Promise Me Shadows (To the Cruel Gods #3)

Chapter 1 Silver

SILVER

If someone told me a month ago that my best friend would walk down the aisle in a sexy pale blue mermaid gown, and that the man waiting at the other end was none other than the dark sorcerer of the underside, prince of darkness, Lucian Saltzin Regis, I would have asked what they were snorting and demanded a hit.

For one, the old Kleos would have never worn something as delightfully daring.

Her mother wouldn’t have permitted it. And secondly, the sweetheart of the vale didn’t even use to speak to any unders before.

How our world changed in just a few months.

As the maid of honor, traditionally I would have stood right next to her, but the bridal party scattered to the front row seats once we escorted the bride up to her besotted groom, mostly because of the austere woman leading the ceremony.

I wouldn’t say I cowered, exactly, but for the first time in my life, I was pretty glad to be five foot one.

Imposing and stunning, the woman was dark haired and olive skinned, with a classical Mediterranean look, down to the strong nose, which somehow looked absolutely perfect in her enchanting face.

She was draped in radiant purple silk and gold that glinted in the way that made it look like liquid sunshine.

Hera, the queen of heaven, goddess of propriety, marriage, broomsticks stuck in arses and cows.

She loved Kleos, or at least, loved the woman whose energy Kleos had claimed. Me? Not so much.

I’d never actually interacted with the goddess, not in this form, not in my actual memory, but all my instincts screamed that it was safer not to.

Though by no mean a scholar of Kleos’s caliber, I couldn’t live in Highvale all my life and not learn a thing or two.

Eons ago, in the Bronze Age, Hera was so sick of her husband-brother’s meandering that she cursed…well, a lot of women. One of them was Leto. The wrathful goddess demanded of her mother, Gaia, that Leto, pregnant with twins, be given no haven on Earth.

The entire fucking Earth.

In the end, it was Poseidon who pushed her ship to a floating island, unanchored to the sea bed—and therefore not attached to the Earth—where she gave birth to twins: the shining Apollo, and Artemis.

Me.

Another mindfuck I would have guessed was the fruit of a particularly good harvest of mushrooms, should anyone have claimed it not so long ago.

When gods died, their energies remained, and sometimes attached themselves to people: Freya for Kleos, and Artemis for me.

It was wild, insane. And yet I couldn’t deny that when I thought the words in my head, a quiet sense of peace came to me, as if to say, yes, that’s right.

Besides, just yesterday, Apollo risked his life against bloody Zeus to get me out of danger, and there was no one else he would have done it for.

As fond as he was of his lovers, his friends, even his mother, Leto, Apollo was inherently too selfish to ever defy his father for anything or anyone except his twin.

Dark eyes flashed to me, and a shiver ran along my spine as I looked down at my nails, suddenly shamed for the sin of being born a lifetime ago. From the corner of my eyes, I could see the goddess’s shapely lips curve up. She liked my worry and misery, I would have sworn it.

I forced my attention back on my friends as they exchanged eternal vows.

I didn’t cry. If my eyes got a little misty, it wasn’t my fault. The dome was still broken, and my divine progenitor, being an absolute shit, decided to make it rain.

Poseidon didn’t allow any water through the enormous hole Apollo had made when he’d flown us out of there yesterday, but I was more than positive a drop or two fell to my cheek.

Yes, that was absolutely not tears.

“Sweet, aren’t they?” a raspy voice whispered at my side.

“Mm,” I said, before twirling back.

It sounded like a guy, and I was standing with the bridesmaids. The only one with a penis allowed on this side, Gideon, was too busy bawling his eyes out like a pussy to say anything.

I snorted, recognizing the man lounging behind me.

Except no one else was paying attention to him, which was strange.

Apollo definitely wasn’t the sort of man people might overlook.

Firstly, because he was devastatingly handsome, but also because of how bloody obnoxious his appearance was, from the broad shoulders in a silky shirt to the long flaming red hair and the crystal dangling from one of his ears.

My crystal.

“Are you even here?” I murmured, feeling foolish.

“About point one percent of me is. Wouldn’t have missed it for the worlds. These idiots in love are just so cute.”

“You totally watch soap operas, don’t you?” I made a face, disgusted. “Are you sure you’re my brother?”

