THE DARKEST LOVER

HADES REDEMPTION BOOK 1

C.R. JANE

CONTENTS

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Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Author’s Note

First Impressions

Prologue

Chapter 1

Books by C.R. Jane

About C.R. Jane

The Darkest Lover by C. R. Jane

Copyright © 2021 by C. R. Jane

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

For all the girls who dared to be happy.

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THE DARKEST LOVER

I’ve been promised to Hades as his new bride…

I just found out that the Greek Gods are real and still very much in control of our world.

And, thanks to some mistakes made by my ancestors, I’ve been promised to Hades as his new bride.

After being whisked away to a secluded castle with every luxury I could ever want, they finally told me the truth.

It’s my job to make Hades fall in love with me. I have one year or else everyone I know and love will be punished for my failure.

They say I’m the beauty sent to break a centuries old curse. The problem is… this beast wants nothing to do with me.

We grow accustomed to the Dark —

When Light is put away —

As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp

To witness her Goodbye —

A Moment — We Uncertain step

For newness of the night —

Then — fit our Vision to the Dark —

And meet the Road — erect —

And so of larger — Darknesses —

Those Evenings of the Brain —

When not a Moon disclose a sign —

Or Star — come out - within —

The Bravest — grope a little —

And sometimes hit a Tree

Directly in the Forehead —

But as they learn to see —

Either the Darkness alters —

Or something in the sight

Adjusts itself to Midnight —

And Life steps almost straight.

-Emily Dickenson, “We grow accustomed to the Dark”

PROLOGUE

“No more,” he whispered to the velvet black sky as he peered out into the heavens, searching for answers that would never be found. There were no stars visible to him. Any light had long since disappeared. She’d taken them with her.

He was tired. The kind of tired that sat heavy in his bones and made him long for the sort of sleep that lasted forever. At one point, such a sleep had seemed impossible. But he’d become so numb that now it felt close.

It was almost time. Another girl. Another disappointment.

Because none of them would be her.

He’d lost count of the centuries that had passed since it began. What did it matter when each tribute failed to pass the test?

The future he’d been promised was a myth.

“We’ve found her.” The voice came suddenly, slithering through his mind, a sound that filled his nightmares…when he was actually able to sleep. The voice of the Fates, the ones who had given him this fate in the first place.

“No more,” he called out into the darkness, knowing he wouldn’t receive an answer back from them.

The next girl would come, like it or not. He wouldn’t have a choice.

1

ELENA

The breeze drifted around me, softly stroking the curls that escaped from my haphazardly put together bun. I didn’t bother trying to tame them, I’d learned long ago they were uncontrollable.

I sighed, turning the page of my faded paperback. The pages were weathered and worn, filled with highlighted sections of the passages that lit up my soul. It was one of my favorites, which was good since my family’s lack of money meant I didn’t own many others. I was at my usual spot, my favorite tree by the river that ran through the forest behind our house. It was old and moss covered and somehow felt as comfortable as if I were leaning against a couch cushion. Plus, it had an amazing view of the river and the sound of the water rushing across the rocks helped me relax, even when my books couldn’t. It was the perfect spot, and one that I had been coming to since I was a little girl. Now at nineteen, it served as a source of comfort, like only something that had seen you grow up could.

“Elena,” came a voice from across the river. Unlike the tree which calmed me, this voice made my heartbeat start to race and my breath begin to quicken. Dallin always had that effect on me. I had been in love with him since he moved to our town two years ago, not that I would ever tell him that. I was firmly in the friend zone as far as Dallin was concerned. The girls in this town fell all over him the second he appeared, and he had enjoyed the offerings to the fullest. The fact that we lived in a small town didn’t seem to matter, as Dallin had the rare gift of remaining friends with all the girls he slept with.

Friendly exes or not, I had never been comfortable with the fact that practically every girl we saw had slept with or dated Dallin. It was far safer for us to stay best friends.

“There you are,” he said with a grin, his blond hair waving in the breeze. His teeth flashed a brilliant white against his tanned skin, the lingering color the product of mowing lawns all summer, much to the delight of the town’s admiring housewives. Of course, he’d mowed shirtless.

“Hi,” I said lamely, admiring him as he picked up a pebble from the riverbank and skipped it across the river.

“I’ve been looking for you all day.” He gave me another heartbreaking grin, and I momentarily lost my breath.

“I thought you had football practice?” I asked as I raised an eyebrow.

“I meant after that,” he answered.

Dallin was a receiver on the junior college’s football team. He was doing so well this year, everyone thought that he would be picked up by a major college next year. I already missed him.

“So will you go?’ Dallin was saying, and I realized he had been talking the whole time I had been off in la la land.

“Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “Where are we going?” He looked annoyed for half a second, which was out of character for him, but he quickly hid the look when he saw me watching him. “Some of the guys on the team are having a few people over at one of their apartments tomorrow. I thought maybe you would go with me.”

I grimaced internally at the thought of being surrounded by strangers. Knowing him, what he was describing was probably a lot closer to a party than it was the small intimate gathering he was trying to sell. I hated parties. I was much more of a bookworm at nineteen than a normal teenager. Plus, parties with Dallin in the past had meant watching him flirt with other girls while I stood in the corner sipping punch. I began to think of an excuse.

“We haven’t been spending a lot of time together,” he said before I could come up with anything. “This would mean a lot to me.”

He looked so earnest standing in front of me with his baby blue eyes that I couldn’t help but give in.

“What time does it start?” I asked, and his answering grin told me that I had made the right decision.

“Pick you up at seven,” he said, walking backwards away from me with a smirk on his pretty face.

Only when he was out of sight did I allow myself to squeal a bit. I was pretty sure I had just moved out of the friend zone. A trickle of doubt ran over me, making me question if I was making a mistake or not, considering everything I knew about Dallin. I pushed it away and ran home giddy, like I was ten instead of nineteen.

THE NEXT DAY, I was a bundle of nerves. I had hung out with Dallin hundreds of times but my stomach was so fluttery that it may as well have been a first date. I spent the entire day agonizing over what to wear. All of my clothes were from the secondhand shop, and even though I was proud of my creativity, I really wished I could have gotten a new outfit for the occasion.

Mom came up the stairs a few hours before Dallin was set to arrive. She came in quietly and sat on my bed, holding what looked like a letter in her hand. She looked like she had just gotten bad news. Her pretty face looked drawn and even more exhausted than normal.

“Everything all right?” I asked hesitantly, putting down my hairbrush and staring at her questioningly. One thing about my mother, Rosie Carmichael was always in a good mood. Despite the fact that she was a single mom, despite the fact she had to work two jobs to put food on the table for my brother and I growing up…she always seemed to see the glass as half full. Seeing her look so dejected was troubling.

She looked up at me as if she was seeing me for the first time, even though she was sitting on the bed in my bedroom. Mother had always looked younger than her age. But right now, she looked like she’d aged ten years just since I had seen her downstairs an hour ago. There were lines around her eyes and on her forehead that I could have sworn didn’t used to be there, and there was a pinched expression around her mouth that I had never seen before.

“Mom?” I asked hesitantly, all thoughts of my date that night disappearing from my head at the look on her face. She seemed to mentally shake herself from her dark thoughts and glanced up at me with a fake grin. “Yes, baby?”

“Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine. I just received some news this morning. It’s nothing. What are you getting ready for?” she asked, the distress on her face clearing away and leaving behind a carefully blank mask.

I studied her for a moment, wondering why my mother was lying to me for the first time that I could remember. She kept her face blank, letting me know she didn’t want to discuss whatever was bothering her. I decided to let it go and talk to her about it later. If I needed to know, she would tell me. Right?

“Dallin invited me to a party tonight,” I told her with an excited grin. She knew that I had liked Dallin since he moved here and had often teased me about it. This time however, there was no teasing. Instead, a flash of pain crossed her face at my pronouncement, worrying me further.

She quickly covered up her strange look and put another fake smile on. “That boy has finally come to his senses,” she said with a laugh. “I knew it would happen sooner or later.”

We spent the next hour with her helping me get ready and all thoughts of the mysterious letter and her strange attitude fluttered out of my mind.

DALLIN WAS TWENTY MINUTES LATE. It shouldn’t have bothered me, but considering this was what I thought was our first date, I thought he would be on time.

“You look amazing,” he said when he finally arrived. He flashed me that signature wide-eyed grin, cutting through some of my annoyance. I looked down at my outfit. After too much deliberation, I had finally decided on a jean skirt that I’d cut to make a little bit shorter and a black tank top. Simple, but I thought it looked good. I didn’t want to seem like I was trying too hard. I’d never been the type of girl who looked effortless. With my out of control curls and my eyes that were a bit too big for my face, I felt awkward no matter how much effort I put in. Hopefully, what I was wearing would be fine for this party.

My mom came out with a camera, and my cheeks flushed with embarrassment. You would think that I was sixteen and going to prom instead of nineteen. Dallin graciously took a couple of pictures, and I hurried him out the door, looking backwards once over my shoulder to see my mother looking after me with a wistful expression on her face. It was as if she was trying to memorize the moment.

Instead of going directly to the party, Dallin took me to one of the local seafood places that was super popular with the locals. Shelby’s was the kind of backwoods place you found in small towns like ours. Resembling a log cabin with stuffed fish hanging on the walls and netting hanging from the ceiling, it tried hard.

I had never been there before. We usually couldn’t afford to eat out, and even though I had picked up a job since starting classes, I tried to give my mother as much as possible since I was living at home while I did my two years at the junior college. She had refused to take it at first, wanting me to save up for living on my own, but things were so tight that it wasn’t too hard to eventually wear her down and get her to accept some help.

I was worried what would happen to her when I transferred to a university out of state. My brother moved out three years ago, and she would be all alone once I left.

“I’ve been wanting to do this for a while,” Dallin said, shaking me from my thoughts as he reached across the table to grab my hand.

I looked at him, a little smirk on my face. “Oh really, I would never have guessed that with all the other dates you’ve been on lately.”

He answered my smirk with his own grin. “It almost sounds like you’re jealous,” he said watching me closely. There was something in his gaze that I didn’t recognize, something almost hungry.

I scoffed and then cleared my throat, not used to the full brunt of his flirtation being focused on me. “We know each other well enough that you don’t have to pretend, Dallin,” I finally said.

He looked offended at my statement…and then he looked a little worried. “I never thought you would say yes to a date,” he said pleadingly, as if it were a life or death situation that I believe him. “You’re always so cool and collected around me. You had to have known that I’ve been in love with you since I moved here.”

I looked at him in shock. I tried to think about how I would act if I was in love with someone. Sleeping with every girl I came across didn’t seem like something that resembled love…but maybe I was just naïve.

Except the thought of love being something like that didn’t feel right in my heart.

“I’ve been trying to get over you,” he told me, obviously having read the unease written across my features. “It was stupid. I should have just gone for it, even if you’d shot me down. But I was so sure…”

“What made you change your mind?” I asked hesitantly, my gaze dancing across his beautiful features. Dallin was the kind of guy you just knew was going to be someone, do something. He had greatness practically beaming from every inch of him. It was a far cry from what I saw every morning in the mirror when I was getting ready.

“The other day, I saw you talking to Brad,” he admitted reluctantly.

“Brad Foster?” I snorted. I’d forgotten what he was referencing even happened. I’d been walking back from the library when Brad, a guy who had been on the baseball team in high school and who had been in Dallin’s popular circle of friends, had stopped and said hello as we passed on the sidewalk. It had literally been a blip in time, nothing sufficient enough to spur Dallin into action, if he had indeed seen it.

Dallin rolled his eyes. “That’s just it—you’re so oblivious. Brad was obsessed with you in high school. Most guys were. And you never even noticed. I thought maybe you had like, a secret college boyfriend or something back then, because it was like guys didn’t exist around you.”

I stared at him, flabbergasted, wondering why he was bothering to say crap like that. I hadn’t been oblivious, I’d been a wallflower. Someone who blended in with the shadows. I’d always been more comfortable there. And everyone I’d gone to school with had been more comfortable with me there.

Dallin took my hand in his, the soft way he stroked my skin sending my heartbeat spiraling out of control.

“I saw you with him on the sidewalk, and I thought he was finally making his move. And I just knew if I didn’t try and I saw you someday with some other guy…I’d never get over it.”

I was speechless. It felt like I was actually in bed dreaming, because this couldn’t be real life. Things like this didn’t happen to girls like me.

“I-I don’t know what to say,” I finally admitted, my cheeks such a dark shade of red at this point that I felt like I could burst into flames at any given minute.

“Say that I have a chance, that I haven’t ruined everything by being a coward and not going after what I want more than anything before this point. I tried to forget you. And it was impossible.”

“You have a chance,” I all but squeaked out, and his answering victorious grin was one that I filed away in my mind, determined that I’d remember it forever.

Conversation was easy after that. Maybe I was a fool to just accept everything he’d said…or maybe I was just desperate to believe this wasn’t all a dream. But either way, I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. Dallin could have me as long as he wanted me.

As I ate my grilled salmon and we chatted back and forth about school, it was easy to see why every girl in town had fallen under his spell—he was just that charming. The rest of dinner went so well, it was a no-brainer to let him hold my hand as we walked out to the car.

I was inexperienced. And when I said inexperienced, I meant I was the kind of girl who’d had a few fumbled, awkward kisses during middle school and high school dances that made me want to never be kissed again…and that was it.

Which was why even hand-holding felt like a pretty big deal.

It was a cool night, the kind of night that held the threat of winter but was still trying to hold on to what had been a glorious fall. I loved this time of year…loved everything about it. The pumpkins, the early morning frost on the grass, the flannels and football.

And tonight, it felt even more magical.

We were almost back to his car when I felt it—a trickle of unease like someone was staring a hole right through my skull.

I surreptitiously looked around, just to make sure I wasn’t crazy. Besides a few people walking in and out of the restaurant, the parking lot was relatively empty. There certainly wasn’t anyone staring at me.

Weird.

Convinced I was imagining something, as I did on the regular, thanks to my love of reading and my habit of daydreaming…I resolved to ignore the ominous feeling and continue to enjoy the night.

The feeling of being watched didn’t fade until the restaurant was out of sight. And it took a lot longer than that for the unease it had given me to fade.

Just like I’d suspected, Dallin had understated the type of gathering we were going to. Instead of a “couple” of football friends, it appeared the entire junior college and all of their friends were at this party. Raucous laughter and screams of excitement filled the air. People yelled out Dallin’s name as we walked through the crowd, everyone checking me out to see who he was with.

I wondered what they thought. I’d never spent much time worrying about my looks. I knew my place in the world, and how I looked fit in just fine for that. But Dallin had always been so much larger than life that I found myself wondering in that moment if I looked like I fit with him at all.

Acting at ease as always, Dallin put his arm around my waist, waving to people as we walked but never stopping to talk to anyone.

We finally got to a back room that was bursting with people. I recognized many of them as being on the football team with him. Dallin made sure I had tickets to every one of his games…along with a jersey.

Hmmm. Maybe I was a bit oblivious. Thinking back on it now, his hookups never seemed to get tickets to the games.

Several of his teammates came over to us, and they exchanged those weird, complicated high fives and manly hugs that guys seemed to like to do. The guys gave me curious hellos, many of them glancing over my figure appreciatively as they did so. I felt Dallin’s fingers tighten around my waist, signaling a possessiveness I didn’t think he was capable of.

There was an assortment of drinking games happening all around the room, and we quickly joined in a game of flip cup. I wasn’t sure that I wanted Dallin drinking since he was my ride home, but to my relief, he poured Sprite into our cups. No one said anything, just another sign of the status Dallin held with the team.

The night flew by. The room was filled to the brim with beautiful girls, many that I had seen hanging around the football team at school…but Dallin seemed to only have eyes for me. It was a heady feeling, and I savored every look, every smile…every touch he gave me. Each one of them meant something different than they would have just the day before.

It made me have dangerous thoughts. Ones that wondered if Dallin could be a one-woman kind of guy after all. Of course the other part of me, the more rational side, wondered if this was just how he always was on first dates. It would explain how he was always getting lucky.

Regardless of Dallin’s intentions, I actually had fun, which for an introvert like me was kind of a miracle. And when we finally left the party at around one AM, I felt like I was floating.

I didn’t object when he pushed me gently against his SUV, encircling me with his arms until I was caged against the car.

And I certainly didn’t put up a fight when he kissed me.

I’d dreamed of what kissing Dallin would be like. I’d mapped it out in my mind as I’d lain in bed, certain that it would be the pinnacle of my life. It wouldn’t be my first kiss, but I knew without a doubt it would definitely rank as the best one I’d ever had.

The reality of kissing Dallin however…was a bit different.

It lacked something. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. It’s just for a girl who read a lot of romance books—more than was probably healthy as a matter of fact—I’d thought a lot about what a kiss with someone you were in love with would be like.

And this wasn’t exactly it.

It was good. Sparks still flew. But it wasn’t the kiss I’d thought it would be, the kind that would haunt my thoughts until the day I died if I didn’t get the chance to experience it again.

I wondered if there was something wrong with me, or if this was a big fat signal that Dallin would never be able to live up to the vision of him that I’d built up in my head.

Either way, when Dallin pulled away, he looked dreamily satisfied, placing one more gentle kiss on my lips before releasing me. He didn’t seem to be suffering from the same concerns.

There was a heavy silence in the car on the way home. Dallin held my hand the entire time, sneaking glances at me when he thought I wasn’t looking. He kissed me again when he walked me up to the door of my house.

“When can I see you next?” he asked gently, pushing the strands of hair off my face that had fallen into my eyes. I stared at him, wondering why he looked different to me now than he had just this afternoon. Moonlight was shining down on his usually golden features, making him seem more mysterious than usual. That look was there again, the one that promised something…something I wasn’t sure of. I was almost scared of what it meant.

My first instinct at his question was to ask him if he was sure, but I figured that wasn’t the confident girl thing to do. “I’m free tomorrow,” I whispered with a forced smile.

His eyes lit up at my answer, and he brushed one more kiss across my lips before walking backwards away from me, as if he wanted to hold on to the sight of me.

“Text me as soon as you wake up,” he said with that same starry-eyed look. Despite the warning in my gut, I couldn’t help but feel a little rush of butterflies at his eagerness, but still trying to play it cool, I simply nodded and walked inside the house.

I ran up the stairs, feeling a little bit like I was walking on air as I did so. I opened the door to my room and gave a little shriek when I saw that my mother was sitting on my bed in the same place she had been earlier.

“Mom?” I asked questioningly. At nineteen years old, I didn’t have a curfew. My mother, in general, had always thought that I was responsible and had treated me accordingly. We had the understanding that I was transitioning into becoming an adult, and for the most part, she treated me like one.

Unlike before my date, my mother was no longer trying to hide the despair she seemed to be feeling. There was a look of true sorrow on her face, and she was still holding the same piece of paper that she had been holding earlier.

“Come here, darling,” she said in a quiet voice that held the prospect of tears. I cautiously approached her. She patted the space on the bed next to her, and I sat down beside her. I wanted to cry for some reason, just because I knew that whatever was about to come out of my mother’s mouth would change my life forever. Was it cancer? Had something happened to my brother? My mind reeled with all the terrible things that she could say.

I never would’ve guessed the truth.

2

ELENA

“We’ve never talked about our family’s history,” she began unsteadily, folding the paper in her hands and then unfolding it over and over again until I was tempted to grab it from her before I went mad.

