A shaft of light sliced through the darkness. Fragile. Dim. The only light in this darkening world.
The Underworld.
His realm. His home. The lands he would do anything to protect, upholding his sacred vow and crushing any who dared rise against him, who dared target the souls under his care.
Who dared target his family.
Hades’s heart beat slowly. Evenly. Controlled. His breaths were steady.
A contrast to the desperate, fearful panting of the female on her knees before him in the windowless black room in the heart of his prison—Tartarus. A place where she had been many times in the last few months. Hades tightened his fists until his bones creaked under the intense pressure.
A place where she belonged.
He stared down at her, his face impassive, his emotions in check, for only a fool would allow an enemy to see such weakness.
And Hades was no fool.
Millennia of ruling the Underworld had taught him many lessons, but none more essential than this one—never reveal a weakness to an enemy, for they would always exploit it.
And for that reason, the goddess kneeling before him, her raven braids matted with filth, her black skirt ripped to reveal dirty scarred skin, and a narrow strip of fabric binding her breasts, had seen nothing but this cold mask he wore in all the times he had dragged her from her cell.
He had mistakenly revealed his weakness to his enemy, and they had exploited it.
Had targeted not just his beloved realm, but his family.
Had stolen his daughter from his cherished wife—from him—for centuries, making them believe she was dead.
Gone.
Lost to them forever.
A piece of his heart he thought he would never get back.
For that alone, he would have visited Eris to torture her daily for the rest of time, but the goddess had desperately confessed she’d had no part in Calindria’s false death and subsequent imprisonment. Eris had begged. Pleaded. Beseeched him as his shadows had torn into her, lancing her flesh and spilling her blood across the cracked black ground.
Oh, how the little goddess of strife had screamed.
Pleasure flitted through him, brief and fleeting, and neither of the other two occupants of the interrogation room saw it.
One, because the male was staring at the wretch before Hades as he was. The other because her head slumped forwards as if it had become too heavy for her to hold up. Her ragged breaths stirred the copper-drenched air. Fresh blood slid down her hunched shoulders, seeping from eight puncture marks across her back.
One for each of his children.
“My…” she croaked, her voice hoarse from screaming, and coughed to clear her throat. Her voice was faint—pathetic—when she managed to speak again. “My god-king—”
A hundred needle-like shadows exploded from the black ground and stabbed her as one as rage burned up his blood, disgust swift to roll through him, and as she cried out, her body bowing backwards and chest arching towards the pale light that filtered down onto her, he had to grind his teeth to stop himself from thundering his words at her.
“Dare,” he snarled instead, the single word making the ground beneath his pointed black metal boots quake. He lowered his voice to a fierce hiss. “Dare speak of me as your king, impudent filth. You serve another and I will know her location. You will tell me.”
As the last of her breath left her on a broken scream, Eris slumped forwards again, further this time, so her brow kissed the bloodstained dirt beneath her.
His fury mounted and swirled like a hurricane inside him, growing darker and more dangerous by the second—too powerful to contain despite the strength of his will. The thought of what this goddess had done, how long she had been in his service before she had betrayed him and had turned on her own family and his, and how close she had come to ending him with a poisoned blade, had his temper snapping the tethers holding it in place. He reached his gauntleted right hand out towards her before he could stop himself.
Hades stretched his black talons outwards, opening his fist, and then slowly closed it as he glared down at Eris.
On her next ragged inhale, she wheezed and then choked, and he stood still and silent as he gradually closed his fist further, savouring how the scent of her panic cut through the coppery stench of her blood and she frantically clawed at her throat and clutched at the ground. Her head lifted, desperate and agonised amber eyes seeking his.
Hades only closed his fist tighter, squeezing her throat without even touching her, reminding her that in this world, his power was absolute and unmatched.
Her face reddened, her frantic gasps like music to his ears, a melody that entranced him and had him sinking deeper into the waiting darkness. Shadows swirled around the soles of his boots, tendrils of black rising up the metal plates of his greaves to twine around his leg and stroke it as he gave himself over to the cold abyss, listening to the coaxing whispers of the other side as it beckoned him.
