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“Will you take me to her?”

“I’d rather you sleep,” he said.

“I do not want to sleep.”

“Even if I stay?”

“There are people out there attacking goddesses,” Persephone said. “I’d rather hear what she has to say.”

He frowned, his fingers twined in her hair, uncertain if this was too much, too soon. They could wait, confront the woman tomorrow.

“I’m okay, Hades,” she assured. “You will be with me.”

He only hoped he could be what she needed. It was clear to him that he hadn’t been prior to this.

Finally, he relented. “Then we will do as you wish.”

Ilias and Zofie had taken the woman to Iniquity, where she sat beneath a stream of yellow light, held in place by venomous snakes. Despite the hatred she exuded, she remained still as stone, too fearful of a venomous bite and imminent death.

Hades wondered then why she’d felt emboldened to attack his lover.

As much as he wanted to take over this encounter, he understood it was not his to control, so he letPersephone lead, and she did so without fear, stepping close until she edged the light.

“I do not need to tell you why you are here,” Persephone said.

“Will you kill me?” the woman asked.

“I am not the Goddess of Retribution,” Persephone said.

“You did not answer my question.”

“I am not the one being questioned.”

The woman’s mouth tightened.

“What’s your name?” Persephone asked.

The woman lifted her chin and replied, “Lara.”

“Lara, why did you attack me in the Coffee House?”

“Because you were there and I wanted you to hurt.”

Hades’s fists clenched. He wanted to hurther.

“Why?”

The why did not matter; it was the fact that she had.

The snakes reacted to Hades’s own anger, hissing violently as they lifted their heads and bared their fangs. Lara closed her eyes and prepared for the bite.

“Not yet,” Persephone said, and the snakes stilled. When the woman opened her eyes and met her gaze, Persephone spoke. “I asked you a question.”

There was a moment of silence, and then the woman broke. “Because you represent everything that is wrong with this world,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “You think you stand for justice because you wrote some angry words in a newspaper, but they mean nothing! Your actions are by far more telling—you, like so many, have merely fallen into the same trap. You are a sheep, corralled by Olympian glamour.”

This woman had been hurt by a god. Hades knew it and Persephone knew it.

“What happened to you?” Persephone asked.