I looked at her, baffled. “Our family history” was literally the last thing that I’d expected to come out of her mouth. Working two jobs had finally made her crack.

“Mom,” I said hesitantly, reaching out to touch her. She jerked back from my touch like I was poison.

“You have to listen to me. Everything you know is going to change tomorrow. I thought…I thought it wasn’t going to happen…but—”

She shook her head, her hands trembling as they continued to hold on to that piece of paper that, looking closer at it, I realized was a letter. She took a deep breath, holding back the tears that I could tell were threatening.

“Our family has had a sacred responsibility for thousands of years. One gifted to us by the gods,” she told me reverently.

I looked around the room. Was I being punked? Was there someone hiding somewhere that was secretly recording us right now and I’d be embarrassed on national television later? Because that was the only thing I could think to explain why my mother was talking about freaking “gods” at two a.m. of all things.

We weren’t even particularly religious. My mom took us to Catholic mass once a year for Christmas, but she never seemed to be quite into it and I’d always felt like a fish out of water there.

I opened my mouth to ask her more questions, but she shook her head, signaling that I should let her continue. “You remember studying the ancient Greek gods in school?” she asked.

I nodded, still unsure of where she was going with this.

“What if I told you they weren’t myths?”

A giggle threatened to erupt from my chest, but the look on my mother’s face was so serious that it got caught in my throat. Was she sick? Maybe she was getting early dementia and this was a sign.

She continued on in a voice that was increasingly distraught, despite the fact that I’m sure the look on my face was one of disbelief. My anxiety grew as she began to give me a history of maiden sacrifices to the Greek gods. Why were we talking about sacrifices right now? Was I dreaming? She was throwing around names like Zeus and Hades.

Maybe Dallin’s kiss had somehow knocked me into another dimension. I should have given it more credit.

“The women in our family have frequently been required to become the sacrifices,” she said quietly, the paper in her hand trembling at her words. “It has been asked of us for thousands of years, the result of some deal made that no one now remembers…or maybe it was actually some kind of curse. My mother was told by her mother, who was told by her mother before that…and so on. I had begun to think maybe it was just a legend passed down the generations, as nothing had been asked of us for the past hundred years.”

She stopped speaking for a moment, as if the next words were more than she could bear to say. “I received this letter in the mail today,” she said in a distraught voice, holding out the paper in her hands for me to take. Whatever she was talking about, it didn’t sound like the honor she was saying it was. It sounded like death.

I hesitantly took the paper, still sure that my mother was losing it. It all sounded so fantastical.

Your service is required…the letter began in elegant cursive. The stunning silver letters shined from the page, imprinting in my consciousness until it was as if the words were carved into my brain.

Everything disappeared after that.

THE PROCESS of opening my eyes felt like they’d been glued shut and I had to tear them open in order to wake up. I lay there in my bed, staring around my perfectly normal room, trying to get my bearings.

What a weird dream. A terrifying dream actually. I needed to not read thrillers before bed apparently.

I got up and headed to the bathroom to splash some water on my face and try to wake myself up more. The wood floor felt ice cold under my feet as I darted out of my bedroom and into the bathroom.

I looked haunted as I stared into the mirror. That was the best word to describe me. Haunted and tired.

As I walked downstairs, I expected my mother to be in the kitchen cooking pancakes, as she was most Saturday mornings before her shift at the local diner. But that wasn’t the case. My mother was instead waiting for me at the foot of the stairs, tears in her eyes. She was standing next to one of my grandmother’s packing trunks, one that I’d spent hours digging through in the attic as a little girl with my friends when we would play dress up on our play dates. My mom was wringing her hands in a fancy black dress that she only wore at funerals. The whole scene was…intense. And confusing. A macabre tableau for a nightmare I hadn’t realized was real.

I was getting the feeling I hadn’t been dreaming.

“They’ll be here shortly to collect you,” she said in a hitched voice as she wrung her hands feverishly, mimicking the motions she’d made last night with that letter. I noted absentmindedly that her hands were red and cracked, like she’d been washing them continuously.

“This is really happening? You’re trying to send me somewhere? I’m nineteen years old, I can’t just be shipped off,” I said indignantly, starting to get angry at how crazy my mother was acting. “If you didn’t want me in the house, you could have just told me,” I continued. I tried to think if there had been signs that my mom was unhappy with me? Had she asked me to do something that I hadn’t? Had she actually needed more money all along?

As soon as the words came out of my mouth, a bright crimson lash mark appeared on my mother’s arm. She cried out in shock and pain. I watched in horror as what seemed like a hundred other lashes began to show up across her arms, her legs, and even her face. Her cries filled the room as I watched in horror. I’d never seen anything like it, and I looked around the house, frozen in terror, paranoid that it had suddenly become haunted.

“You have to agree,” she gasped out as lashes continued to rake across her body. “It has to be of your own free will.” She screamed as another lash appeared to strike her across her back, sending her to her knees.

I didn’t know what to do. Did I call the police? Did I dare touch her? Did we need a fucking priest to perform a seance?

At that moment, the doorbell rang. The silence after the gong echoed through the house was somehow deafening. My mother slowly got off her knees, wincing with every step as she stuttered out halting breaths and walked towards the door.

“Mom,” I cried, finally able to move. I ran to try and get her to sit down, but she continued to stumble towards the door like she couldn’t control herself. “We need to get you to the doctor,” I said, momentarily relieved when it appeared that the lashes had ceased when the doorbell rang, but I was horrified at the blood that was copiously dripping from her body.

The doorbell rang again, as if the person waiting on the other side was in a hurry. She didn’t answer me, instead she opened the door calmly, as if she regularly looked like an extra in a horror film.

The door swung open. Standing there in the entryway was a tall, thin man who looked more like a relative of the Grim Reaper than a living person. He was dressed in a fancy black suit, one that looked like it had come from a different age. The outfit came complete with a black top hat that sat on top of his liberally gray streaked hair.

“Is that the lady’s trunk?” he asked, gesturing towards where the trunk sat, as if we’d been expecting him and he wasn’t a stranger standing at the door.

My mother didn’t question his presence or ask him to identify himself. She merely nodded in assent. I began to feel lightheaded just then. This was really happening. I was really supposed to go somewhere with this man. My mother was shipping me off somewhere.

I opened my mouth to scream, and my mother bowed over in pain as cuts began to appear all over her arms once again. Shrieks ripped from her mouth as the lashes continued to pepper her body.

I choked on the tears that fell from my eyes. My mind wasn’t able to comprehend what was happening. But what could I do but go with this man for now? There was no one I loved more than my mother in the world, no one that had sacrificed more to make me happy. I couldn’t take what was happening. I had to go if it would stop whatever was terrorizing her.

No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than the slashes ceased once again. Mother took a deep, unsteady breath and limped to the kitchen, coming back with a wet cloth that she began to use to wipe the blood off of her. Her body shook as she tried to stand tall. She was trying to put a brave face on for me. But nothing she could do was going to change the fact that my last memory of her would be her looking like Carrie at the prom.

Everything was a haze after that. The man picked up my grandmother’s trunk and then walked out of the house without a word. I took a step towards the front door, and a glimmer of hope appeared on my mother’s face.

She was relieved.

I didn’t know how she could be relieved when she was sending her daughter off to allegedly be sacrificed, or at least sending her daughter off into the hands of crazy people. Weren’t mothers the ones that were supposed to sacrifice for their children?

Regret at my ugly thoughts filled my mind as she threw her arms around me. I could feel her blood soaking into my nightclothes and her entire body was trembling as she held me tightly. She’d sacrificed for me repeatedly over the years. There had to be a reason for this now.

I was too numb and too shocked to give her a real hug back. I just prayed that someday, I would understand what was happening and why. The man was waiting impatiently outside the door, the trunk already in the car. I reluctantly pulled away from her, trying to quell the heavy urge I had to beg her to save me.

3

ELENA

The man gave me a small bow as I walked away from the safety of my childhood home, and then gestured to the car. I guess it was a car, it looked more like a limo. In this situation, it reminded me less of the limo people used for prom and more like what the mafia or some other criminal mastermind used as their mode of transportation.

The inside of the vehicle was cool and dark. I slid across the leather seat, aware this was the first time that I had been surrounded by such a luxury. Although I wasn’t buying the whole ancient Greek god story, whatever my mother had found herself involved in, it appeared they had money.

There was a screen that separated the back of the limo from the front where the driver sat, but the driver helpfully moved the screen down so I could see him. Despite the fact that he looked like the living embodiment of death, I was glad not to be alone.

“What’s your name?” I asked. There was a short pause before he answered, as if he was debating whether he was supposed to tell me.

“Charon,” he finally answered.

I recognized the Greek name from my studies and tried to remember what myth his name was involved in.

Finally, it came to me. Charon. He was the guy who had ferried spirits across the River Styx in the Greek Underworld. I laughed somewhat manically. How fitting. Maybe this was a cult filled with people who believed they were reincarnations of Greek legends. I wondered if I needed to give him a few coins to ensure my safe passage. My laughter squeaked out louder at the thought.

My giggles abruptly cut off as I remembered a news article I’d seen the other day about fourteen girls that had been rescued from the sex trade. What if my mother had somehow gotten herself involved in that? Except I couldn’t explain those cuts on my mother’s body that had come out of nowhere…

I didn’t ask any more questions after that. Instead, I looked out the window, staring at the countryside as we passed it by. I hadn’t traveled very much growing up. My father had taken me to Chicago before he disappeared, one of my last memories of him. He’d left a few months later. And then we’d never had the money after that. I had always wanted to explore the world though, but I never imagined I would leave home this way.

After a few hours, that felt more like years, we stopped. We were still close enough that it wouldn’t be impossible for me to get home. Maybe I could escape.

As soon as I had the thought, it was like I could feel my mother’s pain, as if she were right this minute being struck again by invisible whips just at my rebellious thoughts. Somehow, I knew I wasn’t imagining it, it was actually happening. I wasn’t going to be able to go anywhere without her suffering the consequences. As upset as I was at my mother, I couldn’t let that happen.

Charon opened the door. I peeked out, squinting in the bright sunlight. My jaw dropped when I noticed that we had parked outside of an airplane hanger. There was a sleek black jet with no writing on it waiting on the tarmac in front of us. My mysterious cult kidnappers were definitely very wealthy.

Charon grabbed my trunk out of the limo and walked with me towards the airplane. As we approached the plane, the door of it opened and a set of stairs unfolded beneath it. I wasn’t sure if that was normal.

A beautiful woman dressed in a tight black skirt and a red blouse that reminded me of blood stood at the top, a wide smile on her face as she saw us approach. I slowly walked up the stairs, not bothering to say hi to what looked like the flight attendant. By her overly cheerful demeanor she was either one of the cult people and therefore an enemy at the moment, or blissfully unaware of anything. Either way she wasn’t going to be able to help me with anything.

All thoughts exited my head when I looked around the interior of the plane. It was like nothing I’d ever seen. The same black and red as the woman’s uniform took up the entire space, and everything was made of sumptuous fabrics. Instead of chairs, there were black leather couches lining both sides of the plane’s walls with tables in between them. There were a few doors at the back of the plane that I presumed led to a bathroom and possibly a bedroom. It was the kind of plane that the billionaires always had in the books I read.

At that moment, Charon appeared behind me, making me jump a bit. I saw that he was trying to stifle a smile at my idiotic reaction. Maybe he had a sense of humor after all.

Charon gestured silently to one of the lavish, black leather couches, and I went to sit down. It was the most comfortable thing I’d ever sat on, and I nestled into the soft leather, enjoying the comfort after the long car ride. There were seat belts connected to the couch, and I clicked one closed around me. No sooner had I done so then the door of the plane closed and the engine started up. No one said a word to me, but I was coming to expect that after my quiet car ride with Charon.

We were in the air soon after that, and I gripped the arm of the couch tightly, not a fan of the way my stomach felt like it was in my throat. It was ironic really that this was my first time in an airplane. Who would’ve thought that it would happen after getting abducted by a crazy cult?

As I watched the clouds pass by, I suddenly remembered Dallin and the fact that he would be waiting for my text message today. Looking around and seeing that Charon and the pretty flight attendant weren’t looking my way, I surreptitiously patted my pocket, trying to see if I had remembered to slip my phone inside it. I groaned when I remembered that it was sitting on my bed upstairs still. I hadn’t believed that I was actually going anywhere when I walked downstairs this morning. I definitely would have at least changed out of my pajamas and into regular clothes. I cursed my stupidity. I should’ve known that what was happening was very real with the way my mother had acted the night before.

Again, a flash of hurt spiraled up my spine. How could she have gotten herself involved in something like this and brought me into it? I thought that she of all people had loved me. I didn’t have very many of those in my life, but I’d always been able to count on her.

We flew for hours. The flight attendant brought me a plate of assorted nuts and fruit, but I had lost any semblance of hunger with the situation and politely declined, despite the fact I hadn’t eaten since the night before. Charon tried to be helpful by turning on a movie on one of the giant flat screens. I laughed when I saw he had turned on Brad Pitt’s version of Troy. How fitting for the situation. I guess at least Brad Pitt was hot.

At some point in the flight, I drifted off. My dreams filled with images of me surrounded by Greek heroes battling in a field soaked in blood. And in the background, my mother silently wept as she watched me in their midst. I was woken up by the plane hitting the tarmac, signaling that we had landed. Opening my eyes was a struggle. I had been in a deep sleep.

I looked out the window to see where we were. It looked similar to the terrain at home. There were thousands of trees everywhere you looked, and they stretched on for miles. The only thing different was the giant mountains in the distance, their peaks covered in snow.

“Where are we?” I asked no one in particular. As usual, I didn’t get an answer. The plane door opened up, and I unbuckled my seatbelt and got up. Charon walked past me from the back, carrying my heavy black truck once again. He exited the plane, not saying a word to me. Apparently, I was supposed to follow him.

For some reason, the flight attendant looked decidedly less happy with me as I approached the staircase. I wondered if my refusal of her fruit tray had somehow set her off. I said thank you and headed down the stairs, but I could feel her eyes boring into the back of my skull as I walked away.

There was another limo waiting right outside the plane. Charon had the door opened already and was once again impatiently waiting for me. I got into the backseat, and he closed the door behind me. Away we went once again.

There was no sign of civilization as we drove. There were no stores, or other cars, or any other signs of life. For someone who had always been around other people, it was a little bit terrifying to feel so alone. Charon finally turned down a long driveway that was almost entirely obscured by trees. A few feet in, we stopped at an enormous set of iron gates, the kind that usually stood outside a giant manor or other historical building. It opened in front of us slowly, and we drove through. The driveway seemed to stretch on forever. The thick foliage along the sides of the road made it impossible for me to see what was around. After another five-minute drive, we finally saw the first sign of civilization. It was a house, or maybe the better word for it was a castle. All gray stone and winding turrets, it was something out of a fairy tale.

I looked at it in awe. I had never seen such a structure, not even the rich kids in my town had lived in places that came close to equaling the size of it. Whoever owned this had to have had a legion of servants and help to keep up the property. Or maybe this was where the entire cult was located. It certainly looked like it could hold hundreds of people comfortably. Everyone could probably have their own bedroom.

Charon seemed more at ease when he opened my door, his posture more relaxed. I wondered what he had been so nervous about before. Did he think I was going to put up a fight? I thought we were past that for now.

I looked at my surroundings as I followed Charon to the massive set of double doors that marked the entrance, trying to memorize the lay of the land around me in case I needed to do something drastic like escape. The door opened before we could knock on it. Another man stood in the doorway dressed in another dated tuxedo. I wondered if there was a cult requirement that you had to be dressed up at all times. Looking down at my black leggings and my oversized sweatshirt I had slept in, I gave a little hysterical laugh. Maybe when the head of the cult saw what I looked like, he would send me right back.

The man at the door had a hook-like nose and wide set brown eyes. His hair was perfectly black, and it was hard to guess how old he was. He was an interesting enough looking character, and there was a friendliness in his eyes as he looked at me that set me at ease. He bowed low to me as we approached.

“Welcome, my lady,” he said to me in a delightful British accent. Standing in front of me was a real-life British butler. Things were looking up. Or maybe I had officially cracked and this was my idea of things looking up. I wasn’t really able to tell. A numbness had settled over my veins and it felt like I was treading underwater, everything warped and distorted around me.

I forgot all about the butler and Charon when I stepped inside the cavernous front entryway. My mouth dropped open at the sight. The entryway was enormous, larger than my entire house. There were two sets of winding staircases that led up to the second story. Shiny obsidian colored marble covered the entire floor, and the walls were a light gray color. Apparently, the leader of this cult really enjoyed dark colors.

The air was cool and a bit musty, despite the fact that everything looked to be pristine without a speck of dust to be found. It somehow felt empty, like no one had lived here for a long time. Which couldn’t be true, since the butler was standing right here. And surely the cult people were around here somewhere.

After the journey I had just experienced, I was even more confused about what was going on. For a sacrifice, I sure was being treated well. I had kind of expected to be thrown into a dark cell until the crazies came to get me…but maybe that was still coming. Was this some kind of trick to get me to let my guard down? I remembered the stories we’d learned in school of the Mayan sacrifices. They’d thrown the virgins into active volcanoes in an effort to appease the gods and bring a good harvest to their fields.

I didn’t want to be thrown into a volcano.

Another hysterical giggle squeaked out of me and the butler silently raised an eyebrow. I nervously shrugged my shoulders and he nodded once before schooling his face into a blank canvas once more.

The butler took my trunk and began to ascend the stairs like the weight of it was nothing. Evidently he expected me to follow him. The staircase seemed to go on forever, and I realized that I was probably going to get in really good shape if I was here for long. We began to walk down a hallway that stretched on and on. The lighting was dim, and as I looked closer at the lamps on the wall, I realized that they were actually candles, not lightbulbs lighting the way. I prayed that they had electricity in some of the rooms…and plumbing. If I was going to die, I at least wanted to be able to watch some episodes of The Office before I did so.

We finally stopped at the last door in the hallway. The butler pulled a keyring out of his pocket, that was loaded with what looked like at least fifty keys, and unlocked the door.

“This suite has been specially prepared for you,” he said, the only words he’d spoken on the entire trip up here. But I wasn’t really listening, I was too busy admiring the room we had just stepped in. While the rest of the house had been old-world glamour, this one looked like someone had studied the inside of my brain and come up with precisely what I would pick as my dream room. The bed was huge and covered with a fluffy white comforter that had an explosion of colorful pillows on top of it. The floor was a gleaming dark wood, made homier by an assortment of colorful rugs that matched the pillows perfectly. Along one wall there was a floor to ceiling bookcase that was filled to the brim with books. Gasping a little, I walked over, skimming over the titles. Along with some of my favorites, there were hundreds of books that were on my Amazon wish list, along with a host of first editions that were probably worth more than the house I had grown up in.

Dragging my gaze from the bookshelf, I spotted a window seat with a white padded cushion and an assortment of the same pillows as on the bed. There was an enormous flat screen television on the wall, and I gasped in delight when the butler pressed a button on the wall and a shelf appeared in the wall filled with hundreds of movies. I didn’t mention that they could probably save a lot of space if they switched to digital. I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth like that.

