Page 7 of Where Darkness Bloomed (Of Stars and Salt #1)

Hades’s lips twitched, nearly forming a smile.

From his throne, his gaze had drifted over the gathered assembly. Restless, detached.

Drawn by the summer solstice, the full pantheon stood arrayed before the dais, cloaked in resplendent pride and ambition, an echo of Olympus’s own gilt splendor.

One by one, petitioners came forward. Divine disputes, petty squabbles. Grievances demanding redress. After eons of rule, it all bled together. Olympus provided an endless procession of vanity cloaked in ritual. The cadence of it dulled his senses, lulling him to indifference.

At the hall’s edge, a torch crackled loudly. Its flame leapt high, scattering embers like sparks from a forge.

His gaze flicked toward it just as the light revealed an unassuming figure beneath it.

Her.

The trespasser from his cypress grove.

She stood half-veiled in shadow, nearly swallowed by the crowd. But her eyes—clear, unmistakably green—were fixed on him, curious and unguarded. Too direct. An open perusal of him that few would dare.

Until their eyes met.

She startled. A breath caught in the small lift of her shoulders.Her lashes swept down in haste, and a tumble of dark hair spilled forward like a curtain, shielding her face. She stepped back, as if trying to vanish into the crowd. Hiding. From him.

The corner of his mouth tipped. Poseidon’s droning account of Spartan ships faded into distant sound as Hades’s focus turned fully to her.

She wore no finery. Just a simple chiton, a delicate golden chain at her waist. A circlet of primroses crowned her hair, rich brunette waves that caught the firelight like sun-warmed bronze. Among the decadent masses, her simplicity was strikingly out of place.

A wildflower blooming among golden statues.

She was young, he realized. Fully grown, but a younger goddess of the pantheon—perhaps the reason he had no memory of her. She lingered at the periphery, half-lost in the crowd, overshadowed.

As he watched, her gaze rose again—slower this time. Hesitant, but drawn.

Emerald met obsidian, his gaze capturing hers. Steadily, he held her there, letting her feel the full force of his attention.

Her lips parted, just barely. Her lashes dipped once... then again, and she looked away. Another step back, and she slipped further into the refuge of the shadows.

But his gaze lingered, unwilling to leave her entirely.

Even as Zeus’s voice echoed through the hall, solemn and absolute:

“This council is adjourned.”

A lightning bolt split the sky in answer, illuminating the hall as thunder shook the mountain.

When the glare faded, she was gone.