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When we come, we come together. It’s not with the crashing waves of a violent sea or even the blazing flames of that which ends everything for the path of all that is new. It’s quiet and gentle like stars that rain from the night sky. Like burning embers of hope in an otherwise eternal darkness.

She is the star that burns bright for me. She is the ember of hope that fell for me when I feared all was lost. When darkness and suffering was my eternity.

She is the hope for the future of the realms, I realize with an icy chill that strokes the very core of my soul. She is the portal through which that hope will travel, will come into the world and change everything . She is the mother Goddess.

And she is mine.

Emotion builds inside me, a crescendo I loose in a sound that edges on a sob.

Her arms tighten around me, clinging to me as though she fears this will soon be over. That this dream will soon end.

I sense it, too.

“What is this?” She strokes her hand over the braided ropes of black mist and white fog.

“The tether back to the Underworld. To Hypnos.”

“Oh.” Sadness paints every inch of her, wreaking havoc on my heart.

I nudge the tip of her nose with my own. “What did you mean when you said there was something meant to live in Olympus?”

“It’s—there’s so much evil here, Hades.”

I’m afraid to ask, but before I can she tells me, “There are sacrifices here. But not in the way I thought they would happen. Not that it would be any better to have some poor soul laid out on a stone to have their throat cut but?—”

“But what?”

“But the way Zeus demands the blood be spilled is—God, Hades. It’s awful. He’s awful.”

Her eyes watch my frown. “I didn’t realize Zeus was still demanding sacrifices.”

“I think he’s—I think he abducts people from the living realm.”

Everything inside me stiffens. “What?”

“Every night I’ve been here, I’ve watched someone innocent die.”

I pull away from her, fearing the rage I feel building inside me. “Tell me more.”

She pulls the sheet up to cover her body, her hands trembling in a way that I loathe.

“He makes them fight gladiators in the arena. They have no chance of winning. No chance of living.”

“And once they die in Olympus, they remain in Olympus for eternity.”

Her words are a whisper. “There are so many souls trapped in the realm.”

“What happens to them when they die?” I already sense I know her answer, but I fear it all the same. Need to hear it even as I wish I didn’t have to.

“Ares saves the young women, the children. He gives them a home where they can hopefully heal.”

My head whips to her. “Zeus takes children?”

Her hands tremble so violently, she twists them in the sheets to still them. “Yes.”

“How young?”

“The youngest I’ve seen was six. A boy.”

The fucking bastard always did prefer the young boys be the ones sacrificed on his altars, when Gods demanded the blood of the innocent, a practice from the Titans before. A practice I’d thought long since abandoned.

I can’t swallow the curse that splits from between my lips. I ask roughly, “And the men?”

“He makes them fight again and again. Every night as gladiators in the arena,” she says brokenly. “It’s terrible, Hades. So terrible. They die and die again until?—”

She cuts off, but I don’t need her to finish.

They die again and again until they no longer die and become the gladiator Zeus craves.

I need to speak with Hermes. I need to know everything he knows of Olympus, though I’m not certain how much he knows. When I’d banished him from the Underworld for the part he played in Persephone’s murder, he’d made a place for himself in the living realm, avoiding Olympus for the most part.

But the evidence is lining up, and it’s undeniable.

Quietly, I tell her, “He’s building an army of souls.”

Her head snaps up, her wide eyes leak fear as they search mine. “But I thought that was why Demeter wanted the Underworld.”

“It is.”

“So, what do they want to take over then?”

“Everything.”

Heavy silence falls between us. A suffocating silence that sucks life from the very air we breathe.

I don’t miss the way her hands cradle her belly, where the lives our love created grow inside her. I think she’s worrying for them, for our daughters, until she says softly, “I think one of them belongs in Olympus.”

Every part of my body stiffens. “Explain.”

“One of them feels,” she pauses, continues, “a pull to Ares.”

My mind flashes back to the Moirai’s cave, and the vision of my daughters’ souls bound to the souls of Gods. One of those souls had been Poseidon’s. The other had been Ares’.

I hesitate to ask, “And?”

“Ares is good, Hades.”

“He’s always been better than the rest,” I admit.

“History paints him as a war hungry monster.”

“Ares is the God of War,” I say, but tell her even as I remind myself, “He is also the God of Courage.”

Her hand caresses her belly. My eyes follow the movement until, softly, she whispers, “I think he’s meant to save Olympus, with one of our girls at his side. As his Queen.”

No sooner than the words have left her lips, the image of her flickers. A moment of fear so vicious strikes me, and I flinch at the whip of it.

She flickers again.

“What’s happening?” Her eyes are wild with panic.

“You’re waking up.”

“No. I don’t want to.” She shakes her head, rejecting the fate neither of us can fight.

“Listen to me.” I grip the sides of her face, even as her form feels less solid. “You need to sleep. When you sleep, I’ll be here.”

Tears well in her eyes, like blades to my heart. She promises, “I’ll sle?—”

She doesn’t finish because she is gone.

I follow the thread of Hypnos back to the Underworld.