As I wandered around the room, oohing and ahhing at everything, I felt a little like a frog that had been put into cold water. Everything in this room was designed to make me feel comfortable… even grateful for being here. But at some point the heat was going to be slowly turned up until I was boiled alive, I just knew it.

The butler opened another door in the room, revealing a full en suite bathroom with a tub that could fit ten people and a shower that had four showerheads. Another door led to a full living room complete with a TV that took up the entire wall and several comfortable looking white leather couches set up in front of it.

It was all incredible. And now I was even more confused.

I stood in the middle of the room, my gaze darting from one fabulous thing to another.

“There’s one more thing,” the butler said before pulling on the full-length mirror on the wall to reveal a gigantic closet that was filled to the brim with clothes. I hesitantly walked into the closet, wondering if this was filled with the last sacrifice’s clothes. But when I looked at some of the sizes, I realized that everything would fit me perfectly.

Whoever had designed the room knew everything about me, right down to my bra size.

“I will have one of the maids bring you up some food while you relax. I’m sure that it was a trying journey,” he said as he walked to the main door to let himself out.

“Wait, I still don’t know your name,” I cried, panicking for some reason at the thought of being alone.

He turned and gave me a small, weird bow. “Cerberus, my lady,” he said. “And we are all quite glad that you are here.”

With that, he left the room.

4

ELENA

Despite my long nap on the airplane, I fell asleep on the floor as soon as he left, my dreams filled with images of strange three-headed dogs and a skeletal ferryman who rowed my soul across a dark river. I didn’t wake up until there was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” I said in a groggy voice, standing up from the floor wearily. The door cracked open, and a young freckle-faced kid who looked like he could only be around twelve or thirteen peeked his head in.

“I’ve got your breakfast,” he said in a cheerful voice as if he wasn’t talking to someone who had just gotten abducted and appeared in his home. He was probably a son of one of the cult members. Fear crept down my spine again as I wondered what exactly was in store for me. It wasn’t going to be anything good, I was sure of that.

“You can bring it in,” I said, striding over to my bed and warily watching him walk in the door. He carried a tray full of delicious smelling food. The smell reminded me once again that I hadn’t eaten in almost twenty-four hours.

“Do you need anything else, my lady?” he asked after he had shyly set the tray down next to me. He looked around the room happily. “Do you like your room? Master had us working night and day to prepare it for your arrival,” he said.

Master. That was the first I’d heard of him. Was that the name the cult leader required everyone to call him? If he thought I was just going to blindly fall in line, he had another thing coming. The word “master” was never going to pass my lips.

Well, I might if it prevented me from being thrown down a volcano and burned alive. I’d have to mull that one over.

I looked speculatively at the boy. Out of the few people I had met so far, he seemed the most approachable and the most likely to give me some answers. Maybe I could find out information from him.

“What’s your name?” I asked. He glanced at me, blushing shyly. “Hermes,” he responded. It was all I could do to stifle my laugh. I guess they were keeping to the Greek theme.

“So how long have you lived here?” I asked with a smile that I hoped looked innocent. Hermes looks nervous all of a sudden. His gaze darted around the room like a caged animal.

“For as long as I can remember,” he finally answered. I nodded, although his answer was vague.

“How old are you?” I asked.

Now he looked even more nervous.

“Thirteen,” he answered, but the way he said it made it seem like he was lying. Why would he lie about his age?

“Does your mother live here as well?” I asked. Now he got really nervous and started backing out of the room. I was suddenly desperate for him not to leave. “Please don’t go.”

He was out of the door before I could say another word. “Stupid girl,” I muttered to myself with a sigh. It was obviously going to be impossible to get information out of people here if I couldn’t even get it out of a young boy.

The delicious smell wafting from the tray finally caught my attention. I walked over to where Hermes had left the food on the bed. I examined it closely, wondering if it was poisoned. But then that didn’t seem like a good way to sacrifice someone, by poisoning them. I decided that I was so hungry, I would just take the risk.

Hermes had said he brought breakfast, but it was eight p.m. and the food on the tray seemed to be more like a dinner. There was a lemon rice that had just the right amount of flavor and some chicken kebabs covered with a spicy seasoning. Everything was delicious. After I finished devouring the entire tray, I realized that despite my multiple naps, I was still exhausted. I lay down on my bed, not bothering to look for any clothes to change into. I immediately fell into a thankfully dreamless sleep this time.

I HAD that feeling when I woke up, like I’d been sleeping far longer than I was supposed to. It took me a second to realize that I still was not home, that I was, in fact, still in the strange castle that I’d been brought to by a group of crazy cult members with Greek names.

Looking around the room for a clock, I finally found one, and I gasped in surprise at the time. It had only been around nine p.m. when I went to sleep last night, and the clock was now saying that it was approaching five p.m. I suddenly wondered if my food last night had been drugged with some kind of sleeping pill. I felt disgusting being in my clothes for so long, so I wandered over to the luxurious bathroom that I’d been shown. It took me a minute to figure out all the knobs and buttons in the shower. For a castle that relied on candles to light its rooms, it was super up on technology in other ways. You could program exactly what temperature you wanted the water to be with a touch of a button. Incredible.

I took a longer shower than I’d intended and then stepped out, wrapping a towel around me that evidently had been heating on the towel rod. Because of course a place like this would have a heated towel rod.

Even the floor was warm under my feet, despite the fact that it looked like it was marble. Maybe the medieval look outside my room was just the aesthetic that whoever was in charge here liked, but he was still a fan of modern technology.

I wandered over to the closet, still amazed at the fact that all of these clothes were supposed to be mine. My closet back home hadn’t even been one-tenth this size and most of my clothes were from the thrift store or what I could scrounge up from the sales rack at Target I stalked. Staring at the clothes, I became even more confused. What did a sacrifice need a ballgown for? Or La Perla lingerie. That was definitely something I’d only read about in romance novels. Real people didn’t pay thousands of dollars for bras.

A tremble worked its way down my spine. The lingerie definitely fell in the sex trade column of my guesses for what I was doing here. That was bad.

The thought spurred me to want to get dressed as fast as possible. I didn’t know what was expected of me for the rest of the day, so I finally picked out a long black skirt with a clingy dark purple top that looked pretty. Looking around the closet, I didn’t see anything that was ugly and could maybe hide my body. Or a single pair of pants. I would need to ask one of the staff members about that whenever I saw someone. I at least needed to get my yoga pants washed.

I walked over to the door, sighing because I assumed it would be locked even as I reached for the door handle. To my surprise, the door easily swung open, and I found myself looking down the dark hallway. I tentatively walked down the hall, listening for any sound. I wondered when someone was going to explain what the hell was actually going on. If this was some kind of sacrifice, I’d like a minute to wrap my head around my impending doom. It seemed kind of cruel for them to string me along in this beautiful place without telling me when I was on the docket. I’d at least like to prepare myself for it. Or prepare myself to escape from it…

I finally got to the long set of stairs that led to the front entryway, and I walked down the stairs slowly, my footsteps echoing around the dome like ceiling. I noticed for the first time that there was a mural painted on the ceiling. Not sure how I’d missed that yesterday, it took up the entire space. Maybe the shock had rendered me momentarily blind? I halted on the stairs as I studied the painting. My heart squeezed at the image. It was strange. But the sorrow in the painting was tangible, like I could reach out and touch it. The painting was split into two halves, one light, one dark. There was a man painted in the shadows, everything about him juxtaposed from the girl bathing in the sunshine on the other side of the mural. She was beautiful. I could feel his longing for her. Dressed in a gown of yellow and gold, pink rosebuds were woven throughout her silky locks. I fingered my brunette hair almost self-consciously. Mine looked like mud compared to the beauty above me.

I’d studied art in school, even been to a few art museums, but nothing I’d seen in there had ever given me the emotional reaction I was experiencing right now. I tried to put a word to what I was feeling. Sadness, yes. You could taste the man’s pain as he reached out for the girl he adored who seemed to want nothing to do with him. But the other emotion I was feeling…it almost felt like jealousy. Which in fact was probably my craziest thought of this whole experience. Who got jealous of a painting?

I snorted angrily and reluctantly dragged my gaze away from the perfection above me. I was officially going crazy. Or maybe I was already there.

I was still shaking my head as I got to the bottom step. I looked around, wondering how it was possible that I still hadn’t seen a soul. If this was a cult, where were all the members? Maybe they’d already gone back to their rooms or something? Cults were known for their strict rules.

As if my thoughts had brought him into existence, Cerberus was there at the foot of the stairs just then, making me jump at his abrupt appearance. Someone needed to put a bell on the guy, or maybe a foghorn. That would keep him from creeping up on people.

Cerberus gave me one of his small, strange bows.

“Do you need anything, my lady?” he asked solicitously.

“I apparently slept the day away. I must’ve been more tired than I thought.”

He nodded as if it was normal to sleep for almost twenty-four hours straight, and I wondered again if they had given me a sleeping pill or something.

“The cook will have dinner ready in about an hour’s time,” he said. “In the meantime, would you like a tour of the house?”

Cerberus had been nothing but kind to me thus far, and I was curious to see the rest of the castle…and hopefully its inhabitants, so I agreed.

We began to walk, Cerberus giving me random facts about the place as we went along. My eyes widened with every room we came across. There was room after room filled with the sort of luxury that I’d actually believed only existed in books. I mean who actually had two ballrooms in their home? Did people even throw balls anymore?

There was a theatre room complete with a screen that covered the entire twelve-foot wall. Another room held a library that looked straight out of Beauty and the Beast. There was an indoor pool, and Cerberus explained there was a large outdoor pool as well that stayed heated all fall and winter.

After an hour of going through rooms, it seemed we had only seen a small portion of the castle. It was that enormous.

Only when we had been touring for a while did I finally get the nerve to ask some questions. “Cerberus, where is everyone else?” I asked. He looked at me in confusion.

“Everyone else?” he responded in a puzzled voice.

I nodded and leaned in close to whisper to him. “Where are all the other cult members?”

His eyes took on a merry twinkle at my question, and he burst into a boisterous laughter that seemed very out of character for him. He wiped his eyes trying to respond to me. “You want to know where the other cult members are?” he repeated in a voice that was still filled with laughter. I nodded, suddenly feeling very foolish.

“This is not a cult, my lady,” he said.

“But then who lives here that still practices sacrifices?” I asked in a voice that shook with anger.

He sobered up immediately. “I’m afraid there’s been a mistake. There are no sacrifices happening here,” he answered as if I had offended him. Now I was even more confused and upset.

“My mother told me that the whole reason I was here was to be a part of some sort of crazy sacrifice that our family has been forced to participate in for generations,” I explained, frustrated tears starting to fill my eyes. At the sight of my tears, Cerberus started to panic.

“Now, now, my lady, don’t cry. There will be no sacrifices happening here. You are our most desired guest. You’ll find out everything in due time. I swear on my soul, no one here will hurt you. That’s the last thing that any of us want to do. In fact, we hope that you are happier here than you ever have been before,” he added in a meaningful tone. Tears continued to stream down my face. It was like all the fear I’d experienced since I’d first stepped foot into the limo had decided to come out at once. I couldn’t get control of myself.

“Let’s get over to the dining hall. Master will be appearing soon, and he can explain more,” Cerberus said, gently gesturing down the hallway to where the dining hall sat that he had shown me earlier. We walked slowly. I knew that he was trying to give me time to recover before I met this mysterious Master. I would have appreciated his thoughtfulness if I had any interest in meeting the person in charge. Right now I just wanted to lick my wounds by myself. At least I knew I looked like crap right now. If Cerberus was lying to me about the whole sacrifice thing, I would look very unpalatable. Those stories I’d heard in school always talked about them picking the most beautiful among their people to throw in the volcano. No one was going to pick me out of a group with my swollen, blood-shot eyes, and snot-ridden nose.

Right before I got to the doorway, I stopped abruptly in the entryway. “I don’t think I feel very hungry,” I said, turning to face him. “I think I’ll just go back up to my room.”

Cerberus was shaking his head before I had even finished my sentence. “You must meet the master,” he said. “I assure you that you will feel much better after doing so.”

I wiped the tears off my face with the back of my hand. Something told me I wasn’t going to be able to change his mind about this.

Nodding my head reluctantly, I followed him into the dining room. The room had a table that could seat at least fifty people. I didn’t know they even made tables that big. But there it was. Despite how ridiculously large it was, the table was only set for two. Was I dining with the master by myself? The thought made me extremely nervous.

Cerberus pulled out my chair so I could sit down, taking my cloth napkin from the table to lay it on my lap once I had sat down, just as if we were in some sort of fancy steakhouse. The table setting was fancier here than I had seen even in a restaurant, and I had thought the place I went to with Dallin had been nice.

I felt a stroke of pain at the thought of Dallin. Was he thinking of me? Was he worried about me at all? I wondered if there was a way I could get information to him that I was all right. Maybe eventually I’d be released from here, and he would still be out there waiting for me. I shook my head at the thought. I wasn’t going to fool myself that the connection Dallin had felt with me was enough to make him wait for me. I didn’t think the guy usually went a couple days without a date. The thought that he couldn’t wait for me weirdly made me feel better. Maybe it was the idea that I wasn’t losing out on true love because true love would wait, right?

My thoughts were interrupted when someone cleared their throat. It was like whoever it was was announcing himself before he walked into the room so as not to startle me. I looked over at the doorway, and I promptly lost my breath. All thoughts of Dallin went out the window as I gazed at who had just walked into the room.

Standing before me was a creation that had to have been blessed by the gods…if you believed in that sort of thing. He looked too perfect to be real. Shiny black hair was slicked back from a face that looked like it had been carved by the angels. Piercing blue eyes, as blue as a starry night sky, stared back at me, seemingly just as interested in observing me as I was interested in observing him.

I shivered as I stared at him, beyond overwhelmed by his beauty. Maybe I was dreaming because men like him, they didn’t really exist. He was so perfect it was hard to comprehend. I was really wishing I’d been able to wash my face or put on makeup or something right about now. Not that it would have made a difference. He wasn’t even in the same galaxy as me with those kind of looks.

He seemed lost as he stared at me, like I was destroying preconceived notions he’d had about me.

Finally, he opened his beautiful mouth.

And promptly broke my fantasy.

“Persephone?” he breathed. I was immediately confused and strangely disappointed at the fact that he thought I was another woman.

“Elena,” I answered hesitantly, pulling on my skirt nervously. The light in his eyes dimmed, and a look of absolute devastation crossed his face before he turned and stormed out of the room.

“Oh dear,” came a worried voice. My gaze darted towards the newcomer, hoping she could explain whatever the hell I’d just experienced. A woman dressed in a black dress with a high, stiff neckline and a pristine white apron came rushing into the room wringing her hands. “That could have gone better,” she muttered before straightening her expression and turning my way. “Are you ready for dinner, my lady?” she asked with a face that was attempting to be hopeful.

“Who was that?” I asked, unable to keep my gaze from going back to the empty doorway where the Adonis had disappeared through. That strange sense of disappointment at the stranger’s actions still licked at my insides, furthering the confusion and overwhelming weight of this whole experience.

I knew I looked bad right now, but I didn’t think I looked bad enough for him to run away. I mean that was just rude.

“That was the master, my lady,” the woman answered. “He’s just having an off night. I’m sure he will be right as rain in the morning,” she stated cheerfully as she turned to go back through the doors that led to what I presumed was the kitchen. Cerberus hadn’t shown me that room unfortunately. It would have been nice to feel like I was able to go to the kitchen whenever I wanted a snack or a meal away from anyone else.

“Why did he call me Persephone?” I called after her, needing to know the answer for some reason. The name was playing on a loop in my head as I wondered at the significance of it. I knew the story of Persephone and Hades, of course. I would think most people did. The story was making me second guess the meal I’d eaten last night actually. These people obviously thought it would be fun to cosplay Greek myths, and I remembered well what had happened to Persephone after she’d tasted those pomegranate seeds. The lemon rice and chicken I’d had last night were a lot more than that.

The woman froze in her tracks. Her shoulders slumped as I watched, and she gave a large sigh that somehow told me this woman was tired. Right down to her soul.

She looked back at me sadly. “It’s probably because you bear a striking resemblance to Master’s long-lost love,” she said warily, watching my reaction carefully.

“Her name was Persephone?” I asked quizzically, thinking that was an usual name for anyone to name their child in the last century. Or maybe that was the name the girl had been given once she’d gotten to this place.

The woman just nodded in answer to my question, biting her lip as if she was itching to say more but was having to hold herself back.

Also, the man who had just been in the room looked like he was barely pushing thirty. How long ago did he lose this Persephone?

And what had happened to her?

The image of the mural crawled through my thoughts and I frowned as I found myself touching the ends of my hair again. I had a sneaking suspicion now that the mural had something to do with a myth. But there would be no confusing that rendering to me.

This place was really, really weird.

I opened my mouth to ask another question, but the cook had left the room. I knew she would probably be bringing out food in just a moment, but I had no appetite since my strange encounter with my otherworldly handsome host. Feeling oddly tired, despite all the sleep I had gotten the night before, I got up and left the dining hall, returning to my room.

As I walked up the mountainous stairs, a sound that resembled a man wailing in agony sounded in my ears. I had never heard such a devastated sound in my life. Somehow, I knew it belonged to the man from earlier and that I was the cause of such pain. My heart did that weird clenching thing again that it had done earlier when I’d stared up at the painting that I was now sure was a tribute to his lost love. I wanted to find the man, wrap my arms around him, tell him everything would be alright. Even if that was a lie.

It was a weird feeling.

As his cries continued to float through the air, faint enough that I knew his rooms weren’t close by, I wrapped my arms around my body, holding myself tightly. Looking up the stairs, I swore I saw a tendril of blonde hair disappearing around the corner the opposite way from my rooms as if someone had just darted by. A shiver traveled down my spine. The air felt colder…more dangerous.

And I didn’t feel alone.

I ran the rest of the way up the stairs, not looking behind me as I raced towards my room sure that there was someone watching me right at that moment.

I slammed my door shut behind me, engaging a lock that I swore hadn’t been present on my side of the door when I’d left just a bit ago. My breath left me in long, harsh gasps from my panicked run. The door cut off the sounds of crying, and the lock made me feel safe.

All good things.

I ran through everything that had just happened as I leaned against the door, trying to calm my breath and find something that made sense or that I could hold onto. I guess on the bright-side, my disastrous meeting with the “Master” might make him want to let me go. Silver linings and all of that. No one wanted a reminder of an ex-girlfriend to be hanging around 24/7 after all, even a guy who looked like he could have his pick of every girl on earth and in the heavens if he wanted. I had to think that even the freaking angels would salivate over a face like that.

You had to admire the guy’s loyalty.

It took a minute, but finally my heart rate slowed down enough I felt like I could step away from the door without falling to the ground from a heart attack.

Surprisingly, I noticed then that a dinner tray was already waiting on my bed. I wasn’t sure how that was possible, but I wasn’t going to think too hard on it. I’d had enough mysteries for the night.

Despite the fact that I couldn’t hear his cries anymore, or what I assumed were his cries, I wasn’t able to find very much peace. The haunting stranger had taken up residence in my head, not straying very far from my thoughts despite my best efforts. I attempted to pick at the dinner, not able to stomach hardly anything even though the food looked like something you would find at a five-star restaurant.

My sleep was fitful that night as his star filled gaze took a starring role in my dreams.

