Tempted Read Online Free Page B

picked up her cloak and bag from the floor, stepped over the puddle of water, and hightailed it for the door.
    “Now,” Orpheus said, crossing his arms over his chest as he glanced from his brother to Demetrius and back again, “to what do I owe this…surprise?”
    Demetrius took a step forward, but Gryphon’s forearm against his chest stopped him.
    “The princess is missing, Orpheus,” Gryphon said.
    “And that concerns me how?”
    “Because you took her to the portal.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking ab—”
    Demetrius pushed past Gryphon’s arm. “Dark magick hovers all around this place. That female you had in here was a witch.”
    Orpheus’s gray eyes settled on Demetrius, and for a second they flashed green. Green? That wasn’t right. “Be careful, Guardian.”
    “Orpheus, listen,” Gryphon said, moving by Demetrius with a glare. “Isadora went missing from the castle just before her binding ceremony to Zander. No one can find her. She doesn’t even know the king called off the proceedings.”
    At those words Demetrius finally pulled his gaze from Orpheus and shifted it to Gryphon. “The king did what ?”
    Gryphon frowned Demetrius’s way, but refocused on his brother. “We found a bracelet in her room. One with the Helios marking. This store. Those witches.” He gestured to the door Aellô had just left through. “Casey told us the portal you took her, Callia, and Isadora to was manned by witches.”
    Orpheus’s gaze shifted from Gryphon to Demetrius and back again. “The king called off Isadora’s binding?”
    “Yeah.” Gryphon’s brow wrinkled. “Wait. You were supposed to be at the ceremony. You should know this already.”
    “I decided not to go. Why did the king call it off?”
    “Because it’s clear Zander and Callia are meant to be together.”
    Orpheus’s eyes narrowed. “Who did he give her to this time?”
    “No one.”
    “No one?” The words shot out of Demetrius’s mouth before he could stop them. Gryphon glared his way again with a what the hell is wrong with you? look that tightened Demetrius’s stomach and told him what the guardian said was true.
    The king really hadn’t betrothed her to anyone else? Fuck. Fuck!
    “Translation, little brother,” Orpheus said with disdain, flicking a curious look between the two. “The king didn’t have a chance to force her on yet another Argonaut she doesn’t want because she ran off before he could.”
    “Ran off or was kidnapped.”
    The brothers stared at each other, and in the tension crackling it was clear that they both knew something Demetrius didn’t. The darkness inside him tingled with awareness.
    “Will you help us?” Gryphon asked.
    Orpheus’s eyebrows lifted. “You’re asking, not ordering?”
    “Yeah. This time I am.”
    Orpheus nodded at Demetrius. “And what about that one?”
    “He wants to find her as much as the rest of us do.”
    “I wouldn’t be so sure of that. Something tells me he has other, contradictory motives where your princess is concerned.”
    Demetrius had sensed Orpheus and the princess had some kind of connection in the past. Knew it now by the way Orpheus glared at him. What was she to him? And what was he to her?
    The dark mist churned and boiled inside Demetrius as he imagined the two of them alone together. This was her choice? This piece-of-shit, rat-bastard, scheming nothing ?
    Orpheus’s eyes slid back to Gryphon. “I’ll take you to the portal where I took the girls. But if she already went through—”
    “We know,” Gryphon said. “There’s no telling where she could be by now.”
    Orpheus grabbed a cloak from a nearby closet, led them outside, gave them a location in the Aegis Mountains, and disappeared in a flash of light. With no other choice, Demetrius followed. He cleared his mind and imagined the location, then he was flying, flashing from the sidewalk on Corinth Avenue to a wooded area at the base of Mount Parnithia.
    Orpheus was already there