Daimon (Guardians of Hades #6) - Felicity Heaton Page 0,67

opened his eyes again, it was as if nothing had happened. His perfect features lost all the darkness they had held and his eyes lost the twisted hungers that had filled them.

He turned away from her and strode towards the house, and when he reached it and stepped up onto the walkway, he said, “I will tend to him.”

He took Marek from Valen and carried him towards his room, turning his profile to Cass.

She stared at him, studying his features and the feelings she could sense in him, and frowned. He was the calm and collected god she had always witnessed, not even a lingering trace remaining of the person who had been standing here with her, craving violence from her.

Taking pleasure from it.

Did his brothers know about that side of him, the one who had looked ready to provoke her just so she would strike him again?

She edged her eyes towards the main room of the house.

Cursed in Russian when she saw the state of Daimon.

Her heart lurched into her throat as he hobbled onto the walkway, his right arm banded around his stomach and blood covering the left side of his face.

The urge to strike Keras blasted through her, coupled with a desperate need to go to Daimon, and a foolish hope he would accept her help.

Because she needed to take care of him.

She sent a prayer to the gods that for once, Daimon wouldn’t fight her.

Even when the darkness that shone in his eyes as they met hers said that he would.

Said more than that to her.

It whispered a terrible truth.

Keras wasn’t the only one who courted pain.

Daimon had let the daemons hurt him.

Chapter 19

Darkness was a living, writhing thing inside him. It whispered, coaxed and seduced, and Daimon did his best not to listen to it, not to be swayed by its black magic.

To ignore the craving for violence that blazed inside him.

But it was strong.

Far stronger than he was in his current state, his mind fragmented, torn in two directions.

Images stuttered across the darkest corners of that mind, taunting him with flashes of Cass with another man, a faceless and nameless one who was her destiny.

Who she was apparently resolved to go to even though he had seen the doubts in her eyes.

Daimon stared at the daemons surrounding him, singling out all the males, his mind labelling them as Cass’s intended. He cut through them, a whirlwind of ice and steel, taking some down with spears and shards of glittering crystal and others with a swift stroke of a blade over their throats.

Valen’s lightning shook the ground, lashing down from the heavy black clouds like white-purple whips to light up the darkness. Each strike filled the air with the scent of daemon blood, rousing Daimon’s darkness, keeping it at the fore.

It seeped deeper into him, snaked around his heart and murmured to him, whispering taunts about the males around him, about them and Cass.

About how she would never be his.

Daimon slid across the dry grass of the ancient Stadio Palatino and used one of his throwing knives to slice across the shins of a female daemon as her claws cut through the air above him. She shrieked and leaped backwards, into the path of a lightning strike. Blood and bone exploded outwards and Daimon was swift to step, avoiding being hit by it.

He landed in the middle of a group of six male daemons.

All of them turned on him, their eyes glowing with sick hunger in the darkness.

He was sure his looked the same.

From the ends of their fingers, long claws grew, four-inch talons that promised pain if they caught him.

Their dilated pupils narrowed into thin vertical slits as he faced them, rising to his full height, showing them that he wasn’t afraid of them. Six or sixty, it didn’t matter. They would never win against him.

Rain hit in a heavy downpour, turning the grass to mud beneath his boots, saturating him in a heartbeat. He casually ran a hand over his white hair, slicking it back.

His heart beat steadily, a hard drumming against his chest as he waited.

Beyond the six, in the middle of the long rectangular courtyard of the monument, Valen fought another half a dozen, keeping them away from Marek. Beyond Valen, Marek stood facing the gate that hovered a few feet above the floor of the Stadio Palatino. The colourful light it emitted shimmered over the broken columns that lined all sides of the grass and the crumbling walls of the