Chapter 3 Silver
SILVER
My attention was divided between the chaos of the various healers throwing spells at the doors and yelling threats or cries for help and the green shard of polished glass pulsing at my throat.
Kleos recharged it a week ago, right before her wedding. I’d used up most of her reserve of power during my twenty second confrontation with Zeus. His lightning bolt never even got close to me, but deflecting its residual power still completely depleted the crystal I was wearing at the time.
The horde of healers behind the door were no Zeus, but the consistent attack by half a dozen sources were taxing my defenses.
Shit. I didn’t want it to come to a face-to-face confrontation.
Not because I couldn’t win. I’d have to evade their spells but I was fast and strong enough to take a bunch of old, undertrained, mostly sedentary scientists, magic or no.
I’d wrestled a bloody dragon a couple of weeks back.
But fighting against city officials wasn’t in my best interest. I was already registered as dangerous.
Any strike against me might get me right back where I started: a lab rat for those assholes.
Focused on two places already, I didn’t sense him until he was right in front of me. Fuck. The ruckus must have woken him up.
Aphrodite’s tits, he was huge.
I’d only seen Cas laying down so far, and of course, I noticed both his height and muscles, but nothing could have prepared me for the colossal hulking figure as he stood before me.
His eyes were eerie, one ink black, the other, glowing blue just like the lightning marks running along his skin.
I was too busy gawking and he moved so fast I couldn’t even think to defend myself, his hand clutching my neck.
Instinctively, I reached for his wrist to push him away, not bothering to restrain myself. It was only when he didn’t even budge that I realized I was using my full strength. In vain. There was no curbing his iron grasp.
“What age is this?”
I blinked, not because I didn’t understand, but because the low, slow, rumbling growl brought a million memories all at once.
“Age?” I croaked, his fingers pressing against my pipes. “What age? And how about you fucking let me go, asshole.”
That was what I got for trying to protect a big, bad deity who woke up crankier than me—which was saying something.
The man I called Cas swore colorfully, in yet another language I couldn’t identify but understood perfectly.
“English, huh? I take it I wasn’t gone for long.” Now that he’d switched to our common tongue, he sounded like the poshest Brit ever, potentially even fancier than Lucian and the other Regises.
He still made no sense whatsoever. “Is your brain damaged or something?” I asked. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Those unsettling eyes narrowed at me.
I pulled his wrist down with all my might, but to my everlasting shame, I could tell that he simply chose to let me move his hand, lowering it to his side. “The year, doll.”
“Then why didn’t you just ask that? And I’m no doll,” I grit between my teeth.
The asshole snorted before looking at the door behind me.
I’d completely tuned out the healers’ threats, but they were still shouting at me, demanding I open and promising a variety of reprisals if I failed to obey.
“You protected me,” Cas gleaned after analyzing the current situation.
He seemed both amused and incredulous, as though he didn’t understand why I would bother doing something this stupid.
That made two of us.
“Well, you were all pathetic and helpless, weren’t you?” I shot back.
The corners of his eyes hiked up.
There was something deeply unsettling about the whole affair. I decided I didn’t like it at all. It completely changed his face, giving it a degree of warmth that didn’t compute with the rest of what I was seeing and sensing.
My mind screamed danger. Someone I was afraid of shouldn’t be this fucking hot.
“Adorable,” the stranger drawled, waving his hand towards me.
The sea glass pendant exploded, shards flying so fast some of them cut my skin.
My skin.
It wasn’t the first time I’d seen my blood, which was silver, like my eyes and my hair, but it usually took an ancient weapon covered in many spells to make the slightest dent on my iron skin.
I knew there was nothing special about the sea glass, other than the magic Kleos had imbued it with. What managed to hurt me was his power.
I wasn’t even the target. Behind me, the door I’d been blocking had disappeared, leaving us in front of a group of shocked healers who stared at the monstrous thing towering over me.
Gone was the smirk, the hint of warmth. His blue eye glowed brighter, the black one flashing a little, and the marks dancing along his skin.
The man who looked past me didn’t have to issue so much as a single warning for the healers to start shaking in their boots. I would have laughed if I wasn’t almost as frightened as the idiots.
