Chapter 35 #2
I spat at her boots, blood and venom and the last of my bravado. My jaw throbbed; my pulse hammered, but I met those hooded eyes and forced a smile sharp enough to cut. ‘Try it,’ I told her. ‘Break him, and I’ll make sure the last thing you see is slow, expensive regret.’
She paused—the first flicker of uncertainty in a minute that felt like an eternity—and for a breath I thought my insolence had found purchase… then she tilted her head and smiled that same cruel smile.
‘We shall see, little assassin,’ she said, and the hood swallowed her whole, laughter trailing after her like broken glass.
‘Let’s have some fun…’ Ajax actually smiled; it was creepy as shit. He hauled aside a tarpaulin and revealed a huge, black vat of water, the surface slick and oily in the torchlight.
Great. Waterboarding. Because of course. Why the hell had I not taken Si’s oath sooner? For fuck’s sake, drowning is a bitch.
He grabbed me by the hair and hauled my head over the edge. Cold hit my face first—water rolling over my mouth, my nose. The world narrowed to the sting of breath I couldn’t catch. He lifted my head momentarily, just enough time for me to catch a breath.
‘I’d call you a cunt,’ I spat through clenched teeth, because if I couldn’t keep my mouth from moving, I could at least aim it, ‘but I doubt you possess the depth and capacity to give pleasure.’
His laugh was a wet, ugly sound. Then a fist smashed into my gut. I doubled over, pain folding me in half, lungs screaming, but before I could even think to breathe, his hands shoved my head back under.
I couldn’t think. I was drowning. No air. I struggled like a trapped animal—claws raking for purchase that wasn’t there, body thrashing against invisible walls.
Panic keyed everything to white noise; my lungs convulsed.
Pain blasted through me again and again; the world tasted of copper and salt.
I let out a ragged breath that was more animal than human.
The dunk burned into me—a brand, like molten iron poured into lungs, and mind-numbing, all-consuming agony wrapped itself around my nerves until there was nothing but the hollow ache.
The water closed over my face once more, and the vat became a black, terrible sky. My world was nothing but pressure and the stupid, insistent need to claw for air. I felt my heartbeat spool and fray; time broke into ragged slashes.
As terrible, white-hot agony ripped down my middle, the first instinct was brainless survival—panic snapping like electricity—until the next, darker instinct took over.
To feel would be to crawl into a hole and die.
To feel would be surrender.
My brain slammed on the brakes, and I shut down.
I slipped sideways into the safe place my training taught me: a thin, blank trance where pain became noise at the edge of nothing; something you observe, not something that owns you.
I’d been here plenty of time. Drakos had tried to break me in every way he could think of, and still I stood.
He’d never broken me, and neither would these bastards.
That mantra was a thread I clung to as the water blurred my vision.
Between gulps, I forced words out, ragged and raw. ‘You’re an absolute cock who’s got the IQ of a pork pie,’ I wheezed. If an insult could puncture their smug, I’d stab them with it.
He dunked me again, as my world reduced to rhythm—and somewhere, very far away, a part of me catalogued—breathe, count, survive; as cold and steady as a bone, and in that thin trance the terror dulled to a distant hum, and beneath it, a clean, hard promise: live; learn; wait. Payback comes later.
* * *
It had been hours. I was battered, bruised, cut, and racked with violent shudders from being cold and wet, but I wasn’t broken, and vengeance whispered to me on the still air.
I was fucking hell in razor-spiked heels, and that cock sucker would pay.
I crawled across the floor and grabbed one of my shoes which had been thrown into a corner, breaking off the stiletto heel; it would be as handy as any blade. Closing my eyes, I waited for Ajax to return.
He came back soft-footed, arrogance oozing like oil. He must’ve thought I’d be spent, scared, resigned… He was wrong.
‘Let’s have some fun with the chains and hooks,’ he said with hatred.
I found the heel of the stiletto under my palm and let the metal be an extension of thought.