Tempting him into surrendering to it.
Hades stared down into her wide amber eyes, the world around him falling away as ice filled the space in his chest, chilling his heart until he felt nothing.
When the last frail threads of warmth slipped away from him, losing their hold on him, he snapped himself back from the edge with a low, furious growl and released his hold on Eris.
She sank onto her side, gasping for air. Choking. Coughing.
Damn him.
Hades stared at his fist now, Eris going out of focus beyond it, and curled his pointed black talons until they were in danger of piercing his palm.
He was stronger than this.
Stronger than the darkness that ran in his blood.
In his soul.
Gradually, that darkness lost its hold on him, the light that struggled to bathe his soul driving it back. As it weakened, the world returned to him, awareness of it slowly building until he once again heard the distant clamour of the occupants of the spiralling cells that drilled deep into the black earth of the Underworld.
Until he grew conscious of the male now watching him carefully. Silently.
Hades ignored him and focused on strengthening his connection to the light, using it to drive out the darkness. It was growing harder to keep it at bay.
His regular visits to Tartarus weren’t helping him there.
The occupants of the cells were always rowdy whenever he visited, the hordes of daemons and other creatures contained in the depths howling because of his presence, filling the air with rage that burned in his blood too. Their disquiet roused the fell beasts that stalked the prison, dark things that would eat his prisoners if it wasn’t for the ancient metal bars that kept those in the upper reaches safe from harm.
Hades let their malice seep into him as he calmly lowered his right hand and focused on Eris.
The sole light caught on the beads of sweat that clung to her grimy forehead as she coughed up blood and her hand trembled as she lifted it and tentatively brushed her fingers across her throat. It bore a black bruise in the shape of his hand, one that was darkest where his fingertips would have been if he had gripped her physically rather than mentally.
Her dark eyebrows furrowed as she angled her head back, fear flitting across her features as she shifted her gaze to the other occupant of the room, one who loomed deep in the shadows close to the heavy iron door.
“Mercy,” she whispered, her voice scratchy, and reached her unsteady hand out towards the male. “Help me, brother.”
Hades flicked a glance at the male.
Thanatos.
The towering obsidian-haired god of death remained stoic with his arms folded over his broad bare chest, his silver eyes cold and emotionless as he stared at his younger sister, and his black wings furled tightly so the longest feathers brushed the ankles of the onyx armour that protected him from the waist down.
The male hadn’t moved since the guards had brought Eris into the chamber. He hadn’t spoken a word either.
Hades knew why Thanatos was there, and it wasn’t because he felt a need to protect his sister, or because he had any mercy to show her.
This was a form of punishment for himself, carried out to assuage his guilt over the fact that several of his own bloodline were involved in the uprising that threatened to destroy the Underworld and the mortal realm too. An uprising that would see the two merged into a new realm her cohorts would rule if Hades failed to stop them.
All led by a goddess of the Underworld.
One of his own subordinates.
A female he had believed to be even more loyal to him than Eris.
A female he had once shown mercy.
Mnemosyne.
The titaness had been spared after the Titanomachy—the war in which Hades and his brothers, Zeus and Poseidon, had risen up against their father and the other titans to tear them down and take their place as rulers of this world. Hades had given her a new life and a new purpose in his realm while her male counterparts rotted in Tartarus, and she had repaid that kindness by turning on him. He should have locked all the titans away—both male and female—rather than being merciful to some.
Being weak.
Mnemosyne had exploited that weakness, using her freedom to plot, plan, and gather herself an army, turning his own people against him and poisoning them with promises of realms to rule if they succeeded in tearing Hades down.
She had even managed to evade suspicion by being incarcerated in Tartarus for a minor crime at the time Calistos and Calindria had been captured. When her term had ended a century or so later, he had turned her out into his realm and allowed her to go on her way.
Anger blasted through him, heating his blood, but his mask of ice remained, hiding the sudden surge of emotion from Eris and Thanatos.
He would find the titaness, and when he did, she would pay.
