The Stone Queen (The Dark Queens Book 9) Read online

  I yelped, instantly recognizing the gravelly timbre of the male’s voice. My flesh prickled with heat, and my lower stomach pitched violently. Snapping my wings behind me, I looked up and was snared by the most mesmerizing eyes I’d ever seen. Fire burned within their dark depths.

  Ares wore a whisper of a smirk upon his full and handsome lips. He was dressed in full battle armor, and I swallowed so hard it was almost painful.

  “What… what are you? How? How are you here, God of War? This is Athena’s sanctified land. You’re… you’re not allowed here.”

  He snorted and glanced around the manicured forest of Athena’s hunting lands then, with a casual shrug, gracefully sat. His movements were leonine, elegant and yet no less predatory. My blood raced like Apollo’s fiery chariot through my veins, making me feel both exhilaration and nausea.

  “Are you telling me to go away, little bird?”

  I curled my nose. “I’m no bird, Ares. I’ve told you this before.”

  Tipping his head back, he gave a great big booming peal of laughter that sounded like rolling thunder in the distance. And all I could do was sit, entranced at the sight of War himself laughing so openly and freely before me.

  “You are a sassy one. Glad to see my memories of you weren’t wrong.”

  I thinned my lips, hiding my unusual feelings of excited curiosity by feigning annoyance. But I was far from irritated with him. If anything, I felt exhilarated. My wings shivered behind my back, tingling with the need to speed through the skies and sail as high as the very sun itself.

  My fingers danced over my peach-toned skirts. “Why are you come?”

  “You really are telling me to go away.”

  I thought he might be irritated, but I wasn’t hearing it. Instead, there was wry amusement in his tone. “Do you know how many mortals would be genuflecting at my feet right now if I showed myself to them as I have to you? After all, you did call for a god.”

  I snorted. “No, I called for your sister. Who didn’t come, as usual. But I don’t recall ever having said your name. So for the final time, War, why have you come? To make trouble for me again?”

  He lifted one finely shaped brow. “What trouble could I have possibly made for you, girl?”

  I gnashed my front teeth at his use of that name. I was no girl, as I’d often reminded him. I swore he said it to vex me. I was a woman by all accounts, and well he knew it. I glared at him, and the bastard seemed utterly amused by my little show. His flames danced like twinkling lights in his dark eyes, and I hated that my heart went pitter-patter at the sight of it.

  I huffed. “Do you not see where I am? I’m not here for my own perverse amusement. Mother banished me after she caught you with me. In fact, she told me never to speak with you—” I made to stand, snapping out my wings for balance, but his hand was on my wrist in a split second, his touch firm but surprisingly gentle.

  “Don’t,” he whispered harshly, his voice sounding quivery and strange, unusually raw and honest-sounding coming from him. “Don’t leave. I will behave.”

  He’d almost sounded genuine, which wasn’t possible. At all. My uncertainty gave me pause, and I cocked my head, my wing tips still trembling with their need to flex.

  The movement must have caught his eye because he slowly and very gently lifted his other hand toward the nearest feather. Without even a word of warning, he traced the one nearest him.

  I sucked in a sharp breath, shivering from head to toe as I felt the stroking of his hand move like a phantom’s touch all the way through me. The sensations made me feel hot and cold and desperately longing for more of something I’d never felt before.

  I looked at his face. His eyes were wide, his handsome mouth slightly parted, and his nostrils flared. Then he clenched his jaw, and I stared hypnotized at the flexing of his muscle as though he waged some internal battle within himself that I couldn’t possibly begin to make sense of.

  Then his hot gaze found mine, and the frozen moment we’d shared instantly vanished. He withdrew his hand, now tightened into a fist, and coughed once. “I’m sorry, bird, if I made you uneasy. I… I wished to speak with you, in truth.”

  I knew I should go. The memory of Mother’s wild eyes and her pleas that I never be alone with any of the male gods of the pantheon burned in my memory bank. But Ares had an intense vulnerability that drew me in like a moth toward flame.

