23. Better The Cock You Know
The Gorgon King lifted a slice of cucumber from one eye, the movement catching the light on a heavy silver ring upon his finger, a dark stone set deep in its centre.
“Most people tend to knock”, he said, completely unfazed by our abrupt arrival. Aster slid me a sidelong look, and I could tell he was every bit as thrown as I was.
“You’re taking a bath,” I said in astonishment.
Theron glanced down at himself, as though only now becoming aware of the fact. “Your powers of observation are truly an inspiration to us all.”
I glanced at the bath. There was an alarming quantity of foam.
“I expected something rather more… intimidating,” I admitted, half-tempted to sheathe my blade.
“So many do,” he replied with a sigh.
Aster cleared his throat. “Yeah, well, bath time’s over. You’re needed in The?kós.”
Theron reached for a crystal goblet resting at the bath’s edge and took a slow, leisurely sip of what looked like red wine, though, from the stories I’d heard, I would not have been the least surprised to learn it was his latest enemy’s blood.
“I think not,” he said pleasantly, plucking the second cucumber slice from his other eye.
He regarded us both, entirely unhurried.
“Last I heard, you two were rather busy watching your own kingdom burn to the ground. And now here you stand, interrupting my bath, thinking what precisely? That you might pop over and have a go at my kingdom as well?”
The jab landed exactly where he’d aimed it. I felt the growl rise in my throat before I could stop it.
“Careful, Gorgon king. You’ve no idea what you’re…”
“Mm.” He waved a wet, dismissive hand, foam sliding from his wrist. “But lucky for you, she obviously got there in time.” And then, quieter, half to himself, something that almost looked like genuine astonishment crossed that great stone-carved face, “By the gods’ own balls. She actually did it.”
“Enough of this! You’ll come now,” I growled. “Of your own free will. Or we kidnap you. Those are the choices.”
I was, in that moment, profoundly grateful that it was Aster and I who had come for him, and not my brother. Atlas would have run out of patience long before now, and there would already be a Theron-shaped hole in the floor. The Gorgon King himself flung headfirst into the deepest pit of hell.
Theron’s expression cooled. “I would watch that tongue of yours, little prince. I can turn you to stone where you stand, with a single look, or did your scholars forget to teach you of me during your studies?”
My heart slammed against my ribs at the words.
I had spent far too long already trapped, helpless inside my own body, screaming where no one could hear.
I had no wish whatsoever to spend an eternity frozen in some garden.
Beside me, Aster shifted, almost without thinking, putting himself half a step in front of me. As though to shield me from the threat.
I would remember to thank him for that, even though it was unnecessary.
“Alex is in trouble,” he said. “She needs you.”
I was surprised he’d given up that information so easily. More surprised still when it worked.
Because Theron’s gaze snapped to his, and I did not miss the way his eyes widened. The reaction lasted no more than a heartbeat. But it was enough. Whatever lazy calm he’d been wearing suddenly felt like a thing built carefully, brick by brick, to hide whatever lay beneath it.
“Why am I not surprised?” He sighed and reached for his wine again. “Of course, she’d go and get herself into trouble. So… What mischief has the little mortal got herself into this time?” He asked with a sigh.
“We don’t have time to explain.”
“Would five minutes be so very unreasonable? I haven’t even exfoliated yet.”
“No,” Aster and I said together in unison.
Theron scowled. “Three?”
“No.”
“Fucking one?”
“No!”
He let out a long, theatrical sigh. “You are both being terribly rude toward royalty. Didn’t your elders ever teach you manners?” he mocked.
“To deal with the likes of you, no, can’t say it was a lesson I would ever waste time listening to,” I muttered.
Aster went for the jugular, “Now you’re just getting on my very last nerve.”
He strode forward then, all that towering bulk and broad-shouldered menace, a Minotaur in a man’s skin, a sight that had sent armies running. And the Gorgon King, with a put-upon sigh, set down his goblet, braced both hands on the lip of the bath, and rose.
And rose.
And kept rising.
Because Theron, it turned out, was every bit as vast as Aster.
Easily his match. Broad, carved and towering, water sheeting off a body that was plainly no stranger to a battlefield of its own.
The two of them faced one another across the steaming room like a pair of mountains deciding whether or not to collide.
“Out,” Aster said. “Now.”
Theron’s eyes narrowed. “You may be able to order that king of yours around as you please. But you’ll find yourself in a great deal of deep shit if you try to do so to me again, young bull.”
Aster rolled his eyes so hard I was genuinely concerned he might strain something.
