Aster’s head throbbed with pain. Each word she heard, each scrape of a knife or fork on a plate, each pop and sizzle of the bacon and eggs being cooked, it all intensified the searing-hot pokers that had been digging into her brain for the past week. It was times like these that she really wished she could go to the doctor, but trying to explain to a medical professional that she had visions where she blacked out and saw the future wasn’t exactly a good idea.

Her eyes drifted up unbidden toward the only person she was trying not to pay any attention to. Everyone around her was enjoying the family meal, but every time she tried to eat, her stomach twisted into knots, and it was all his fault.

Dem’s midnight-blue eyes clashed with hers for a split second before darting away.

Anger rolled inside her like the rumble of thunder before the lightning. Why did he have to be such a jackass about everything? And why, for the love of the gods, did she still find him attractive? So they had slept together, had one amazing weekend together, but they both knew that was over, so why was he still treating her like a pariah?

“You okay over there, Sunshine?” her sister called across the table, momentarily breaking through the dark cloud that seemed to surround her mind lately.

“Yep.” The word ground through her teeth, but she didn’t have the patience right now to deal with all the lovey-dovey crap happening at the table.

Three different couples surrounded her; all of whom were completely infatuated with each other. It wasn’t that she begrudged them their happiness. It was more that she was forced to sit at the table with the six of them and the man who had given her the best weekend of her life before rejecting her like a meal he had overindulged on. Her only saving grace was Cin’s mysterious half-brother, Ben, whom she had just met.

Apparently, he had known her sister before Cin had turned into a fury, but never told her they were related. At least, not until she stumbled into the fury hideout in the Underworld. As though thought summoned him, Ben’s hand touched her shoulder. “Are you really okay? We can sneak out of here if you want, get some fresh air? Cause no offense, but you aren’t looking so hot.”

“Thanks for that. It was just what I needed to hear, a judgment on my appearance when I obviously don’t feel well.” She tossed her napkin onto the table and marched out, ignoring the voices calling after her.

All she wanted right now was somewhere dark and quiet, and for this freaking vision that had been stuck in her head for the last couple weeks to present itself already. Sometimes her whole life felt like it had been a series of headaches and visions that had all culminated in coming face to face with Randall Fields. She could have sworn he was the devil, until she met The Surgeon, and then her perspective changed. A shudder rippled down her spine at the memory of their first meeting, followed shortly by a smile at her recent interactions with him.

The brothers had been too focused on other things to pay much attention to their prisoner in the last few weeks. They were probably hoping that neglect would get him to talk, but they didn’t know The Surgeon, Leonard, like she did. He preferred to be alone. If they had wanted to get him to talk, then they would all have to be in the cage with him, talking to him, tormenting him with quips and anecdotes of their lives.

Their absence had given her plenty of leeway, though. She had visited the man who was once her captor almost every day, finding new ways to hurt him that wouldn’t raise too many suspicions from the others.

He was a monster and deserved everything he got. The thought whipped through her head, vicious and cold.

Stumbling on a newly fallen branch, Aster snapped out of her bloody-minded focus, only to find herself next to the door she used to get to Leonard. His cage was deep underground, and none of the brothers would willingly let her use their passageways to get down there. When she had found this door, it was like she knew what she had to do, like the opportunity had presented itself to her on purpose. Who was she to turn it down?

Now was not the time to go down there, though. The whole family was around, too many eyes and ears that could catch her.

“Hey, little sister, wait up,” Cin’s voice rang out behind her.

“Go back to Thad. I just want to be alone for a bit,” Aster said, turning in the direction of her sister’s voice. Her blonde waves clouded her vision momentarily. She swept them away, only to find Cin in front of her.

“Too bad. Sisters stick together,” her tall Amazonian sister said with her hands on her plentiful hips.

“Sometimes sticking together doesn’t mean within an inch of each other.”

“You are way too surly for just a headache.” A dark brown brow quirked at her, while hazel eyes underneath examined her. “What’s wrong?”

Aster wanted to yell and scream. At this point, she felt more like a fury than a seer. Cin stood there, elegant and tall, with the feminine curves Aster had been jealous of her whole life, and she was completely head over heels in love with a man who worshiped the ground she walked on, and she was asking what was wrong? How about the fact that Aster had been tortured? Or that she might have had her eggs harvested to create a weird seer army for some creepy secret society that controlled the world? Or that Dem made her skin warm just by being in the same room?

“Nothing.” The word came out almost reflexively, as though everything else was too much, and if she started talking about it, then she would never stop.

