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“Me?” I demand. “He’s coming to collect me?”

“He comes for you, Persephone.”

“Who? Who is the Dark Prince of Golden Gods?”

There is a hum of energy, wild and live. It crackles over every inch of my skin, calling hairs to rise and my heart to race.“Ares, God of War and Courage.”

My gasp lodges in my throat even as Hydra shudders behind me. I gather myself enough to lift my chin in an act of bravery I’m certain each of the three sisters of fate can see through. “And if I refuse?”

“If you refuse, it will be seen as a break in the deal by the God of the Underworld. If you refuse, the blood that binds the deal will turn rancid in his belly. Toxic. It will be a swift and agonizing poison that will drain him of power, not of life. The Underworld will suffer.”

“Is there a way to break the deal?”

The cauldron trembles. A song of souls bleeds a harrowing melody into the cave, igniting the veins of cool light that ribbon through black stone.

“The deal will break when your soul is no longer your own but tethered irrevocably to the Underworld.”

The vision of the statue in the deep of Asphodel City flashes in my mind. A foretelling of what would one day come to be, called up from the deep by the Moirai and carved with their merciless blades of fate.

I steel myself. “Then I’ll give Hades my soul.”

“It is not the time.”

Frustration threatens hopelessness inside me. I don’t mean to raise my voice, but I do. “What does the time matter?”

“Ares, God of War, the Dark Prince of Golden Gods faces two paths. You are the fork in his path.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Without you in his life, he will fail to see the path of right. The dark hatred inside him will grow teeth and claws that nothing and no one will ever pull free. He will become a great and powerful God of War whom the darkness will absorb wholly and completely until that darkness spills from him like a plague to infect all who dare live.”

“And if I enter his life?”

“He will see the path of right. In your presence, for the first time in his existence, he will glimpse love. It is from you his salvation will be born.”

Hydra shuffles closer. So close, I can feel the heat of her body seeping into my back. “Why am I here?”

“We have called you here to explain that you, Persephone, have a choice to make.”Three sets of eyes, one cloudy and blind, one vivid and blue, and one black as obsidian land on me.“Your choice will set the trajectory of the future of the realms.”

“So, I don’t have a choice?”

“There is always a choice. And to every choice, there is a reaction.”The stone behind us begins to shift, and I know our invitation here is coming to an end.“The Dark Prince comes for you, Persephone.”

Chapter

Nineteen

Persephone

It appearsHades assembled everyone when I entered the black mountain. Or maybe everyone just gathered. I can’t imagine the entirety of the Underworld didn’t hear Hades’ roar as the black mountain closed behind me and Hydra, sealing me off from Hades in a way I hadn’t been since I returned in his life.

The fear and rage I’d heard in his voice…

Simply replaying it in my mind makes me shiver.

The palace is chaos. Everyone is tense. Even Cerberus is here in his beastly state. He stands, a massive and formidable force, beside the fire that rages in the hearth.

Outside the windows that scale high into the walls of the obsidian stone, through the dagger pointed peaks that stretch for the high arcs of the ceiling, I can’t miss the darkness of the sky. The way the ever-present stars are now concealed by vicious clouds thick with sinister foreboding.