Page 29 of Bride of Death

She nods so I take the dish to the sink.

“Why you?” she inquires, causing my brow to furrow.

I glance back at her. “What do you mean?”

“Why are you here telling me that I’m engaged and not Hades? Why has he avoided me for the last thirteen months? I mean, I lived in his palace for a year. If we’re supposedly betrothed, why didn’t he come talk to me? Or, I don’t know, introduce himself? Or tell me he thinks I’m Persephone, or whatever else he could have said.”

She’s doing that thing again where she spews questions at me. I don’t comment on it, though. Instead, I try to answer her thoroughly.

But without giving away too much.

Because telling her Hades both loves and hates her… will probably be a bit too much right now.

“As I mentioned, he asked me to convince you to accept the nuptials. He seems to think I’m good with women.”

Which I very much am in sexual circumstances.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t apply here.

However, I don’t comment on that.

Instead, I continue by saying, “He hasn’t come to you himself because he’s convinced you already know him and remember everything.”

“I don’t,” she interjects. “I don’t remember him at all.”

“And yet, I know you recognized the name Persephone,” I point out. Because I saw the way she reacted to it last night when I called her that. So some part of her knows something.

Her paling complexion now confirms it.

Only, her words that follow are not what I expect. “I hear that name in my dreams.”

I blink at her. “Your dreams?”

But in the next breath, I already understand.Morpheus. He’s the God of Dreams and seems to think he has a claim on Sera as well.Fucking meddler.

“Yeah, it’s what he…” She trails off and shakes her head. “Never mind that. You said Hades thinks Iremembereverything… everything being what?”

“Your history together,” I say vaguely.

“As… as this Persephone?”

I nod. “Yes.”

She frowns. “But I don’t remember anything.”

“As already stated, I suspect that’s true.”

“There’s nothing to suspect. Itistrue,” she insists. “You have to tell him that. And tell him I don’t want to marry him, too.”

“Okay, I don’t have to tell him anything,” I correct her. “But if you ask me nicely, I will think about sharing those two points with him.”

She scowls. “Or you can just tell him to come here so I can inform him to his face.” Her cheeks flush a little more, telling me she’s getting angry. “Who does this guy think he is, demanding I marry him because he thinks I remember him? Yet he doesn’t feel the need to come meet me himself?” She scoffs. “Some Alpha he is.”

My eyebrows lift. “Shall I give him that information, too?”

“Sure,” she says, all sassy-like. “Maybe it’ll make him come talk to me himself instead of sending hisenforcerto do it all for him.” She pushes away from the table, her gaze narrowing. “If hewants me to marry him, he’ll have to come to me himself. And even then, I’ll still be saying no.”

She starts for the door, then pauses as she reaches the threshold.