5

HADES

I fell in love with her the second I saw her. Falling in love with her wasn’t a choice. It was a need. The breath I took in right before I took a step around the garden wall and saw her was the last breath I ever took for myself. Every moment after that was for her.

Despite the foolish tales that have floated around through the ages, Persephone wasn’t coerced, or kidnapped. I didn’t trick her or selfishly steal her from her mother’s arms.

We met in that garden and that was it. We were both completely and utterly taken with one another.

Or at least that’s what I thought.

Despite how much I try and blank it out, thoughts of that first meeting are on repeat in my head. The way the sun caressed her gleaming hair. The way her eyes were almost gold, as if the sun was being absorbed into her body and shone through her gaze.

I should have known just from that we were destined to fail. I lived in the shadows. And someone like that, who was loved by the sun… she was never going to love me.

She withered in the darkness. All her light was sucked dry until she was nothing but a husk, lifeless and miserable. Even her hair turned dark without the sun, a phenomenon that gave weight to those first thoughts I’d had when I saw her.

And it was all my fault.

I thought my love would be enough, because in the history of existence, no one had ever loved a woman the way I loved her. Even the cracks in my heart belonged to her.

But nothing I did was ever enough.

This place, this place was haunted. Sometimes I swore I saw her face above me when I first opened my eyes to start a new, dreaded day. The smell of her perfume lingered on my pillowcase. I walked around a corner and her hair was there in front of me like she’d just ran out of sight. In the initial months and years, I would tear apart this hell I was trapped in, convinced she was still somewhere between these walls. The servants would hide in their quarters, convinced I’d gone mad.

And they were right. I had gone mad.

Despite the fact I still felt her everywhere, I’d stopped looking for her. Persephone made sure when she left that I’d be just as broken as she became when I brought her here.

I’m cursed and there’s no cure. Despite what the Fates say.

They say something was triggered when she left. That my sorrow broke something in the eternities, the balance of power and sanity was destroyed.

Find love again, they ordered me, even going so far as to procure the women for me, certain another Persephone was out there.

I felt pity for the Fates, because they had no concept of love. You don’t get to just replace lost love. You wither and worship at its feet for eternity, the memory enough to freeze your heart in place so you can never move on.

I STOOD at the foot of her bed, a specter from this angel’s worst nightmares if she were to open those eyes and see me here. Now that I was taking a closer look, I could see she was nothing like Persephone. It was simply wishful thinking creating something that wasn’t actually there.

The color of her hair might be the same, but her nose was sloped differently, more Roman than Grecian in its shape. There were freckles dusting her cheeks. Persephone’s skin had been flawless. There was light streaked through the dark of her hair. Her lips were fuller than Persephone’s, like she’d just been stung by a bee. My gaze traced their shape absentmindedly, remembering her cautious voice. That was much different too. Her voice was lower, softer…more serious. Like her words were usually measured before they were spoken. Persephone had often lashed out without thinking, like her feelings were uncontrollable and had to be released or else she would die. Some of her words still lashed through me at night, the echo of the hate in their depths carved into my skin.

I didn’t know why I was thinking about that now, or why I was standing here watching this poor girl who’d been unwittingly dragged into the Fates’ wicked games. They said they were attempting to help, but the girls’ endings were never pretty. In the beginning I’d tried, I swear I did. But their smiles never put sparks in my heart, their voices never gave me proverbial butterflies, and their touches never had me wanting to wage wars.

I don’t know if they ever fell in love with me. It never mattered.

Because I never fell in love with them.

This girl would be the same. And maybe I would even feel a pinprick of sorrow when the Fates eventually dragged her away at the end of the year.

Poor girl. She didn’t know the fate that awaited her.

A hand brushed against my back just then, and I knew she was there, or at least whatever was wrong with my life-source that constantly conjured her up had been triggered, reminding me I would never be able to fall.

I turned around to try and find her, unable to help myself, as usual. But something about the move felt different, like it was a little bit more a habit, and not as much a sharp desire like usual.

I turned to find Persephone, but something inside of me wanted to keep looking at Elena.

It was pity, that’s all, I told myself. The madness I constantly experienced was giving me human traits, because weren’t they all a little mad there on Earth?

The specter touched me again and I dissolved from the room.

I’d spend the rest of the night as I usually did, thinking about her.

6

ELENA

The next morning, I woke up feeling like I had been run over by a twenty-ton truck. I was debating whether to go back to sleep when a knock sounded from the door.

Not thinking of what I looked like, I dragged myself out of bed, walking to the door still half asleep. I quickly woke up however when I saw who was at the door.

He looked just as surprised to see me as I was to see him, despite the fact that he was the one who had knocked on my door. There was a slight flush to his cheeks as he glanced down at my barely clothed body. Too late, I realized I was standing in front of this Adonis in boy shorts and a white cami that left very little to the imagination. I quickly hid my body behind the door, peeking just my head out. But it was too late. There was a fire in his eyes that hadn’t been there the night before. Like he had seen something he liked and he wanted it very much.

“Can I help you?” I finally said in a voice that came out much more breathy than I would have liked.

He cleared his throat and shook his head slightly as if he was trying to empty it. “I was wondering if you would like to have breakfast with me. I was having a poor evening last night, and I squandered our first meeting,” he said. His voice rolled over me, the sensation of it like lying in a warm bath. It was smooth and cultured, warm and masculine. I had never heard a sound I liked more. He had a funny way of speaking, but maybe that was just how rich people talked. I wouldn’t know.

It took me a second to regain my wits. “I’m sorry, but I have no earthly clue who you are?” I told him once I had regained my ability to speak. I noticed for the first time what he was wearing. It was hardly past seven in the morning, and he was dressed like he was about to go to a meeting in a boardroom rather than a breakfast in his own home.

He smiled. It was the first time he had done so in my presence, and it somehow managed to transform his already perfect looks into something that resembled a miracle. Crazy cult leader or not, I was going to remember the moment I had seen him smile for the first time for the rest of my life.

“Ah, I see that the servants have been tight-lipped,” he said charmingly. “They are protective like that. My name is Hades, and I’m honored to have you here.”

“You’re the leader of the cult?” I blurted out, still hiding behind the door.

He looked at me quizzically for a moment before bursting into laughter. “That’s quite clever,” he said. His laugh did something funny to my insides. “I guess that story makes sense in this case,” he said. “But no, Elena. This is not a cult compound, and I am not a cult leader,” he said, still smiling. The way he said my name made me hot all over.

My cheeks flushed. I had no other ideas for why I would be here. Did my mother owe someone money? Was my brother being held hostage somewhere and this was the payment? I needed to ask about a million more questions, but I thought it might be best to get dressed first.

“Just give me a moment,” I said, closing the door before he could answer. I hurried to the closet, cursing again when I remembered the lack of jeans. Thinking of how dressed up he had been, I grabbed a sundress that managed to fit me better than any other piece of clothing had before. I hurried into the bathroom and began brushing my hair.

I looked dreadful, like I hadn’t slept in days. My eyes were still swollen from all the crying that I had been doing. I opened a drawer and saw it was full of makeup products, all colors that seemed like they would suit me. I began to put some mascara on before I stopped. Why in the world was I trying to impress this person who was essentially my kidnapper? I walked out of my bedroom without putting on any more makeup.

When I saw him waiting in the hallway, there was a sense of familiarity about him that I couldn’t shake, and when we touched as I wrapped my arm around his proffered arm, it almost felt like our souls were connecting. It was romantic nonsense, but the guy did something to me.

Maybe Stockholm syndrome was already setting in. I’d read books about that.

He didn’t say anything while we walked down to the dining hall, and I didn’t have any words either. The silence was awkward…and lonely. Seeing the ginormous table with two place settings in the equally ginormous room was also lonely.

Hades pulled out my chair, and I sat down, thinking that the movies always made this look less awkward. Was I supposed to just hover above the seat so it was easier for him to push the chair in? Or was I supposed to sit down and just let him push my whole weight and the chair towards the table.

I tried to do the hover thing and it was indeed as awkward as you could imagine. Thankfully, my captor was at least polite and he didn’t say anything. He didn’t even have the ghost of a smile when he sat down.

Impressive.

We both sat there quietly. He seemed just as lost for words as I was.

“So… want to tell me why I’m here?”

He grimaced as if my question was painful. “How about we just get to know each other right now and I’ll explain everything afterwards?”

Hades looked vulnerable at that moment. Like he was just as terrified and exhausted about this whole experience as I was. Something in my heart strangely loosened at the sight. It somehow made me feel safer.

A male servant I hadn’t seen before stepped out of the same doorway as the women had last night and made a deep bow. “Any special requests, my Lord?” he asked. I watched him fascinated at his devotion, of the devotion of everyone I’d encountered in this place. They were here to please, here to serve. Their world revolved around Hades.

How odd.

“Just the usual,” Hades said at the same time as “french toast” flew out of my mouth.

The servant stood straight, his lips twitching with amusement. “As you wish,” he said before briskly leaving the room.

Hades was watching me intensely when I looked at him again. “What?”

He shook his head as if knocking himself out of a trance. “Nothing. Tell me about yourself. I’m finding myself suddenly desperate to know everything about you,” he answered, shocking me and sending nervous butterflies scattering all over my skin. It was unnerving to have his attention like this. No one had ever stared at me like I held all the secrets of the universe inside my heart. He was going to be very disappointed when he saw inside of me and realized there was nothing there.

“I’m from a small town in Virginia. It’s a tourist town, nothing too special about it and the same people have lived there forever. My mom raised me and my brother by herself. She’s the greatest,” I added softly.

“You miss her,” he stated quietly.

I thought of my last image of her, her blood drenched clothes and skin, the pain on her face. “I’m here because of her. Something was punishing her until I agreed to come. I would do anything for her.”

He was studying me again. “You really mean that, don’t you?”

“That I love my mother?”

Hades nodded. “That you would do anything for her.”

“Isn’t that what anyone would do for the ones they loved?” I asked, not studying him just as intensely.

“I once thought that,” he answered. Powerful grief crushed his features then, so tangible and all-consuming that I felt it inside of me, just as I had last night. I wanted to ask him about that, if it had been him wailing like the sins of the world were clawing at him. But it felt too personal.

Hades cleared his throat just as the servant appeared again with a cloth covered cart that he wheeled towards the table. Even with the cloth covering the contents of the tray, I could tell it was going to be good. The smells were heavenly. One thing I couldn’t complain about this place was the food. It was off the charts.

The servant removed the cloth and began to take silver lids off of dishes loaded with food. He hadn’t just brought out french toast. He’d also made biscuits and gravy, fluffy eggs, pancakes, a gorgeous fruit plate, cinnamon rolls as big as my head, and what looked like a million other things. I’m sure my eyes looked the size of my head as I gazed from the cart to Hades. Hopefully he had a massive appetite. Otherwise there was going to be a lot of food wasted. I had a feeling that “the master” wasn’t served leftovers.

Hades looked intimidated by the food as well. As morose as he was, I could see him only allowing himself stale crust and sips of water to atone for whatever pain he was holding inside over his lost love.

My insides curled over the thought of that. Stockholm syndrome for sure.

“I’ve got your usual here,” the servant said to Hades, lifting up a tray to show a bowl of austere, plain oatmeal. There were even lumps in it for good measure.

“I’ll try what you brought,” said Hades, making the servant look at him in shock.

This place was really weird.

I started spooning food onto my plate. I was probably supposed to wait for Hades to eat first or something archaic like that, but I was starving.

My actions got the servant moving and he started pushing plates onto the table as fast as he could.

I cut a piece of the french toast and popped it into my mouth, moaning ridiculously when I realized it was stuffed with freaking nutella and quite possibly the best thing I’d ever tasted. Hope they had an elevator in this place because pretty soon I wasn’t going to be able to get up the stairs if they fed me like this all the time.

When I opened my eyes from nearly having an orgasm at the taste of my breakfast, Hades was frozen in his seat, staring at me, heat in his gaze and confusion on his face.

I blushed a thousand shades of red and swallowed awkwardly. “The food is really good here,” I told him. “Try it.”

He picked up his fork and knife and hesitantly cut into the french toast on his plate, like he was afraid it was going to come alive and jump at him. I watched as he popped a piece in his mouth, the act sensual and smooth and doing something to my insides.

Who knew watching someone eat could be so…

Delicious.

He didn’t moan but he did continue to eat, this bite much faster as if someone was going to take it away from him.

“Tell me more about where you’re from,” he ordered right before he seductively licked a speck of Nutella from his bottom lip.

I was entranced as I watched his tongue dart off his perfectly, plump…

Wow girl. Get yourself together.

I cleared my throat, I’m sure blushing again, and then began to talk in between bites.

I told him stories of my family. About my mom taking me to libraries as a child every Saturday. She would sit there patiently and wait as I picked out books for an hour, even though she had a day of work ahead of her. I told him of my brother beating up this kid at school that had made fun of the patch on my jeans. He’d been suspended for a week from school, but my mom had never said anything. I told him of the garden we’d tended in the backyard every spring and summer, of the tree where I read on warm afternoons, of the creek that my brother and I would play in. My stories came out to this stranger and I was overwhelmed when I finally took a breath and realized all the word vomit I’d just given this person…my kidnapper.

Hades looked…out of it. Like he’d been caught in a trance, or a spell. I didn’t even know this man and I knew that whatever was happening in his head was not usual for him. His food lay forgotten in front of him. Mine had been deserted at some point as well. There was a warmth in his gaze as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing in front of him.

He was giving me a lot of firsts. Because I hadn’t seen that look directed at me ever either.

I laughed nervously and he leaned towards me. I shifted in my chair, a strange feeling in my gut. I had to actively prevent myself from leaning towards him as well.

It couldn’t be possible, but it felt like at that moment the temperature in the room dropped at least ten degrees. And a flowery, mouth-watering perfume that stirred up memories of springtime and rosebuds masked the scent of food. I shivered and looked around the room, confused and wondering if a window had been opened, or if someone new had just walked into the room. I would need to ask them about their perfume if so, it was incredible.

But there was no one there. It was just me and him.

When I turned to ask Hades if he’d felt the chill enter the room as well, words left me. Gone was the interest, the light…the wonder that he’d shown only moments before. His face was a blank canvas and he was stiff. I wasn’t sure what had happened but when he stood up so quickly that his chair almost fell over, I sprung up too.

“Let’s walk around the grounds,” he said too formally, sounding more like an eighteenth-century lord than a man in the twenty-first century. For a second there, I’d almost forgotten he was just a stranger. There had been something…more. Whatever that was, it was long gone now.

He didn’t offer me an elbow this time, instead he strided ahead of me as if he couldn’t wait to get away. I meekly followed after him, wondering what I’d said.

Something made me look back towards the dining table as I reached the doorway of the room that led back into the massive hallway. I could’ve sworn I saw a shadow on the floor of a woman stepping just out of view on the far side of the room.

I could’ve sworn I heard the sound of her tinkling laughter too.

HADES DIDN’T SAY anything until we made it outside of the mansion… castle…whatever it was. He didn’t even make sure I was following him. It was like he was just desperate to get out of there. I wanted to ask him about the shadow, about the laughter, about the hair. But it felt too crazy to voice out loud. Of course, everything about this situation felt crazy so maybe it wouldn’t be a big deal.

Thoughts left me when we turned a corner and I found myself in a garden that looked straight from the Garden of Eden. Despite the fact that summer had faded into fall, there were still vibrant blooms everywhere. I didn’t even recognize many of the flowers and my mom had spent hours looking through garden books with me in preparation for creating ours every year. There was a small brook winding its way here and there. Small wooden bridges went over the water when it collided with the golden cobblestone pathway I was walking on. The air was filled with the collision of fragrant fruit trees and flowers. I took a deep breath, savoring the beauty until I realized something strange. I looked behind me and saw that the sky behind me, right beyond the wall that I now realized surrounded this magical place, it was completely grey and cloudy. It was dark like it was about to storm and there had been a shiver in the wind.

Here, in this garden, the sun was shining down, the sky a perfect robin egg blue color.

Just over the garden.

What was this place?

Studying my surroundings even more intently I noted there were statues of various gods and goddesses that I didn’t know the name of situated here and there, lending further credence to my idea that this was a cult obsessed with Greek and Roman mythology. Hades turned just then and finally acknowledged my presence by gesturing for me to hurry and join him on the bench he’d just stopped at.

This guy was giving me whiplash. He gave me furtive glances as I sat down, turning his head away from me as soon as I’d given him my attention, like he couldn’t stand it. It was like he had a million questions on the tip of his tongue but was too afraid to ask. Frustration built inside of me as the minutes seemed to stretch into hours. Finally, I broke the silence, unable to take it any longer.

“What is this place and why am I here?” I said, peering at him closely. He sighed, and I could somehow feel his regret. There was something about him that seemed ancient in that moment.

“The reason why you’re here is a little hard to believe,” he answered, shifting on the cold stone of the bench. He sighed and his shoulders dropped. Hades seemed to come to a decision then, something he wasn’t happy about.

After a long moment where I felt like I was on the edge of a precipice, just dangling there, he finally turned and gave me his attention again, taking both of my hands in his. His touch shocked me and I curled my fingers in against his palms at first, trying to get rid of the sensation. Hades must have felt it too because he bit his lip and studied our clasped hands intently. I didn’t know why he was touching me, but I kind of wanted his touch to stay on me forever.

It somehow felt like the most intimate moment that I’d ever experienced in my life. There was something about him that drew me in, made me want to know everything about him, uncover all of his secrets…fall in love. Love? Where the hell did that come from?

“What if I told you that I was the god Hades, cursed to search for the reincarnation of my lost love?” he said, watching me closely.

I burst out laughing, I was so shocked. I had expected him to be crazy, but this was a level I hadn’t anticipated.

I tried to pull my hands away, but he held them tightly. “Greek gods,” he said earnestly. “They aren’t just legends. We’ve hidden ourselves throughout the years, but we’re still around,” he said. He changed topics abruptly. “What do you know about the legend of Hades and Persephone?” he asked.

I decided I should probably not tell him about what his servant had told me the night before. She hadn’t mentioned anything about reincarnation though. Didn’t that mean Persephone had died? For some reason I hadn’t had that impression. But I guess it would make sense. This guy was clearly in mourning, a few screws gone loose from the pain.

Having decided that the man I was sitting next to was in fact a crazy person that could attack me at any time, I decided to try to play along in order to appease him.

“Didn’t he steal her away from her mother by tricking her, and then somehow, he got her to eat half a pomegranate which forced her to spend half a year with him after that?” I asked, watching his face closely to make sure he wasn’t about to attack me. He grimaced.

“That is how the legend goes,” he said. “But that’s not how it was in reality. Persephone and I were in love,” he said softly, a wistful longing in his voice that made my heart ache. “So in love that the rest of the gods were jealous because they had never been loved as intensely as she loved me,” he said. “She became weak in this place though.” He gestured back to his home where the menacing clouds still blanketed the sky. “She was taken, and then killed by one of my brothers, her immortality leached out of her. I’ve never found out who did it, although I have my suspicions. The Fates felt sorry for my lost love, especially after they saw me go mad with grief. They made a promise to me that I would find love again.”

“Find love again with Persephone you mean, right? Isn’t that what reincarnation would mean?”

“I’d thought so,” he said with a frown, but something in his tone told me that he wasn’t feeling as certain about that anymore.

