Chapter 14

Chapter

Fourteen

H ades

Persephone wasn't lying when she said she could cook. She also wasn't lying when she said she enjoys cooking. It's clear she's comfortable in the kitchen, and to my relief, she mostly uses natural ingredients. Having lived for millennia, I can attest to the fact that life for humanity has become exponentially easier, and exponentially lazier. For the most part, I very much dislike the food in the middle realm. It's filled with chemicals intended to preserve the food, while killing the consumer. The number of souls I've condemned to Tartarus that work in the food business, knowingly poisoning innocent consumers for riches, is ever-growing and despicable.

Swallowing another dill and lemon seasoned potato, I allow my eyes to slide back to her. I've come to notice that she grows uncomfortable if I allow my gaze to linger on her for lengthy times, and expend conscious effort to keep from drinking in every part of her, every moment she spends with me. If I looked at only her for the rest of my eternity, I can't say I would not be blessed.

She stirs life inside of me. She awakens the parts of me that have been dying since she was stolen, gruesomely taken from me in an act that weaved the web of destruction that would follow in the centuries to come.

When I returned to the Underworld to retrieve Cerberus, Hecate had informed me, that for the first time in the last century, the stars had stopped falling. The Tree of Life in the Elysian Fields, not only stopped shedding leaves, but began to bud again.

A new bud has not been observed since the Day of Death in the Underworld, where the one truly living thing—the one thing with a soul bound to life and not death—had been violently, brutally, betrayed. Murdered.

Stolen.

The food sours in my mouth at the memory, and I push my plate away.

The way I raged in the past when the memory of Persephone bound beneath the waters of the Lethe, her dark green eyes wide in death—it had been intense. My grief had shaken the Underworld so fiercely, that the earth itself trembled. Land split, allowing Poseidon to circle the land he did not swallow in his seas. Lives were lost, souls claimed.

Atlantis had fallen.

"Is everything all right?"

I blink the fire from my gaze, dipping my eyes to the obsidian gloss of the table. It takes a moment, but the magma of Tartarus in my veins slows its flow, cooling.

"Yes." My voice sounds rough even to my own ears.

She shifts across the table from me. Awareness slithers through the valves of my heart, Medusa's serpents rooting precariously in the depths of the organ that beats exclusively, dangerously, for the oblivious little woman who holds the soul of my mate in her fragile human body. This chance I have with her now, I know without even visiting the Moirai, The Fates, is the last chance I will be given with her soul. If she is taken from me again, the heart inside my eternal chest will, undoubtedly turn to stone, trapped within a grief I will never recover from. The Underworld will collapse. The prisons of the Titans, bound by my blood, will fail. Freeing the beginning of what will be the end of all that has ever been known.

She touches me, and I breathe. Her hand is small against the stone of my shoulder. "Hades? "

"I'm fine."

"You don't look fine."

I grind my teeth, keeping my head bowed as I tighten the reigns of my splintering control. If she knew the way I burned when she touched me, she would not do it. And yet, I don't want her to stop.

I want to loose the God that claws at the flesh of the man that contains him, and claim her. I want to swallow her screams and cries. To play the chords of her unwilling pleasure until she gifts me with the moans I ache to devour. I want to shove inside her body, to claim her innocence and ravage the purity of her warm heart, consuming the whole of her for my own so that I may never lose her again.

I want her soul. The God within rages for it, willing to steal to possess it. Whatever the cost.

But the man knows better. The man has lived in this human form for centuries, shoving at the consuming grief of the God that threatens to overwhelm him.

Her hand moves over my back, and the God hums his approval.

If she knew the way she affected me with just this simple contact, how the threads of her freedom frayed under her friendly comfort, she would certainly flee me.

"I had a rough day." With a scrub of my hands over my face, I lift my now cool gaze to hers. "I apologize. "

Her full mouth shifts into a soft, innocently caring smile. I ache to taste it.

"Would you like to talk about it?" she offers.

Would I like to tell her that the continuation of the Underworld, the Middle World, The Oceans, and even the golden expanse of Olympus, is tied to her willingness to deliver me her soul? No. No, I would not.

Slowly, I shake my head. I note the disappointment that shadows her lovely green eyes, like emeralds mined from the riches of the earth, and ask instead, "Are you tired?"

She sucks her lower lip. I've never been more jealous in my life. Her voice is soft. "No."

I have to clear my throat. "Will you join me this evening, then?"

Caution battles the shadows in her eyes. "Where?"

"On the rooftop." I add when she hesitates, "For conversation."

Her eyes flick to the ceiling, full lips parting.

Fuck, but I ache to cover her mouth with my own. If she weren't so skittish about the gap in our age, I might have done it already. But she is skittish. She's overly prudish in her unwillingness to act in a way that goes against the appropriateness of our restrictive rolls as employer and employee. I am confident all this is owed to the web Demeter weaved into the curse she cast on our great love.

She took her case to the Fates centuries past. She claimed that together our power was too vast, too much, too unchecked and dangerous.

There must have been some truth to that which she claimed, because the Fates acted. They weaved. And the fate they weaved was the thing that punished us for too long.

I am reminded, yet again, that I must visit the Moirai . Yet the very thought leaves my flesh feeling chilled, unease icing the very bones beneath my skin. For the webs the Fates weave is never in black and white. And fate, even written, is ever-evolving.

Their riddles, even for a God, are spun in threads lacking transparency and dipped in the rivers that flow from the Three Mountains that overlook the Underworld, ruling like overlords in a realm that is entirely their own. For the Three Mountains in the Underworld are only the base of what is known above as Mount Olympus. Incorrectly, from the dregs of an ancient myth, it is presumed Mount Olympus is the home of the Gods. Instead, it is the passage of the Moirai . The heart of all that is. Her roots so deep they sew into the earth of the Underworld, so wide her skeleton stretches into the sea, so vast she plunges into the sky. It is a realm unto itself, the home of the Fates, tying all that is and all that has been or will ever be, together as one.

For the most part, I leave the Moirai to themselves, as do the other Gods. Not even the Gods wish to command their scrutiny. Look what has come of me under their disassociated ire. The punishment I suffered for daring to command the rare and coveted power of true love.

Persephone's hand falls from my shoulder, calling my thoughts back to the present. To her.

Confusion knots her brow, and I ache to wipe it tenderly away. To give her words of assurance.

I need to find a way to break through her barriers. To make the want she already feels for me, even at her denial, too strong to refuse.

Our time is limited, and passing quickly. Every second that passes, the danger she is in increases. I must claim her living soul.

I force a smile to my lips, watching as her eyes drop and her full breasts rise with her inhale. Then she whispers, "Let me tidy this up and I'll join you." More to herself than me, she repeats, "For conversation."