TWISTED (Eternal Guardians Book 7) (21 page)

Her gaze drifted down to her arm, covered in a white bandage. She tugged the edge free and studied the cut underneath. A thin red line marred her skin. Reaching for the edge of her bloodstained shirt, she pulled the cotton up and found the same on her side where she’d been pierced by that satyr’s blade.

Ari had succeeded in healing her. Fuzzy memories of that whole ordeal whipped through her head. Turning away from the view, she wondered where the strange Argonaut had gone. There was no sign of him in this room. She looked around, searching for Nick, only there was no sign of him either.

Unease filtered through her chest, but it calmed when she caught sight of Nick’s weapons in the corner of the room. He wouldn’t have left without them. And the fact he wasn’t carrying them now meant wherever they were—and she was confident they were no longer in the Yucatan—there was no immediate threat.

She breathed easier as she moved past the mattress, intent on finding him. Little furniture sat in the giant room besides the makeshift bed. A pile of wood lay scattered in the corner. A couple of couches were overturned, the cushions sliced, stuffing littering the ground. And one whole wall was blackened, as if a fire had roared through this part of the building.

This wasn’t a house or even a compound. It was some kind of ruins. An archway opened to a wide hall with scuffed walls and crumbling stucco. Ahead, a giant curved staircase—or what was left of one—disappeared to upper levels. Boards were missing. What had once been intricately carved wood was now blackened and covered in soot. Another set of dilapidated stairs dropped to floors below, but she couldn’t see where they led.

She stilled. Listened. Couldn’t hear anything but the cry of a bird somewhere through the broken windows. Whatever this place had once been, it was clearly now abandoned.
 

Her stomach churned with both apprehension and dread. Gritting her teeth, she told herself standing around wasn’t going to answer any of her questions. She moved for the staircase. It was battered but stable, and she grasped the railing on the right as she climbed to the next level. Another hallway opened before her, this one not quite as wide. A frayed carpet ran along the floor, and broken doors sporting holes and splintered wood hung open on hinges that looked as if they could give with a tiny gust of wind.

She glanced in rooms as she passed. The remnants of a library—books charred and torn and scattered across the floor like kindling. A dining hall—tables shattered and overturned; windows broken with tattered curtains blowing in the breeze. An office—computer screens cracked and smashed, lying on the floor; desks splintered and busted as if someone with a sledgehammer had gone ballistic.

That unease came rushing back. She turned the corner and stopped, peering into what she knew on first look had once been a nursery. Toys were broken and ripped and scattered across the floor. Cribs lay in shambles. A rocking chair sat in pieces near a shattered window.

These weren’t just ruins. This was a demolition.

Her head grew light. Her stomach a tight knot. She turned out of the ruined nursery and swiped a hand over her suddenly damp brow as she passed room after ransacked room, looking for one that wasn’t in pieces. At the far end of the hall, she found a closed door that was still hanging on two hinges, wrapped her hand around the knob, and pushed.

Paper lay scattered across the floor, and a few mirrors on the walls were cracked and broken, but this room hadn’t sustained the kind of damage the others had. She walked through a sitting area, then stepped into what she knew instinctively was a salon.
 

Swivel chairs were lined up on each side of the room. Mirrors—whole, undamaged, normal mirrors—sat in front of each one. Scissors, hairbrushes, razors, and clippers were all tucked into canisters on the workstations.

She caught her reflection in one of the closest mirrors. Her skin was still pale, her eyes a little wild after everything she’d seen, and her clothes were a mess, stained with blood and dirt. She fingered the ends of her bleach-blonde hair and stared at the image Zagreus had created.

Not her. Not who she was inside. Not who she ever wanted to be again. Suddenly, she felt the need to purge herself of everything related to the last year.

She rummaged through cupboards until she found what she needed. Tugging on clear plastic gloves, she mixed the solution she figured was closest to her natural color in a plastic bowl, then rubbed the cream into her artificial blonde locks. After wrapping her hair in a plastic bag, she secured the end, then went in search of something clean to wear.
 