  “You will hurt me.” I hadn’t meant to whisper the words, hadn’t ever meant to speak them to life, but without thinking, I’d simply let them spill out of me.

  Fear clutched at my throat, and my pulse beat like a drum in the side of my neck as I gazed at him in wide-eyed horror. I should never have said that to him. Should never have spoken so freely with a god.

  “I… I…” I backed up on my heels, ready to fly away, consequences be damned. I didn’t care if I had to clean the temple baths for weeks for daring to fly within Athena’s temple grounds.

  I began to turn on my heel, but suddenly I was wrapped up in such powerful arms that it was like trying to move through stone.

  “I’m sorry, Medusa. Don’t leave. I will leave if you need me to. But don’t leave.”

  “Release me at once!” I screamed, more from terror of the emotions flooding through me than from any real fear for my life.

  Shock gripped me, because he did release me—instantly. So swiftly, in fact, that I nearly face-planted forward. I had to windmill my arms and wings to keep from landing in a heap upon the gravel-packed earth.

  Wings still fluttering for balance, I glanced at him. His eyes were wide, and his pulse hammered in the vein at the side of his neck. And I swore but I was sure it was truth reflected back at me.

  “I’m… I’m sorry, little bird. I should not have co—”

  After winging myself upright, I latched onto his elbow and gripped it tight. His arm felt like smooth, hot metal. He was surprisingly solid. He glanced down at where I touched him, and there was something on his face that I couldn’t even begin to describe.

  Visibly swallowing, he slowly looked up at me with a question mark on his brow.

  It was my turn to release him as though I’d been scalded. “I’m sorry.” I whispered the very same words to him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You’re a god. I should not have yelled at you, and I certainly should not have touched you. I’m so—”

  His finger, strong and powerful, was suddenly upon my mouth. I could feel the tension quivering in his body through that one touch.

  “Don’t say it. Don’t act as though you’ve done wrong, because you haven’t.”

  He gently pulled his hand away from me, but I still felt him pressed tight to my mouth, felt the tingles of his touch burning through me. My breath came out in a shivering sigh, and my chest heaved as though I’d run for miles.

  He was the first one to blink as he rubbed the back of his head with his large palm. “I should not have come,” he murmured.

  “Why did you?”

  I wasn’t sure he would answer, but he surprised me yet again when he cocked his head much like a curious bird and said, “I don’t know. I… I just felt drawn here.”

  I remained silent, digesting what that could possibly mean.

  After several seconds of silence, he whispered, “Does that scare you?”

  “Should it?”

  He smirked and gave his head a gentle shake.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked grumpily.

  He snorted. “Gods, you’re unusual.”

  “Is that a good or bad thing?”

  Shrugging, he rolled his wrists. “It’s a thing. Good or bad, I’m not sure yet. But you’re unlike anyone I’ve ever known before.”

  “Ares, will you hurt me?” I asked him again. This time, my words were softer, gentler. More vulnerable. “Mother thinks you might. Though she won’t tell me how or even why. Only that I should never be alone with a male, let alone a male god. If she were to learn of this, I fear what might…” My words trailed off as I shuddered,
imagining all that she might do to me if she were to discover my latest duplicity.

  Sometimes I was tempted to call my new lot in life hell on earth, but the truth was I’d not even begun to feel the pain if Mother should ever discover where I was at this very moment.

  Blowing out a frustrated breath, I gazed at him from beneath my lashes. I knew I should fear him. Mother’s fears weren’t for nothing. She wasn’t that kind of woman. She was stalwart and rarely given to emotion. I could not have done half of what she had if the slipper had been on the other foot. Leaving a man I was so obviously in love with, willingly making myself smaller and inconsequential, even in the eyes of gods she could so easily crush if she’d truly had a mind to. And all of it done for the love of a child. I admired her. But I was also annoyed by her.

  She wouldn’t tell me the prophecy, and I wouldn’t lie—I wasn’t scared of Ares, though I knew I should be. I simply couldn’t work up the emotion. I knew who he was, but when he was with me, I didn’t see the bloodthirsty god. I simply saw a curious man who intrigued me as much as I seemed to intrigue him.