“But what does this have to do with me?” I asked.

He stared into my eyes, so intensely, it was like he was trying to see right into my soul. In that moment, I half wondered if he could. “Your family was picked by the Fates. It was their prophecy that Persephone would be reincarnated through your family line. No one has been a match yet.” This time, he let me yank my hands free from his grasp. This lunatic actually thought there was a chance I was the reincarnated version of his old dead girlfriend. It was enough that he considered himself some kind of god, but how did my family get picked to be the object of his hysteria?

“My name is Elena,” I said firmly. “I was born on January second in a tiny town in Virginia. I’ve lived at 101 Westchester Drive my entire life with my mother and my brother. I am not your reincarnated lost love. And I demand that you release me.”

He looked desperate after hearing my impassioned speech. He reached again for my hands, but I held them protectively against myself so he couldn’t touch me.

“Please, Elena, just listen. We are both victims of this insufferable curse. It’s been centuries since someone in your family was picked by the Fates to come here. Your ancestors…” He trailed off, staring into the distance as if he was looking into another life. “Well, it was quite clear they weren’t her from the very beginning. It was like that with all of them. They couldn’t do it,” he said.

“Do what?” I asked. An ache had developed in my chest from his story. It was like something he had said was calling me. It was probably the fact that I couldn’t help but feel sorry for anyone with a sad story, crazy or not.

“They could never love me like she did.”

I shook myself from the spell he had woven over me and began to back away slowly.

“I’m leaving,” I said. “You need to let me go.”

He shook his head sadly. “You won’t be able to. There’s nothing I can do that will allow you beyond these walls until the Fates are satisfied that you are not her.”

I turned and ran away.

Desperate to find the edge of the property, I ran around the side of the house towards the front to where I knew there was a road that at least led to the rest of civilization. But just as I was about to take a step onto the gravel road that had led us to the castle, it was as if I hit a glass wall. I bounced back so hard from the invisible barrier that I was thrown to the ground. Standing up, and refusing to believe that this was real, I once again charged towards the road.

The same thing happened.

This time I got a dozen scrapes from the rocky ground underneath me. A manic energy passed over me at that point. In a panic, I continued what I knew to be a useless effort. I began to run along the side of the property, periodically testing to see if I could take a step forward. Each time, I failed. Finally, after I’d fallen too many times to count, I lay on the ground, my body bruised and bleeding. I desperately tried to suck in air as tears streamed down my face.

He stepped in front of me and looked down at me. He looked at me in a mournful way as if my pain was causing him true agony.

Bending down, he carefully lifted me into his arms, cradling me as if I was the most precious thing he’d ever held. I was too tired to try and get away from him.

“I’ll prove to you that I am Hades, King of the Underworld,” he said. “Then we can at least spend the rest of the time you’re here being friendly to one another until the Fates decide to release us both.”

I passed out after that.

7

ELENA

I woke up in my bed. It took a moment for me to remember everything that happened. And when I did, I expected there to be a flash of pain as the memory of all my injuries came back to me.

Surprisingly, as I sat up, I felt better than ever. It was like I’d visited a rejuvenating spa instead of having my ass handed to me by a mystical force that I was still pretending didn’t exist.

There was a knock on the door, as if someone had been waiting outside so they could hear when I woke up. Not wanting to make the same mistake of opening the door practically naked, I hurriedly pulled on a silk robe that had appeared on the hook outside of my closet and walked to the main door.

I cracked it open.

It was him again.

“I’d like to answer more of your questions this morning if you let me,” he said. He looked just as beautiful as ever this morning. But beautiful didn’t seem like the right word. He was more man than I’d ever seen in one person. The perfect embodiment of everything you could ever wish for and love. There was no way to not feel attraction, even if he was crazy.

Remembering the last words he said to me the day before, I decided I would play nice this morning. I still suspected he was crazy, but my mother had always told me that it was easier to catch flies with honey than it was with vinegar, and cooperation seemed to be the honey I had to offer today.

“Just give me a moment,” I said, and I couldn’t help but love how his eyes lit up at my words with a fervent hope.

I put on a simple blue dress that reminded me of those eyes. It was a stupid thing to do, but my heart could be stupid sometimes. I opened the door, and he gave me an appreciative glance that made my cheeks blush.

“Let’s have breakfast, and then I’ll prove to you that I’m not crazy,” he said as he offered his arm again for me to take.

He tried to engage in small talk on our walk. But he was terrible at it, the small bit of ease we’d slid into yesterday completely gone now with his latest revelations. This man next to me actually believed he was a god. It was hard to fathom that kind of crazy.

His words certainly made me look twice at that mural though as we descended down the long and arduous stairway. I could almost imagine she was watching me. Her gaze seemed to follow me all the way down the stairs and a piece of me certainly felt like she’d found me wanting.

Growing up, reading had been my escape. I loved it. I’d always had an active imagination, wanting to believe there was more to the world than there actually was. I’d wanted to believe there was magic out there, that there was more than the provincial town I’d grown up in. But now faced with someone who was telling me that magic did indeed exist, well…I was having a really hard time believing that.

I’d always liked to play it safe. Maybe that’s why I’d always loved books.

I could live in them, instead of actually living.

My…wasn’t I getting introspective at this place.

We made it into the dining hall and inexplicable dread curled up in my gut. I thought of that shadow…the perfume…and the laughter. I shivered, wondering if I would ever feel comfortable in this room again.

“Are there any other tables in this place?” I asked suddenly as I watched Hades pull out my chair.

He looked at me confused. “Tables?”

“Yeah. Maybe a circular table or something?”

“A circular table?”

This wasn’t working. We were going to be here all day.

I grabbed the plates someone had already set out on the table, ignoring his befuddled expression, and I walked towards the door that I believed led to the kitchen. At least that’s where the food smells were coming from the last couple of days I’d been in here.

It was indeed the kitchen, one befitting a large restaurant. There was a whole staff of people flitting from stove, to oven, to counter, chopping and stirring what looked like a million different dishes. They all paused in shock when we entered the room, just staring at us like we were aliens from an invading planet.

Evidently Hades didn’t find himself in here very often. I waved at everyone sheepishly, looking around the room to see if it had what I was looking for. Darting a few steps to the left, I lucked out when a servant came into the room by another entrance and I saw what I was looking for through the swinging door.

There was a separate alcove in the next room with a circular table that looked like it would hold about five people instead of the fifty… or hundred people that the dining table could hold.

“Can we use that?” I asked the servants, pointing to the door where the table lay. None of them answered, they just continued to stare at us blankly.

Hades laughed and steered me through the door I’d pointed to, all the way to the circle table. I could hear the servants’ conversations picking up as we left, their sounds abruptly cut off as the door swung close.

We slid into the squishy bench seating that surrounded the table and I was all too aware that Hades had gotten in on the same side as me, and no matter how much I scooted around the table, he still seemed far too close.

The nook where we were sitting was surrounded on three sides by walls of glass. It looked out to the dreary, beautiful grounds of this place. I could see the walls of the garden Hades had taken me yesterday a ways back.

“Did you know this was here?” I asked, thinking this might be the best room in the whole house. There were definitely not enough uncovered windows in this place. The never-ending darkness felt suffocating. A person could go mad in a place like this.

I gave Hades a side glance after that thought, but he missed it. Hades was looking around the room thoughtfully.

“I guess it was just habit eating there. I knew this was here all along…but she…”

He trailed off and I could guess at what he didn’t say.

Persephone had wanted to eat in that monstrosity.

“I’m kind of confused about the timing of that whole thing,” I told him as a servant opened the door we’d just come through holding an array of dishes.

No one had asked what we wanted today. They were probably too much in shock by Hades deviating away from the usual. I was getting the sense that the man was a creature of habit.

The “god” was a creature of habit.

I mulled the word around in my head but couldn’t hold in my snort at how ridiculous it sounded, garnering questioning looks from Hades and the servant that I just ignored.

Unfortunately today there was none of the delicious french toast. Everything was quite a bit different. There were recognizable things like grapefruit, apple slices, and oranges, but there were also things like hard-boiled eggs and other dishes that I didn’t usually eat for breakfast.

“Would you like some eggs?” the servant asked, holding out the plate of hard-boiled eggs. “The chef does something to them that makes them better than any eggs that I’ve ever tasted,” he said with a smile. Moving to put one on my plate. I shook my head. “I’m allergic to hard-boiled eggs,” I said.

Hades’ eyes seemed to spark at my comment.

“How interesting. Are you allergic to all eggs?” he asked in a way that was supposed to sound nonchalant, but failed miserably.

“No. It’s a strange thing. It’s just hard-boiled eggs. And no one else in my family is allergic. I eat scrambled eggs almost every day,” I said with a laugh. I noticed that his hand was trembling. “Is everything all right? Are you sensitive about egg consumption?” I asked, laughing at the thought.

He recovered from whatever he had been thinking, and I watched as he schooled his face until it was perfectly devoid of any expression.

“Just curious,” he said. “But that does seem strange. What other allergies do you have?” he asked.

“I believe I’m allergic to pomegranate,” I said in jest.

He laughed, and we continued eating. He didn’t ask any more follow up questions, and the earlier tension disappeared.

“So timing, I don’t think I answered that question,” Hades remarked. “What were you wondering about.”

I nodded my head. “Well although this place could use some updates, it’s still highly modern considering you’re claiming you’ve lived here for a long time.”

“Thousands of years,” Hades supplied helpfully.

I gulped at that, unable to comprehend a thousand years. “Are you able to predict home trends or something?” I asked with a nervous laugh.

Hades chuckled and then snapped his fingers. Abruptly the room changed into something resembling a Greek temple. He snapped his fingers again and we were surrounded by what resembled the inside of a French chateau. Hades snapped again and we were in a log cabin.

My eyes got wider with every change until he finally took pity on my feeble human mind and brought the surroundings back to the state I was used to.

“Well, that’s certainly useful,” I choked out. I’d just seen magic. I mean what happened to my mother had certainly been magic as well, but my brain had been desperately trying to convince itself it was something else.

But what had just happened…I didn’t think I could deny that.

I’d become Dorothy, swept away by a man in an old tuxedo instead of a tornado, but one thing was for sure.

I was not in Virginia anymore.

“Everything here exists because I say it does. It’s an extension of me. All energy that I can manipulate at will.”

He flicked his hand and the food in front of us transformed. The grape I’d stabbed with my fork before he’d begun the magic show was transformed into a piece of chocolate. A servant entering the room was suddenly wearing a neon pink jumpsuit instead of the formal black and white shirt and slacks he’d been wearing before.

“I kind of feel like a cannibal then if this is just a part of you,” I tried to joke.

I’d never been funny though.

In all honesty, it did feel a little weird to be eating this food after his little revelation. But I soldiered on. The food was really freaking good.

He snorted, his mask dipping to showcase a smile brought on by my ridiculousness.

I found myself entranced again by just that little slip of a grin. It was again unsettling to feel that overwhelming desire to get another glimpse.

The servant cleared his throat then, interrupting me from my lust filled moment, and I realized he was still wearing the pink outfit that I was pretty sure I’d seen in a Britney Spears video. Maybe Hades was a secret Britney fan. I bet he could help out a lot with the #FreeBritney movement.

“Apologies, Agnes,” he murmured and in the next breath the servant was in his original clothes, scurrying from the room I’m sure in fear of what Hades would do next.

“This is a lot,” I murmured, unable to eat anything else, especially knowing Hades could now just change my food at any moment.

“It’s much easier to show than to tell, isn’t it?” Hades said sympathetically.

I nodded and took a breath, not believing what I was about to say. “So is this like…the Underworld?” I asked hesitantly, not sure I wanted to know the answer.

“A part of it,” he murmured distractedly, his gaze far off as he answered. I knew he wasn’t there with me in that moment. He was in a memory.

Was he with her?

My heart clenched at the thought.

“It’s time to go. The window for our trip today is a small one.” I blinked and we were both standing on the other side of the table.

And then I was falling to the ground.

“What the hell was that?” I all but screeched as I fell, feeling like I was going to throw up. His arms locked around me right before I hit the ground.

“Too much?” he asked, but it was hard to respond. Between the queasiness in my stomach to how close he was to me…I was all out of sorts.

“Just trust me,” he murmured, his gaze locked on mine.

It was a strange thing how much I wanted to trust the beautiful stranger holding me right now. And I knew, somehow right then and there, that whatever this thing was, would break me. Beautiful boys always did the most damage. And the creature holding me, he would have no other choice.

I perversely wanted to answer “always”, but somehow I managed to just say “okay.”

And maybe that was when the start of my downfall actually began.

8

ELENA

Cerberus strode through the door just then and whatever was happening was promptly broken. Hades let go of me like I was a snake, and I almost fell over again. I grabbed onto the table at the last second.

Jerk.

I tried to straighten up with some sort of dignity, realizing happily that my stomach had miraculously returned to its normal state. Whatever flash travel Mr. Greek God had just done…I didn’t want to do that again.

I smiled at Cerberus and gave him an anxious wave, perversely glad to see him. At least I wouldn’t be alone with Hades anymore. The morning had just started and it already felt like a million things had already happened.

He nodded respectfully to me and then turned his attention to Hades who was back to pretending that I didn’t exist.

“Everything is ready, Master,” he said in that beautiful accent of his. I would need to ask him someday if the whole British accent thing was something he’d developed over the years or he was somehow really from there. It made more sense to me that it would have been a Greek accent.

Or maybe Cerberus wasn’t even real. Maybe he was just Hades manifesting that crazy energy magic and Hades happened to like British accents.

I was afraid to ask.

“Ready,” Hades answered Cerberus.

My stomach was in knots again, and this time it wasn’t because I’d been magically flashed somewhere. What was he going to show me? Was this where he showed that he was actually a crazy psycho and I ended up in a dark hole with him wearing my face?

I mean it could happen!

Hades looked back at me to see if I was coming. Fear must have been written all over my face because his features softened for a half a second. He extended his hand and I hesitantly grabbed it, needing something to hold onto as I continued to face the unknown. I knew my hand was trembling in his grip.

“Relax,” he said softly. “Everything is going to be alright.”

Even as he said the words though, I knew it was a lie.

We walked down so many new hallways that I had no idea where we were or how to get back. My tour with Cerberus had obviously been very limited because this place seemed to have no end.

We finally stopped at a nondescript door at the end of another long hallway. Hades took an ancient-looking key out of his pocket and inserted it into the lock on the door. Cerberus stood quietly behind us.

“Never try to get in here without me present,” Hades ordered, his voice the most serious I’d heard it sound. I nodded, my anticipation and fear growing as I wondered what was going to be beyond the door.

He opened the door, and I gasped in amazement. The inside of the room…was a freaking cave. A cave that stretched on and on so far that I couldn’t see where it ended. Pulling me beside him, we took a step inside. The temperature immediately dropped…just as it would in a cave.

Despite the fact that I’d seen Hades use his power firsthand and despite the fact that I’d seen him manipulate his surroundings with just a twitch of his finger…my mind struggled to try and understand how this could be. The human part of me wanted to believe this was some kind of elaborate decoration. That he must’ve had some Hollywood set designer come and recreate a cave he had seen.

But even as I had that thought, I couldn’t help but notice how the room even felt like a cave. The air was damp and earthy smelling. The ground underneath my feet felt like stone and dirt. This was….

Surely it couldn’t be real?

I looked backwards, the urge to return back to the relative safety of the familiar riding at me. Cerberus was standing there at the door watching us, and then he slammed the door, ensconcing us in the darkness of the cave. There was no sign that the door even existed.

I shivered in fear. Hades must have mistaken it as me being cold though because he pulled a thick cloak out of nowhere and pulled it over me.

I might have swooned…just a little.

Or at least I would have swooned if this were a victorian romance, which it is definitely not.

“Don’t let go,” I whispered, fear leaking from my voice.

“Never,” he swore, and I hated that the promise felt like a lie.

As we walked deeper into the cave, it grew darker, the lights embedded in the walls of the cave initially, disappearing. Hades seemed to have no problem with the darkness however, he walked steadfastly forward like he had freaking night vision.

Along with the darkness came the very real feeling that we were being watched. At one point rocks clacked against each other from somewhere to our left, like they’d been kicked. I looked over and let out a small scream when a pair of glowing yellow eyes peered back at me.

“It’s just a nightmare,” Hades said smoothly, like that should be reassurance or something.

“A nightmare?” I gasped, gripping Hades hand even harder until I was sure that I was crushing it. I wasn’t going to take the risk of somehow getting separated from him and just being left here.

“They like the dark. They lie in wait here until they’re called to the surface when someone decides to let them in.”

“Let them in?”

“Whenever you have a nightmare, you’re letting that nightmare in. They can’t get in by themselves. If you think about it, nightmares always come from a fear you’ve had at some point that day or week. The fear expands in your subconscious and creates cracks that allow the nightmares in.”

Hades was decidedly a little too nonchalant about this.

“Are they part of your kingdom, your Underworld?” I asked as I somehow saw through the darkness a shadowed figure of a man cross the path in front of us just a few feet away. It paused for a second, it’s blood red gaze seeming to see all the way through me before it disappeared into the abyss.

My grip on Hades got even tighter.

“Everything that belongs in the dark is part of my kingdom,” Hades answered, almost morosely. “The nightmares, the spirits, the things that go bump in the night. They’re all here under my command.”

“If they’re under your command, why do you let the nightmares out?” I all but screeched as another pair of red eyes blinked slowly at me from way too close.

“Even nightmares need love,” Hades said with a dark chuckle.

I wasn’t amused.

“The nightmares feed on fear. Who am I to starve them to death when the humans are the ones that voluntarily feed them?” he said more seriously.

I think we had a different idea of what “voluntarily” meant, but I didn’t feel like it was a good idea to pick a fight with someone you were completely dependent on at that moment.

“Tell me a story,” I whispered. “Anything,” I said in desperation. The eyes seemed to be everywhere and the darkness and the fact that I couldn’t see anything but their eyes had my mind conjuring all sorts of monsters. I felt right on the edge of losing my mind even though I was all but wrapped around Hades.

Hades cleared his throat, like my request had caught him off guard. Despite all the servants everywhere in Hades’ mansion, something told me he spent a great deal of time since Persephone disappeared…alone.

“I was never a child,” he began abruptly. “I just existed one day, a grown god for all intents and purposes…at least physically. Emotionally, I was naive, like a child. Everything around me was new. I didn’t understand interactions and motivations, I didn’t understand anything really.”

I jumped when another dark specter, this one with what looked like wings trailing behind it, passed in front of us.

Hades continued walking unperturbed. But seriously, would the darkness ever end?

“One day I realized that something was different about myself. While my brothers and sisters lived for the light, thrived in it actually, I lived for the dark. My friends were the monsters, the shadows, the ones that were never wanted. It also didn’t take me too long to realize that just like my friends, I was unwanted as well. The day my father was killed was the best day of my life…until I met Persephone.”

My steps stuttered at that last sentence. But I tried to act as calm as possible. It felt like Hades was trying to scare me, to push me away so that I would run away.

I wanted to run away. But I wasn’t going to.

I remembered the story now, about Zeus, his brother, killing their father Cronus after he ate everyone…or tried to eat everyone. I was a little fuzzy about all the details, that class had been a while ago. But beyond Hades being cast as a sort of villain in most of those stories, there weren’t very many details on his backstory.

