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“Hades.” I pull my hand from his to reach up to catch his face between my palms. “I’m okay.” I scan the length of him, knowing I will see no injuries even as they are there. The climb isn’t a physical battle so much as it is mental. Still, it is harrowing. And the cuts of the journey are deep. “How are you?”

He shakes his head. Through the fire in his eyes, I read the burning emotion that lies there. My own heart responds, and I fall into his chest.

“Oh, Hades.” He’s so big in this form, I can’t circle my arms around his frame to touch my fingertips. I hold him anyway.

“I’ve always wanted them,” he finally admits to me what he hasn’t been able to admit aloud. “Children.” When I stay quiet, he continues, “I thought my seed was dead.”

Those words strike a place so deep inside me, I can’t help but flinch. “No, Hades.” I tip my head back to peer up at him. “Nothing about you is dead.”

“I am the God of the Dead.”

“You are the God of Afterlife.”

He cracks a sad smile. “Yes, because of you, little goddess.”

“No,” I argue. “You’ve always been the God of Afterlife.” I try to push light into the darkness with a smile and a tease, “But every King needs a Queen.”

A sad sound escapes the confines of his chest. His arms come around me tighter. “We don’t have a choice, little goddess.”

I know what he’s referring to. I nod through the aching of my heart. “I know.”

“They are the final piece of this war.”

He saw what I saw. Maybe more to put that look in his flaming eyes.

I blink back tears. “I know.”

“I am so sorry.”

“Me too.” I pull back, because I need for this to be over. I need to be with him. I need—time to lick my wounds. “Which way do we go?”

The cave at the mouth of the black mountain is enormous, and from it multiple arms stretch into the blackness of the deep. There are too many paths to choose from, and I sense that not all of them lead to the Moirai. That if we choose wrong, we will forever be lost to the bones of those who have tried before us and failed.

“The path will become clear when they are ready,” Hades confirms my fear. “We must wait until then.”

I snort a little huff. “They’re a tricky lot, the Moirai.”

Hades barks in amusement. “I can’t imagine anyone has thought of them like that in all their existence.”

I shrug. “It’s true, is it not?”

He grows serious. “The Laws of the Universe are not so clear to the living. Not even to Gods, Persephone.”

“How can that be? You’re aGod. All powerful.” Hades studies the pinch of my brow, his own responding in kind.

Finally, he admits, “I don’t know.”

“This is what you have come for. The answers to your questions, to the truth you seek, will be revealed at the end of your journey. But know, King and Queen of Gods, that such knowing is heavy. It is the weight of the Universe, and not all are crafted to carry such burden.”

The sound of the three voices seems to crawl from the very walls, leaching into my mind. I look, wide-eyed at Hades. “Did you hear that?”

He nods gravely.

And then the pathways before us begin to shift and merge until there is only one that remains. Hades pulls in a breath. “This is our path, little goddess.”

I slide my hand into his, and we walk together, side by side, into the darkness.

We are guided by nothing but intuition. There is no light in this darkness. Beside me, Hades glows. The magma in his veins blazes. His eyes are twin flames in the pitch black, but he does not light our way.