“So.”
I swallowed. That one word made me realize just how light and downright friendly he’d been with me. To the healers’ credit, they didn’t start sniveling.
“You wanted to experiment on me.” A smile curved his mouth again, but this one exuded the opposite of amusement. Cruelty. “Well, here I am.”
“S-Sir—” Faust stuttered. “We were only—we’re healers. It’s our duty to take care of—”
Cas lifted one hand, silencing her with a single gesture. “You’re excused.”
They scampered so fast one would have thought Olympians were attacking the Hall for the second time in as many weeks.
I should have followed suit, but curiosity kept me glued to this spot as I watched the half-naked giant turn toward his bed, surveying it as though it held many secrets.
Never had I been so glad to sense Kleos’s arrival.
I was generally able to feel her when she was close, as I was used to her power. It felt like gold, sunshine, and sea air. In hindsight, that made complete sense, given the fact that she’d been remade into Freya by Poseidon.
The sound of her heels approached, accompanied by the swoosh of Lucian’s traveling cloak. They were practically running.
Glad to have reinforcements, I cleared my throat. “What’s your name? We’ve been calling you Cas.”
He didn’t even bother to turn towards me, let alone answer.
“What in all the hells happened here?” Lucian whispered.
I glanced at him just in time to see Kleos jump to wrap her arms around me. “Hey!”
“Hey back. He’s awake,” I said, stating the obvious as I waved towards the stranger.
Lucian, for his part, was focusing on the vanished door—or rather, the residual magic around it.
I might not have any magic myself but I was raised with it here. I was pretty good at feeling it. Cas’s was potent. Devastatingly so.
“Cas,” the man repeated, as though he hadn’t been silent for a good five minutes. “It’s a good name.”
I blinked. “Sure, but what’s yours?”
He turned, and despite the arrival of a goddess and a necromancer pretty damn close to her in terms of strength, Cas’s mismatched eyes remained fixed on mine. “I don’t know.”
I opened my mouth and closed it.
“You don’t know your own name?” Concern coated Kleos’s voice. “What’s the last you remember?”
The giant shrugged. “Light. Bright blue light. Pain. Screaming.”
Bull. Shit.
He appeared perfectly lucid when he woke up mere moments ago. Didn’t he ask about the age, the year? That seemed way too specific for someone with no memory. If anything, he sounded like a bloody time traveler with too many memories.
Kleos let go of me and approached Cas, Lucian immediately following her, in silence, never more than one step away in case he needed to intercede. “May I?” she asked politely, hand raised. “I’m a healer.”
I was about to mention he wasn’t impressed with healers at the moment, but Cas just nodded.
I joined Lucian, flanking Kleos’s other side protectively as her fingertips approached his forehead. Familiar golden strands of magic gathered between her palms, coating his face.
Kleos frowned. “You’re healthy,” she said slowly. “But there’s a block. Like a wall of—electricity?”
Lucian gently took one of her hands, intertwining their fingers. “How about we don’t poke the endless pool of energy buzzing under all that, hm?”
He felt it too; Cas’s power. And the wall Kleos professed he had.
I crossed my arms in front of my chest, eyes narrowed.
Kleos wasn’t nearly as suspicious as she should have been. “You had a hell of a fall,” she said. “Your memories will likely come back in time.”
“Thank you, healer. What do they call you?”
“Oh, where are my manners?” Ever the consummate socialite, my friend smiled and introduced herself, her husband, and me. “And I suppose we’ll call you Cas for now, if you like it.”
“You’ve very welcome to stay at The Royal Manor with us for now,” Lucian told him. “We certainly have the room, and it would be the safest option in case that wall of yours acts up.”
Lucian was more careful than Kleos. Still, they were both welcoming him with open arms and I didn’t like that one bit.
How could a bloody god lose his memory? He arrived the day after Zeus attacked the city, and blasted right past our wards. I—not to mention, everyone else in the Guard—had about a million questions and his amnesia was far too convenient.
I would have bet a hundred golds he claimed not to remember anything because he didn’t want to answer any of them.
Whatever Cas was hiding, I would find out.