I realized that Hades was waiting for something, whether it was for me to run away screaming or not, I wasn’t sure, but I figured I should say something. It took a second, but it came to me.

“Then I guess we’re more similar than I thought,” I told him. “I was unwanted by my father as well. The night before he left for good I overheard him telling my mother he’d never wanted me…that I’d ruined everything by being born.”

I forgot the darkness for a moment as I thought about that night, about hearing them screaming at each other.

My brother had been at a sleepover with some friends from his soccer team so it was just me…and them, in the house. I’d crept down the stairs, skipping the stair a fourth of the way down that always creaked. I’d walked down the hallway and listened right outside the entranceway of the kitchen. My father had thrown something against the wall, whatever it was shattering into pieces while my mother quietly sobbed a few feet away.

“You got pregnant on purpose, you conniving bitch,” he’d growled at her. “You knew I was about to leave and you just couldn’t let me go.”

I curled up against the wall, holding the stuffed teddy bear that I’d brought down with me tightly to my body.

“I’m done,” he seethed.

“Don’t do that to her,” my mother had begged. “You may not have wanted her, but she’s yours. She needs you.”

“I don’t need either of you,” he’d answered before the back door had swung open and crashed closed.

That had been the last time I’d heard my father speak. I’d later learned that my brother was actually only my half brother and I had indeed been a mistake that my father had never wanted. At least my mother hadn’t felt that way.

“I’m sorry you went through that,” Hades said quietly and I startled back to the present.

“What?”

I felt him shrug next to me and I realized that we’d come to a stop in the darkness.

“You were projecting your thoughts. My power is stronger down here. I can pick up thoughts, wishes, desires…anything really. I was trying not to listen in but your thoughts were loud.”

I groaned and shivered at the same time, not liking this latest development. That memory was one of my lowest points, something I hadn’t even told my mother I’d ever heard. The last thing I wanted was Hades seeing my thoughts. I especially didn’t want him seeing how I was feeling about him.

He stiffened next to me and began pulling me forward briskly. “You’ll need to work on guarding your thoughts. Zeus and many of my brothers and sisters have that power and the last thing you want are those snakes seeing your thoughts and picking them apart. They’ll use what they find against you until they break you.”

Perfect. Another thing to look forward to. It had only been a few days, but I felt like I’d been on my guard for years, never getting a moment to relax. It didn’t look like that would be going away any time soon.

A light suddenly appeared in the distance, and I almost sobbed in relief at the sight. I wanted to run towards it, but I felt like that would be some kind of insult to Hades, who’d just admitted to me he preferred the darkness.

“I’m not offended,” he responded, and I winced realizing he’d just read my mind once again. There had to be some kind of way to block that.

He cleared his throat and I realized that he’d heard that too.

Hades did that thing again, the one where I blinked and we were somewhere we hadn’t been just a second before.

I swayed on my feet again but this time I only felt a little bit nauseous. He touched the side of my face briefly and any sickness disappeared. It was bright wherever he’d taken us, and I wondered why he hadn’t done that from the beginning. My thoughts dissipated though when I saw his face.

If I thought Hades was something before…now he was more.

There was no way now to miss the fact that he thrived in the darkness. His skin was glowing, like there was a light inside of him that was sparking him up from the inside. His eyes were no longer blue. They were silver, reminding me of starlight stretched out on a tapestry of darkness. There was a cruel, proud smirk on his mouth, like his transformation during our journey through the darkness went much further than skin deep. His presence seemed to fill up the air around me until all I could see, all I could breathe…was him.

“Stop looking at me like that,” he growled, an inhuman echo in his words.

“Like what?” I whispered, the words difficult to choke out.

“Like you want the monster as much as the god.”

“I don’t see a monster,” I breathed, as his thumb slid to my bottom lip and pushed against it, the tip of it slipping inside and sending my insides spiraling. He leaned forward, his breath adding to the shivers sparking across my skin.

“Then you aren’t looking close enough.”

He abruptly let me go and strode past me. My knees almost failed me. My chest was heaving, my breath hard to come by. My panties…yeah, they were damp.

It was only the myriad of sinister eyes watching me just beyond the pool of light I was standing in, and the shadowed figures standing just feet away, that brought me back to where I was. I turned and ran towards the being I was realizing was king of all those monsters.

9

ELENA

Now that I was a little less distracted by Hades’ transformation, I could see that the light was coming from a large lake stretched out before us that was giving off a ghastly green glow.

I took a step closer, my eyes straining to see what was floating throughout it, just beneath the surface of the strange neon green water. Hades hand shot out and stopped me from going any further.

“Careful,” he murmured, and I realized I had almost walked right into the water. “That’s what they want. And once they grab ahold of you, it would be difficult, even for me, to get you away.”

“They,” I whispered and then a cry slipped from my lips, because I realized what was floating in the lake. It was spirits. Millions and millions of them by the looks of it. They looked never-ending. The spirits seemed to be crying out in agony as they stared up at me. These weren’t the lovely spirits we’d been promised we would be in our Catholic mass. These were spirits in torment. Their hands seem to reach out to me beseechingly. I shivered and stumbled away.

I was officially freaked out.

“They feast on misery and would love to get someone like you in their midst,” Hades commented helpfully.

I had no response. I stared at the souls in fascination…and horror, wondering what they’d done to get this fate. My ideas about heaven and hell were rapidly disintegrating.

A dark shape appeared from across the lake. Squinting, I could just see the shoreline on the other side. The dark shape was moving closer and soon I could see that it was a large rowboat, one that could possibly sink at any moment judging by the state of it.

Please say there’s another boat. Please, I chanted silently.

“Breathe, Elena,” Hades said softly, touching my lower back in a whisper of a caress. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

For once I was glad he could read the panic coursing through my mind. I was going to need all the encouragement I could get if I had to get on this boat.

“Maybe you should tell me where we’re going now,” I told him as the boat pulled up to the shore.

“Wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise,” Hades smirked, and I cursed myself for what the simple movement of his lips did to my insides.

Hades turned his attention to the boat and that’s when I saw Charon. Except he wasn’t the same Charon I’d met before. He looked even more skeletal in the dim, green lighting. More demon than human. Instead of the suit he had been wearing before, he was dressed in a simple black shift. He looked like I had always imagined the mythical Charon had looked in the story books.

“Master,” he said to Hades. Hades just nodded at him and stepped into the boat, helping me to step inside of it afterwards. Hades pulled out a blade and sliced his skin, black blood dripped onto the worn wooden floorboards of the boat. I watched in amazement as Hades skin pulled together rapidly at the same time as the blood soaked into the wood and disappeared.

“Payment,” Hades murmured in answer to my questioning stare.

“I guess those myths about the gold coins held some truth,” I said under my breath as the boat began to move across the water, propelled by Charon’s slow and steady rowing.

I hugged myself tightly, wishing that Hades wasn’t sitting a row away. I didn’t know where to look. Between Charon, the glowing water, and Hades himself, my mind was a mess.

A particularly gruesome looking spirit grabbed my attention just beyond the edge of the boat.

“Elena,” I heard Hades’ panicked voice say before a pair of strong arms wrapped around me.

Belatedly I realized that I had one foot on the edge of the boat, like I was about to dive in. There was a group of spirits gathered right in front of where I would have jumped from, like they were waiting for me. I shivered as I watched them soundlessly gnash their teeth in frustration that Hades had stopped me from becoming dinner.

“Don’t touch them,” he chastised, needlessly, his grip momentarily tightening on me almost desperately before he reluctantly let me go.

Evidently it was dangerous to even look at the spirits. I kept my eyes averted from that point forward. I could feel Hades’ eyes upon me, watching me closely for my reaction.

We continued to float across the haunting green body of water. It was a strange thing, all you could hear was the sound of the water splashing against the oars, yet I’d never heard silence so loud. The pain and agony of the spirits was tangible, so overwhelming you could feel it crushing your shoulders.

“Do they stay like this forever?” I finally asked, taking a deep breath and trying to shake off the heavy sorrow I was experiencing. I’d always been a rather empathetic person and right now that trait was firing on all cylinders.

Hades cast a disdainful look down at the writhing spirits, obviously not feeling the same way I was.

Maybe he was just used to it.

“Yes,” he finally said succinctly before casting his gaze on me. “You feel sorry for them,” he said incredulously.

I shrugged, trying to stop myself from crying as I continued to be crushed by the spirit’s despair.

Hades suddenly grabbed at one of the spirits in the water and held it a few inches above the surface. The shrill screams of the spirit were no longer silent, they filled the air, echoing off the cave’s walls until I felt like I was going to go mad.

“This man liked to sneak into his niece’s room at night every time he visited his brother.” He dropped the spirit into the water, the spirit’s cries abruptly cutting off. Hades grabbed another one.

“This one murdered fifteen women before she was caught. She liked to keep their teeth as souvenirs.” Again the spirit was dropped.

“This man conned his mother out of every penny she had and left her homeless. She didn’t survive.” Splash. He went to grab another one, but I held up my hands beseechingly, feeling like I was going to be sick.

“Please,” I whispered.

Hades pulled a rag out of thin air and dried his hand off.

“Still feeling sorry for these spirits?” he drawled.

I didn’t bother answering him, I just resolutely stared at the shoreline while I tried to get control of my shaking body.

It seemed like forever before we reached the other end of the lake. Charon got out first, followed by Hades, who helped me onto the shoreline. I was still mad at him for the stunt he’d pulled on the lake, but I had to be grateful when my knees buckled briefly under me, and Hades deftly caught me.

“Easy there. Just relax,” he crooned at me soothingly.

I wanted to stick out my tongue at him or something equally immature, but I was still feeling deeply unsettled by everything I’d seen so far on this journey. I didn’t know where we were going, but we needed to get there…fast.

Once I’d gotten control of my legs, Hades waved a hand in front of a gap in the cave’s wall and I gasped when it extended, revealing a tunnel that was thankfully lit. We set off again through it, until we reached a room at the very end that had me gasping in amazement. That seemed to be my overall reaction to everything on this little expedition.

The room looked like it was made of millions of sparkling lavender crystals, like we’d found ourselves in the middle of a giant geode. It was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen…besides Hades.

“I was about to be jealous of the way you were looking at the room until that thought,” Hades purred.

I scoffed but couldn’t help blush again despite how annoyed I was with him. The Hades of the mansion had thus far been morose, self-hating, cold… This Hades? This Hades was nothing like him. I wasn’t sure I could handle this version of him when the other one did so much to me already.

I cleared my throat and gazed around the room, trying to pretend I hadn’t heard him and he couldn’t read my mind at that very moment.

It was actually pretty easy to distract myself in the midst of such beauty. I jumped when a stone structure appeared in the middle of the room. A closer look at it revealed that it resembled a marble birdbath. Hades suddenly pulled me towards it until we were staring down into a cloudy pool of water inside the large bowl on top.

“The pool of the Fates. They let me borrow it to watch over my domain,” he explained.

“The Fates? Like the ones responsible for me being here?” I asked, anger burning at my veins.

I didn’t admit to myself that the anger wasn’t quite as strong as it had been just a few days before.

I wasn’t listening to whatever Hades said in response because flashes of images began to appear in the water inside the birdbath-looking thing. There was what looked like a golden field that happy couples were running across holding hands. Another image showed people being burned alive. I could hear their screams of agony, and it made my stomach turn. Still another image showed a scene that resembled what I imagined the Garden of Eden would have looked like. Just the glimpse of it made my heart pang in my chest. I yearned for that place, a reaction that startled me. Through all the images, Hades watched me closely.

“You recognize that?” he asked, and again, the way he asked the question felt like he was asking something of great importance to him.

“You look like I should recognize this,” I responded. I continued to stare at the image that strangely felt like home to me. “It looks like somewhere I’ve been before,” I continued softly.

He made a pained sound that made me look at him sharply.

“Are you okay?” I asked, staring at his tortured face. Hades simply nodded and pulled us both away from the pool. I followed him with reluctance, not wanting to leave the image of the garden I had seen.

He walked us to the other side of the room and waved his hand along the wall. A hidden doorway opened up showcasing a room that looked like the inside of an elevator. Hades led us both inside.

Hades snapped his fingers and the crystal room disappeared as the hidden doorway closed. I gasped as the room started to move. Evidently it was an elevator.

“Can you tell me where we’re going yet?” I asked, gritting my teeth and holding onto the wall. I’d never been a fan of those rides at amusement parks where you shot up in the sky and then was dropped. This felt exactly like that and I was expecting the floor to fall out at any minute.

Hades smiled at me softly. “I’m trying to give you all the proof that you need to know that this is real and not just some kind of trick. I’m taking you to Mount Olympus,” he said. My mouth hung open in shock.

The elevator seemed to move up forever. I had once been on an elevator in the Sears Tower. It took you to the top where the lookout was. There had been a screen in the elevator that showed you how high you were compared to national and world landmarks. I’d always been afraid of heights, and seeing how high we were freaked me out at the time. I had a feeling that I would’ve been even more scared if I could see how high we were traveling right now.

At last, the elevator stopped, and my stomach returned back to its normal place in my body. Hades looked like it hadn’t affected him, and as the doors opened, he simply smoothed back a piece of his hair that had fallen in his face and took my hand again. I hated that my heart seemed to leap whenever he touched me, and that his hand was beginning to feel familiar and almost necessary to me in such a short time.

My trail of thoughts disappeared when I actually took notice of the room we were walking into. It was the size of a ballroom, the most enormous ballroom on earth. It looked like it could fit hundreds and hundreds of people. The walls and floor were golden, and the light in the room was almost blinding, despite the fact that I couldn’t see any light fixtures anywhere. There were beautiful people in various poses around the room. Some were lying on lounges while what looked like servants brought them things. A group of perfectly built men were wrestling in one of the corners. There was a fierce looking woman that evoked images of an Amazonian shooting arrows at a target in the far corner of the room. My eyes flitted back and forth, not knowing where to look since there was so much to see. But through it all, I felt Hades’ eyes on me.

A centaur raced a unicorn across the ballroom as a tree just a few feet away from us turned into a sparkling silver clad woman with a pop. Everything was unfamiliar and strange. I felt like Alice down the rabbit hole. Except I wondered if Alice had felt like prey the entire time she’d made her way through Wonderland.

Because that’s what I felt like right now. Prey. Despite everything going on and the myriad of people that seemed much more interesting than I could ever be, I could feel their gazes…so many of them I wanted to hide. I’d never done well with attention. Especially with attention that felt…menacing.

“Stay by me,” I all but pled to Hades.

His grip tightened on my hand. “Of course,” he said. “But you have nothing to fear. I would never let anything happen to you.”

A flash of gold caught my attention…and held it. There was a man a few feet away, or I guess it was a god judging by the being’s perfection. He was the polar opposite of Hades in every aspect. Where Hades reminded me of the nighttime sky and made you want to discover the secrets he held within the depth of his sparkling indigo eyes, this man was the sun. As I stared at him I wanted his light, I wanted his warmth…I wanted his attention. Everything about him was golden…his skin, his hair. Everything. Well almost everything. He glanced over in our direction and his eyes captured me and held me prisoner. They were a light blue color, almost crystalline, like I was staring into a clear pool of water. They had a tint of blue, like a perfect summer sky. I’d never seen anything like them.

I hadn’t been able to see very much of Hades’ body, but from what I could tell from the way his clothes fit, both of these men were built the same. They looked like their bodies had been carved by Michelangelo himself. And just like Hades, this man was watching me intensely.

I watched as a gorgeous woman clothed in a sparkling violet dress hung on his arm while he talked with a few other males. Something flickered around in my stomach, something that felt an awful lot like jealousy. I needed to get a hold of myself.

“Did you ever live here?” I asked Hades, looking up at him to distract myself from the golden god. It worked. It was like looking from the sun to the moon, both were equally beautiful. Both were equally dangerous.

“Once upon a time,” he said, his gaze flashing as a rainbow made up of what looked like real jewels suddenly sparked across the stories tall ceiling. “It feels so long ago it could almost be a dream.”

I realized, staring at him, that you could just tell he didn’t belong here. Hades’ beauty was cold, like being enveloped by a thick fog in an autumn’s evening. He reminded me of the quiet, maybe just a piano playing half-heartedly somewhere nearby. This place was loud, and bright, and overwhelming, like how I’d imagine Spring Break in Florida would have been if I’d ever gotten to go.

I personally preferred something right in between the two.

“Hades,” a female said softly nearby, catching both of our attention.

I felt threatened. That’s how I would best describe the myriad of emotions in my chest as I watched the ethereal female approach us, her gaze locked on his face like he held the key to everything she’d ever desired in life. Imagine the most beautiful woman your mind could comprehend, the world’s most famous supermodel, and then multiply the beauty times a million. Then you would maybe be a little closer in picturing the perfect blonde with emerald eyes standing in front of us right now.

“Aphrodite,” Hades said gently…perhaps even happily.

Ignoring the fact that this female was evidently the goddess who every woman on earth had been measured up to at one point in time, I was most threatened because this Aphrodite character was clearly, and desperately, in love with Hades.

Which should have meant nothing to me, except for the fact that I was starting to feel something for the complicated, dark god standing next to me. I was in denial about it. But it was still there.

“It’s been awhile,” she told him, her voice like the sound of a bell chiming in the wind.

“Aphrodite,” he said again with a sigh, and I stiffened even more because there was so much there in the way he said her name. So much history. So much pain. Maybe even so much love.

What about Persephone? What about the other girls? It sure as hell didn’t sound like he’d just been pining away for his lost love, not when this Aphrodite chick was around.

“I need to speak to you,” she told him desperately, her hands clasped in front of her beseechingly.

Hades hesitated, giving me a polite, questioning glance, even as his body language was screaming that he wanted to talk to the goddess. I tried to be cool about it and shrug it off with a smile as he walked away beside her, but he’d just promised to stay by me. And yet here I was, surrounded by strangers…powerful strangers.

“I wondered how long it would take for her to get him alone,” said a deep voice, the sound of it sending a pulse between my thighs.

I looked to my left to see the golden dreamboat standing there. I lost my ability to speak for a moment because up close he was even…more. He stared at me amused as my gaze danced across his features, unsure of where I wanted to focus on more. Everywhere was equally perfect.

Finally what he’d said sunk in, not that his words came as a surprise. A woman who’d been dumped was easy to spot, even for someone with basically no dating experience at all.

“I’d guessed there was history there.”

“Enough to fill a thousand of your history books, little human,” he said smugly.

My stomach curled up even more. I needed to get out of here. I believed in gods, the goal was achieved. Now it was time to leave.

I ignored the pretty boy and looked behind me where I’d thought we’d come in from…except there was nothing but a smooth wall where I’d swore the doors to the elevator had been. A smooth wall and a god decked out in full armor sliding in and out of the silver tree girl I’d noticed before.

I quickly averted my eyes. But where I looked next wasn’t much better. At that moment the Amazonian-looking woman I’d spotted before fired a shot at another handsome male. I gasped in amazement as I saw the arrow disappear in a cloud of smoke right before it would’ve hit him square in the chest.

“Is there a way out of here?” I asked the golden stranger, searching around for Hades and not seeing him anywhere. My frustration and anger grew.

“I have to say, I’m not sure whether to be offended or turned on at how quickly you went from eye-fucking me to wanting to get away,” he answered with a ridiculously sexy eyebrow raise.

