Page 38

Chapter

Twenty-Nine

Nero Ravencrux

The Curse

T he only way my enemies could hurt me was by hurting her—my one true mate.

In this lifetime, I’d found her again.

Someone had taught her how to hide from me. For years, her presence had been veiled, until two weeks ago, when the shield shattered like glass.

I’d tried everything before. Leaving her alone, hoping my enemies would spare her if I stayed away. Hiding her in remote corners of the world. Neither worked.

They always found her. Always butchered her before her twentieth birthday, leaving her broken body where I’d find it.

I was forever one step behind, because Moirai saw to that. The Fates held a grudge against me and joined my foes. Their eyes never turned away from her.

No more chances. No more distance. This time, I changed the rules.

It took decades to prepare. I built Forsaken Academy with Hecate, weaving blood wards against every god except the four within these walls, myself included. Here, bound by ancient rules, even my enemies couldn’t touch her directly.

In this gothic cage, she’d be safer than in any other place.

They recognized her immediately, of course. The vultures always did. But for now, they could only circle, watching, waiting.

She had six months until her twentieth birthday. Our enemies had moved their timetable forward—they’d sensed the shift in the air. This third millennium could be the endgame.

She was different this time. The frailest of all her incarnations, yet fiercer in will. Something had already awakened in her, a spark even the Fates couldn’t extinguish.

The siege had begun at dawn a few days ago.

Minor gods hungry for glory sent their monsters to our gates. Some came for sport—this hunt had entertained them for two thousand years.

My team and I met them at the perimeter, painting the wards red with their blood.

A hundred corpses later, we won the day.

Exhausted, wounded, I returned to find her scent lingering outside my study. She’d fled before I could call her in.

After Morrigan healed me, I’d tracked down Bloom. My chest had squeezed with fear for her when I saw her body pressed against his. When I saw Apollo’s golden hands on her hips, her head thrown back in laughter, wrath filled my veins like molten lead.

Shadows writhed around my fists at the unholy sight. Every instinct screamed to tear them apart, to remind her whose mark she’d borne since the dawn of time.

She felt me first. Always did. Even in mortal form. The longing beneath her hate burned so brightly in her beautiful eyes, it undid me, dragging me back an eon ago to her old hatred for me.

When I stole her.

I’d shattered her sheltered world and brought her to my cold, dark one. I’d seduced her, tricked her into eating the passion seeds of the Underworld, and trapped her in my realm.

She’d hated me even as her body sang for mine.

The day I first glimpsed her in her garden still seared my agony-filled memory. She was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. When I finally saw her face, unveiled, thunder had roared in my skull, lightning had struck my heart, and shadow had pulsed in my bloodstream.

I was hers from that moment.

I waited, biding my time. She was always guarded, so I watched from a distance until, one afternoon, she was alone. There, among the roses, she plucked a thorned stem with gloved hands, unaware of my presence.

I approached her with a smile—unpracticed, unfamiliar, because I never smiled. Not for anyone.

Her gaze, bright and piercing, locked onto me. It traveled over the cut of my chest, the strength of my legs. I had chosen my clothes carefully: a dark tunic that clung to my muscles, leather pants tailored to every shift of movement.

Her heartbeat quickened. The sound pleased me. She liked what she saw—and I was, undeniably, a man worth looking at.

I grinned, surprised by how easily it came. I wasn’t known for being friendly.

“Hello, Persephone,” I purred, knowing the effect of my voice on women and amplifying it.

She drew a sharp breath, and spring flowers burst to life beneath her feet. The air around her brightened, and for the first time since my brothers stabbed me in the back, casting me into the Underworld, something in my chest eased, and my heart lightened.

“Are you my new guard?” she asked, hopeful, almost delighted at the idea.

“I’m not,” I said, feigning regret.

Her gray eyes turned molten in the sunlight, silver flashing with sudden suspicion.

“Then how do you know my name?”

I smiled, letting the deep resonance of my voice thrum with deliberate allure. “I have my ways.”

She blew a breath over the dew on the petal of a blood-red rose. My gaze locked onto her lips, imagining their taste, the sound she’d make when I finally claimed them.

She hesitated, flustered by my boldness—but enthralled. Her teeth caught her lower lip, pearlescent and untouched. I ached to close the distance between us, to seize her and claim that mouth no one had ever kissed. Her mother, the Harvest Goddess, had seen to that.

“I know more than just your name,” I continued. “It’s the loveliest in all the worlds.”

