Kyra

Chapter Twenty-Four

Alone, Kyra sat on the floor of Ares' office. There, she stared at the canvas hanging from the wall. At the chaos it depicted. At the future it foretold.

The door opened softly behind her. After hours of being alone, the God had come looking for her. Kyra didn't react or respond. Honestly, she couldn't be bothered to.

There was no point anyway. Ares strolled into the room, stopping behind her to plant his hands on her shoulders.

"How did I know I'd find you in here looking at this?"

He was playing a dangerous game. A game he'd been playing for weeks now. A game in which he pretended Kyra didn't want to rip his bollocks off. A game where he pretended that all was right in the world.

"There weren't exactly many other places you could find me," She answered bitterly, tired of this game of cat and mouse.

I'm wasting away here.

"I'm forbidden from stepping near the cabins, so that's half of the compound out of the question. I'm only permitted training time when the other Amazons have finished, so I can't hang around the fields or the compound during the day. Essentially, your castle is the only place in this world I'm allowed to go. And even then I only have access to a select number of rooms. I'm living in captivity. Where else could you possibly find me?"

"You're allowed in any room of this castle. Every room."

"So long as there's nothing of interest to me in there, right?" She rolled her eyes, unimpressed. "So long as you're not keeping something in there that I shouldn't know about, right? Are you seeing where I'm going with this? I thought I lacked freedom before but now I really know what having none of it's like. You give a whole new meaning to 'I'll give you something to cry about'."

Kyra couldn't do anything without the God knowing about it. She was monitored in the day. He rarely left her alone, scared she'd fuck everything up the second he turned his eyes away.

At this point, she longed to. She'd do anything to break the monotony of her typical day by day.

"I'm sorry you feel this way," Ares told her cooly.

"And that's all you have to say for yourself." Why am I not surprised? The God was phenomenally good at pretending nothing was wrong. "Even now you refuse to admit what you're doing to me. You're just sorry that I don't see it from the same calculated angle as you." Kyra couldn't be bothered to argue. Not really. She was getting tired of this. "You know, if I had half as much power as you do, I'd make the world a better place. Instead, you cower in this blasted compound doing other people's dirty work. It's disgusting."

He didn't let her words get to him. Each time she said something horrible, it bounced off the God. Nothing could get to him. Why would it, coming from a totally powerless Amazon and all?

He'd stripped her of everything.

"Would you like a drink?" He asked idly, once again pretending that nothing was wrong.

"I want my freedom," She bit back, head falling to the top of her knees. "I want space. I want to go outside. I want my room back. I want my clothes back. I want to die. You'd be just as well locking me in your cells and leaving me there to rot."

He poured himself a drink, considering she didn't want one. From across the room, he kept his gaze on her. Still worried I'll pull something?

"Why do you still look at this painting?"

Easy question.

"It represents more freedom than I've ever had and I haven't even lived it yet. It reminds me of Romania. Of the singular night where I was free of you."