  “You keep asking me this, and it makes me wonder what you know that I don’t, little bird.” He said the words gently, but I heard the slight irritation behind them. That was when I knew he was just as clueless as I was when it came to my story.

  I shrugged as I dragged my fingers through the dirt, idly doodling a sketch without much thought behind it. “Just something Mother keeps telling me.”

  His brows twitched. “Tell me.”

  The words sounded like a command from a god, yet I suspected that if I refused, he would not begrudge me my secret either. I knew I should not involve myself with him, that I should not allow such liberties. That letting him in deeper was a fool’s errand, but I couldn’t deny the burgeoning thrill I felt whenever he was near.

  Ares was a male who wasn’t easy to forget or let go of. One would have thought I had learned my lesson after the disaster that was Percy, but a part of me still craved companionship, a deeper connection to the world and peoples around me. Once, the isolation hadn’t bothered me, but it had been quite some years now that my feelings of longing were becoming incapable of ignoring or shoving aside into a dark and deep corner of my mind.

  Against my better judgment, I decided that just once more, I would learn to trust. Percy was an anomaly, not the norm, surely. Not all men were terrible, and I didn’t have to look far to know it was so. Father’s great love for Mother was enough to show me there were good men out there.

  I took a deep breath. “When I was born, Mother took me to the oracle.”

  He nodded sagely. “Of course. All half-breeds must have their fortune told before they’re given the right to life.”

  I flicked a glance at my hand, still idly scribbling in the dirt, realizing an image was actually coming to life, though I’d not planned it so. The very idea that the Olympians had such control and power over us wasn’t pleasant. Ares acted like nothing he’d just said was out of the norm, but it prickled at my conscience that he could be so blasé about life. And yet… if I were an Olympian, I, too, would crave that control over my own life. The war with the Titans had been messy, and though history proclaimed otherwise, the Olympians had won by the skin of their teeth. This world could be a very different place if Hermes had been caught before he could deliver his message. Therefore it only made sense that Zeus had designed his rules as he had. Power was rarely attained through peace so much as through a rigid and unyielding set of rules that, at the end of the day, weren’t completely unfair.

  “You do not like that rule, I take it?” His deep voice shivered through my body like dark silk, and a tiny puff of air escaped me when I looked up into his wise and intelligent eyes.

  I frowned. “I hate it,” I answered honestly, “but I understand its necessity as well.”

  His head cocked, and I felt his study of me like a tangible thing. “You try to see both sides of any situation, do you not, little bird? You understand that in order for us to keep our reign on Olympus, we cannot allow anyone to live who would wish us harm enough to topple our might.”

  Pressing my lips together tightly, I didn’t know what to say. Because again, it wasn’t like I didn’t understand why. It was simply that I was on the wrong side of this thing, and therefore, it was far more personal for me.

  He glanced down at where I still doodled in the dirt. His look was long and thoughtful. I instantly stopped my sketching, and he shook his head.

  “You have great talent. I did not know you could draw. Who is that male?” He tipped his chin toward my image.

  I shrugged as I studied the image of a man I’d seen in my dreams all my life but had never personally seen or witnessed before. His face was handsome, classically Roman. He had long and patrician features, with wisdom glinting in the depths of his eyes, but it was his mouth that told the true story. It was open wide, his teeth clearly showing, and his neck bulged with their veins screaming in silent agony as he gazed at what surely must be a monster.

  My heart rattled in my chest as I thought of what Ares might say if he knew that this wasn’t some random male I drew but one who’d haunted my mind’s eye for as long as I could remember my dreams.

  Scared to show him such a dark side of myself, I quickly scrubbed my fingers over the dirt, obliterating that face I could recall with perfect clarity whenever I closed my eyes. “No one. Nothing. Just a male. Never met him in my life.”

  He looked at me as though unsure whether to believe me, and I gave him a wimpy smile. “Mother calls my art macabre. It… it shames me that you saw th—”

  My fingers were fluttering like broken moths’ wings as I stuttered my way through those painful words, but he gripped my wrist and gently stroked the meat of my palm with his thumb. “Do not be ashamed of the art that pours out of you. I am the god of war, Medusa. The macabre does not bother me.”