In the wake of anger came the familiar restlessness, impatience that had been slowly gnawing at his sanity for months now, since the demigoddess had revealed Mnemosyne’s role in the uprising and he had begun to scour the Underworld for her. She had gone to ground and she had covered her tracks well. His legions were searching every corner of his realm for her, and his sons were doing the same in the mortal world. Even Enyo, his eldest son’s beloved, was seeking Mnemosyne, checking every corner of Olympus for the traitor.
Eventually, Hades would find her.
But it weighed on him.
Every second she remained beyond his grasp was a second she could launch an attack, a moment in which she might succeed in her plan.
And the longer she evaded him, the stronger she would become.
He had no doubt in his mind that the titaness was raising a new army for herself, replacing the soldiers she had lost as she formulated a new plan.
Hades narrowed his eyes on Eris as she realised she would receive no help from her brother and her bleak amber gaze drifted back to him.
As he stared into her eyes, the weight on his shoulders became crushing. It squeezed the air from his lungs and tightened his chest, until he was close to gasping for air as she had been. He needed to end this. Now. Before it was too late.
Before something terrible happened.
He was god-king of the Underworld, responsible for his realm and all in it, and the crown he wore had always felt heavy, but never as heavy as it did now.
So many of his sons had fallen in love with mortals or Carriers—humans with blood of his realm in their lineage—and he felt responsible for the fate of that world too now. If he couldn’t stop Mnemosyne, all would be lost.
And his family would face a terrible fate.
He couldn’t stop his gaze from shifting to his left, to Thanatos. If the titaness won, even the god of death wouldn’t be spared to carry out his duty of severing the threads of life from Hades and his family now that the male was wed to Hades’s daughter, Calindria.
For the first time since the grim male had stepped foot into the room, a flicker of emotion coloured his irises, lighting them with ethereal blue. Thanatos knew his thoughts. Knew the darkness that tormented him. He could see it in that blue shimmer. Thanatos knew it because it tormented him too.
Probably stole sleep from him as it did Hades.
Did Thanatos lay awake to watch over his beloved, fearing this glimpse of her might be his last and too afraid to tear his gaze away?
Hades did.
The thought of losing Persephone tore at his soul, bathing it in darkness, and he curled his fingers into fists at his sides. He stared at Eris, seeing Mnemosyne in her place as she choked and began clawing at her throat again, her eyes wild as they sought her brother, seeking help where she would find none.
Mnemosyne would know the full extent of his wrath when he got his hands on her.
For every betrayal she had wrought, she would receive a million lashes from his shadows. For every member of his family, she would receive a million more. He would whip her until she had no more blood to give. Until she teetered on the brink of death. And once she was there, desperate and pleading with him in the way Eris beseeched her brother, he would let her heal and do it all over again. And again. Until he ripped the last shreds of her sanity from her.
And then he would discard her in the deepest pit in Tartarus and let her rot.
Her new home would be a cell that Cassandra, his son Daimon’s wife, was helping him construct. One that would be strong enough to contain the titaness thanks to a combination of Cassandra’s magic and his wards.
Hades wanted to kill her for what she had done, but again, he was no fool. Killing a titan was nigh on impossible. It was the reason Tartarus was home to so many of her breed. After the Titanomachy, they had tried to kill the titans, but found they didn’t possess the power to do it.
So Hades had built Tartarus and imprisoned them here forever instead.
The cell he was constructing was powerful, and once Mnemosyne was sealed inside it, not even he would be able to open it. It was the best he could do. Mnemosyne would be powerless and isolated, left in darkness for the rest of her years.
Eris spat blood that came dangerously close to hitting his boots.
Hades’s blue eyes shifted from it to her and narrowed. Despite the rage that scalded his veins—the hunger to lash and rip into her for her insolence—his deep voice was calm as he spoke.
“Tell me of Mnemosyne’s plan.”
He had given up trying to get her to divulge Mnemosyne’s location when she had endured a week of torture that had seen her lose several of her organs and have to regrow them, and she still hadn’t told him where the titaness was hiding. The little goddess of strife didn’t know. Mnemosyne had been wise to keep her hiding places to herself, always meeting her subordinates in locations they knew, coming to them instead of allowing them to come to her.