No lie. I was many things, but a liar wasn’t one of them.

Heat rose in her cheeks as she recognized the hunger in my stare. She might have been innocent, but she wasn’t na?ve. Beneath that soft exterior lurked something wild, untamed—a pulse of desire waiting to be unleashed. And I would be the one to free it.

“You don’t think Aphrodite is the loveliest?” she inquired.

I barely suppressed a sneer. Aphrodite had been…memorable—clingy, after one night, but hardly worth repeating.

“Love’s her domain,” I said, smirking. “Not pleasure. She’s too busy admiring herself to be worth admiring in bed.”

She flushed furiously. “You shouldn’t say such things.”

“Shouldn’t I?” I stepped closer. “Truth isn’t always pretty.”

A breath hitched in her throat. “Have you…uh, bedded a lot of goddesses?”

The question trembled between curiosity and sharp jealousy.

“I’ve sampled every kind—mortals, immortals, goddesses,” I admitted. “But after today,” my gaze held hers, deliberate, “there’s only one I’ll ever want.”

She blinked rapidly, her breath quickening, her breasts rising with each unsteady inhale, nipples pebbled against the thin fabric of her sundress.

The sight sent a jolt of hunger through me.

I wanted to taste them, to tease with my tongue, to bite just hard enough to make her gasp.

My cock strained against my pants, aching.

Her gaze flickered down, catching my bulging erection. A sharp inhale. The rose stem trembled in her grip.

“I—I should go,” she stammered. “Mother warned me about strangers.”

“We’re far past that, sweetness,” I purred, gesturing between us. My voice was silky, laced with dark promise.

She tilted her chin up. “We’re still strangers,” she insisted. “I don’t even know your name.”

“Hades.”

Her beautiful gray eyes went round. “ That Hades?”

A flicker of irritation coiled in my chest, and I fought back a growl of displeasure. Of course, my despicable brothers had spun their lies, painting me as the villain of Olympus.

I took my time with soft words, deliberate charm, until her wariness eased. And that day, I claimed my reward: a kiss. Not the bruising, possessive one I craved, but a whisper of lips against mine, feather light. Even that was enough to set my black soul on fire.

She swore to keep our meetings secret. And so it began. First, her resistance crumbed, then she sought me as fiercely as I wanted her. Until I took her, and there was no path back to the sunlit world she knew.

“I hate you,” she said, tears in her eyes, when she realized what she’d done, and what we’d done.

The same hatred now darkened Bloom’s eyes, the same devastatingly beautiful eyes that had ensnared me an eon ago. Only she didn’t remember.

It had to be Apollo, that fucking culprit who planted doubts and stoked her fury against me in every cursed lifetime.

He’d coveted the virgin goddess from the start and resented it when she chose me instead.

Now that she was cursed to be a mortal, he thought he finally stood a chance.

That this time, he could win her and claim her.

My cold, furious stare cut to him. There he stood at her side, smirking provocatively, wearing his ridiculous mortal disguise and calling himself a stupid name:Sebastian .

I swallowed the fury thickening in my throat. If her hatred could spark even a flicker of memory, I’d let it carve into me a thousand times over. I’d tear open the same scarred wound again and again if it meant she remembered .

Because that was the only way to break the curse.

A goddess reborn as mortal, doomed to die before her twentieth year—cycle after cycle, never escaping. She had to recall the truth herself, had toknowwhat had started this. No one could tell her. Not even my enemies. The blood vows bound us all.

She was brave this time. She was hunting for answers, unafraid of the terrible truth and the darkness it would bring.

Apollo, ever the fool, had no idea he was playing his part perfectly when he showed her that first image.

I’d let him break into my vault. Let him steal that single photograph, so he could—while I wasn’t allowed to—lead her to the rest, the gruesome collection I’d gathered over lifetimes.

She needed to see. Needed to understand. Needed to be prepared.

I wanted to spare her the horror, but coddling her would only get her killed. Again.

Every past life, I had tried to save her. Every time, I failed. Now, she had to save herself. Saveus.

The stakes had never been higher.

If she failed this life, if her last breath left her in my arms, she might not return. The curse would claim her forever. I would break after losing her for good. And our enemies would finally win.

So she had to remember.

Persephone.

Goddess of Spring. Queen of the Underworld. My wife. My eternity.

I am Hades, God of Death, and I knew no fear until the day my queen was cursed. Until I watched her first mortal life flicker out like a candleflame in the darkest night.