Chapter 43
The orange ferns collapsed around me as their trunks burned beyond the point of structural integrity. On the other side of the ashes, I was faced with two deep crimson eyes. Butterfly sat on the rock behind him, her knees pulled to her chest, and dressed in black leather. Rai was shirtless, with his tattoos, piercings, and lean muscles on full display.
I didn’t even try to process what the fuck I was looking at before I had the Minotaur’s throat in a vice grip, and his back against an unburned tree. “You have five seconds to explain before I rip your fucking horn off and give you a new kind of dermal piercing.” I added a few extra pascals of pressure, but his collar protected him from me as much as it limited him for Jericho.
I’d already happened upon the Cronus camp, so I wasn’t completely oblivious to what had gone on. The fact that I’d woken up to the zing of a mate call from her touching the marks, only to find myself bound in vines that Alessi had to cut me out of, told me it wasn’t the simpleminded goblins who had kidnapped her in the first place. Only Rai had that kind of control over the environment of the Labyrinth.
But if Rai had taken her, then why was the whole village dead? And I mean dead dead, and the whole village. There wasn’t a single one of those things left to rebuild the population. There was no doubt that Butterfly wasn’t the one who managed to gore them, break trees in half, and physically rip their horns from their skulls and stab them through their chests.
So… why? The Cronus have lived in the Orange Sector for ages, and only now Rai felt inspired to remove them from existence? What new found humanitarianism made him want to send their souls into the eighth circle of hell?
If Jericho’s fuck toy was suddenly warming up to a tribute, I was going to give myself a nightmare.
Rai grinned widely in my chokehold, bearing his fangs. “Try it, Dream Weaver.” He placed his hands on my forearm, and clamped down hard enough to dig into the muscle. “Kill me and watch what happens to your sweet little tribute.”
My eyes narrowed. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“Theron, stop.” Butterfly yelled to me, rubbing at her own neck like she could feel my fingers bruising his skin.
Wait . Stunned silence took me as I looked between them. Abruptly, I dropped Rai, and took all of the steps back. “What did you do? ”
“I shared my blood with her.” Rai scoffed like it was obvious. Like he’d ever fucking done that with anyone or anything before. “I found her in the Senseless Forest about five minutes from death, and I used my own life force to clear her poison and heal her wounds before I dropped her at your door.”
What? I stared at the tribute: the girl who healed way too fast, who took on marks usually reserved for bonds between devils and angels, who had instantly drawn me to her… who had the blood of the half-breed Minotaur pumping through her veins. I returned my dumbfounded gaze to Rai.
“Why?” I must have asked, since I heard the word in the air between us.
“I don’t know.” He said, looking as distraught as the rest of us.
In hindsight, Rai had always had a thing for cute animals, so this wasn’t that shocking. The idea that he would happen upon Butterfly in turmoil, and suddenly his compassion welled up and overflowed all over her— gross. Note to self: never use that phrasing in regards to Rai ever again —wasn’t entirely out of character.
“So what does that mean?” So much to process right now. So many things.
“It means I’ll take it from here.” He spoke firmly, and I laughed in pure disbelief.
“You’ll take what from here?”
“Protecting the girl.” He said. Wait, did he really say that?
“Come again?” I blinked with confusion, and he remained in his completely baffling stance.
“I’ll take her through the Red Sector and talk to Jericho to plead her case.” Rai spoke unironically, and I just kept staring at him with my jaw on the floor. “She’s bonded to me by blood, and our emotions and nerve centers are linked until that blood clears. Which will be years upon years, if ever. It doesn’t make sense to keep fighting and trying to terrorize her.”
I turned my head back just enough to side-eye the Minotaur. He would never, in any world, with any feelings, betray the king. Jericho was as much his lover as he was his master, on top of practically being his father figure, so there was no possible configuration in hell where he’d pick Butterfly over Jericho. I couldn’t even do that. And I was Jericho’s most begrudging hater.