But just because Eris didn’t know where the titaness was, didn’t mean she was of no use to him. Rather than getting her to tell him where Mnemosyne was, he had changed tack and started questioning her about what they had planned together.
“I told you…” Eris huffed, causing a tangled thread of her black hair to sway away from her face. “I told you everything.”
Hades stepped forwards to loom over her and the shadows crept forwards too, dancing at the edge of the weak beam of light that shone down on her. It flickered and she cast worried glances at the shadows as they eagerly inched towards her. He came close to snorting. As if the light was protecting her from them. Foolish female. If he wanted to rip her apart with his shadows, no amount of light could stop him.
“You told me nothing,” he said, his tone even and emotionless.
She glanced from the shadows to his face and back again, and her hands shifted to her knees, her blackened fingertips digging into their bare flesh as she struggled to sit up straight. She tilted her chin up, a pathetic show of strength that didn’t mask her fear in the way she believed it did.
One of his shadows snapped at her right knee and she jerked to her left, leaning her body away from it and curling her arms protectively over her chest. Giving away her fear. He made the shadow settle again and waited for her to look at him.
When she did, he flatly said, “Tell me of their plan.”
“The information is worth nothing. The plan would have changed!”
His brows drew down and his lips flattened, and this time she eased backwards away from him. “Then you can tell me, for as you say, the information is worth nothing.”
But it might contain a clue that would allow him to turn the tide of this war in his favour and end it before it really began.
Eris flicked another look at her brother and lingered for a moment, a war erupting in her amber irises. She was considering telling him, weighing up the pros and cons. Was he finally getting somewhere?
Her gaze roamed back to him. “I have nothing to tell you.”
Hades lunged towards her and bared his fangs as rage drenched his vision in crimson. Shadows burst from the soles of his feet, surging towards Eris as she shrieked and reared back, and the ground beneath him cracked, jagged fractures splintering outwards from beneath him.
They flared orange, flooding with boiling lava that swiftly filled every fault line that streaked across the trembling black rock.
Eris scrambled backwards as two fissures closed in on her.
Unleashed an ear-splitting cry as one touched her and the scent of burning flesh filled the thick air.
Hades raised his hand and closed his fist so tightly that Eris’s eyes bulged and blood burst from her lips. He hauled her off the ground without touching her, his eyes slowly narrowing on her as his shadows hungrily snapped at her. The fissure that had scalded her leg split wide open beneath her and she frantically flailed, her bare feet kicking as her gaze edged downwards.
As shadows rose to drag her into the bubbling, hissing pool of molten rock.
“Perhaps you should take a break, my god-king. The legions may have discovered something and wish to report it.” Thanatos’s deep voice rolled through the room like a calming wave.
Hades’s attention snapped to him.
The shadows instantly ceased moving towards Eris’s ankles as awareness of what he had done hit him. Too close. He swept his hand to his right, discarding her, and she struck the rough wall and hit the ground on her side. She remained there, breathing hard, each desperate gasp grating in his ears.
“Allow me to take over questioning Eris, my god-king.” Thanatos stepped forwards and then stopped dead, his glowing blue gaze snagging on one of the fissures in front of Hades’s boots.
Hades looked down.
Not snagging on one of the fissures.
A green vine grew from the cooling lava, a bud forming at its tip. Leaves unfurled, stretching towards him rather than the slender light, as if he was the source of their nourishment and life, and then the bud opened.
A red rose that bloomed for him.
So delicate and beautiful.
Too delicate to belong in this grim world he ruled.
Hades stared at it, calm suffusing him, and felt to the very depth of his wretched soul that it was too delicate—that this war would finally crush that sweet flower which brought him light and balance.
Who made his life worth living.
An ache grew inside him.
An ache to see her, to dip his head to her shoulder as he crushed her to his chest and breathed in her subtle fragrance of lilies.
To find his strength in her as he had so many times before.
“I will question the demigoddess too.” Thanatos broke into his thoughts and Hades focused on him again.