When he stepped close, I lashed out, because hesitation was a luxury I didn’t have.
Pain sharpened everything—breath, sight, reflex.
The first strike was a seamless surprise: the heel drove into the meat of his thigh, a hard, clean hit.
He howled like a wounded dog, pistol clattering from his hand.
He recovered fast, rage and pride flaring.
He lunged, sloppy with fury, and I met him—we collided like two linebackers—fists, kicks, the clack of stiletto on stone.
He grabbed my wrist, tried to twist as I pivoted, sank an elbow into his ribs, and tasted copper on my own tongue.
He countered with a haymaker that rocked my skull; stars flared.
I went down—and rolled back up, because the only acceptable option was standing.
Everything condensed into motion. He wanted to dominate, to humiliate again, I wanted him to know the cost. I wanted to be back at Si’s side; that thought—Si, his voice, that stupid soft edge I’d come to crave—was a striker’s fuel; it landed in me like a flare and set me alight.
A hot, furious clarity took over as my bruises screamed, but my limbs answered with a speed that felt borrowed.
I moved with a terrible grace, and each blow I delivered was a sentence: a punch to his jaw, a knee into his balls, a thumb jab to the soft space beneath his eye.
He staggered, and for a beat I saw the man beneath the traitor—fear and greed and something like regret—flash and then bruise over.
He reached for the pistol again, but I didn’t give him the chance. I disarmed him with a twist and a sickening pop—his shoulder protested—and shoved him into the iron bars. The stiletto found his forearm, a shallow cut, neat and burning. He screamed, a raw animal sound, and dropped the weapon.
He lunged with one last desperate grab, and I ducked, spun, and drove my foot into his chest. The impact sent him crashing into the wall; stone cracked, and the breath tore out of him in a single, rattling gasp.
He slid down and went still.
Good. Maybe I’d killed him.
I didn’t have time to check—not with Si out there, not with the dragon’s teeth, not with Ixion’s shadow still crawling through the mortal plane.
I catalogued what I needed in one furious sweep: the ring he’d been flaunting—I snatched it off his finger (because information is leverage), grabbed the pistol, and bolted.
The corridors were a maze of damp stone and dripping arches, the air tasting of iron and old promises.
I moved fast, breath tight in my chest, every shadow potentially an Ixion soldier or worse.
Around the next bend, I heard it: the metallic percussion of combat—the crack of weapons, yells cut short, Zeus’s lightning tearing through the air, Hades’ voice low and dangerous.
Relief crashed over me so hard my knees nearly buckled.
If they were fighting, Poseidon would be there too.
If Si was there, then he’d found me. He was close.
My storm; my anchor, but I didn’t dare let myself drown in the feeling, not yet.
I was still in Ixion’s nest, still hunted, still one wrong turn away from being dragged back in chains.
Overjoyed would have to wait; survival came first.
I pressed myself into a narrow side passage and listened. The sounds were closer now: the sharp command of gods, the thud of bodies, the high keening of someone hurt. I head-ducked through a half-blocked tunnel and the world opened into a network of shafts leading upward—towards the man I loved.
My lungs burned; my legs trembled, but the ache in my chest was for him—Si—more than for me. He’d promised. He’d said things he hadn’t said before. I had to get to him; I had to warn him. If I couldn’t stand with him, I’d at least make sure he knew what was coming.
I ran, breath tearing at my throat, the tunnels alive with the sound of footsteps closing in. Ahead, the noise of the fight swelled into a roar; the drums of war, the cries of gods and monsters, pulled me forward.
I wanted to slow down, to taste the victory of escaping, filthy and sharp as it was, but survival and love are practical things, so I kept moving.
The tunnels spat me out into the pale underside of a desolated city, and as I broke into the open air above, I heard it clear as a bell—the sound that would never leave me: Poseidon’s voice—roaring and raw, carried on a tide of battle.
The thunder of brothers, united at last, answering a summons older than blood.