“Not every pair of twins is identical. In fact, the two of us have always been stark opposites. Sun and moon, and all that.”

Closing my eyes, I could remember flashes. I’d rolled my eyes a lot as he teased. It made me deeply uncomfortable to have those memories that had not actually happened to me.

“You’re here for Artemis,” I scoffed. “And she’ll take over. Erase me. It’s not like Freya, who was ready to fade like the rest of her pantheon, right? You want your sister, and that will kill me.”

Apollo didn’t answer at first. “When my energy latched on to this flesh about thirty years ago, I felt a stirring, a change in the worlds. Prophecies have been vague, as though the Fates were waiting for a catalyst before threading the loom again. I observed behind his eyes, curious. And all of a sudden, Moros started writing again, clear as day. Do you know when?”

I shrugged.

“The night when a mortal woman pushed a full-blown goddess out of her womb, though she was pure as snow, completely untouched at the time.”

I turned to him.

“I took over this body then because I knew that within moments, hours, days perhaps, Father would sense the rebirth of an Olympian on Earth. I prevented it by sealing the little girl’s power.”

I completely turned around to face him, though I knew I probably looked foolish to anyone who wasn’t seeing him.

Apollo was no longer smiling, though his eyes remained sky blue, not the fiery hue they’d previously adopted when he had been serious.

Kleos had found those eyes scary, but nothing about this man alarmed me—other than the fact that part of me recognized him too well.

“I don’t know what you are, but my sister’s spirit didn’t attach itself to you when it recognized a fitting soul. You were born with it. It’s not logical. None of it should have happened. This is the Fates meddling.”

His gaze lifted up, past me, toward the darkening skies.

“And now the next piece on the board enters. Brace yourself, sister.”

The god vanished in a blink, leaving me to think whether any of that was real.

That was when little Rhea gasped. “Look!” she said, pointing at the sky.

I blinked, my eyes not understanding what was going on at first.

What I thought I saw in the distance wasn’t possible. It made no fucking sense. There was a man in the sky. Falling.

The first to move was Ronan, a dark cloud surrounding him as he started to fly up and up, reaching the dome, an energy shield in one hand, while doing his best to slow the descent of the body in free fall.

He was going to crash hard, nonetheless, and he would be very, very dead.

“Move!” I screamed at the stands behind me as I jumped to my feet.

We had to get out of the way or the dead man would also kill whomever he was going to crash onto on impact.

A shield of water covered the entire party just as the man fell through the blue dome, creating a second humongous hole in the Hall of Truce’s ancient ceiling.

The deafening sound as he crashed against Poseidon’s water made me wince.

I wanted to shut my eyes, not eager to watch the utter destruction.

There would be blood and guts, body parts, his body would be flatter than a pancake.

But I was too shaken to look away, and to my utter confusion, the water gently lowering the body to the floor, wasn’t stained red, or black, or even gold with blood.

The man was completely unharmed.

No, not man.

There was only one sort of creature who could have survived this fall intact.

This was most definitely a god.

“Et puis merde alors!” Francois cried over the stunned silence. “Il a tout cassé!”

I knew just enough French to make sense of it: shit, he broke everything!

That wasn’t quite fair. Apollo was the one who destroyed most of the glass-domed roof in his effort to fly me away from Zeus.

I shook my head, still stunned that this was my reality. Gods attacking me and falling from the sky.

The man wore loose dark pants and a thin belt under a cloak that would have won an award for accuracy at a ren faire. Short, pinned at the shoulder, falling in folds to the side.

A chlamys, my mind supplied. How I knew that, I decided not to question, taking it in stride although I was fairly certain I’d never heard or read the word before.

Several people backed away as they whispered. Being me, I stepped forward. So did Lucian, all while keeping Kleos behind him, protecting her with his arm.

Glancing her way, I couldn’t help notice the gods behind her remained at the aisle, close together, talking in hushed voices.

They seemed worried, so I bent my mind to listen as best I could. To my surprise, I managed.

“What is he doing here?”

Even though I was focusing on them, I shouldn’t have been able to hear them over the various voices in the hall, and the distance.

I shouldn’t have been able to understand them, given the fact that they spoke in ancient Greek.

But if I got stumped by everything I shouldn’t be able to do, I’d constantly be very confused and weary.

