Page 50 of A Kingdom of Sand and Ice (Kingdom of Gods #2)

I’m scared. Hades is a god, and he holds powers, powers that could obliterate everything I hold dear. Now that I’ve chosen Hadrian over him… what if he kills Hadrian? I couldn’t live without him.

I refuse to.

Tabitha Wysteria

Mal stared into the obsidian vastness beyond, her eyes fixed upon skies she knew no wyverns would pierce. Though the Underworld echoed the world she had known, it was but a shadow of the real thing. Similar in shape, but not in soul.

She caught the movement behind her before it fully formed—her senses too sharp, too attuned to ignore such things.

Yet still, she turned, watching as Thanatos approached with the slow grace of a shadow.

He leant against the opposite side of the open stone archway, the one built for wyverians to leap from, onto the backs of their winged beasts.

But there were no wyverns here. So why keep windows without glass?

Mal turned her attention back to the void outside, feigning disinterest while stealing glances at Thanatos through her lashes.

A fierce part of her imagined seizing his black shirt and flinging him into the abyss, just to hear the silence break.

But that part, as always, lost to the quieter, more reluctant one .

‘You find too much pleasure in the thought of murder,’ he said.

Her eyes widened. ‘You said thoughts couldn’t be read here.’

‘And they can’t,’ Thanatos replied with a lazy shrug. ‘You’re just terribly easy to read.’

‘You don’t know me.’

Something shifted in his eyes. A wisp of recognition or regret, but it was gone too quickly for Mal to grasp.

‘No,’ he said softly, ‘you’re right, Melinoe.’

She stiffened at the sound of her name on his lips, her shoulders tightening like coiled rope. She turned fully away from him and let her eyes wander to the forest below. Even that was familiar, eerily so. A mimicry of the Forest of Silent Cries.

‘The Forest of Silent Cries is the entryway for souls who die in your kingdom,’ Thanatos said, voice almost contemplative. ‘Each kingdom has its own threshold into the Underworld. Some... more theatrical than others.’

‘Have you met the other gods?’ Mal asked, her voice low.

His jaw tensed, just slightly, but enough to tell her she’d struck a nerve. ‘Yes. I have.’

‘And what are they like?’

‘Why do you ask?’ His mouth curved into that infuriating smirk she was beginning to loathe. ‘Planning a visit?’

‘Perhaps,’ she answered, her face unreadable. ‘My brother used to teach me about them.’

Thanatos tilted his head, folding his arms across his chest. Mal tried not to dwell on how much the gesture reminded her of Ash, of the drakonian warmth that had once held her. But the memory curled in her chest, unwelcome and intrusive.

‘And what did he teach you?’ Thanatos asked.

‘That the gods created our kingdoms. That each realm was shaped by a particular god, designed to reflect something of themselves, or—’

‘Or...?’ He leaned closer, teeth glinting in the dim light.

‘Or to outdo the others.’

His smirk widened. ‘Exactly. Gods are petty, self-serving creatures driven by rivalry and pride. Etch that into your soul, Melinoe. You’ll need the reminder.’

‘You speak as if you weren’t one of them.’

Thanatos let out a soft, bitter snort. ‘That’s because I’m something far worse, Melinoe.’

Mal’s brow furrowed. ‘Why do you keep saying my name?’

The question seemed to catch him off guard. He rubbed his jaw with a thoughtful hand, the gesture almost uncertain, almost mortal. She half expected him to ignore her, but then that infuriatingly familiar smirk unfurled across his lips.

‘I have waited an eternity for you. And now that you’re here, close enough to touch if you’d let me, I must speak your name aloud, if only to remind myself this isn’t some cruel dream.’

Her focus faltered. She turned away, unable to meet the weight of his eyes, or the fleeting brush of his fingers against hers.

‘Why do they want to destroy everything?’ she asked, veering the conversation elsewhere, if only to escape the strange gravity pulling her towards him.

She hadn't noticed how near they'd drifted until her breath caught in her throat.

Too close. Far too close to a creature who wore Ash Acheron's face like a mask designed to torment her.

She stepped back sharply, spine meeting the cool stone of the column behind her.

She ignored the shadow of hurt that passed through his expression. His eyes, at least, did not belong to Ash. They were colder. Wilder.

‘Your father—’

‘Hades,’ she corrected flatly.

‘Hades,’ he echoed, his voice tinged with amusement. The sound scraped against her nerves. No matter how much he resembled a fallen angel from some long-lost tale, Mal knew better. She saw beyond the white curls and the sculpted strength. She saw the shadow.