“Okay, let’s try this again.” She sighed and shoved her hand out. “Hi, I’m Cin, your sister of almost thirty years. What’s wrong?”

“Listen, I’m not trying to be a bitch, but I asked to be left alone and I told you nothing is wrong, so why don’t you just let it go and go back to playing house with your own personal dream boat.” The venom in her voice startled her.

Cin’s eyes narrowed. “Jealousy? Really? Come on, Sunshine, it’s not like you’re never going to find someone, or that I’ll forget about you.”

“Please stop calling me Sunshine. It was a nickname from when I was a kid. I don’t need it anymore.”

Cin’s face crumpled. “I’ve always called you Sunshine.” Her voice was quiet.

Guilt rolled in Aster’s stomach.

“Why do you want me to stop?”

“Because I’m not a kid anymore!”

“But you’re always going to be my little sister!”

“Yeah, well, we can’t choose family, can we?”

Cin took a step back, her eyes shimmering in the light. Aster knew she’d gone too far, but she couldn’t take it back now. At least, not without explaining why she was so angry.

Her powers were gone. She had thought maybe it was just a phase, but with every passing day, she became surer.

The last visions she had experienced were of Cin dying as she tried to save her. Before that? It had been months, and now it had been months again. The headache was just a constant reminder that she wasn’t going to get any more visions. Her powers had stopped when Leonard and the Order of Talos had tried experimenting on her.

“I’ll get out of your way for now, but this isn’t over. We will always be family, whether you like it or not.” Cin’s voice was hoarse with restrained emotion.

All the anger seemed to rush out of her as her sister walked away. She desperately wanted to call out, ask her to come back, tell her everything, even tell her about Leonard, but there were too many secrets now, too much explaining to do. Without the rage that had been bubbling inside her, she felt empty, a shell of who she had been. She couldn’t go back to her old life, not that she minded. Aster knew she had been stuck in a dead-end job and that the people she considered friends were mainly coworkers, not true friends. Still, she would miss them.

She was exhausted and felt like she had been for forever. Her limbs felt leaden, and she just wanted to fall onto a bed. Even her eyes were tired, all dry and itchy, like she’d been staring at a computer screen too long. She closed them, rubbing each with the heel of her hand.

The itching only intensified, though, and when she pulled her hands away, she couldn’t see. There was nothing, just black, everywhere. She blinked, but there was no change. She couldn’t even tell that she had blinked except for the physical sensation.

A cold hand squeezed her heart as panic seeped in. It was a snake sliding up her spine, wrapping around her throat until each breath was a desperate gasp. Aster alternated franticly rubbing at her eyes with clawing at her throat, trying to rid herself of the sensation that she was being strangled.

Two yellow pinpricks appeared in front of her, and her fear eased a fraction before it came back stronger than ever. As they grew larger, she could tell that they were eyes, luminous orbs that drew ever closer until they were directly in front of her. She could almost feel a nose touching her own, but the eyes in front of her were all she could see. Even when she closed her eyes, they were there watching her.

They blinked.

She almost had a heart attack. A scream of terror ripped out of her throat and a cruel laughter rang in her ears, the sound bouncing around inside her head before she passed out.

* * *

Dem wanted to strangle the boy who sat down at the table. Ben. Sure, he was Cin’s half-brother, but that didn’t mean he had to like the guy. The way he’d put his hands all over Aster was enough to make his blood boil. She needed space, not some idiot kid breathing down her neck, trying to get in her pants.

It wasn’t his place to step in, though. Especially not now.

The back door burst open, and Cin came in, tear streaks staining her cheeks.

Thad was already halfway to her by the time Dem was out of his chair. “What’s wrong, love?”

“Aster.” She sniffled. “I’ve never seen her so angry. She’s lashing out at everything, even me.” Cin’s breath hitched as she spoke, and a fresh silent wave of tears cascaded down her cheeks.

“It’s okay, little sister. She’ll work her way through it,” Dem said as he patted her shoulder. He was still uncomfortable with touch, had been ever since losing Isa, but he was working on it.

The feel of Aster’s hands on his skin during their weekend together flashed over his mind before he locked it down. It was supposed to be a one-night stand to get rid of the base need he had after however many years it had been, and he let it turn into almost three days. It was a hell of a weekend, but not what he’d intended. Keeping track of when he interacted with the general populace throughout his overly long life would drive him insane, so he tried not to think about it. He wasn’t fit to socialize, anyway.

“Do you want me to talk to her?” A voice came from just behind Dem’s shoulder.

