Chosen by Sable Grace Read Free Book Online Page B

kick his ass.”
    â€œWow. Not kill him? Just an ass kicking? I think you’re becoming tame.”
    Haven rolled her eyes. “Fuck you.”
    And there was the new Haven again. Bad-tempered and foul-mouthed. Maybe she wasn’t so bad.
    As she pulled Haven to her feet, Kyana smiled. “I’ll call for a bath. Consider this room yours until this ordeal is over.”
    It would work out well. Kyana’s bedchamber was connected by a single door. Haven would remain close, and she’d be able to make sure she was safe at all times. “I’ll have a bed brought in too.”
    â€œThanks.” Haven’s hand slid out of Kyana’s hold. “Not sure I’ll be able to do much sleeping, though. Besides, won’t Ares insist on cuffing me to something or sealing the room in some magical prisonlike spell? Maybe you could just give me a dungeon somewhere and be done with it.”
    This time, Kyana rolled her eyes. “The Haven I know isn’t prone to pity parties.”
    Half a smile cracked on Haven’s face. “It’s probably the last party I’m going to see for a while. Let me have it.”
    â€œFine, but do it in the bath. You’re looking funky.”
    As Haven saluted her with an extended middle finger, Kyana couldn’t help but smile as she made her way from the room to summon a bath. The middle finger might belong to the new Haven, but the banter they’d just exchanged belonged to the old.
    There was still hope, indeed.

Chapter Seven
    O nly minutes after Helios had finished calling forth the sun, Ryker had his council gathered in Kyana and Artemis’s temple. He sat on a throne, facing Zeus’s half brother Kheiron—the mighty Centaur—who had stepped out of the sky in order to make this council. Word had spread that war was coming—and since returning from the Fates’ cave where he’d spoken to Atropos, even Geoffrey was no longer in denial.
    â€œWhat changed your mind?” Kyana asked, leaning in so the others wouldn’t be disturbed.
    Geoffrey frowned. “Atropos’s souls are exactly where they’re supposed to be.”
    Surprised, Kyana’s mouth fell slack. “That’s not possible. Cronos is raising the dead. That means some souls have to be missing.”
    â€œRight. Hers are still intact, but some of mine have gone astray.”
    Ryker heard this last statement and stopped speaking to the council mid-sentence. “What?”
    Sighing, Geoffrey stood and turned his attention to the group before them. “Several hundred of the souls locked in Tartarus have up and gone. Their bodies remain, so it’s not another breakout, but they are completely lifeless now. Someone nicked them.”
    â€œWhy? I don’t understand . . .” This from Haven, who had spent the last several minutes receiving hate-filled stares from the gods as they arrived. At least she could face them clean. She looked a bit more like her old self since her bath, with the exception of the borrowed chiton wrapped around her too-thin frame.
    â€œIf Atropos’s souls are where they’re meant to be and mine are not—it is a simple thing to assume he’s raising those with sins on their hands.”
    I wish no more blackness on my soul . . . The man in Haven’s dream had said as much. Was that really Cronos’s intentions? To find sinners and raise them for his army?
    â€œIt’s easier to convince those who were evil in life to become evil again,” she realized aloud.
    Geoffrey nodded. “It’s what I believe.”
    Ryker’s head was going to explode. The entire room erupted with unintelligible dialogue, sending timpani-sounding crashes through his skull. He could feel Kyana’s questioning stare burning through the side of his face—why wasn’t he shutting them up so they could get on with the meeting? Simply put, because they needed a minute to