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“Well?” Hermes demanded.

“I…suppose you are right,” Hades said, crossing his arms over his chest.

Hermes grinned. “Now, let’s do something about that hair.”

Hermes spent what felt like an entire hour brushing out his hair, then he tied half of it back, away from his face.

“Drop your glamour,” Hermes said.

Hades lifted a brow and met Hermes’s stare in the mirror. It wasn’t that he minded his true form. It was the order from Hermes that bothered him.

“It’s hotter,” Hermes added.

Hades rolled his eyes but let his magic fall away.

Mostly, he did not notice the difference in how it felt to carry around an illusion all day, but there were timeswhen it felt particularly nice to shrug off the heaviness of his magic.

Tonight was one of those nights.

As he sat before the mirror in the bathroom in his natural form—tall horns spiraling from his head and eerie blue eyes flashing bright—he almost did not recognize himself. Or rather, he felt as though this form belonged to a god who no longer existed. It was the form he’d been given at birth, the one he’d used as he’d waged wars against the Titans, the one he’d used as he received thousands of colorless souls into the Underworld, the one he’d used when he and the other Olympians had come to earth during the Great War.

It was this visage that people had come to dread. He wondered if there were souls in Asphodel who would see him tonight and remember their fear.

He curled his hand into a fist on the counter.

“You need a crown,” Hermes said.

Hades focused on the god, who still loomed in the background, studying him like a painting in a museum. He didn’t argue and called on his magic. Shadows broke away from his body and slithered through the air, twining on his head to form a crown of iron spikes. Before it was finished forming, he rose to his feet and turned toward Hermes.

“Thank you,” Hades said and then looked the god up and down. “Have fun…doing whatever you’re doing.”

“It’s okay, Hades. You can say it. I look fine as fuck.”

The corners of his mouth lifted. “Sure, Hermes.”

With that, he teleported to Asphodel, arriving at the very edge of the village.

“Lord Hades!”

He grinned as several of the children broke into a run, colliding with his legs hard. He pretended to stumble, and they giggled at their strength.

“Play with us!” one said—his name was Dion. He pulled on Hades’s hand.

“Please, please, please,” a couple others chanted.

Hades chuckled and reached to pick up a smaller child who had pushed her way to the front of the crowd and buried her head against him. Her name was Lily.

“What shall we play?” he asked.

The children replied at the same time.

“Hide-and-seek!”

“Blindman’s bluff!”

“Ostrakinda!”

Their answers continued, some choosing games that had been played since the ancient times while others chose more modern versions. It reminded him just how long some of these souls had resided here and that, at some point, they would ascend to the Upperworld, to be born to new parents and birthed into new bodies, and they would forget everything they had learned here.