‘Hades did something he was never meant to do. And now... this is their way of setting things right.’

‘What did he do?’

‘You needn’t trouble yourself with that.

’ His eyes shifted, refusing to meet hers which was an answer in itself.

Whatever it was, it was bad. Monumental.

Perhaps the gods were furious that he had forged something like her, a being made of wyverian blood, witchcraft, and divinity. A creature that should not exist.

But she did. And if she posed a threat to them, she needed to understand exactly why.

‘Then what should I be worrying about?’ she asked, her voice sharp with challenge, her violet gaze blazing like a forge. She meant to sear through him, to unravel him molecule by molecule. But he turned, and when he looked at her, the power behind his eyes struck like lightning.

He moved before she could blink.

One moment he stood apart, the next his arms were braced on either side of her head, caging her against the column. His breath mingled with hers, and for a heartbeat, the world held its breath.

Mal did not flinch.

Instead, she lifted her chin, meeting him at eye level, refusing to shrink. If he thought he could intimidate her, he would learn just how wrong he was. His stare dropped to her mouth, and his smile turned hungry.

‘You ought to worry about me,’ he whispered.

Mal let out a snort, unbothered.

Then she sank her teeth into his ear, and bit it clean off.

…

What Mal assumed was the next day had arrived.

Though in truth, the concept of time had long begun to unravel in the Underworld.

She had slowly come to understand that here, time was more illusion than law.

Though the world turned through its motions—meals served, sleep taken—nothing truly shifted.

The sky remained ever dim, the air ever hushed.

It was as though they were caught in a single, suspended breath, held between heartbeats.

‘Time is not linear here, Melinoe,’ Thanatos had once told her, tone light, as if speaking of the weather.

‘Then what is it?’ she’d asked, perplexed.

‘Non-existent,’ he replied, with a shrug that irked her more than it should have. ‘We do not age in this place. We are frozen in a single moment. We simply stretch it as we please.’

Mal tried not to smirk at the sight of him now, standing across from her with a freshly missing ear. That familiar crooked grin of his remained firmly in place, infuriating as ever. The wicked glint in his eye said he found the whole thing rather amusing.

Makaria had crept into Mal’s bed during the stillness of the night, murmuring that she feared sleeping alone.

Mal had bristled at first. Some feral part of her wanted to shove the girl away.

But then she remembered all the nights she had slipped into Haven’s bed just for the comfort of a sister’s presence.

And though Makaria was not Haven, and never would be, Mal had allowed her to stay.

Now they stood at the threshold of the great wyverian castle, its silhouette rising like a dead god against a lifeless plain.

All around them stretched a vast swathe of withered grass and barren earth, untouched by wind or season.

Not even a breeze stirred Mal’s dark hair; the world was still, held in perfect silence, fitting for a realm of the dead.

Thanatos stood waiting before her, clad in shadow-black wyverian garb, his hands empty but for the scythe she’d once seen Zagreus carry. The steel caught no light, for there was none here to catch, just the faintest echo of death in its gleam.

‘He enjoys stealing it from me,’ Thanatos said smoothly.

Mal’s nose crinkled in irritation. The realisation dawned that, once again, he had plucked her thoughts straight from her mind. The smirk curving his lips, followed by a low, velvet laugh that echoed Ash’s all too perfectly made her still, caught in a strange moment of doubt.

‘You’ve already begun to awaken your divine powers,’ he continued, as if nothing had happened. ‘You’ve summoned shadows. Commanded the dead. That is the god in you, beginning to stir.’

‘What of my witchcraft?’ she asked, trying to steel her voice.

‘Only another witch can teach you that,’ he replied, lifting a brow, ‘or a god who shares a link to their kind.’

‘Then you’re rather useless to me, aren’t you?’

Thanatos chuckled again, the sound soft and dangerous. ‘Am I?’

‘You said it yourself,’ she shot back, folding her arms. ‘I’ve touched my god-powers already. And you’re of no use in unlocking the rest. So what, exactly, do I need you for?’

Without warning, Thanatos reappeared before her, so close their breath mingled in the air between them.

Mal’s pulse leapt, her fingers flexing in readiness to shove him away.

But instead of kissing her, as she half-feared, he reached out and tapped the tip of her nose with his finger, like a child chiding a kitten .

‘You shouldn’t have said that,’ he said.

And then the ground beneath her feet vanished.