Turning, he looked down at Ben.

“No. It’s okay. Thanks, though.”

“Are you sure? It’s no problem. It might help that I’m not really part of the family. At least, not yet, anyway.”

He just didn’t know when to quit, did he? Dem wanted to punch Ben’s overly concerned face and let him know exactly where he stood in the hierarchy of things. “She said no. And you’re right; you’re not part of this family. I don’t even know why you’re here.” It came out rougher than he’d intended, but he wasn’t about to apologize.

“Jeez, big brother! That’s a little harsh,” Cin reprimanded him.

“Maybe, but that doesn’t make it false.”

Dem turned and walked back to his seat, picking up his plate and taking it to the sink. A storm had been brewing inside him ever since they started doing these weekly family meals. It was never the same day or the same time, since they were all over the place for their work, but it was nice seeing his brothers together and happy.

A needle of jealousy poked at him, demanding that he disrupt their happiness as Zeus had disrupted his so long ago, but he wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t make anyone go through what he went through with Isa. As true as that may be, he still needed to vent the tumult of guilt and sorrow that had been building inside him.

Nodding to his brothers, he jumped out, teleporting himself to the side of the island no one really used. His favorite spot was a rocky ledge that hung over the ocean. From there, he could look out and see nothing but sea and sky, just him and nature, which at times like these was the way it should be.

He sat with his legs dangling over the edge, watching the waves crash against the stony shore underneath, the frothy caps breaking like glass against the rocks that had been smoothed from a combination of time and water. The spray occasionally reached high enough to coat his boots in a fine mist of water, while filling his nose with the salty clean scent of the ocean. He sighed, releasing the rigid control he had over his powers, letting all the pent-up energy and emotion flow out of his body into the wild sea that churned below him.

His energy turned the almost cerulean blue sky an ugly shade of gray as it clouded over, and a bolt of lightning broke across the view, a bright flash in the dark as the rain began to fall. It was just a patter at first, but soon it was cold little needles hitting his skin. The urge to call up Isa’s face had been riding him ever since he had sat down. He had been trying to resist, hating to imagine what she would think about him torturing himself. As much as he tried, he couldn’t seem to let her go.

His breath clouded the air in front of his face as the temperature dropped around him. Each droplet of water that landed in his cupped hands froze. Slowly, drop after drop, the ice began to form the face that haunted his mind. Isa’s eyes stared out at him, quickly followed by her smile, breaking his heart all over again.

Charm and grace were evident from her features. She had been everything to him, the light that his life had revolved around. The ice sculpture he had created from the hail couldn’t compete with the real thing, but it was the best he could do. His throat was tight with unshed tears as thoughts swam around and around in his head. Had he betrayed his soulmate with his desire for Aster?

That single thought plagued him. From the moment he realized Cin’s sister was the little blonde he had spent the weekend with, through when she confronted him, to seeing her every few days as he had for the last couple months. The thought had been gaining steam in his mind and was ready to push through anything that tried to get in its way.

This was his time to give the thought free rein, to examine it and answer the question for himself once and for all, without having to worry about the effects his powers would have on the weather around him, and yet, looking down at the sculpture of Isa’s face, he pushed it away once more. It might come back stronger than before, but right now, all he wanted to focus on was the smile of the woman who had stolen his heart so long ago.

In moments, the sculpture had changed until it was Aster’s face staring out at him. The big doe eyes were unmistakable, nothing like the shrewd, sharply intelligent eyes of Isa. He shook himself and allowed the ice sculpture to fall from his hands into the swirling water below. His ears pricked, listening for the sound of the splash, an action he had completed more times than he would care to admit. He never heard it, no matter how closely he watched as it splashed into the water. This time was no different.

He lay back on the ground, allowing the hail to pound his skin. Each one was a little jolt to his brain, reminding him what his feelings had cost him and how much Isabeau had suffered because of him. He could never allow anything like that to happen again.

The wind changed direction and blew the wet strands of his hair into his face, plastering them to his forehead, along with his T-shirt to his chest. It was the sound on the wind that made his blood run cold.

A feeble voice calling for help pricked at his ears.

Dem was on his feet and moving before he had another thought. No one on their island should be calling for help. It was their safe haven, warded from everything. Gods and mortals alike couldn’t find it, let alone see it, without one of the brothers with them. When he heard it again, his feet picked up speed until he was racing down the mountainside toward the call. The wind whipping against his body helped dry his clothes and hair, while the storm overhead cleared as he clamped down on that side of his powers once more.

