Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 69923 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69923 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
His bulbous, crooked nose cast a long shadow across his slash of a mouth. He did see enough action that someone broke his nose.
“Turn around.”
“Excuse me? Why?”
Nico raised a hand. A force like a cannon blast knocked me off my feet, slamming me against the wall. Another blast of wind rocked the windowless cell.
I spun around, coming face to stone with the wall. There wasn’t a chance to breathe before Nico was on me. Cuffs circled my wrists.
“What are you doing!?”
“Shut up!” Nico hauled me around and threw me to the floor. I landed hard—wind knocked out of me.
I lay still, my mind slowing as I took stock. Something was very wrong. Wrong in the way he stopped and towered over me, staring in the stretched-out silence like he was making up his mind.
Like he’s about to make a serious mistake.
Swallowing hard, I willed saliva in my dry mouth. “Whatever it is you came in here to do,” I said slowly. “Don’t. Bad things happen when I’m upset.”
A hard kick caved my stomach. “How dare you threaten me, traitor bitch. You’re just like those smug, stuck-up Artemis tramps. Jason, Castor, and that Alexander ran through their pussies like Drakones burning through a village. I touch the ass of one whore who wanted it, and she spreads word through the watchers to ice me out. Those bitches would turn their backs and walk away whenever they saw me!”
“H-huh,” I rasped. “You deserved worse.”
I expected the next kick. Gritting my teeth, I refused to scream under the resounding pain. I wasn’t afraid of this shitty excuse for a man. The lack of growing talons and ink-dipped limbs proved it.
No, what he was doing was making me really, really mad... which could be so much worse.
If he didn’t stop. If he took this to the place he was gearing up for, I would start to change, and this time, I wouldn’t fight it. I wouldn’t fight her.
That can’t happen, my mind screamed, though it didn’t need to. No one knew better than me what was at stake.
“This... is a very bad idea.” My voice was barely higher than a croak, but it was even. “I’m telling you to turn around, lock that cell, and get out of here while you still can.”
Nico threw his head back laughing.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I cried, raising my voice over the noise. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“Ahh. You’re not going to hurt me.” My gut churned at his smirk. “And if you’re a good girl, don’t scream, and don’t struggle, I won’t hurt you too much either.”
Flickering torchlight cast moving shadows over me—mocking and mimicking the slow removal of his belt. A heavy, quieting emotion sludged my bones when it hit the dirty stone floor.
“Mmh,” he moaned, tangling in my hair. Still I refused to whimper as he yanked me up, bending my head back. “You are pretty for a traitor. I will take no pleasure in watching such a beautiful face turn blue and bloated in the noose.” His dirty fingers brushed my lips. “It is only right I use you before you go to waste.”
Bile burned my throat. He spoke to me like I was a half-eaten leg of lamb about to be thrown to the dogs.
“Vile creature.” She spoke from everywhere and nowhere, but all who heard her was me. “I expected little else from a son of Zephyrus. All of those wind gods were nothing but hot air. The only thing mighty about them was their Olympus-sized insecure streak.”
I fought to block her out with everything I had. “You still have a chance.” Nico ripped my tunic, pulling it over my breast band. Panic welled in my chest. “There is no humanity to appeal to in you. But there is self-preservation. If you walk out of here now, you live—”
He slapped me across the face, snapping my head around. “I told you to shut up.”
“Do you see? Do you see now?” she whispered. “He behaves exactly how Zephyrus did when he was whole. The parasitic seed Zephyrus implanted in this human’s soul has corrupted him. Do not tell me you march to your death to save the likes of him?”
I trembled, trying so hard not to listen. Not to agree. Not to—
“No,” I whispered. “Not him.”
Nico twisted my knee, forcing me to straighten my legs. Those dirty, filthy fingers fumbled with my pants button.
My foot flashed, burying my talons so deep in his gut they scraped bone.
Eyes bugging, he choked, showering my ripped tunic in blood.
That was the first time I thought of the horrid appendages as mine. It was the first that as she appeared before me—terrifying and wonderful and burning and shredding my soul apart—that I didn’t scream.
Darkness swallowed my humanity, leaving Nico alone with the goddess and her pet.