He caught the guilt that flared in the god of death’s eyes.
Again, Thanatos felt deeply responsible for something. Two things in fact. One: that he had spawned the necromancer breed from his forced union with the demigoddess in question, Harleena, when he was her captive—a breed that played a part in the current uprising.
Two: that one of that breed had taken Hades’s twins captive and had faked Calindria’s death, causing her brother Calistos to suffer brutally in a way he had never recovered from. Harleena had then imprisoned Calindria and a daemon able to construct illusions had made Hades and his family believe the body they had buried in the Elysian Fields had been hers.
A ploy by his enemy to weaken them and drive Calistos to kill himself.
That had failed.
Just as Hades had failed Calindria.
He couldn’t hold Thanatos’s gaze, was looking at the crimson rose again before he could get control of himself as familiar guilt filled him. He should have known she was alive. He should have found her sooner. The thought that she had suffered so many centuries alone, believing her own family had betrayed her and left her to rot in that cage, and that her beloved brother was dead, cut a piece of his heart from him each day, slowly chipping away at it. The thought that she might have gone on suffering like that if his eldest son, Keras, hadn’t stepped too close to the veil during a foolish dive into the mind of an enemy and had seen her as a grown woman, discovering she was alive… Hades couldn’t bear thinking about it.
Thanatos stepped closer and Hades didn’t need to look at him to feel the silent offer of support the god extended to him, and knew he didn’t need to look at Thanatos to show him that he would be eternally grateful to him for his role in finding Calindria and bringing her home.
Hades still wasn’t fully on board with their relationship, but he had watched Thanatos and Calindria together, and it was clear that his daughter adored the dark god and that Thanatos adored her too.
Would do anything for her.
Needed her as if she was the very heart in his chest—the thing that gave him life.
The rose’s petals opened further, blooming brighter.
For him.
Because Persephone had felt his rage and his agitation, and she was trying to calm him in the only way she could while they were apart.
And by the gods, he loved her for that.
He loved her for all the times she had pulled him back from the brink, for all the times she had wrapped her arms around him and crushed him to her chest, and her lips had brushed his ear as he had whispered that she loved him.
Him.
A fiend who had stolen her from a world filled with light and colour and plunged her into one of darkness, where she should have withered and faded, wilting as any other female would have.
But not his Persephone.
She had bloomed.
Becoming a ray of light and a streak of colour he had come to crave, had grown addicted to, and now couldn’t live without.
Eris’s gaze seared the side of his face.
He slid a look at her and bared his fangs when he caught her expression. It wasn’t shocked or sympathetic. It was knowing. Conniving. He had let the mask of ice slip and revealed his turbulent emotions to her, and now she was aware of his weakness and saw it as a source of hope.
Hades decided to crush it again.
“Deal with her,” he growled and spun on his heel, his crimson cloak swirling outwards as he pivoted to face the door and stalked towards it. “I want to hear her screams from my palace.”
Not that he would be listening.
He needed to see Persephone.
The second he was beyond the boundaries of Tartarus, a black vale stretching around him and cragged peaks piercing the turbulent crimson sky, he focused and teleported.
Landed in the grounds of his home.
He stared at the long, elegant black stone palace that was almost Georgian in appearance, with rows of windows set between half columns and a low-pitched roof hidden behind a balustrade that ran the length of the building. In the central third of the façade, full columns supported a triangular pediment. It had been a gift to Persephone after she had seen one like it in England and had come home prattling excitedly about modern architecture.
He had wanted to make her happy, so the design and construction of their new home had started immediately.
He always wanted to make her happy.
Her smile was a light that brightened the darkest reaches of his heart.
Hades swept his gaze over the palace and the colourful gardens she had created, and the other mansions that occupied the grounds—the homes of his children—and then the ancient black Grecian temples behind him, a feeling building inside him.
Growing stronger.
And stronger.
Every second of every day he failed to find and put a stop to Mnemosyne.
This home his family shared, the smile that lit up his world, the children that meant more to him than they would ever know, all of it would cease to exist if he didn’t act soon.
Time was running out.
