Chapter 4

Chapter

Four

H ades

The blade slides into the scar across my palm, splitting it wide as blood drips in a river from the wound to mix with the ashy powder in the bowl, thickening it into a paste. Once smooth, I pour the mixture into the paint I'll splash against the blank canvas enchanted by Hecate.

Wiping my palm clean of blood, I tie my hair back, slide onto the stool, and lift my brush. I don't blink or breathe until I'm disturbed by a noise from behind. I realize I'm halfway through a painting, my thoughts far away as the colors mesh into a disturbed prison of charmed canvas and blood.

The sound of an ash rock spit from the depths of the river Phlegethon is dropped into a bowl fashioned from the skull of Uranus, my grandfather. I defeated him in a brutal and bloody battle that took place shortly after myself and my brothers had imprisoned our father, and the rest of the Titans. It had been a battle unlike any other the earth has seen, or hopefully, will ever see again.

It had been assumed Uranus had died after Cronus castrated him. Assumed, but never proven. He'd simply taken to the sky to lurk in wait for his time to strike for the power he once knew. A power I was unwilling to lose, being the young and ambitious God I was when I first claimed the throne of the dead. First bowed to the Crown of Souls.

His return had been the mark of his physical end as I drained him of blood, stripping his soul of flesh and bone. It is his blood that bubbles and boils in the river Phlegethon, his furious rage that sears the souls held captive within Tartarus, ringed by the inescapable river Phlegethon.

I understand his ire. The world in which he helped to create, the lives he crafted to worship him, had slain him. I understand that Uranus is a dangerous and powerful thing that must be kept contained. I understand that such a thing is within the scope of my responsibility as God of the Underworld, and keeper of evil. I have shouldered this burden with the utmost seriousness for millennia.

But I am tired. I am angry and I am resentful.

I am vengeful.

That which has always been my motivation, my utmost treasure, was schemed from me in a terrible, unforgivable play of betrayal.

For her, for my love, my wife , I have never stopped searching.

If it weren't for the Fates vowing that she would be reborn, I'd have loosed Uranus' immortal soul, and all the Titans in a damning play for revenge. I would have cast the venom of my grief wide on this Earth, destroying all that they cherish. All who worship them. I would have locked the gates of the Underworld, closing my realm from the chaos I released, damning them all above. Protecting only the souls I've vowed to keep safe within my realm.

But the curse of my past has been intricately woven into the fabric of the future, and I am trapped in the prison of my grief. I am bound by the shackles of my hatred for the spite of a mother. My sister. Demeter.

The bitch.

The ash rock grinds into the unbreakable skull of Uranus, disintegrating to dust under the smooth bone I pulled from his forearm. His bones are the strongest element on earth. A thousand times stronger, even, then Tungsten, the current, and wrongly suspected strongest element in the world .

If they knew how valuable, how undefeatable, the bone of a Titan was, governments would thrust armies at me in bid to infiltrate Tartarus. Little do they or the other Olympians know, that the Titans are no longer held prisoner within Tartarus. They are bound to a prison world that is entirely their own, and of my crafting.

I am the singular keeper. The beast holding the key to their damnation. I have fed them, nourishing their hatred. Their lust for vengeance.

I will continue to keep them, to pour my blood and strength into their prisons—until I have found her.

I inhale deep into my lungs, tasting the familiar, sweet scent of mint. With a roll of my shoulders, I dip the brush into a pool of murky blue. For a moment, the painting comes alive. A scream of tortured rage slithers from the canvas, swept up and sealed away in another brushstroke.

Minthe's seductive voice crawls in the space between us. "Who was that?"

"Oceanus."

"Ah," she sings. "The blue. You're giving him an ocean this time?"

"I think it's fair." I wipe my hands of the paint. "He suffered for the last century in a desert. He's parched."

"Of course, he is." Minthe smiles, a wicked and lovely thing. It falters as she scoops the ground dust into a jar that she seals carefully with a lid. She turns to face me and I wait, knowing what is coming before it dares to leave her lips. "What are you doing, Hades?"

"We've discussed this, Minthe."

"No, you've told me what you won't tell me. Why aren't they in Tartarus? Why haven't you told the Olympians?"

I feel the fire flash in my gaze, and watch as Minthe cringes. But only slightly. She's been with me too long to truly fear me.

I move away from my latest prison. The painting in which Oceanus will spend his foreseeable future. I've had to rehome the Titans far sooner than I'd like, the binds of my prisons weakening like the rest of me. I settle behind the sprawling desk I've had crafted from the same obsidian that veins the white stone of this tower.

I pin Minthe with eyes the color of coal. "Hang the painting when it is dry."

Her mouth tightens. I raise a brow when it parts, because I think she's about to give me attitude. That just won't do.

She is saved when my attention cuts to the swinging door of my office. My teeth grind behind my scowl. "Has everyone forgotten who I am tonight?"

Leuce, braver even than Minthe, struts into my space. She heads straight for Minthe, gripping her around the neck and pulling her in for a deep, penetrating kiss .

I feel no arousal as I watch. I very rarely feel anything at all anymore.

Aside from anguish and rage, that is.

My pitifully eternal soul weeps. The echo of my grief screaming her name within the endless depths of me.

Leuce breaks the kiss and turns to me with a wide, cat-like smile. Her gray-green eyes, the color of a white poplar's leaves bleached by heat, flash as they meet mine.

I feel an unusual flutter in my chest.

A quickening of hope.

She strolls casually across the room. Her heels click with the heavy beat of my pulse before she settles her palms on my desk, silver nails sharp against the obsidian slab. She leans close, her voice like dripping honey.

She tells me, "I found her."