5

5

Never Ask A God Why

“I can…go? Really—”

Hades lifts his eyebrows slowly. “You wish to argue?”

“No.” Never look a gift horse in the mouth…or a gift getaway in the escape hatch.

“This way,” he says.

He heads toward a path that takes us a different way down the mountain. I guess I’m supposed to follow? Hades prowls when he walks. I focus on his boots, because staring at his back—those leather straps do meet between his shoulder blades—or his perfectly formed ass, for that matter, just isn’t an option.

I hold my breath, every inch of me prickling with uncomfortable awareness that only grows as I keep up with him. It’s the whole “raw power of the gods” thing. That’s the only reason for the prickles, I tell myself.

I’m not sure I believe me.

We walk in silence until a sidewalk paralleling the main street comes into view. Along with crowds. I stop walking. He stops, too, glancing back. “Problem?”

“Um…” I stare past him, and he follows my gaze. Three more feet and everyone will be able to see us together. See me…with the god of freaking death.

“Don’t worry about them,” he says as though reading my mind. “Only you can see who I truly am. Everyone else just sees a regular mortal man.”

Right. Awesome. Except the pledges still hanging around this place might see me with a strange man and ask questions. Can I get out of this?

“Come on.”

I guess I can’t.

We emerge onto the teeming sidewalk, and I pause. Should I say goodbye before we part…or something?

I offer him a small salute. “I appreciate you not smiting me.”

I think I’m home free as I turn to walk away, but he spins me toward him by the shoulders, grip firm. Suddenly, I’m staring up into eyes of swirling, molten metal, but burning. The way coal burns black.

“Be more careful with your words, my star,” he says in a voice that isn’t as smooth as before—it’s more like raw silk now. “You never know when the gods might take up the gauntlet you just threw down… And any other day, I probably would have.”

Every single particle of me is strung so taut I might snap at any second, adrenaline so hot in my veins that my skin tightens. But that’s the problem. In this moment, I feel more…alive. As if every second I have left is precious because those seconds are numbered.

“Smiting is a quick death,” I whisper. “There are worse things.”

His eyes flare as he searches my expression, and I hold my breath, anticipating the flash of pain before the nothingness of death. That’s how I imagine it.

It doesn’t come.

Instead, his expression alters. The change is subtle enough, slow enough, that at first, I’m not even sure I’m seeing it, but the burn of warning turns…softer. A different kind of heat.

Hades lifts a hand to draw a fingertip from my temple to my jaw, the touch a mere whisper against my skin, leaving a trail of heady sensation in its wake. He stares at me, and I stare at him, and I know I should look away. Of the two of us, I’m the mortal, so I should be the one to break, to give in, to acknowledge defeat.

I can’t. I won’t.

“You’re right, my star,” he murmurs. His gaze trails lower to linger on my lips. “There are worse things.”

Then his gaze goes from fire to ice in a blink. He straightens abruptly, spins me around, and gives me a little push into the crowd, like he’s releasing an undersized fish back into the ocean.

Somehow, even though the rest of me has gone offline, my feet manage to walk me away. I’m thirty feet away before he calls after me. “Stay out of trouble, Lyra Keres.”

I come to a dead stop but don’t turn. That is not the name I gave him.

I’d love to know how he knows mine or why he bothered to ask, since he clearly already did, but self-preservation has finally kicked in, even if a bit late, and escape is literally right around the bend.

So, I lift a hand in a wave of acknowledgment…and keep walking, counting my steps like they might be my last.