The next level up had clearly once been sleeping quarters. These were left in shambles too, but she didn’t focus on the destruction. In one room she found clean jeans that looked as if they’d fit. In another, a loose-fitting white sweater with a ballet collar. In still another, she dug through a ramshackle closet until she pulled out a pair of boots her size.

She went back down to the salon. In the back of the room, she found a full bathroom decked out with a wall-length mirror, granite counters, and a glass-enclosed shower with a rock floor. She flipped on the shower. The water sputtered as if air had been in the line, then finally flowed freely, growing warmer with every passing second. Tugging off her disgusting clothes, she stepped beneath the spray, rinsed her hair, and sighed.

Just being clean made her feel a thousand times better. She stayed in the shower as long as she could, then climbed out and dried off. After dressing in the fresh clothes, she moved back into the salon, wrapped a towel around her shoulders, found a pair of scissors, and started cutting.

She’d always hated that white-blonde Zagreus was so fond of. The blue streak had been her one attempt at defiance, but he’d liked that too, the bastard. She snipped and cut, using her fingers as a guide. When she was happy with the length, she tugged the towel off, ran her hands through the brown shoulder-length locks, then stared at her reflection.

It was like looking at the old her. Before anger and hate had driven her to become someone else. Her gaze strayed to the white sweater that showed off the length of her neck and the line of her collarbone, still bruised from Zagreus’s hands. Disgust swirled in her belly, but she forced it down along with the memories, focusing instead on the fitted jeans that were so new, she guessed they’d been worn only once or twice.

Who had they belonged to? What had happened to her? And why did Cynna suddenly feel like she was stealing from a ghost?

The relief she’d felt at being clean dissipated. And the need to find Nick grew even stronger.

She turned out of the salon and continued up several flights until she reached what she guessed was the top level. Double doors hung haphazardly off their hinges, and a strong breeze blew the hair back from her face. Shivering, she walked through the broken doors, stopped at the stone railing, and looked down.

She was on some kind of balcony. Her gaze skipped over the lake beyond, then dropped to a stone courtyard far below. Large black patches marred the stones. Gray ash swirled along the ground. And in the middle of what was clearly the remains of some kind of fire, facing away from her, stood Nick.

His hands were perched on his lean hips. His head was bowed so she couldn’t see his face. But the muscles in his back were tight and bunched beneath the thin black T-shirt he’d changed into, as if he carried the weight of the world there. And unease pressed down on her chest as she watched him look around the courtyard, lift one large hand and rake it through his shaggy blond hair. He dropped his arm to his side, hunched his shoulders, and knelt to the ground, lowering his head as if in defeat.

Cynna glanced across the empty balcony, then over the lake again, taking in every bit of destruction as if seeing it in a new light.

The half-breed colony. Her stomach pitched with the realization of where they were. She’d heard rumors of its existence when she’d been a child in Argolea. Her parents had even considered relocating to the colony instead of the Aegis Mountains with the witches. And she knew from her time with Zagreus that Hades, especially, had been searching for the colony for years because he suspected Maelea—the female he termed “the stain”—might be hiding out there.

This was Nick’s colony. His home. His people. And she knew without even asking that it hadn’t looked like this the last time he’d been here.

Emotions and her own gnarled memories of a scene much like this rolled through her chest, making her heart beat faster, making panic spread through her limbs. She turned quickly from the railing, found the stairs, and hurried to get down to the courtyard before he left. She was panting by the time she found a broken set of heavy wooden doors lying askew against a stone archway. Spotting Nick still kneeling in the middle of the blackened courtyard, she drew a breath of relief and stilled her feet to gather herself.

When she felt steady, she slowly made her way toward him. But her nerves kicked up again with every step. This hadn’t been just a fire. She could sense the remnants of souls still scattered in the wind. This was all that remained of a mass cremation.
 