“Did you not hear me? Alex needs you!”
“Oh, I’m sure she does. Doesn’t she have a king of her own to haul her out of her little scrapes?”
“Right. That’s it.” Aster snapped, and before Theron could so much as react, Aster lunged, plunging a hand into the bath to seize his arm. I rushed in for the other, water exploding everywhere.
Theron merely laughed.
And then he moved.
I had perhaps half a heartbeat to register the sheer, casual strength of him before the world tipped, and the next thing I knew, the warm and foaming water was closing over my head.
I came up spluttering, soap stinging my eyes, to find Aster surfacing beside me with a look of pure murder on his dripping face.
The pair of us.
Thrown into a bath like a couple of misbehaving children, by the very man we had crossed worlds to abduct.
Theron, meanwhile, had stepped neatly out of the water and snagged a towel from a hook. Which he then draped around his neck. Not, I noted, around anything else.
He stood over us, smug, glistening, and roaring with laughter.
The two of us looked up at him from the bath. And, unfortunately, as we looked up, our gazes landed squarely on the weapon hanging quite unashamedly between his legs.
“Um… Mazel tov,” Aster said.
I looked at him, brow raised at a term I didn’t know but could guess the shape of well enough. He shrugged.
“Got to admit. It’s impressive.”
“Yeah, well,” I wiped the foam from my eyes, “So’s mine, but you don’t see me waving it the fuck around, do you?”
The Gorgon King threw back his head and bellowed.
“Well,” he said, once he’d recovered himself, “as entertaining as all this is, gentlemen, if the pair of you don’t fuck off out of my home this instant, I will be sending you both back to your king as a matching set of statues.
To decorate those manicured little gardens of his.
” His teeth flashed. “With my regards, of course.”
“If you do that,” Aster said, “you won’t get your vow, Theron.”
My head snapped toward him. Then back to the king. Whose smile had gone all at once, whose jaw had set hard as the stone he commanded.
“Five seconds… Explain,” Theron said, quiet and dangerous.
“She’s dying, Theron.” Aster hauled himself out of the bath, dripping, now smelling of an entire fucking flower garden. “That’s what she’s done this time.”
“And this vow is something you neglected to mention to me,” I said through my teeth, climbing out after him,
“Later,” Aster muttered.
“Oh. Later. Wonderful. Shall we say the moment my brother tears you a brand-new arsehole for keeping things from him? Yes. Let’s do it then.”
But that was the moment Aster’s patience ran out.
He grabbed me, dragged me in close so I was lodged between his broad chest and muscly arms, and this time, somehow, got a proper hold of the king we’d struggled so hard to keep our hands on.
It was as though the bastard had oiled himself before bathing, which currently made him a slippery big bugger!
Then, before any of us could get another word out, Aster pulled the final Way Stone from my sodden pocket, gripped Theron and me in one enormous fist, and without so much as a word of warning, crushed it in his wet, oil-slicked hand.
The world vanished.
A heartbeat later, the portal spat us out into Atlas’s office.
My soggy ass hit the floor. Aster’s dripping bulk also hit the floor. Theron, somehow, landed perfectly upright.
Of course he did… cocky bastard.
He was also still entirely, unrepentantly naked, dripping water and bubbles into a spreading puddle across the stone.
The portal snapped shut behind us.
Before either Aster or I could recover so much as a shred of our dignity, I registered Atlas.
He stood at the far end of the office, mid-motion, hauling books from the new shelves and casting them aside, plainly tearing the place apart for anything at all that might help her.
A heavy tome on ancient medicine slipped from his fingers and thudded to the floor as his head came up.
His mouth fell open at the sight that greeted him.
Or rather, at the sight of one large, naked, soap-slicked Gorgon King, dripping in the middle of his office.
Whatever flicker of amusement might have lived in him hours ago was long gone.
He looked exhausted. Hollowed out even. We hadn’t been away long, and yet it was plain that what had befallen Alex was crushing him beneath a weight none of us could truly fathom.
Dark shadows pooled beneath his eyes, and every line of him hummed with a tightly leashed and terrible fury.
His attention fixed at once on Theron.
“I expected more clothes,” Atlas said, his gaze cutting between Aster and me as we dragged ourselves to our feet.
“In their defense,” Theron offered, entirely unbothered, “I was taking a bath.”
Atlas looked genuinely appalled. “Cover yourself, for fuck’s sake, Theron.”
Theron lifted a brow and made a slow show of glancing about the room. “With what, precisely?”