I might never have a chance to tick this off my list, but damn … I wanted one night with Cronus.
I could probably die happy then. Screw Instagram likes, I’d much rather screw a god … Titan ... whatever—he was a god to me. And I was the chick who freed the god. Surely that entitled me to one night with him.
“Focus, human,” Thanatos roared, and I pulled my brain back from sex fantasyland. “Tell us exactly what happened.”
Swallowing hard, I breathed in a few deep breaths, hoping my hands would stop shaking. “So, I was waiting for Cronus to get your elixir, and he was taking a really long time—”
“Two minutes,” he muttered. “I was gone for two minutes.”
“Really long time,” I repeated, “and I started to get worried, so I crept forward, being very careful not to touch anything.”
Twin scoffs, that I ignored.
“Then it called my name.”
They both stilled. I definitely had their attention now. All of it. Laser focus that was a little disconcerting when it came from a pair of powerful gods. “You think the box said your name?”
“Yep. Definitely.”
Right? Everything was a little fuzzy, and it seemed kind of far-fetched now that I’d said it out loud, but then again ... so did a two-thousand-year-old god stepping out of a portal.
“I leaned over to look closer and a strand of my hair escaped and fell on the lid.”
Both gods groaned at that.
I hurried on to describe the rest, including the darkness, and Cronus picked up from there.
“The darkness wanted Maisey,” he said, sounding serious. “I managed to break its hold, but I couldn’t return it to the box. Not without a box to return it to, and not without my brothers and sisters.”
“You said something about the world’s sins to me a while ago,” I interjected. “The box is what you were talking about, right?”
A single nod. “The deadly sins, nine gods, locked away to protect the world. The Titans were the guardians of the sins and the box.” His head jerked up to nail Thanatos with a glare. “They have been locked away in many ways, but the box was our last attempt to make it permanent. It weakened us more than we expected though, and Zeus took advantage.”
I gasped. “Are you trying to tell me that you were protecting the world, trying to keep shit balanced, and Zeus attacked you?”
Majorly fucked up.
Thanatos made a dark, derisive sound. “Don’t sound so surprised, human. Zeus is without care or mercy. He is only interested in one thing: power.”
I turned to Cronus, and maybe it was that with everything going on I hadn’t actually looked at him properly until now, but he was furious. His skin was glimmering copper, his eyes almost piercing blue with trails of gold, his jaw so hard and unyielding that it looked like it was made of stone. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. This was all my fucking fault. Shit. I was such a screw up.
Cronus’ eyes shuttered, and there was no way for me to tell what he was thinking.
“Are you … mad at me?” I pushed.
It bothered me that he was mad or disappointed in me. Why, I couldn’t say, because he’d been a disparaging prick from the first second I saw him. That included tossing me off a cliff. But I sort of felt like we’d moved past a lot of that and had been ... maybe ... friends. Or maybe frenemies? But definitely something.
“What do we do now?” Thanatos interrupted the stare-off I had going on with Cronus when he didn’t answer me. “The sins haven’t been released like this in centuries. You said all nine figures formed?”
“Yep,” I said, because Cronus was beyond words apparently. “And why are there nine? I thought there were seven deadly sins?”
Thanatos snorted. “Seven is just the most sins that have ever been released before. It almost ended the world. If all nine manifest fully…”
He trailed off, but I understood.
Nine meant we were totally and completely fucked.
Chapter 10
Cronus took about an hour before he was calm enough to talk properly. My heart ached a little at the way he was avoiding my gaze now, instead choosing to talk directly to Thanatos.
“We have only one shot at stopping them,” he said, staring out across the stunning fields of the underworld. “It will take time for the sins to fully manifest, and each of them have an order that they operate in. The final two sins, fire and death, they’re the ones the world