“It’s not you. I just get the feeling that this place doesn’t see very many humans,” I hesitated a second. “It doesn’t feel safe.”

“That’s because it isn’t,” he whispered in my ear, all of a sudden standing directly behind me. “But unlike your morose companion, I’m going to make sure you stay alive on your little adventure.”

“Stay alive?” I squeaked as he began to steer me forward.

He hummed non-committedly as every being we passed tried to get his attention as he continued to push me towards where a long golden table had appeared, one that was at least ten times the length of the table in Hades’ mansion.

When we got to the table, he pulled out a chair and gestured for me to sit down. I clumsily tried the hover approach on the seat and almost fell into the table when he smoothly pushed the chair in.

His responding laugh sent goosebumps trailing lazily down my spine.

He lounged in a seat next to me. I said lounge because I’d never seen someone look so effortlessly cool…so at ease in their own skin, as this striking creature.

“I’m Elena,” I said, holding out my hand to him.

He studied my hand for a moment and I wondered if hand shaking wasn’t something they did up here in Mount Olympus. “Elena,” he murmured before finally taking my hand, his touch rushing over me until it felt like all my blood was focused right there, just on the skin he was touching. His full, pouty lips brushed against my skin and I stared at them entranced, suddenly wishing he’d put them on other parts of my body.

“You’ll have to forgive everyone for staring. It’s not often we get guests. Especially ones as pretty as you,” he purred. I fought the blush heating my cheeks and turned my head to stare at the floor. I had no idea how to respond to a compliment, even one as cliche as that.

Taking my chin in hand, he brought my eyes back to his, a smile on his beautiful lips. “Don’t look away from me. I like what I see; a strong, independent woman.” His voice was deep, a warm caramel that soothed my anxious spine.

I scoffed. “You know nothing about me.”

His face sombered and I immediately missed the warmth of his grin. “I can tell enough by the fact that you were brave enough to come here. That you stayed once you got here and realized exactly where you were.”

I wasn’t about to tell him how much I wanted to run away the second I’d gotten here. The compliment felt too good. I was pathetic, starved for affection, that would always have issues with men because of my deep-rooted daddy issues. At least that’s what the therapist had basically told me as a child when my mother had taken me after my dad left.

I was kind of seeing the therapist’s point at the moment, because there had to be something wrong with me with what I was feeling.

“Zeus,” Hades responded coldly, suddenly appearing right behind my chair. Aphrodite was hovering right behind him, her gaze locked on me menacingly. I pulled my hand from Zeus’s. Wondering why I felt like I’d been caught doing something wrong when Hades was the one that had disappeared with a woman.

The name Hades had just said hit me right then…my eyes widened in alarm. This was Zeus. Like the Zeus that basically ruled everyone?

All of this was way over my head.

“I was just entertaining your charming, little pet” Zeus said, any hint of the easy-going, almost sweet male gone. I stiffened in my seat, hating the mocking way he’d said it.

“I would say I appreciate that, but I would be lying,” Hades drawled.

“I have to say, the Fates aimed high with this one,” Zeus said, lazily dragging his gaze down my body. Despite the insult in his voice, I found my nipples pebbling, my chest rising…my skin heating up. “Much prettier than the others,” Zeus said flippantly. “What do you think your chances are with this one?” he asked as if he was discussing the weather and not the fact that he was talking about a situation that would only bring heartbreak for the two people involved.

“That’s enough,” Hades hissed, and the lust-ridden high that was enveloping me just disappeared. Zeus had been using magic on me.

I didn’t know why that was so disappointing to me.

“I’ll leave you all to it,” said Zeus, sliding out of his seat. “Three’s a bit of a crowd. Don’t you think, little human?”

The wood right behind my head cracked and I swung around, shocked to see that Hades had ripped the top of the chair right off.

Zeus laughed as he stood straight up, the sound of it echoing around the enormous room, garnering a look from every being there. He was an inch or two taller than Hades, at least six four or five I would guess. They both towered above me as I sat there and I wanted to stand up, just so I could feel a little less overwhelmed. Not that my 5’7 height was going to make much of a difference.

“Have fun with your pet, Hades,” said Zeus, before he gave me a sexy wink and trailed a finger down my throat. A growl ripped from Hades throat at the touch, only amusing Zeus more.

“Have a great time,” said Zeus with a small bow, gesturing around the room. “I’ve been told there’s something here for everyone.” A bit of melancholy slipped into his voice as he said that, though his face remained perfectly blank, giving the beautiful god a touch of mystery.

And then he was gone, disappearing to the other side of the room almost faster than I could blink, immediately surrounded by a throng of worshippers. Zeus reminded me of the popular kid in school that everyone wanted to be around. Those kids always had demons. I wondered what his were…

I also wondered why I felt a little empty with him gone, like he’d taken something I needed with him.

“I get the feeling that the two of you don’t really get along,” I murmured to Hades as he sat down next to me, my eyes still trained on Zeus. He’d been different when it was just the two of us, hadn’t he? Or was I just imagining that and looking for kindness in this confusing place.

“You would be correct in that assumption,” Hades said wryly, drawing my attention back to him. He was seated where Zeus had been sitting, and Aphrodite…she was right next to him on his other side. Lovely.

I should have been amazed when my plate was filled with an array of mouthwatering food, or when most of the other beautiful creatures in the room sat at the table. I should have enjoyed the harp music that began to play, filling the whole room with haunting, delicate sounds.

But all I felt was a little bit heartbroken.

Hades barely spared me a glance through the whole meal. It was like I didn’t exist. He hung on Aphrodite’s every word. I picked at my food, my gaze flicking from Hades to Zeus who had seated himself next to the female god I’d seen him with earlier a few feet down from us.

I tried to distract myself by trying to guess which god was which. Of course, I had no idea how to confirm any of my guesses so it was a pretty pointless game, but it was better than twiddling my thumbs.

“I’ll be right back,” Hades suddenly said next to me. I looked over to see he was already standing up. He strode away without a look back.

“It’s hard to watch him leave, isn’t it?” Aphrodite murmured in her musical voice. It was the first thing she’d spoken to me and I gulped as I stared at the beauty. “You should get used to it,” she continued, not caring that I hadn’t spoken yet. “If you don’t have any expectations, it won’t be quite as devastating.”

“What won’t be as devastating?” I spit out, hanging on her every word.

“When you can’t ever be Persephone, silly girl.” She leaned forward. “Or me.”

I stood up from my chair so fast that it almost tipped over. I barely saved it from falling to the floor, not that it stopped me from garnering what felt like a million judging…or knowing stares. I rushed to the left, not caring where I was going as long as it was away from her, and the others.

There was a hallway up ahead that I hadn’t noticed earlier and I all but sprinted to it, breathing a sigh of relief when it was somehow blissfully empty. I leaned against the wall, safe from the prying eyes at last. Giving myself a second to calm down, and cursing myself for letting that troll get to me, I looked around to see if there was anything that looked like it could offer me a way out, even while knowing it was a useless endeavor to think I’d ever be able to find my way back to Hades’ place. Imagining myself somehow getting over that green lake without him…just the thought gave me the heebie jeebies.

I felt him before I saw him. His gaze singed my frazzled nerves. He stood there in the hallway, the golden hue of the room unable to penetrate his silver, ethereal glow. My heart liked him much more than I wanted it to at the moment. It gallopped faster as if it was pressing me to get to him as fast as possible. He stood there casually, his stance wide, the line of his black shirt stretched across his shoulders as he stared at me. I could see the tension in his spine though. It hadn’t been long, but I was already coming to know him.

One heartbeat, two, and then in his imposing gait he moved across the gold marble floor to where I was.

“Elena,” he whispered, taking my hand and brushing his mouth across my cheek. My breath hitched. Hades looked at me through his long, thick, black lashes that would be the envy of every woman on earth.

He bit his bottom lip and I had the insane urge to replace his teeth with mine. It was such a human gesture on someone so godlike.

“You’re dangerous to hearts everywhere,” I told him, trying to hide the heartbreak I was feeling.

“What did she say to you?” he all but snarled, getting right to the point.

“Just reminded me of the situation I’ve found myself in. I wasn’t really expecting you to have more than one famous ex,” I answered, laughing self-deprecatingly. I stared up at the ceiling, feeling like if I looked at him he’d be able to see every single emotion in my suddenly fragile heart.

“You almost sound jealous,” he told me, a little too happily as he took a step closer to me. He pulled me forward and against every part of him. I was forced to look at him as he pressed me against the wall, intensity building in his eyes.

I rolled my eyes in return, my exhale coming out shaky and revealing.

“Aphrodite is an ex,” he began.

My stomach churned at his words despite the fact I’d already known that.

“From about three thousand years ago.”

“Three thousand years ago?” I gasped. “It seemed a bit more recent then that. She was practically frothing at the mouth to get close to you.”

“She can’t stand not having attention.”

“You said you wouldn’t leave me,” I told him softly, hating that I sounded so vulnerable.

Hades’ face fell. “I was trying to protect you. She has a tendency to lash out irrationally when she’s not getting her way.”

“You spent the entire dinner talking to her,” I reminded him, not able to get her words out of my head.

“She was asking me questions about you the whole time,” he answered gently, smoothing a piece of hair out of my face and tucking it softly behind my ear. “I was still trying to protect you.”

Why did such a simple move feel like so much more?

“So do you make a habit out of breaking the heart of every beautiful woman out there?” I asked, my question coming out breathlessly.

He chuckles and my insides jump at the sound. Why did even that have to be sexy?

“Lately there seems to be only one heart that I’m interested in,” he said in a gravelly voice, pressing up even closer to me.

His hands slid up to caress the sides of my breasts, and I suddenly envisioned their full weight falling into his palms, the feel of his skin next to mine… the way he would pull at my throbbing tips.

What the hell am I thinking?

I moan at the press of his hardening length against my stomach. I’m so out of my element here. I mean I’ve barely been kissed and here I am wanting to throw all my clothes off and let him do me in the hallway next to a room full of people. What is he doing to me?

He leaned down to nip my jaw, and I imagined what it would be like if his lips touched mine.

“Hades,” I whispered as his hands found my hair and tugged, pulling so my neck was bared to him.

“What are you doing to me, Elena?” he asked, the heat of his breath warming a path as he spoke into my skin. When he licked my collarbone, I about collapsed, instead wrapping my arms around his waist to hold myself up. His muscles contracted under my roaming fingers. I couldn’t believe we were doing this. It was like this place had cast a spell on me where I could do everything I’d been thinking but didn’t believe was possible.

For all I knew, I could be opening Pandora’s Box though. But my body wanted him and I did too. Maybe I could manage to stay on the right side of the line emotionally and delve into this physical connection that was so alive between us. I could do it right? I’d always admired the heroines in my books that could do it.

My lids closed and I anxiously laid my cheek to his chest, hoping that I wasn’t somehow misreading the situation. His racing heart pounded under my ear. For a moment I drowned in the sweet hint of sandalwood and cool mint that would be forever synonymous with him.

Hades tightened his hold and my breath exploded from my lungs as he lifted my chin up to find my eyes. He was so intense, jaw clenching as he almost growled, “You need to stay away from Zeus.”

“He was helping me after you left,” I told him innocently, conveniently pushing away the memory of what Zeus had made me feel. None of that was real anyway judging by the way he’d behaved later on.

Hades’ eyes darkened. “Zeus is never just helping. There’s always an ulterior motive.”

I opened my mouth and then closed it, wondering why I even felt the need to defend Zeus. I didn’t know him. I’m sure Hades had a perfectly good reason for hating his brother and I didn’t really feel like talking about it when he was standing this close to me.

“I don’t want to talk about him anymore,” I whispered to him as I got lost in those starkissed eyes of his for what felt like the hundredth time.

“I don’t want to talk at all,” Hades said gruffly.

He had my waist, holding it, sinking his fingers into the pad of flesh that curved into my ass. I gasped. He drew somehow closer as his gaze dropped to my lips, and I ran my tongue along their length, moistening them while they remained parted in wait. A delectable shiver ran down my spine as his mouth hovered over mine.

“Elena.” My murmured name was barely a breeze and I wondered if he’d even said it at all. His lips stayed close as he took in one of my answering breaths at a time. Long deep drags, as if I was his lifeline and without me he couldn’t survive. My knees weakened at the intensity and I leaned in to him.

And then it happened. His lips touched mine and then retreated, a light gift before he paused and did it again. I shivered, wondering how something so simple and sweet could do infinitely more than any kiss before it.

Goosebumps sprang up on my arms. I would have been embarrassed but my mind was clouded by this glimpse of perfection. Any ideas I had of what his kiss would feel like were wrong. There were secrets in the gentle press of his lips. Secrets that I was desperate to discover. One thing was not a secret though. He’d been longing for me. I could feel it in every touch. It felt…a little bit like I was reuniting with him, that I’d been missing him all this time and was finally coming home.

It felt like my soul was finding its other half and I wondered if it felt that way for him. Or if he was comparing our kiss to the girl that had really been his soulmate.

The thought felt crushing…destructive…terrifying.

Before I could spiral anymore thinking about that, we were crushed together. Hot and demanding, just like him. His erection ground against me and I melted into a pool of need. It was perfection. Feelings of inadequacy and insecurity drifted away until there are absolutely no thoughts of them anywhere.

I couldn’t even miss home, not when I was here wrapped in Hades’ arms, feeling like maybe I’d been a visitor in my whole life until this moment. I sucked his tongue, hungry for everything he was willing to offer. He groaned and his tightly bound control slipped as he licked and bit into my mouth, driving pleasure from the piercing sting until my cry rebounded against the walls. I was at his mercy. With his silent insistence, I accepted my fate and dove in. Wrapping my arms around his head, my fingers plunged into his hair and I pulled him closer, matching him need for need. We were stuck together in a frantic, pleading kiss.

Slow clapping from down the hallway had us ripping apart from each other. My heart was beating so hard I was afraid that it was going to come out of my chest. We stared at each other, the hunger in his gaze enveloping my body until I felt like I was going to combust, like something inside of me was trying to crawl out of my skin.

Languid footsteps coming towards us finally made Hades’ gaze rip away from me to look at whoever had dared to interrupt our little moment of heaven.

It was Zeus.

He looked amused…but also conflicted. His hands were clenched at his sides, belying a tension that his face just wasn’t showing. I realized that Zeus had worn a mask this entire gathering. What was he hiding underneath?

“Little human, I thought you would make him work harder,” he remarked, continuing to walk until he was just a few steps away. I was buffeted between the two of them, light against dark. It was intimidating and enthralling, and wreaked havoc on my already raging hormones.

I cleared my throat, uncomfortable, and at a loss for what to say.

“What do you need, asshole?” said Hades, turning me around in his arms so that my back was pressed against him. I could feel Hades still hot and heavy against me and I struggled to resist the temptation not to move.

“I could smell the lust from out there. The crowd is starting to get antsy. I don’t want any of the guests to start fornicating in the mashed potatoes,” responded Zeus casually. I got the feeling that was exactly what he would want actually. “And there’s the fact that your psycho ex is going to be on the warpath if she realizes where exactly the lust is coming from.”

His words finally sunk into my idiotic brain.

“Wait. They can smell us?” I screeched as I arched my head to look up at Hades. “What the hell is wrong with all of you?”

Hades’ mouth twitched and I knew he was trying to hold in a grin.

“The little mouse has teeth,” commented Zeus, drawing my attention back to him, which if I could have guessed…was his goal.

“Aren’t you supposed to be like a lightning god or something? I’m really not getting that vibe from you at all,” I told him snottily and the stupidly pretty grin on his face just grew.

The glittery goddess that had been all over Zeus for most of the night suddenly approached from down the hall. She eyed the three of us cooly. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” she cooed at him. She blinked a seductive gaze at Hades. “And Aphrodite’s been looking for you.” She laughed, the sound cold and beautiful. “The gang’s all back together. It can be just like old times.”

My cheeks flushed at the connotation and my traitorous brain couldn’t help but conjure images of what four of the most striking figures in existence would look like…

Nope, I wasn’t going there.

“Serenade the guests for me while I finish a bit more business,” said Zeus, hungrily devouring the female’s lips until she was a gasping and giggling mess.

It was a hot kiss, one that left me tangled inside and needy between my thighs.

But there was something off about it. Zeus kept a besotted look on his face until she was out of sight.

And that’s when my exhaustion kicked in.

“Can we leave?” I asked Hades, admiring the way you could tell I’d been running my hands through his hair. His lips were slightly swollen and his pupils were still a little blown out from our kiss. He looked delicious, the kind of beauty that made your heart throb once you realized it could never be yours.

He looked relieved at my request. “Of course..”

“Leaving so soon? The party’s just getting started,” said Zeus. He took another step towards us, as if he wanted to stop me from leaving.

“As fun as this has been, it’s time to get back,” Hades said, emphasizing the word “fun” rather sarcastically.

Zeus turned towards me, an intense look in his eyes as he lifted up a hand and softly stroked my face. I couldn’t help the tingles that went down my spine at his touch.

“I’ll be seeing you soon, little human,” Zeus said to me, and the way he said it sounded much more like an oath than an obligatory farewell. I heard Hades softly growl behind me, and then his hands gripped my waist even tighter, pulling me back towards him.

We left without another word, but I could feel Zeus’ stare follow us until we were safely enveloped back in the elevator that had once again just appeared in the wall.

“What’s the real Zeus like?” I asked tiredly as I leaned my head against his shoulder as the elevator rapidly made its way down.

“Miserable and morose like myself, I would imagine,” he responded softly, stroking my hair absentmindedly as if he was deep in thought and distracted.

“That would be interesting if it were true,” I answered. “It seems like one, big beautiful party up there.”

“Even a pretty cage is still a cage,” Hades responded. “We’re all in cages of one kind or another. Zeus just wears a better mask.”

“Your cage is built of sorrow, what’s his?”

“Envy,” answered Hades. And I knew by the finality of his tone, he wasn’t going to say more.

JUST LIKE BEFORE, the elevator ride seemed to take forever. I couldn’t hold in another enormous yawn.

“I can’t believe I’m so tired. I feel like I’ve run a marathon or something.”

Hades rubbed my shoulder comfortingly. “Being in Olympus around that much higher energy is exhausting for humans. We wouldn’t have been able to stay much longer, regardless if you had wanted to.”

“How long will it last?”

“You should be fine by tomorrow,” he said as the elevator doors opened. He had me step out first, and we both stopped abruptly as we looked around the room. The crystal room had been transformed. There were flowers covering every surface of the room. I couldn’t help but step closer to the walls, reaching out my hand to touch one of the vibrant pink petals of a flower that had caught my eye. The flower appeared to grow as soon as it made contact with my hand, and I quickly yanked my hand away in surprise.

“What in the world—” I said as I turned to Hades. The rest of my sentence was cut off with the way he was looking at me. There was a new gleam in his eye. It looked a lot like hope. And it made me nervous.

“Do your rooms regularly change like this?” I asked him, wanting to know what he was thinking. My question seemed to yank him out of whatever trance he had been in, and he was in front of me, holding me within seconds.

“Not usually,” he said, that same strange sparkle in his eye. All of a sudden, the room’s wonders faded from my mind as I realized that his lips were inching ever closer to mine.

