Page 14

But that was a desire he would not speak, and instead he drew away and met her gaze.

“As you wish, my darling,” he said as he transported them away from the depths of Tartarus to their room, where he let her lead them to release.

Persephone slept.

She lay on her side, her hands folded under her head, her breathing easy and even. Hades sat on the edge of their bed, watching for signs that another nightmare had taken root within her dreams, but she remained quiet and still. There was a part of him that feared leaving her unattended. What if Pirithous returned? What if he was not here to comfort her when she woke?

He felt a keen sort of turmoil roiling within him as he wondered if her sleep would take on a new horror. Perhaps it would no longer be Pirithous that haunted her but the torture she had inflicted on him.

Hades raked his fingers through his unbound hair.

He was restless and anxious, and he had only found reprieve while he was with Persephone. His comfort came with her, whether she was astride him or beneath him. He wanted to be near her, inside her, filling her. The need was acute and primal, and in the hours after, it gave him the greatest pleasure to know some part of him remained within her.

If he could take refuge in her body every minute of every day, he would, but that was a sign of his addiction. It wasn’t healthy, but if he were to have a vice, it was the best of the lot.

He sighed and rose. It was too warm, his body still slick with sweat. Unlike Persephone, who drifted off after sex, he’d remained awake, his body a live wire.

He poured himself a drink and then stepped outside onto the balcony where the night was mild and breezy. The reprieve from the heat was pleasant, and he felt atease, knowing he was near in case Persephone spiraled into another nightmare.

He looked out on a fraction of his realm where silvery moonlight pooled in the shadowed garden outside his palace. It was the garden where everything had begun, where he’d brought Persephone to plant the seed of her bargain.Create life in the Underworld, he had instructed,or be mine forever.

Gods how he’d hoped she would fail, because at the time, he’d believed that was the only way he’d get to keep her. She’d been so angry, and it had only gotten worse when he’d brought her here, to the Underworld.

She, like so many, had expected a barren landscape of ash and fire. What she had gotten instead was a lush world full of color and flora. It had also been the first sign that what her mother had told her about him over the last twenty-four years was not the truth, and that had devastated her.

She’d fought him.Hard.

But the more he’d learned about her, the less it surprised him. She had been so traumatized by her mother’s control, she’d resisted the idea of belonging to anyone. The stronger her feelings for him grew, the more she refused to love him, except there was no way to stop it once it had started, and when she finally succumbed, she’d opened the most powerful part of herself.

This…it went beyond love. It was devotion. It was worship. It was the power that began and ended worlds, and if he had to, he would do so in her name. He knew those words were true because he felt them so deeply, it hurt.

“Why are you naked?”

Hades was drawn from his thoughts and looked down into the garden where Hecate lingered, nearly invisible in the darkness.

“Would you really like an answer to that question?” he asked. “I can give details.”

She scrunched her nose in mock disgust. “I think I can guess. It is not as if you arequiet.”

Hades chuckled and Hecate arched a brow, though he could not help being amused at the thought of Persephone’s cries of pleasure echoing throughout the Underworld.

“Come off your high horse,” she said. “It is not as if you excel at giving pleasure. Some of us are just sensitive to sound.”

He rolled his eyes. “Fearful I will become too arrogant, Hecate?”

“I do not have to fear it,” she said. “Youare.”

“Arrogance does not make something untrue,” he said.

“No, but it does make it annoying.”

He could not help laughing. “No one said you had to endure it,” he said. “Why are you here anyway? Aren’t there some pathetic souls in the Upperworld deserving of your haunting presence?”

“No one isdeservingof my presence,” she said. “I am a plague upon men.”

“You are definitely a plague,” he muttered.

“I heard that,” she snapped.