Page 25

Hades straightened and crossed to the door, calling up his glamour to cover his naked body. He stepped out into the hallway with Ilias, fully dressed in his usual tailored suit.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“La Rose,” the satyr answered.

Hades and Ilias manifested on the deserted, snow-covered sidewalk outside Aphrodite’s club. As it was late and many businesses along this road were closed, there was nothing to illuminate the mirrored exterior of Aphrodite’s club, making it look like a cluster of dark crystals jutting from the earth.

“This way,” said Ilias, who directed Hades to an alleyway that ran between La Rose and the building beside it. The space was so narrow, the edges of his shoulders grazed the wall on both sides.

As they came around to the back of the building, a few people were gathered. Zofie was among them, but also people in Aphrodite’s employ.

Aphrodite herself had yet to arrive.

“Has your goddess been informed?” Hades asked Himeros, who he recognized both as the God of Sexual Desire and a close companion of the Goddess of Love. He appeared very young, as if he were in his early twenties. He had no facial hair to speak of, but he did have a swath of thick, dark hair.

“Eros has gone to inform her,” he said.

Himeros and Eros were Aphrodite’s closest advisors and were two of the Erotes, a group of gods and goddesses who all represented different elements of love and sex.

Hades wondered how the goddess would react to learning one of her mortal lovers had been murdered. He was never certain of Aphrodite’s feelings toward those she favored. He knew she was partial to a few, but her love, whether she wanted to admit it or not, belonged to her husband, Hephaestus.

Still, targeting a favored mortal was like targeting the god who had bestowed it, and when Hades turned and saw Adonis’s body, his blood ran cold.

He looked…broken. It was the only way to describe it. His body seemed to have been so badly beaten, he splattered where he lay.

“This was a bold move,” said Hades as he stepped closer.

To attack not only someone who had favor but outside their club.

“And no one heard anything?”

“Nothing,” said Himeros.

“Is there surveillance?” Hades asked.

“There is, but the lenses are frosted over. It’s impossible to see what really happened.”

Fucking Demeter and her gods-damned winter storm.

“But from what I can see,” the god continued, “he seems to have tried to come to the club after we were closed. When he couldn’t get in the front, he came back here. That’s when he was attacked.”

“Who discovered him?” Hades asked.

“I did,” said a new voice: Eros, whose magic felt warm and heady—wrong in this environment. He appeared alongside Aphrodite.

Hades turned and looked at the two, but he could only focus on Aphrodite, whose expression remained disturbingly neutral. He waited for her to change, to realize what happened and rage or perhaps even weep, but she did neither, though her eyes did not waver from the dead mortal.

“By the time I found him, he was already gone.”

Hades bent over the body. There were any number of people who might be responsible for this death, but the severity of his wounds was what made Hades so uneasy. This was hate.

He stared for a long moment before reaching toward the body.

“Do not touch him!” Aphrodite said. She took a step forward but no more, held back by Eros.

Hades glanced at the goddess but ignored her and placed his hand fully on the mortal’s back. Instantly, black tendrils shot from his body, wrapping around Hades’s arm. They continued to climb until Hades was sure of his grip, and when he pulled, he freed Adonis’s soul from his body, and then it vanished, transported to the shores of the Styx where Charon would greet him and take him across the river.

“What did you do?” Aphrodite demanded.