Pure Requiem - Aja James Page 0,61
underwater cavern beneath Avalanche Lake situated between two mountainous canyons.
“I wonder why the Dark King didn’t send Lord Wind and his son Ryu Takamura,” Erebu muses in the lightless interior of the “SUV.”
Gabriel is driving the vehicle with Erebu in the front, Ishtar and me in the back. Inanna, Cloud and Valerius are riding separately.
“Lord Wind is alive?” Ishtar huffs a surprised breath.
I, too, had not known this.
“Oh indeed,” Erebu replies. “Very much so. I believe he even kept tabs on you, Ishtar, though perhaps not any more. I haven’t dug too deeply in his personal affairs, but I spied enough on him for my Mistress that I know he helped you settle into Dark Dreams. He has been your anonymous benefactor all this time.”
It is amazing how enlightening four hours in a car can be. This is just the beginning of the secrets Erebu reveals, one by one. It is almost as if he is trying to share all the pertinent information he knows about our nemesis and potential allies, to prepare us for what’s to come.
It worries me that he feels the need to do this now, because it assumes that he will not be around to tell us later.
What are you planning, my son?
“Why would he do such a thing?” Ishtar asks in response to his earlier comment.
I can sense Erebu’s shrug.
“Who knows. Guilt perhaps. My Mistress used and abused him for almost as long as she used and abused—”
He cuts himself off with a clearing of his throat. But we all know what he was about to say.
“Anyway, a couple years ago, shortly before your encounter with Medusa, he cut his ties with her once and for all.”
“He is her Blooded Mate,” Ishtar recalls. “He cannot simply cut ties.”
“It certainly wasn’t ‘simple,’” Erebu admits. “He cut her out of his heart, to be exact. That male has ironclad balls.”
“But he didn’t die?”
“He disappeared for a while. I was tasked with drawing him back out. He was completely untraceable without the link to Medusa. The male is air after all.”
“Did you find him?” It is Gabriel who poses the question.
“I always find what I’m looking for,” he says grimly.
“But you didn’t reveal him to Medusa?”
Erebu sighs and drums his fingers on the armrest of his seat.
“It was tempting, I admit. She would have rewarded me. Probably give me a short reprieve from other…tasks.”
I can hear the unpleasantness of the “tasks” Erebu alludes to from the lowered tone of his voice.
“But she was also recovering from her wounds at the time. She wasn’t ready to try to reel him back in. So she didn’t press me, and I didn’t volunteer. How he ended up at the Cove under the reign of the Dark King is anyone’s guess. I would assume it has to do with his son Ryu being one of the Chosen warriors there.”
“Perhaps he did not join this fight because he still…cares for Medusa,” Ishtar muses.
Erebu snorts in response.
“Oh, I highly doubt that. He has a new family now with a human Mate. Now that I think about it, it’s likely he didn’t join because he wants to stay back to protect them. And too, even centuries before he gutted Medusa out from his veins, he only fought for her when absolutely necessary. They had a strained kind of arrangement for a very long time.”
From what I recall of the shadow warrior, this is true. He tried to leave Medusa many times, the first of such attempts was during ancient Egypt. I recall some of the conversations they had in front of me. He tried to leave her, but he never could stay away for very long. He was bound to her.
Lord Wind must indeed have “ironclad balls.” Reversing the Bond of a Blooded Mate often leads to death, and if not that, then insanity. He’s taken an enormous risk. It is not the action of a male who has any lingering care for his Mate.
“Or perhaps Ramses held him back,” Erebu continues to contemplate out loud. “Though I doubt anyone, even the Dark King, can tell Lord Wind what to do.”
He sighs almost wistfully.
“It’s a shame. If Enlil, or Eli, as he’s now called, joined in the fight this night, you would have a better chance at success.”
“Don’t you mean we?” Gabriel picks up on the slip immediately.
Erebu laughs softly.
“What makes you think I’m on your side?”
Both Ishtar and I tense at the hissing question. I grasp her hand in mine and squeeze to reassure