Chapter 29 Eryx
ERYX
Rhiannon’s expression went so soft, I thought she might cry. She leaned forward, placing both her hands on my face as she moved slower and slower. “Home?”
I nodded. “I thought we did all right at the cottage. When this is all over, if you want to, we could go back together.”
She threw her body against mine, sobbing. But she was nodding, clenching around me with such intensity that I nearly came. She clung to me, kissing me through her tears. Lust and love mingled in the sweetest way.
Her back arched as she raised up to take me at a better angle. I wiped the tears from her beautiful face, but more streamed down in their place. It was as though every emotion she’d pent up inside her was spilling out now. Her mouth fell open with little gasps of pleasure.
“I want that,” she whimpered. “I want this, every night. Every morning. Forever.”
Something in my chest contracted at the word forever. I shut my eyes against the onslaught of emotions. It triggered a fear in me I didn’t even know I could have. Not after Frannie. Not after so many years of denying myself all true intimacy. I was afraid of losing her. Afraid to be alone again.
“Look at me, baby,” she murmured. “Look at me.”
I did as she asked and saw the tears in her eyes.
“No one can use me against you. Do you understand? They can take me, torture me, rip me to shreds, and I can take it.” Sobs choked me as I wrapped my arms around her.
It was everything I needed to hear. “There isn’t anything anyone could ever do to me to make me leave you. You understand?”
If someone had told me six months ago that a woman would say that to me.
That this woman would say that—I might have been angry.
I would have railed against anything that implied that Frannie should have been sturdier.
But that’s not what Rhi was saying. She was saying she’d never leave me.
That I could grieve what happened to Frannie with the knowledge that not only could it not happen to her, but that if someone tried, they couldn’t turn her away from me.
Nothing and no one could take her. It was the closest thing to reassurance that I was ever going to get. I was safe with her. For the first time in my very, very long life, I was safe to love someone. “I will never leave you,” I promised. “I will always be there for whatever you need. Always.”
She smiled and it was the gentlest expression I’d ever seen. And then she kissed me, so thoroughly and so deeply that the way we moved shifted into something I’d never done before. I had always thought of intercourse as fucking. But this wasn’t that. It wasn’t just bodies pleasing one another.
This was love, the kind of love that needed words, but that also needed these oaths we made right here and now, with our hearts, our minds, and our bodies.
Every bit of her tightened around me as I moved in her, her face shifting into a state of bliss I hoped to recreate every day for the rest of our existence.
As she came apart around me, my determination solidified. Rhiannon and I were forever, and I would accept nothing less. That thought sent me hurtling over the edge, pouring every bit of my love and commitment into her.
When our bodies slowed, she lay her head down on my chest and I stroked her hair. “Does eating food from the underworld bind you to it?” she asked, her voice heavy with sleep.
I smiled. “No, those really are just stories. The food was magic, probably from the island.”
She sighed, her eyelids fluttering a bit as she settled in to sleep. “That’s too bad, it might have been nice to be stuck in the underworld with you forever.”
“You’re stuck with me forever either way,” I promised her, closing my eyes as well.
Aknock at the door woke us. I jumped up to answer, wrapping the flat sheet around my waist as Rhiannon found a robe. When I opened the door Lara stood outside, dressed in close-fitting black tactical gear.
Her smile was grim. “Hey,” she said, nodding to Rhiannon, who eyed what Lara was wearing and headed straight for her closet.
“Can I come in?” Lara asked. I nodded, moving aside for her.
My heart sank as I watched Lara sink into a chair, dead-eyed. She wouldn’t make eye contact with me. I leaned against the bed, my heart rate increasing steadily by the second. “What is it?” I asked. “Has something gone wrong?”
Lara shook her head, sighing as Rhiannon emerged in her own version of gear. “No,” she said, sharing a look with Rhiannon. “But you won’t like what I have to say.”
Rhiannon held up a hand, before coming to kneel in front of me. She took my hands in hers. “Lara’s going to tell you that Ember’s decided we’re going into the Asylum alone.”
“No,” I said, shaking her hands off me. “I’m coming with you.”
Rhi and Lara exchanged another look. “Give us a minute, okay?”
Lara nodded. “I’ll be waiting downstairs. Max is flying in, and we have to wait for her to get here. Take your time.” She placed a hand on my shoulder. “Try to understand, Eryx. This isn’t an insult.”
When the door shut, Rhi smiled sadly. “She’s right. It’s not an insult. It’s strategy. We can’t die.”
It felt as though every piece of me had shattered apart. I’d only just told her I loved her, only just convinced her that I could be as good for her as she was for me. Losing her now would be too much.
“I know that,” I insisted. “But it’s not like Ares and I are a liability. Hell, even Av is so scary that—”
“Baby,” she breathed. “It’s not about any of that. It’s about the fact that some of us might not make it out of there—we can’t die, but they can capture us, and with that adamantine...”
