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Hermes grinned. “See you soon, Daddy Death!”

He vanished, and when he was gone, Hades looked at Thanatos, who asked in a very serious tone, “Which one of us do you think he was calling Daddy Death?”

Hades returned to the palace.

He would have to tell Ilias what he’d learned from the farmer.

There had always been an urgency behind finding the ophiotaurus, but Hades had felt an even greater need to locate it as Demeter’s storm in the Upperworld worsened and Persephone began to question whether Zeus would allow their marriage.

There were too many obstacles in his way to havingeverything he had ever wanted. The ophiotaurus would make anyone’s attempt to overthrow the Olympians far too easy, and Hades would be damned if he lost without a fucking war.

As he meandered through the garden, in no hurry to return to the castle, he felt Persephone’s magic blossom.

She was back, which was strange. When she went to the Upperworld for work, she often remained for hours.

He frowned and vanished from the garden, following her magic to the bedchamber where he found her naked. She had yet to turn to him as she bent at the waist, inspecting something on her legs. He was content with this and admired her quietly from a distance, though he let his imagination run wild with other things he would like to do to her in that position.

After a few moments, she straightened, still unaware he had joined her. She turned toward the bathroom and startled.

“Hades!” His name slipped from her mouth on a breathless shout. He liked the way she said his name; it reminded him of how she came with his name on her lips. “You scared me!”

His eyes dropped to her breasts, which she covered with one hand, as if she could stop her racing heart.

“You should have known I would find you once you took your clothes off. It is a sixth sense.”

He guided her hand away from her breast and kissed her fingers, which were delicate and strong. He thought about how they threaded through his hair, how her nails grazed his scalp, how they twined around his hair and pulled as she rode him until he came.

I am fucking insatiable, he thought, even as his eyes drifted down her body.

Except that now he noticed her thighs, which were red and swollen. Small pockets of fluid speckled her skin, clear in color but obvious. They were blisters.

“What is this?” he demanded, pressing his palm flat against the fiery skin, which seemed to revolt against his palm. Persephone gripped his other arm, her nails biting into his arm as he tried to heal her flesh—to heal her burns.

What the fuck?

“A woman poured coffee into my lap,” Persephone said.

He didn’t like the pain that seeped into her voice.

“Poured?” he asked, meeting her gaze.

“If you are asking if it was intentional, the answer is yes.”

Intentional.

It was as Hades had feared in the aftermath of Adonis’s death, and even before that, when news of his relationship with Persephone hit the media. He had always been afraid someone would target her, aware that at some point, something would happen, and Persephone would realize that she could not exist in the world as she once had—as an unassuming mortal.

She was more than that—a goddess to be certain, buthis, and that made people angry.

He knelt before her, wrestling with his emotions, which were everywhere all at once. There was a pressure in his head and chest that urged him to explode and seek vengeance, but the guilt kept him anchored at her feet. He should have insisted that she not go out in public;he should have given her an office at Alexandria Tower sooner.

He channeled this frustration with himself into soothing her wounds and healing her. Once he was certain she was no longer in pain and there was no visible sign of the burns, he let his hands slide to the backs of her thighs and held her, his eyes drifting back to hers from his place on the floor.

“Will you tell me who this woman was?” he asked, and he bent forward, letting his mouth drift over her newly healed skin, content when she offered a pleasing sigh.

“No,” she said, bracing her hands on his shoulders, her golden hair curtaining her face.

“I cannot…persuade you?”