Erin sat in indecision, holding his talon in her hand. How could she leave him here, like this, knowing no one else would help him? Comfort him?

M’Ordant moved forward and pulled her away from V’Aidan, then walked her to the opening, where he kept her still.

For several minutes, V’Aidan didn’t move at all. Then he lifted his head and tried to look around.

“Erin?” he asked quietly. “Are you still here?”

M’Ordant motioned for her silence. “She’s gone now.”

V’Aidan’s lip quivered with sadness. “You sent her home?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you.” He lay down as if all his strength had been stripped from him.

“Tell me,” M’Ordant said. “Why didn’t you want her to stay with you?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Love.”

M’Ordant snorted. “What does a Skotos know of love?”

“Absolutely nothing…” He took a deep breath. “And everything. I couldn’t ask her to stay here when I know how much this place scares her.”

“But you wanted her to stay?”

V’Aidan nodded weakly. “More than I want my freedom. Now, leave me, brother.”

Erin wiped the tears from her face as she stared at M’Ordant. She gave him a hopeful look.

“Can I stay?” she whispered so that V’Aidan wouldn’t hear her.

His face impassive, M’Ordant shook his head and led her from the room. “It’s not up to me.”

“Then who?”

He refused to answer. “You have to leave.”

“I won’t leave him,” she said, her voice firm. “And no one is going to make me.”

Erin found out those were famous last words as she came awake back in her office. When dealing with Greek gods, human will didn’t amount to much.

Heartbroken, she wept, thinking about V’Aidan in his hell and the fact that she was the cause of it.

Worst of all, there was absolutely nothing she could do to help him. Nothing.

*   *   *

“V’Aidan.”

V’Aidan clenched his teeth at Hypnos’s voice. He tucked Erin’s wreath under a nearby rock to keep the god from seeing it and taking it from him as he had done the pictures.

It was all V’Aidan had of her and he couldn’t bear the thought of losing it.

He forced himself upright and cleared his throat of the grief that choked him. “I didn’t realize it was time for more punishment.”

Hypnos snorted. “I can’t break you, can I?”

He sensed the god moving around him.

“You know,” Hypnos said irritably, “I have tried since the dawn of time to make you fear me. And you never have. Why is that?”

“I can’t feel emotion, remember?”

“No. What you are is disrespectful, irreverent, and sarcastic. You have never fit in with us. And the thing that has always made me maddest with you is that you never even tried to.”