She was right. I knew she was right, but it still felt wrong.
Rhiannon saw me relenting and continued, “If we have any chance of getting my mother and all of us making it out, we cannot be worrying about one of you being left behind.” She stood, stroking my cheek with her silky soft fingers, the worn calluses on her palm a reminder that while she was soft, she was also experienced at all of this.
Lethal in her own right. “This is what we were made for, Eryx. This is why we’re here. ”
Slowly, the pieces of me fit back together. All the times I’d thought of her as a goddess, only to find out that she was a direct descendent of one. I knew who the woman I loved was. And I trusted her to come home.
She stood and wrapped her arms around me. It killed me that she could smell so good in this moment. I mustered a smile for her, trying to use a light tone. “There’s probably shit for me to do, anyway.”
Rhiannon nodded, pressing the sweetest kiss to my lips. As she kissed me, she reached for my phone, and unlocked it as she pulled away. I sighed as she turned it towards me, revealing ten missed messages from Ares.
“Looks like there’s plenty that needs doing,” she murmured. “What’s he say?”
I took the phone from her with one hand, letting my other arm snake around her.
Lara said we had a minute and I was going to take every second of the time I had with her.
I scanned through my brother’s messages, shaking my head.
I tried to smile. “Looks like Ares, Av, and I are going to finish closing the path in the Ossuary. Apparently, Cassandra’s illusion has crumbled now that she’s gone, but the door to the underworld is still cracked open. ”
Rhi nodded. “The things Calypso warned us about could still happen, even though that was never the point of all this.”
She was right, and Ares and I were uniquely positioned to close the door to the underworld, now that we knew what we were up against. Especially with Av’s help, we might be the only ones in the city who could fix this.
And if it had been Magnus’ goal in life to open a door between the worst parts of the netherrealm and that of the living, surely in death, with his turn as a malefic spirit, those ideas had only intensified.
Necromancers had theories about the underworld and how it worked, and occasionally we could even visit parts of it, as Rhiannon and I had in Oleander Cottage.
But only the first levels, the surface levels where spirits who existed in the liminal space between the living and the dead could travel to.
The places beyond were unknown to us—though from what little we knew, there were places of torment for the condemned and places of peace for those at rest.
If Magnus opened the doors to the parts of the netherrealm where the condemned resided, there might be no way to close the door. Spirits in torment were some of the most powerful, as they fed on the misery of the living. And in this day and age, misery was in no short supply.
That could not happen. And Rhiannon was more susceptible to the machinations of the dead than I would prefer. She might not be able to die, but there were worse things than death. I didn’t even want to imagine what a malefic horde of the condemned might do to her.
“Okay,” I agreed, seeing the wisdom of splitting up more acutely now. “Let’s do this.”
Rhiannon raised up on her tiptoes as I slid off the bed, our bodies fusing together as she kissed me long and hard.
“So, wanna meet my mom tonight?” she asked as she pulled away, keeping hold of my hand as long as she could as she walked towards the door.
I wanted to follow her downstairs, but I could tell from the pleading look in her eyes that she needed me to stay put.
“Sounds perfect,” I replied, no snap in my reply. Hollow banter was the best I could manage. “She a Pizza Queen kind of girl?”
Her fingertips and mine pressed together. “No, baby,” she whispered. “But you get extra mushrooms on mine, okay?”
I closed my eyes. I couldn’t watch her go.
“Don’t say it,” she whispered from the door as I started to call after her. “Tell me again when I get back. Tell me every day when this is all over.”
I opened my eyes. “Extra mushrooms. I promise.”
“Good boy,” she murmured as she shut the door between us. I heard her deep breath, her forehead pressing against the door. And then she was gone. Off to do her part, and me to do mine.
My eye caught on the Admiral’s guns. I drew one, my breath catching. How was this possible? I recognized the carvings on them. These didn’t belong to the Maere. Why had the Admiral had them? How had she gotten hold of them?
I shook with anger. The woman had so much fucking audacity. To steal the Orphium Maere’s swords, to steal from the Necroline Dynasty. When this was over, I was going to find a way to make her pay for it all.
As I took a moment to steady myself, the priority notification on the group chat between Av, Eryx, and I blared—a single siren in the quiet house.
It was only supposed to do that in an emergency.
I lunged for my phone, unlocking it as fast as I could.
There was a message from Ares. Underworld breach on 8th Ave. The condemned are escaping.
Ares didn’t need to say where the breach had occurred.
I already knew. Magnus had done this—the breach was right in front of Oleander Cottage.
As Ares and Av went wild discussing plans, I dropped the sheet, grabbed the stolen guns, and headed straight for my room.
We had a job to do, and not much time to do it.