* * *

When she woke, the yellow eyes had disappeared. The darkness had cleared, but nothing was the way it should be. Aster wanted to scream and cry and rage against everything. The Surgeon looked down at her, his dark eyes devoid of any emotion. She was strapped to the metal table once more.

“You’re awake. Good,” he said, scribbling some notes down on his clipboard. “That last set of drugs didn’t seem to induce visions, but you did seem to be fantasizing about being on an island. I think I’m on the right track. I just need to tweak the formula a little more.”

She tried to speak, to tell him that nothing could ever induce her visions, but her mouth was so dry, it hurt. Her lips cracked at the slightest movement. Her eyes scanned the room, looking for any possible means of escape. It was the same one she had been in before, until Cin and the brothers had rescued her. That had been real, hadn’t it? She couldn’t have created the whole thing in her head, could she?

“I’ll find someone to get you cleaned up and ready for the next test. Don’t miss me too much.” He directed an empty smile toward her as he tapped the clipboard against his thigh. The starkness of his face unnerved her to the point that she had to look away, fixing her eyes on the stainless-steel cabinets that lined the room.

Aster could hear his fancy, expensive loafers clicking against the floor as he walked out. Once she was certain she was alone, she looked down at her wrists. They were bound the same way as before, big leather straps and buckles holding her arms in place. She yanked at each side with the small amount of leeway she had, only to find that her wrists were still raw from the last time she had tried to pull herself free. Pulling herself up as much as she could, she felt a tenderness in her abdomen, followed by a wave of nausea. Whatever he had given her was not agreeing with her.

The beige walls of the room swam slightly, and her stomach clenched. She barely had time to turn her head as her mouth watered and her belly revolted. The sour taste of vomit lingered in her mouth as the mess lay on the bed next to her, slowly dripping off the side onto the floor with a noise that made her stomach want to heave all over again. Heat radiated through her as a sheen of sweat broke out on her forehead. She rolled her head away, only to see one of the guards walking into the room.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” He sighed as he approached, shaking his head. “I did not sign up for this shit.”

“Help me.” The words rasped out of her, each movement, each syllable bringing a new wave of pain.

“You know I can’t talk to you. I’ll clean this up and give you some water, but that’s it.”

It was more than she had hoped for, expecting him to just turn away from her as so many of the other guards did, as though if they couldn’t see her, she didn’t exist. The snap of latex gloves brought her mind back as she sipped from the glass in front of her. The water was the most amazing thing she had ever tasted, cool and clear as it flowed down her throat, soothing the raw, dry feeling.

Once the guard was finished cleaning her up, she expected him to leave. He didn’t. Instead, he rolled over a chest-high silver tray. She could barely glance over the top, but the shape of a syringe was all she needed to see.

A shiver ran down her spine as the guard moved the hospital gown to one side, exposing her hip and underwear to the cold room. He efficiently swabbed an area and injected her with who knew what before placing a mark on her hip with a pen. She was starting to look like she had some odd form of chicken pox with all the spots covering her hips.

Aster watched his face. His cold gray eyes watched her for a moment before he held the glass of water in front of her again. She sipped at the cool nectar.

It was gone all too soon, and the guard was gone with it. Once again, she was alone, forced to deal with her emotions and thoughts in a way that she hadn’t been in a long time. She knew there was no chance for escape, not unless Thad came for her. But he had come for her, hadn’t he? Her mind was so mixed up.

“Aster!” A phantom voice called out to her, deep and very male. “Aster, wake up!”

She wrenched her head around, trying to figure out where the voice was coming from. Nothing. There was no one anywhere within sight. It actually wouldn’t surprise her if she was making up voices. She had been alone for over a week now.

“Come on, Sunshine, wake up. I know you’re still in there.”

She recognized the voice, but she couldn’t remember who it belonged to, or how they knew the nickname her sister had given her as a kid.

The sound of loafers clicking in the hallway made her heart race. The man who tormented her was coming back. The Surgeon walked into the room, his jet-black hair slicked back and his suit looking fresh.

“Do try to have a vision this time. It would save us all a lot of time, and a lot of pain for you.” The monster stared down at her before lifting the edge of the gown. “The injections don’t seem to be bothering you. At least that’s something.”

Her breathing was coming in short, sharp bursts. Her chest started to feel tight, like someone was sitting on it, making her all the more conscious of her racing heart. She couldn’t seem to get enough air into her lungs, and the cold grip of panic settled around her throat. The edge of The Surgeon’s face began to blur, and he slowly receded until she was looking at him down a tunnel.