She stopped feet from him. He had to have heard her but didn’t turn. Glancing around the blackened stones, she tried to think of something to say.
 

“Nick…” Condolences lingered on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t get them out. Not because she wasn’t sorry for what he’d lost, but because she knew no words could ease his suffering. Because they’d never eased hers.

“Three of my men took down a daemon there.” He nodded toward the corner of the courtyard where a charred section of rock stood out against the gray stones. “Five satyrs cornered them before they could get away.” He glanced to the right, where another blackened patch stained the ground, his shoulders tight, his eyes shadowed, a raspy tone to his voice. “Two daemons ripped apart a female trying to escape there. She had a child with her. I don’t know what happened to the boy.”

Oh gods…
A fresh wave of trepidation washed over Cynna. “You…see them?”

“No, I
feel
them.”

She glanced around the empty courtyard again, and an eerie shiver rippled down her spine as visions swam in front of her eyes. People running in every direction. Satyrs and daemons bearing down with blades and maces and vile-looking weapons intended only to kill. Bone-chilling screams floating on the breeze. The clank of sword cracking against sword ricocheting off the stones as Nick’s men fought to battle them back. The crimson splatter of blood along the ground. And everywhere, fire and smoke. The night alive with angry red flames licking the sky under the dark shadows of Hades and Zagreus, watching from the hillside across the lake.

The vision cleared, and Cynna gasped and stumbled back. Sweat beaded her brow as she looked toward Nick with wide eyes. Over the months, she’d known he was growing stronger—Zagreus had sensed Nick’s powers were growing too, which was why he’d been so anxious to break him sooner rather than later—but until this moment, she hadn’t realized just how strong those powers had become. Whether or not he’d intended to show her that, he had. Every gruesome, horrific moment.

“They were my people. And I left them when I should have stayed and fought. I chose one life over…hundreds.” His voice dropped. “I left them to die.”

The anguish she heard, the misery… It cut to the heart of her. Because she knew what it was like to make that choice. To choose to live instead of fighting for those you loved. Knew because the same guilt still churned in the pit of her soul, every damn day.
 

Hand shaking, she took a step closer and gently touched his shoulder. “You didn’t know.”

He pushed to his feet and whirled on her. Surprised, she jerked her hand back. And saw then that his eyes weren’t just pained. They were enraged. And blazing with a vicious darkness she’d never seen before, not even when Zagreus had taunted and beaten and tortured him in his dungeon of horrors.

“I did know. I knew I was leaving them to this nightmare. And I did it anyway.”

She swallowed hard. Knew he was in a bad place. Knew the smartest thing for her right now was to walk away. He didn’t trust her. He still had no reason to trust her. But something deep inside wouldn’t let her leave. She’d had no one after her village had been destroyed. No one to lean on. No one to turn to for comfort. No one to help her pick up the broken pieces of a life in ruins. And that solitude had bred a hatred that had eventually pushed her toward Zagreus. She didn’t want Nick to take that same dark path. Didn’t want to look back on her life and regret one more thing she might have had the power to change. Didn’t want to know that a warrior like him had finally reached his breaking point.

She lifted her hand to his cheek.
 

He closed his big hand around her wrist in a tight grip before she could touch him, his inflamed amber eyes growing wide with disbelief. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

He was closer to the edge than she’d thought, but she wasn’t backing down. “Helping you. The way I did before. Only…more.”

His gaze raked her features, so intense, so calculating, she felt as if he were seeing past every barrier, deep into her soul. But she didn’t recoil as she once had with Zagreus. Didn’t try to hide what he was seeing. Because she needed him to know he wasn’t alone.

“You never helped me,” he sneered. “You’re as responsible for all this as your
master
. Had it not been for you, I might have been able to break free of that hell and come back to stop this.” He lifted his chin, indicating the destruction. “I might have been able to save them.”