  A breath I’d not realized I’d been holding slipped out of me, and I was suddenly ten times aware of the burn of his hand upon mine and the heat that he transferred through me, the way my blood roared and my pulse pounded in my ears. I swallowed hard, my stomach a nest of nerves.

  “Oh” was all I could say.

  He released me, and I wanted to pout. I didn’t want him to let me go. I wanted him to keep holding my hand, to keep making me feel alive and aware of these feelings I’d never known before.

  “Anyway”—he shook his head—“you were saying, about the prophecy?”

  I blinked, needing a second to remember what in the Underworld we’d been talking about before he’d held my hand and my world had come alive with hot rays of sunlight. “Um. Uh.” I shook my head. “Right. The prophecy. Yes.”

  His lips twitched, and I hoped he didn’t know how discombobulated he made me. What a mortification that would be.

  Wetting my lips, I shrugged one shoulder and dug my fingers into my skirts, bunching the fabric up nervously. “There’s not much more to tell, honestly. Mother learned something. I am here. I exist, so whatever she learned meant I pose no threat to you.”

  His brows twitched. “Not necessarily, Medusa. There are times when Father allows a child to live if there is a chance of redemption.”

  Shocked didn’t even begin to describe how I felt in that moment. “Zeus? Your father? He is the one who makes final verdict?”

  He chuckled, but the sound was full of curiosity. “Yes. Did you expect another?”

  “Well, yes.” I giggled nervously. “Themis, for one. She is the goddess of blind justice, is she not? I would have expected that she’d—”

  “Themis sees to matters amongst the gods themselves. She does not concern herself with the affairs of mortals.”

  “The Fates, then? They’ve the sight. Wouldn’t it seem more likely that—”

  He snorted and brought one of his knees up, causing his pleated knee-high tunic to shift. I couldn’t help myself and peeked, but he was hidden in shadow. I was relieved. Or at least, I should have been.
The truth was, I was sorely disappointed. I’d only ever once seen a male’s body nude, and that had been Percy’s and very briefly. We’d been coming out of the ocean after a long day of swimming, and his garment had shifted up around his hips. He’d quickly adjusted himself, but I’d caught a glimpse of a part of his anatomy wildly different from my own. I couldn’t help wondering whether the gods, too, had that type of anatomy.

  “—he’s odd, it’s true.”

  I startled, quickly realizing that while I’d been ogling the god, he’d been talking. Clearing my throat, I shifted on my seat and hoped he didn’t see my blazing cheeks. Having no idea what he’d said, I pretended I did and nodded, anyway. “Makes sense, I suppose.”

  He gave me a look as though I’d gone mad, and I pressed my lips together, my heart banging like a drum in my chest. “Um… or not.”

  “Are you well today, little bird?” His words were kind and his voice gentle, but he sounded genuinely upset by the fact that I’d clearly said the wrong thing. And I couldn’t help wondering what he’d confessed.

  I coughed and gave him a weak grin. “Right as rain.” Then I glanced at the sky, noting the position of the sun. I’d been out here with him almost two hours. I jerked and jumped to my feet. “Will you look at the time? I should be getting back now before they miss me and report me to Mother.”

  I was a fluttery mess of nerves. He wasn’t acting like he hadn’t noticed, but gods above, what was wrong with me, staring at him in that way? “It was good seeing you again, Ares. Don’t be a stranger.”

  I blinked and froze for half a second. Had I really just said that? “Don’t be a stranger?”

  Oh gods.

  He moved smoothly to his feet and nodded. “All right. I won’t.”

  I blinked again and made to turn, desperate to get away from him.

  “Before you go, though, should you ever wish to see my body, you merely need to ask, little bird. I thought your eyes virgin, which was why I draped myself in shadow. But…” His grin was almost arrogant, and my eyes practically bulged out of my head.

  “I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I… I… oh gods,” I groaned, and his laughter was a great big booming sound of pleasure.