But then again, he never said he was going to get her there within the next… I glanced up at the Twilight Clock that had ticked below the thirty hour mark. That was a lot of time for only one sector, but it wasn’t enough time if Rai decided she wasn’t going to beat the clock. It really wasn’t enough time considering I would be assuring the same conclusion.
Ugh, does that mean we’re fully aligned now? We both wanted to keep the tribute safe, while we were also obligated to get in her way. Though, ironically, I was the one more bound to Jericho’s wishes than Rai would ever be. His limiter collar was his only true subjugation, where I shared his literal soul. Yet he was usually the one doing backflips for the king, while I was the one trying not to die at his hand.
How the hell did this happen?
“I have a proposal.” Alessi called down from a nearby tree after shifting back out of Fox form. He’d been the scout that had found the Cronus camp, but it was Rai touching her marks that alerted me to her precise location.
Another suspicious gesture.
Considering he’d had the foresight to carve out my tracking marks, he was certainly aware of what happened when he channeled his magic through the bonded scars on her forearms. Did that mean he called us here intentionally?
Alessi jumped down into the clearing, landing gracefully on his feet. He had a truly elegant way about him in any and every form he took on.
He stood up, his fox ears perked, and his tail twitching behind him. “We’ll travel with you from here. You two can do the alleged protecting from whatever remains in the maze—though what’s more dangerous than either of you, I have no idea—and I’ll serve to protect her form the two of you, who are both subservient to the Devil King.” He made a solid point. He turned his attention towards Butterfly with a wink. “It’s always better to have a system of checks and balances when dealing with psychotic devils, wouldn’t you say, Bijou?”
Butterfly looked between us and nodded. Mildly offensive, but also fair. “I’d like that.” She said, and I had no fucking clue what could have just happened between her and Rai that had her trusting him that effortlessly, just as I was at a total loss as to what she had done to win over Rai.
Rai turned to face her and offered an infatuated smile— an infatuated smile?! What in the ACTUAL fuck—and then he returned his attention to us. “I’ll bear with it for her sake.”
“Perfect. Then we’re all agreed.” Alessi steamrolled the conversation and my confusion, with a nod of his head. “Let’s get going then.”
And I stood there, absolutely fucking flabbergasted, as the three of them turned towards the direction of the Red Sector.
Butterfly held back, letting Rai and Alessi go on ahead so we could get a brief moment alone. It seemed there was some internal, silent communication happening there, as neither man stopped or questioned it. Between her blood of the Minotaur and that fox tail swirling around my marks on her arm, it was likely that they’d made some emotional link.
“He saved me.” She said, running her hand through her messy hair with an uncertain expression. “I don’t know why he did, but he went from wanting to kill me to completely losing his mind at the thought of something happening to me. I really think we can trust him, even if it’s just for a little while.”
“He kidnapped you and put you in danger in the first place.” I managed through my defeat.
“He did but…” Butterfly forgave him so easily. Maybe even more easily than she’d forgiven me for that nightmare I’d put her through. “People are complicated.” She said with a shrug. “You guys are the most complicated.”
“He tried to kill you.” I reminded her. That went way past complicated. “He would have taken your head off if you weren’t tied to him.”
“Around here, that just feels like cultural differences.” She snorted as she said it, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I also laughed. “To be honest, there are a lot of feelings that have been really difficult to parse through lately. Maybe all of them are just defense mechanisms for trauma, but at this point, I’m just going to go with my instincts and stop worrying so much about what’s right and wrong and brilliant or questionable. I’ve spent enough of my life being all wound up and quick to dismiss, judge, or fight people. This time, if someone wants to act like they care about me, I’m going to let them.”
Her gaze lingered on mine for several seconds that felt like days, and I didn’t know what to make of that. I failed to find words before she closed her eternally expressive eyes. She turned on her heel to flit off to join the men who were both tainted by Olympus blood.
I stood frozen as I let it all sink in. My heart beat was as erratic as it always was around her.
Then with the deepest breath I could draw into my lungs, I took the first step forward to catch up with this growing band of demented heathens.
Don’t ask me what I was doing, because I’d completely lost the plot at this point.
Seriously fuck every fucking minute of my fucking life.