more insistent.
Chills broke out on my arms as I took one step closer, leaning directly over the box. I had no intention of touching the thing, because I was not, in fact, an idiot, when a sliver of my hair fell from my head and landed across the black lid.
Okay, no big deal, I’ll just—
The lid sprang open, shattering light across the space.
“Fuck.” I didn’t even have time to back up out of the light. A black inky blob leapt from the box and wrapped around my abdomen tightly like a snake.
“CRONUS!” I shrieked bloody murder. Where was that motherfucker? Had he portaled to another dimension?
My eyes flicked down to see the box was now gone, completely vanished. A glowing silver necklace lay on the ground where it once had been.
“Maisey!” Cronus finally shouted my name, but I couldn’t reply, because I was currently in a ton of trouble. The blackness was working its way up my ribcage, to my chest and then up my throat. Just as I found my voice again, ready to scream, the fucking necklace leapt off the ground and attached itself around my throat.
No! #ThisIsSomeAlienBullshit
I yanked at the chain, trying to rip it off, but it only cut into my skin. It was no use.
“NO!” Cronus shouted, suddenly swimming into view.
It was all happening so fast, I couldn’t process it. Everything hurt; it burned like my skin had been set on fire.
“What did you do?!” He sounded upset, his gaze falling to the blackness around my chest, then the necklace, and then … for the first time since I met him, he looked scared.
That’s when I lost my shit.
Tears streamed down my face. “Help!” The blackness was at my chin now, burning up my face as it tried to enter my mouth.
Cronus shook himself, snapping out of his shock, and grasped my cheeks. Blue light shot from his palms, nearly blinding me and coating my skin.
“You will not take her!” he roared to some unseen force as the blue light flared along my jaw and the black inky magic pulled itself away from my body to avoid the light. He held my face, firmly cupped in his hands as the blackness started to … divide itself into pieces. Nine pieces to be exact.
I watched as those nine pieces began to mold into...
Chills ran the length of my spine. Those nine pieces were slowly forming humanoid figures.
“What the fuck! What’s happening?” I shouted as the figures began to take shape. Flesh and hair sprouted as they became real.
Cronus looked into my eyes with a menacing expression. “You opened Pandora’s Box. The very thing I was tasked with protecting.”
The sins. The nine sins.
Oh fuck.
Chapter 9
I was frozen. My legs wanted to run, my brain was screaming at me to do something, but somehow I couldn’t move. “Did you say Pandora? As in…?” I hoped I was wrong about my previous thoughts. Maybe this was a totally different, completely non-descript Pandora’s Box. Surely she had more than one box. I mean ... that made sense, right?
His face was a mask of shadows, and he was scaring me a little as he rasped out, “Pandora's Box, container of the nine deadly sins that if opened will end the world.”
I gulped. Well it definitely had opened…
“What do we do?” I gasped, and that seemed to bring him back from wherever he’d gone in his mind.
He focused on me and I flinched at the darkness in his eyes. “The sins tried to manifest in your body but I locked them out. Now, though, they’re going to form their own manifestations, slowly, one by one. And then they’re going to destroy the world.”
Destroy the world?
“The old destroy the world trick,” I said, trying not to faint. “Couldn’t they think of something else this time?”
Cronus glared at me. “Now is not the time for your sarcasm, Maisey. We have minutes before it’s too late. We need to put them back in the box.”
He started to look around, seemingly for the box.
Oops.
“We can’t,” I said quickly, needing to confess the full magnitude of this shit show. “About the box … it disappeared.”
My hands went to the necklace that was permanently attached to me. “Apparently it prefers to be jewelry.”
Cronus reached out and stroked his fingers across it; the piece heated and vibrated under his touch. Like it … enjoyed it. I was surprised he hadn’t killed me yet, but then I remembered we were bonded and that was only to keep himself alive.
“What part