19. Reveal yourself #2
She swallows roughly. “I thought he was Theseus. I mean… he was Theseus. But now he’s… this guy? Or Kronos? Aiden, baby, I’m so confused. What’s going on?”
“I can explain,” Kronos says, and I know he’s only doing so because he’s enjoying the rush he’s getting from Willow’s confusion. That, and whatever he’s about to tell her, it’s going to break her, I just know it.
“Don’t you dare—”
Too late.
Suddenly, he’s Theseus again. “This is my current shell, or as much of it as I’m prepared to share.
You see, the hero you know as Theseus was born as Theodore Williams about thirty mortal years back.
As you can tell, I have an affinity for the name.
Teddy… Theo… Theseus. Why not? I thought I could use this soul so, instead of killing him”—he jerks his chin at me on purpose—“like your man once did for me when he was my man, I decided to use him. Wouldn’t it be even more chaotic to go from a gangster to a hero?
“That’s what I did,” he continues. “I shoved Theseus’s soul inside of poor Theo deep down whenever I wanted to take over a mortal form.
I got myself a little princess who was the gossip of Delphi, telling me what to expect from the gods in the Other while I plotted and planned, and when the queen of the Underworld returned, I thought it was even more poetic to use her to torture Aiden some more.
” His eyes gleam. “How’s that for ‘what’s going on’, Blossom? ”
“Don’t you call her that,” I begin before I feel Willow’s hand tugging on the back of my jacket.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Aiden. He said he died trying to save Aria,” she says. “I thought he was an Unmentionable. I wanted to know whether we could help him. He… he tricked me.”
“Don’t you fret, Blossom. I will take care of this.”
I will.
I don’t even know if she hears me. Suddenly, her eyes go wide, and she darts out in front of him as though something just occurred to her.
“Where’s Sir?” demands Willow. “I left him with you! Where’s my dog, asshole?”
“Sir? Ah. Cerberus. Don’t fret. I have no quarrel with the beast. I slipped away while he was greeting the ferryman.” His grin widens. “Expect to be very busy if we all survive, Aiden. The dead are on their way.”
He’s not wrong. I can sense it in the air. Something is happening, something is brewing, and there have already been more shades these last few days than there has been in the last season with the promise of more to come.
“You were magnificent,” Kronos says, using Teddy’s voice again. “So very disciplined and efficient. So desperate to believe every man and woman on those lists deserved what you gave them.”
I point at him. “Shut your mouth.”
“All those Greeks. All those lives removed before they could reach the Other.”
“I said shut up.”
“Why? Doesn’t she deserve to know?”
She knows. There isn’t anything that my blossom doesn’t know about me. And while I know that Kronos is trying to cause even more chaos by trying to turn my wife against me, he can’t.
He can’t.
I search for Willow again, stunned to see that she’s nibbling on her bottom lip. There’s that little line between her eyes again.
My heart stops. “Willow?”
She gives her head a clearing shake, and then she breathes out a word I’ve never heard before: “Turducken.”
“What was that, Blossom?”
“A turducken,” she echoes boldly, and despite how much I hate Teddy for what he did to me…
hate Kronos for tricking me… at that moment, I’m full to bursting with love for my blossom.
“It’s a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey.
Only he’s Kronos inside of Theseus inside of whoever that guy was on the other side of the mirror.
I get it now. He’s a Greek turduckens, and he’s a fucking asshole. ”
Willow doesn’t cuss. I do, and she always teases me when the words slip out. Now? Her eyes go wide, and she covers her mouth with her hands, but I’m so proud of her.
Because Kronos? He is a fucking asshole.
Even more annoying is how Willow continues to amuse him.
“How clever,” laughs Kronos. “Pity that she’ll have to die.
I might’ve had more fun with her than I ever did Aria.
” He turns Theseus’s smile on my wife. “Would you have nagged me, goddess? Would have you figured out that each of my heroic quests were really when I returned mirrorside to cause chaos for the mortals and throw the balance off even more?”
That’s it. That’s it.
Hades starts to rise up inside of me, taking Kronos’s latest comments as another threat against his wife.
And, yes, that’s exactly what they are. But I refuse to give control over to Hades, shoving him down myself as, with the same gesture as I use to conjure shadows and hellfire, I’m suddenly holding the exact Colt revolver that killed all of those would-be reincarnates on Teddy Thanos’s orders.
Kronos looks at it, recognizing it instantly. The smug asshole laughs one last time as all I can think is: he’s living. Mortal or immortal, it doesn’t matter. He’s not a shade, not since he kicked out Theseus’s soul to satisfy the Underworld, leaving him alive… and that means I can hurt him.
Thinking along the same lines as me, he boasts, “You can’t kill me. All those Greeks you killed for me… I won’t be one of them.”
“No,” I agree. “Maybe not. But you know what?” I lift the gun and aim at his chest, opening up a path through the shadows to reach him. “I think it’ll still make me feel better.”
I pull the trigger.