The goddess narrowed her eyes. “This shouldn’t have been possible. Something in changing.”

As I watched them, I remembered that Hera and Poseidon were siblings—actual siblings who didn’t boink—though there were no similarities between them, their auras, not even the shape of their brow, nose, and eyes.

If Hera made me think of the beautiful women of the sunny shores of the Mediterranean, Poseidon was a Viking—harsh, cold, and pale.

The sea god nodded. “We need to go. Our brother is known to take advantage of our absences.”

Before I could say a thing to warn Kleos that her guests were about to leave, to beg them to wait a moment and explain what was going, who this stranger could be, they both shimmered into nothingness.

Looking around, I noticed that the muses were also gone.

Brace yourself, Apollo had said. Which meant that this man was an enemy.

I turned on my heels. Damn him. My divine brother had disappeared like all the other gods in attendance, leaving absolutely no one who could give us an explanation for the unexpected arrival.

Without warning, rain poured into the destroyed dome, drenching us all in the deluge as thunder struck overhead.

Double fuck. Zeus was so fucking petty.

“All right, stay calm, everyone.” Lucian’s commanding voice filled the hall, exuding confidence. “If you’d start evacuating the Hall—quietly, no need to run. Our shields are still in place. There will be one hell of a potluck in The Royal Manor.”

Regardless of his direction, people scampered rather fast, and who could blame them after yesterday? We were just attacked by bloody Zeus.

“What about him?” I asked, tilting my chin towards the immobile man still on the ground.

We formed a circle around him, the newlyweds, their families and I, joined by Guard superiors and even a few daring city officials, but I was addressing the Regises.

They were the highest authorities in the room—in most room in Highvale.

“Can you wake him up?” Lucian asked his brother.

The elder Regis shook his head.

The matriarch turned to her husband, who shook his head. “I’m not sure we should move him. I mean, if you find a buried bomb, you mark the spot and stay away.”

“So, what, we condemn the Hall of Truce?” the elder son asked, snorting as if the very idea was preposterous.

Almost as handsome as Lucian, golden where the younger brother was colder, the man wore formal regalia almost as impressive as Hera’s gowns, bright blue upon silver.

The only thing I knew about him was that he was a politician and therefore, untrustworthy.

“I mean, given the events of the last twenty-four hours, I’d say, yes,” Gideon offered.

I bit my lower lip, somehow bothered, though I could see his point.

This hall included temples to the gods on the first level, which meant that, if called, they could cross into our world. Yesterday proved that made it dangerous. But the idea of leaving this man entombed here and throwing away the key didn’t sit well with me.

“He’s not going to stay unconscious forever,” Kleos reasoned, frowning. “I can feel his energy. It’s…huge. And he’s not hurt anywhere, I think. This coma feels—”

She didn’t finish her thought, but watched him, frowning.

“Well, that’s that.” The captain of the Guard sighed. “I say we bring him to the infirmary in the Hall. It’s closer than the hospital.”

Lucian was the first to move, metamorphosing a broken bench into a stretcher with a wave of his hand. Then he frowned. “Unexpected.”

“What?” I asked, instantly on edge.

Lucian wasn’t generally bothered by much. I attacked him mostly unprovoked weeks ago and the man never lost his cool. I didn’t like to see him ill at ease.

“I tried to move him to the stretcher. Didn’t work.”

“He’s likely protected against magic, like me,” Kleos guessed.

Only Kleos would have been able to be moved magically, if she were unconscious. Her protection was against nefarious interference. A simple spell to change her location wouldn’t trigger it.

“I guess nothing beats some good old-fashioned strength,” Gideon boasted, flexing his admittedly impressive shoulders before moving into place.

He grabbed the man under the shoulder and…

Nothing.

Bending his knees, face tense in concentration, the half dragon pulled with his all his strength.

“I think he might just have moved a centimeter or two, dear,” Cassiopea Regis encouraged him reassuringly.

I chuckled, suddenly sure of something.

“Move over, schmuck. This calls for a specialist.” I was bragging, just a little, and I could have been completely wrong.

But when I took Gideon’s place and lifted him up, he moved without any issue, though I had to admit, he was heavy—for me.

This meant one thing.

This man was made of the same as me.