The Darkest Lie (Lords of the Underworld #6)(91)
Author: Gena Showalter

He hadn’t expected the confession, and his eyes closed for a moment, exhaling a warm breath. “I’m glad. I understood why you’d done so, but I’m glad you lied. So damn glad. You’re mine.”

“Yours,” she said brokenly, as if the word was impossible to believe.

One day she would. Completely. Two of his fingers stroked the ridges of her spine. “So, who are you today?”

“Scarlet…Lord.”

Sweet mercy, but he liked the sound of that. That was as close to a declaration as he was going to get. Because, knowing her as he did, and he liked to think he knew her pretty well, she wasn’t going to cop to her feelings. And yes, she had them, he knew it, otherwise she wouldn’t have married him. But until her aunt was dead and her mother dealt with, she’d try to maintain some kind of distance.

Which he would see to, all of it. At least Cronus was no longer a threat. Otherwise, the king wouldn’t have helped him heal Scarlet. Still, Gideon knew he would receive no more aid. He’d be on his own. But battling two beings that were stronger and more powerful than he was didn’t scare him. Not when the prize was Scarlet’s heart.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

ARMS SPLAYED, Strider turned in a circle while standing in the center of the Temple of the Unspoken Ones. This was his last resort, his only resort. Otherwise the female Hunter, Ex, would escape him. With the Cloak of Invisibility in her possession. He would be a failure, a loser, and she would have won the challenge between them.

That, he wouldn’t allow.“I need your help,” he called. “I’ve come to bargain.”

Last visit, they’d made him wait. This time, their reaction was immediate. A huge beast materialized between two of the pillars, exactly as before. He was totally nude, but then, he didn’t need clothing. His skin was furred as if he were a horse. And rather than hair, thin snakes hissed from his head. Like the creature, those snakes possessed fangs.

Muscle was stacked upon muscle, his ni**les pierced by two large silver rings. Metal chains circled his neck, wrists and ankles, and while he had human hands, his feet were hooves.

Beside him, between two other pillars, another beast appeared. A male whose lower half was covered by dark red fur and whose upper half boasted human skin. Skin that was a mass of scars. He, too, was bound by chains.

Those chains didn’t detract from the menace radiating from either of them.

A third beast appeared, this one female. Unlike her friends, she wore a leather skirt. Her br**sts were bare, wonderfully large, and her ni**les pierced, as well. Only, she wore diamonds rather than silver hoops.

She stood in profile, and Strider could see the small horns protruding from her spine. The horns he actually liked, almost as much as her br**sts. Her face, however, was beaked like a bird’s. That wasn’t something a man could get over easily. She, too, was furred and chained.

A fourth and fifth appeared in quick succession, both so tall and wide they were like living mountains. They didn’t have snakes for hair, though. What they had was worse. One was bald, yet shadows seemed to seep from his skull. Thick and black and putrid. And hungry. Yeah, they looked hungry.

The other creature had blades. Small but sharp, they spiked from his scalp, each glistening with something clear and wet. Poison? Probably, though nobody had been able to gather tangible data about the creatures’ powers.

There was a reason these fiends were known as the Unspoken Ones, after all.

As before, the female stepped forward, her chains rattling. “And so a Lord of the Underworld returns to our midst. There can be only one reason for that. We requested Cronus’s head. Where is it?” Her voice brought to mind a thousand souls bound together, desperately trying to escape. They screamed from her, echoing through the temple, their tears practically soaking him.

“Uh, I don’t actually have it,” he said, and the Unspoken Ones immediately began hissing and growling at him, tugging at their chains to reach him and, he was sure, claw him into pieces. “Not yet,” he added in a rush.

Yes, they were willing to give him the fourth artifact—the Paring Rod—in return for Cronus’s head, and yes, they’d offered the same bargain to the Hunters. But Rhea was leading the Hunters, and if her life truly was bound to Cronus’s, as Torin had told him last time they’d spoken on the phone, then Rhea wouldn’t allow her men to take her husband’s life.

Humans would have a hard time destroying a god, anyway. So Strider wasn’t worried about the Hunters winning the Rod anymore. And if there was no competition, the Unspoken Ones had no bargaining room. It was all about supply and demand, baby. They had the supplies, but he had the demands.

Win. Defeat snarled, making its demands known.

I will.

“Then why are you here?” the female demanded.

“I want to give you another artifact.”

That silenced them. They stared at him intently, confused, probably trying to figure out his angle. Why would a Lord of the Underworld, a warrior who had been valiantly searching for the very things that would lead him to Pandora’s box, thereby preventing his enemy from ending his life, give up something he needed to win the war?

“Why?” the female finally asked. “And what would you expect in return?”

“There’s a human female on this island. I want her. Flash her here, and I’ll give you the Cloak of Invisibility.” He would have to be careful with Ex, though. She could thieve without his notice and hide things so that he couldn’t see or sense them. How she did it, he didn’t know, but he was determined to find out.

The female grinned, revealing teeth sharper than daggers. “She is here, yes, though she will not be so for much longer. And once she leaves this island, we will no longer be able to locate her or flash her anywhere. This is our only place of power.” For the moment, her words clearly implied. “Why do you want her?”

Shit. Ex was about to leave the island? That quickly? What a f**king time crunch, he thought, urgency rushing through him. “She killed my best friend. I must punish her.” Surely these creatures would understand the need for revenge. They wanted Cronus’s head because he’d enslaved them, after all.

The female’s horns seemed to grow, wrapping from her spine to her arms. “The girl has the Cloak, however. Not you.”

Shit, he thought again. He’d hoped they wouldn’t realize that.

One of the males, the one with snakes atop his head, stepped forward. “We cannot take from a human. That is forbidden.” He sneered the last. “Therefore, if we bring her here, you must take it from her.”