Chapter 38: Seductive Propositions

At the Spartan symposium, Alexis lingers at the edge with Drex, watching a gloomy dance where Lena keeps vanishing into the crowd. The smoke and heat of Day 9 still claw at her lungs; she hallucinates flames and notices Patro’s bloodied boot prints. When Alexis’s fingertips emit a faint glow, Nyx urges her to “make it glow,” then tightens around Alexis’s neck in a brutal pep talk that leaves Alexis gasping and a horned reveler fleeing in fear.

Kharon and Augustus arrive to find Alexis breathless, having felt a surge of pain through their bond and demanding to know what happened. Alexis downplays it as playing with Nyx, defusing Augustus’s rising fury. Kharon and Augustus then invite her to dance; pressed between them, Alexis hears them vow to start a war rather than watch her suffer in the arena.

Tempted but clearheaded, Alexis refuses their treasonous offer, deciding to face the labors herself for Ceres, and to avoid watching her husbands destroy themselves on her behalf. As they dance, desire overtakes restraint. Alexis admits she wants to have sex before the battles ahead; Nyx departs, sowing prankish chaos across the floor while the trio’s focus narrows to each other.

Augustus and Kharon lead Alexis from the symposium with guards in tow. In their dim cell, hellhounds and Poco sleep at the bed’s end; Fluffy Jr.’s back still faintly glows blue, echoing Alexis’s own earlier glimmer. When Alexis hesitates, Kharon orders her to pick a number. She chooses two. He smiles and opens the bathroom: the shower.