My Life From Hell (The Blooming Goddess #3)

Family Dinner (Part 4)

I returned my attention to Kai's home. When I'd first discovered where he lived, I'd been surprised, expecting a flashy hi-rise in some major metropolis. "Why a treehouse?"

We stood on a deck that circled his round wooden pod, built high around the thick, mossy trunk of a massive cypress tree on the bayou. It was designed so that, from a distance, it would be indistinguishable from the rest of the tree. Not that there was anyone around to fool. The area was remote. Uninhabitable without god abilities to blink in and out.

Kai shrugged. "It fits me."

He spoke in such a low voice that I barely heard him. Morning had broken, and the sound of birdcalls was deafening. It wasn't peaceful exactly, but it was calming.

Except for the oppressive humidity. Despite the gray overcast sky, my dress felt clammy against my skin. I grasped my hair and twisted it out of the way, using it as a fan on the base of my neck. Talk about pointless. I felt like I was breathing soup.

To distract myself, I eyed the brackish water far below, and a tricky gator doing its best log impersonation amidst tufts of wild grass. In the blink of an eye, the gator lunged forward and snagged a fish. Pure savagery.

And yet, in its wild way, there was no doubt it was beautiful here. Dangerous, lethal even, but with a surprising fragility. A brilliant orange butterfly landed on the rail beside my hand. Hmmm. Maybe this place was perfect for Kai after all. So seemingly fierce, and yes, actually fierce, but still beautiful and vulnerable.

I watched the butterfly flutter and fly past Kai's head, giving me a glimpse of the wistfulness on his face. He caught me looking and smoothed his expression into the poker face that drove me nuts.

Kai turned, opened the door, and stepped inside. Since he left the door open, I followed him.

His place was one big round room, with large, rectangular windows almost floor-to-ceiling all the way around. Underneath them were custom built cedar cabinets, which infused the whole place with a lovely sort of sauna smell.

The cypress' trunk came up through the center of the room, disappearing again out the top of the sharply pitched ceiling, which was inlayed with slender cedar planks.

To one side of the trunk, Kai had strung a huge hammock bed from an iron grid on the ceiling. The other half of the room was a lounge area, with comfortable seating grouped to take advantage of the view. There was only the most basic of kitchens beside it.

"No bathroom?" I asked as I glanced around.

Kai gave me the ghost of a smirk, making my insides clench in shivery delight. I knew he was remembering the last time we'd found ourselves in a high-end bathroom, and the flirtation that had ensued. He tilted his head. "Over there."

I looked past him to see a walkway connecting this pod to a much smaller one in a nearby tree. "Ah."

Awkward small talk out of the way, I sat down on one of the sofas, because no way was I going near the bed. Determined to keep this on a mature, adult level, I let him speak first. Also, he was the one with the explaining to do.

Kai took a seat on a chair beside me. He rubbed his thumb over his index finger. "I still love you," he said, finally.

"I know."

He nodded as if that was all he needed to say.

My eyes narrowed.

His brows raised.

I shot him a scathing look and drew my legs up to my chest. "You talked to Zeus and Hades? You know what they're going to do? What they have done with their ward?"

He nodded.

That was the sum total of his response. I snapped. "When we do this love ritual, is it going to work? Or is your Guinness World Record for pissed offness gonna sour the whole thing?"

Kai's face flashed annoyance. Maybe maximum snark wasn't the tone to lead with.

"I dunno," he shot back, equally sarcastic. "How far did Persephone's betrayal go? She must have known I'd come after her. So what was the plan? Kill me? Use one of Pierce's arrows to magic herself into being in love with me?"

I flinched at that last bit. At one time, I'd wanted to do the same thing. In my defense, I hadn't known Kai had loved me then, and it had been a major survival plan for keeping my heart in one still-beating piece.

Still, I didn't want to answer him either. I knew what she had felt. It wasn't pretty. "She loved you." I left it at that.

Problem was, Kai was no idiot. He laughed mirthlessly. "And she was going to kill me anyway," he said.

I flung up my hands in exasperation, and sat up, my feet slapping onto the floor. "What do you want me to say? Persephone was the universe's biggest bitch. And I've got Bethany—who tormented me for my entire life, tried to steal my boyfriend, stabbed me, and left me for dead—as a contender for second place. I'm sorry about what Persephone was planning, but I can't change it. So right now I'm telling you to put on your big boy pants because everything is falling apart and we can't let Zeus and Hades win."

Persephone and I had made entirely different choices. For better or for worse, I led with my heart. As opposed to letting my messed up goddess-essence-with-a-superiority-complex rule my life with knee jerk reactions. Could he say the same?

Kai didn't actually say anything for a bit. I hoped laying it on the line had gotten through to him, and was making him rethink his attitude. Then again, gods were notoriously stubborn. And touchy.

I decided to employ the "catch more flies with honey" approach, so I softened my tone and said, "For what it's worth, I doubt Persephone could have really done it in the end."

He shot me a sideways glance. "Could you?"

"Screw you, Kai." I pulled my pendent out from under my dress, bolted to my feet, and headed for the cypress' trunk. I could be back in Festos' apartment in a second.

Kai jumped up and grabbed my arm, knocking my pendent out of my fist. "Protest all you want, but you are her. And if she could do it, then the potential is in you."

I broke his grip. "You're as crazy as our fathers." I shoved at his chest. "Your kid self is in you, if you weren't hatched out of Hades' ass fully grown, or however you were spawned. So the potential for every stupid thing you've ever done is still in you, too. Does that mean you're going to go out and do endless stupid things? Because if you wanna start making lists, I'm betting I'm the one that needs to be worried here."

Silence. My chest heaved and Kai would have to be blind to miss my furious glare.

His nostrils flared. His jaw was so tight I worried he might shatter it. His eyes narrowed slightly and then he disappeared.

Days away from the love ritual we had to perform and this was the state of our relationship.

Humanity was screwed.