Page 179 of Hekate: The Witch (Goddesses of the Underworld #1)

Thanatos Knew These Woods So Well

It quelled my fears. I wondered if the folktales told by the mortals in Asphodel about him and his siblings were true: that they grew up with monster playmates instead of Godlings; whether this forest was where they played their games.

It struck me then how he had grown up with monsters for companions and I had had my ghosts, our childhoods intertwined with their strangeness.

Perhaps this was why he had been so tender with Cerberus?

He knew how to be gentle with monsters, just like I had a love for my spirits that no one else understood.

I had so much I wanted to ask him, but Thanatos walked these woods in complete silence.

Whether this was because he was trying to avoid the attention of what lived here or he simply enjoyed the quiet, I did not know.

What I did know was that at one point, a scaled darkness wrapped around my leg and with a single swipe of his scythe it was cut in two, leaving red sap across my skin.

Shuddering, I wiped it off. We could have been walking for hours or days.

We did not stop, though the tiredness of this quest was starting to wear on my bones.

But I held my tongue, and I was glad for it, because soon we saw it: the impossibly tall black towers of Hades’ palace.