Like before, the kiss was soft, like a quiet whisper. I couldn’t help but dig my hips into his, wanting more. My lips parted, encouraging him to explore my mouth with his tongue. Completely possessed with a blinding desire, I found myself lowered onto a velvet couch that had appeared out of nowhere. He braced himself above my body, claiming my mouth in a way that made me want him to claim every last inch of me. My chest expanded beneath him with heavy breaths, and we melted into one, my arms locked around his neck as if I had no intention of ever letting go. His fingers shaped to the fine contours of my skull as if I was the most precious and delicate thing that he’d ever touched.

I finally pulled away with a gasp as we lay there staring at each other. Never in my life had I reacted to someone like that. He stared at me in a possessive, hungry way that sent sparks shooting across my body. I wanted more…but at the same time, I was scared at how fast this had started moving. A few hours ago, I was thinking I was the victim of a kidnapping…and now I liked him.

“I think we should go back to the manor,” I told him in a breathy voice that I couldn’t hide.

He reluctantly nodded and pulled away from me. I finally took a second to realize that he had just made an elegant purple velvet couch appear out of thin air. “That’s quite the useful trick,” I told him with a shy grin.

He blushed, making him even more attractive to me. He pulled me up, brushing another soft kiss across my lips as if it was difficult for him to stay away.

The journey back was a blur as my exhaustion made me so tired that I couldn’t help but stumble as we walked.

Hades scooped me up into his arms. The rocking of the boat as we were once again funneled across the glowing green river and the feeling of his warm body heat enveloping me sent me into a dream filled sleep before we even made it across.

10

ELENA

I woke enveloped in a pair of arms. Once it hit me that someone was in bed with me, I yanked myself away with a small shriek.

“It’s just me,” came Hades’ voice, and I relaxed back into the bed, my heart still racing.

I rolled over. “Why are you in bed with me?” I asked him, not able to prevent myself from admiring how delicious he looked in his slightly sleep rumpled state. He’d taken off his shirt to sleep, and my eyes devoured the hard, perfect planes of his silvery chest that led to a set of abs that looked airbrushed, they were so flawless. My fingers itched to touch them.

“I didn’t want to stay away from you,” he admitted shyly. “I haven’t felt like this since…”

“Since Persephone,” I finished for him, an unbidden shock of jealousy coursing over me at the sound of her name.

“Yes,” he agreed.

“So now that I’m willing to believe you could possibly be an ancient mythological King of the Underworld, what are we doing today?” I asked him, settling back into the warmth of his arms.

“I thought we could do some experiments,” he said vaguely. I opened my mouth to ask him what he was talking about, but I was interrupted when he suddenly pulled me out of bed and kissed my lips with a perfunctory smacking sound. “After breakfast,” he said, setting me down. He disappeared out of the room before I could utter another word.

AFTER BREAKFAST, where we’d sat in the breakfast nook instead of the cold dining room, he led me out to the gardens once again. We walked until we got to a section that we hadn’t seen before. It was a patch about an acre wide that looked like it had been scorched. There was no sign of green or living vegetation anywhere.

“What happened here?” I asked.

“This used to be the prized section of Persephone’s garden,” he said softly, sadness leaking out of his words. “The day she died, a mysterious fire started, decimating it all.”

Again, I hated that we’re talking about her for some reason, but my heart ached for the sadness in his voice. Would anyone ever be able to replace her in his heart? Did the curse even have a chance of being broken?

He started to lead me around the perimeter, stealing glances at me as if he was waiting for something. When we’d walked all around it, he seemed to be even more depressed.

“Maybe we should go somewhere else,” I told him softly, not willing to watch him mourn another woman for another second. He nodded, and we walked around the rest of the gardens for another hour before he led me back to the manor. We barely spoke during the whole walk, and I felt frustrated and depressed when he led me back to my room. The rest of the day stretched before me and I was lonely just thinking about him leaving me by myself.

I gave him one last look before I went into my room and I was shocked by the pure pain on his face.

“What did I do?” I asked hopelessly.

He shook his head and turned to go. I grabbed his arm, desperation seizing me. It felt like if I allowed him to walk away right now, I’d never see him again.

“Hades,” I whispered as he shook me off.

He took a deep breath and then swirled around. I stumbled backwards from the force of his emotions. The pain was still there…but there was fury there too.

“You know what Hades means?” he asked bitterly, turning his face away from me as if he couldn’t bear to look at me. “It means “unseen.” Because I’ve been fucking unseen from the very beginning. She was the first one to really see me…to know me. It feels impossible to give that up.”

“I see you,” I whispered, reaching up to touch his face.

He yanked his head away as if my touch was painful.

“You see what I let you see. Your human heart sees my beautiful face. You see the mask I wear. You’ll never know me. And even if you knew me, you’d still never see me.”

I struggled to understand what he was saying. I opened my mouth to say something…anything. But he was gone.

I STAYED in my room all day. Darkness had fallen, not that it seemed that different from when the sun was up. There’d been a gloom around this place all day, like the sky was reflecting Hades’ mood. Someone had left a tray outside my door for lunch and dinner. I’d left it out there, too emotionally exhausted to eat.

I’d always thought I liked the quiet. But the piercing silence of this place, it was too much. I was homesick. Desperate to speak to my mother…to my brother. Even Dallin at this point. I’m sure my brother was freaking out. Whatever excuse my mother had come up with for why I was suddenly gone…forever, wouldn’t have gone over well.

I sighed and stared out the window, watching shadows move under the moonlight.

The temperature dropped then. A shiver passed over my skin. I wasn’t alone. I knew that much. Yet I was terrified to turn around and find out who was in the room with me. I slowly turned, holding my breath as I tried to be brave…but there was no one there. Or at least there was no one visible in the room.

I got off the window seat and walked slowly around the room. I threw open the closet door, fully expecting someone would be there lying in wait. But again, there was no one. There was no one under the bed or in the bathroom either.

Maybe this place was making me go mad. It was the kind of place that would do that. It’s beauty held hints of nightmares and I don’t think I’d gotten a good night’s rest since coming here. I walked over to my bed. And that’s when I saw it. A shadow in the full length mirror leaning against the wall. I trembled under the shadow’s gaze. It flickered briefly and for a moment the shadow shifted, showcasing an image of a beautiful woman in its place. She stared at me cruelly, challenging me with her haughty gaze. Her lips were curled up in a smirk, like she saw me, and she wasn’t impressed.

I blinked and she was gone. Not even the shadow remained. But I could feel her presence around me, engulfing me. She was still here, taunting me.

Persephone.

I had to get out of here.

I sprinted from the room and down a dimly lit hallway. She was right behind me, her dark energy licking at my heels as I ran for my life.

It was incredible how the place seemed to be alive despite the fact that I hadn’t come across another living soul. There seemed to be eyes in the walls as I ran, aiding the ghostly specter who was coming after me.

I ran down the stairs, envisioning those scenes in the movies where the heroine fell down them. Except I was never going to be someone’s hero obviously. The chill I’d been feeling only worsened as I passed under the giant mural showcasing the impossibility of my plight. If you loved someone enough to paint a giant freaking mural of them, you probably were in for the long haul. If her spirit didn’t kill me right now, something terrible was going to happen anyway.

I made it to the bottom of the steps and icy fingers trailed down my back. I screamed and pushed forward, making my way down a seemingly never ending hallway. The icy fingers tapped on my back as I ran, almost as if the spirit was mocking me.

“Help!” I screamed, wondering why there was never anyone around except for meal times. I made it to the end of the hallway and grabbed the door knob.

Of course it was locked. I pulled on it frantically with no luck before turning around to face my fate.

The shadow hovered just a few inches away from my face. It materialized until I could see Persephone’s face once again. She opened up her red stained lips and began to suck in. That was the only way to describe it. Where I should have been able to see a tongue and teeth, there was only a dark abyss that seemed to get wider and wider as she breathed in.

My back was plastered against the door as terror crashed over me. That feeling of being touched by ice…it was back. The more she breathed, the more the feeling spread. I watched in horror as a gold mist began to flow from my body into her waiting mouth. The longer she breathed, the more she materialized.

And the weaker I felt.

I belatedly realized she was literally sucking my essence out of me. The color in my skin began to fade the more the gold mist flowed out of me. I would have sunk to the ground but it was like an enormous force was holding me in place against the wall.

I was too weak to scream for help anymore, too weak to do anything. The image of my tree by the river came into my mind and a feeling of peace passed over me. I could almost feel the blades of grass tickling my skin as the breeze blew by. I could almost smell the delicate scent of the wildflowers that grew all along the creek bed. What a pity I was never going to see that place again.

Suddenly a blinding light shot down towards us from the opposite end of the hallway. A powerful voice thundered some order I was too out of it to understand. The shadow screeched when the light hit it, an unholy sound that echoed through my ears, bursting my eardrums. I faintly realized that the terrible scream was the first sound I’d heard the dark spirit make.

The force that held me to the door disappeared and I fell to the ground, sucking in giant breaths as I realized it had been restricting my breathing. My body was trembling as I laid there. I could sense the shadow was gone but I wasn’t improving. The icy feeling was still licking at my skin and it felt like one of the hardest things I’d ever done just to suck in a breath. I tried to keep my eyes open, but it was a losing battle. I stared blankly at the ceiling, the decorative carvings came in and out of focus.

“Elena,” a familiar voice whispered. I was so out of it though my mind couldn’t connect who the voice belonged to.

The voice made my insides feel good though, if that was a thing.

A golden tinted figure appeared above me. The light emanating off of it was so bright I had to close my eyes since it threatened to sear my retinas. Even with my eyes closed the light was so bright that tears streamed down my face.

“Shit,” the voice muttered, and then the light was blissfully dimmed.

I kept my eyes closed, too weak to open them, as I was picked up by a pair of strong arms. A scent that reminded me of sunshine and grassy fields overwhelmed my senses, again so familiar, but yet not. I snuggled closer to the warm chest, absorbing the heat and the growl that emanated from the man’s chest. It was definitely a man.

“Stay with me, little human,” the voice murmured. A rush of air crossed my face and my head got even dizzier.

The man tried to lay me down on what felt like silk sheets but I groaned and flailed my arms, trying to keep him and his warmth close.

I was so cold. It felt like I was never going to be warm again. Like I was never going to be happy again.

Was this what dying felt like? The sensation that all was lost and you no longer existed?

I didn’t even have the energy to ask the stranger if he knew.

The man blissfully followed me to the cool sheets. His body melded against mine giving me all the heat he had to offer, but still I shivered. I could feel my heart making desperate, stilted beats in my chest.

My eyes were cracked open and I watched in horror as the gold mist began to leave my chest with every exhale. I moaned, unable to make out actual words.

“Fuck,” the man growled.

His face appeared right above mine, still emitting a golden glow, but one that I could actually look at without feeling blinded.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and then his lips were pressed against mine. Instead of kissing me however, he breathed life into me. That was the only way to describe it. His lips were sealed against mine and I could feel energy flowing from him into me. I didn’t know how it was possible but energy buzzed through my veins and licked at my skin. My heartbeat, which had been practically non-existent, started to beat a more normal, steady pace. A sweet taste filled my mouth, like ambrosia. My eyes closed as I was able to relax, bathed in a cloud of bliss.

“Sleep, angel,” the voice whispered.

Those words were the last ones I heard from my savior as I fell into a perfect, dreamless sleep.

Zeus

I HELD her gently in my arms, unsure of what exactly I was feeling as I stared at the beautiful little human. She sighed in her sleep, her sweet breath softly brushing against my skin and I struggled not to shiver in pleasure.

What the fuck was wrong with me?

The second I saw her, I wanted her. She’d been standing there, scared to death, but trying desperately to hide it. She’d kept her spine straight, her face blank, as she took in a world that would have terrified almost every other creature.

Her beauty…was surprising. As a god, I’m surrounded by beauty. I see it so much I’ve become immune to it. Aphrodite’s beauty doesn’t even catch my eye anymore. To think that a human woman could sweep my feet out from under me…I didn’t know what to think about that.

But when I saw her, I’d lost my breath. She was…incomparable. A dream personified that I didn’t even know I’d ever had. I’d thought that maybe it was a trick of the light, that maybe the wine was making me hallucinate…sprite wine did have a tendency to do that.

But nope, the closer I got, the more painful it felt…because she was perfect.

So perfect that it took me a second to realize Hades was standing next to her.

Elena moaned softly in her sleep and my gaze slid across her face. I should have felt like a creeper lying there next to her, but I wasn’t capable of feeling emotions like that. I was selfish to my core. If I wanted something, I got it. Immediately.

I ached to brush my fingers across her face. I wanted to know what it would feel like for her perfect lips to actually move against mine and not just be pressed against me. I wanted to know what it would feel like for her to touch me…for her body to dance against me. Something inside my chest quivered and I rubbed at it. It almost felt like…I was feeling.

I’d somehow found myself in Hades’ morose lair tonight. I never came here. There were too many memories, most all of them sharp and painful and best forgotten. It was a wonder Hades hadn’t gone mad staying here. Or maybe he had, I hadn’t been around him enough for years and years to really know anything about him at this point. All I’d known was that I needed to see her again. Just that brief interaction had stayed with me. It burrowed into my skin until I thought I was the one that was going to go mad without another glimpse of her face.

I’d gotten here just in time. It had taken me a moment to realize what was happening. I’d recognized the energy in the air right away, but it had caught me off guard. Because I couldn’t fathom how she could be here. Persephone. It had been so long. So much had happened since she disappeared. But I couldn’t deny what I felt the second my feet had hit the marble floor. Persephone would always be a living, breathing memory…larger than life. Tonight had proven that.

All I knew when I saw what was happening, when I saw Elena’s soul and lifesource being devoured, was that I couldn’t let it happen. Something had come alive inside of me when I’d first seen her face. I didn’t want to live without it ever again.

I felt him before I saw him. Hades could cloak his energy from most people, but not from me. I used to know my brother as well as I knew myself. A few thousand years changed a lot of things, but not that.

“Get the fuck away from her,” he hissed. His words crawled against my skin. His death form was creepy, even for me. When he was in that form, his words weren’t heard… they were absorbed into you. It wasn’t my favorite way of communicating.

Hades stepped out of the shadows in the corner of the room, and I wondered how often he spent time watching her while she went about her business unaware. I probably should have been angry about that on her behalf…but I would do the same thing if given the chance.

Hades was a sight to behold in his death form. He was more shadows than anything else. The embodiment of the creature who lived under the Grim Reaper’s robe that the humans were always going on about. Wisps of black mist curled around his skeletal form. He’d send Elena running for the hills…or the nearest mental health hospital, if she were to see him like that.

He lunged at me, obviously desperate to get me away from her, but the thing about shadows was that they would always be repelled by the light. I held up my hand and sent a stream of light barreling at him. Hades barely avoided the beam. Elena made another soft moan and shifted against me, burrowing her head against my chest. We both froze as we watched her. I was dying and somehow living at the same time as her cheek rested against me.

Why the fuck had I chosen to wear a shirt today?

Being the asshole I was, I shot Hades a particularly wide grin. His form flickered in and out of focus. He was struggling to maintain his ghastly state of being, something that told me just how much this little human had gotten under his skin.

Hades was nothing if not known for his composure.

It would be fun to taunt him eternally, but I didn’t want to wake her up. I pushed her into a deeper sleep so she wouldn’t notice when I moved, and I slid out of the bed. Which was actually quite comfortable. At least Hades had given her sheets with a nice thread count while she was in this depressing place.

I took a step away from the bed and realized I couldn’t leave her unprotected. Persephone’s energy was faint, but it was still there. She could come back to finish the job the second I stepped away. I muttered a few words and a golden cage flickered into place around Elena’s bed. She wouldn’t be able to see it when she woke up but it would keep anything or anyone away from her while she was sleeping.

Satisfied my sleeping beauty would be safe, I stepped out into the hallway. Hades appeared silently behind me. Or at least he was silent until his fist was flying at my face. I’d been distracted, thinking about Elena, and he was able to hit me. I went flying against the stone wall.

“Fuck,” I growled, conjuring up another beam of light as I darted towards him. I sent it at him just as he sent his black mist at me. The forces collided, knocking us both backwards. I grunted when my back once again hit the wall. His grunt sounded across the hallway.

Life against Death. It was a never ending battle between our two forces. And there was never going to be a winner.

He stood up, a trickle of black blood falling from his nose. “Are you done yet?” I asked in a bored tone, pretending to examine my nails.

He growled and his whole body shook as he tried to control himself.

“I’d thought for a minute that no one was ever going to be able to stop you from your self-imposed eternity of mourning.”

There was a tic in his cheek but he didn’t deny it. Whatever was happening in my chest flexed again. I’d kind of been counting on Hades casting Elena aside like all the others.

But I should have known better.

She was very, very different.

“I’m warning you right now. You need to stay away from her,” Hades growled. There was years of conflict in his warning.

If he’d said something like that just a few days ago, I would have laughed.

But now…now I had no intention of letting his threat go.

“I saw her tonight,” I told him sharply.

Hades cocked his head. “Saw who?”

“Don’t play dumb, Hades. Persephone. I saw her.”

The tic in his cheek jumped again, but he didn’t say anything.

“Don’t you want to know what I saw her doing?” I asked menacingly, taking a step towards him.

“Haunting the third floor. Opening and closing cabinets?” he muttered sarcastically. He’d let go of his death form and was back to his predictable, boring appearance that seemed to drive everyone wild. I personally didn’t see the appeal. Who wanted to be with someone who was liable to burst into tears mid thrust or call you by the wrong name?

At least when I called a woman by the wrong name it was by accident.

“That would have been nice. But no. I saw her while she was trapping Elena against a wall and fucking sucking the life out of her,” I all but growled.

“What?” Hades looked shocked.

“Fun fact. Persephone can get her body back by draining energy from living souls…or did you know that already?” I studied him closely. It had just occurred to me that his whole curse thing could be some kind of cover for him to get sacrifices for his beloved Persephone. He looked genuinely shocked though.

“So you saved Elena.” Hades finally said slowly, his gaze darting to Elena’s door. His desperate yearning to be with her was written all over his face.

“I did.”

“And…” He cleared his throat like he was afraid to ask. “What happened to Persephone?”

“Can’t you feel her? She’s still haunting the halls of this dreadful place. Just a little further past Elena’s room.”

He looked relieved, and I wanted to kill him. If it was possible.

I was on him in a flash, grabbing the front of his shirt and shaking him so hard his teeth rattled.

“Before you think about warning me off from Elena, brother. Think about this. I didn’t hesitate for a second tonight in saving Elena’s life. Would you have done the same if it meant getting Persephone back?”

I whisked myself back to Mount Olympus, I couldn’t stand to look at him for one more moment. The truth had been all over his face.

He was going to destroy Elena. I just needed to be sure I was there to pick up the pieces after he was done.

11

ELENA

He was here with me. The perfect man. Full lips, a chiseled jaw, and a dirty smile that made me desperate. He was everything. The man stood there at the foot of my bed, tall and broad and more than I could have ever hoped for. The early morning light brushed against his skin. I swallowed down a question as he leaned in to press his hands on either side of my face, watching me watch him.

“Please be mine,” he begged in his perfect, deep voice. “I’ve wanted you forever.”

I whimpered and reached out for him. I needed to feel him against me. My fingers dove into his hair and pulled him down, crashing my mouth against his. He matched my hunger. We kissed, hard and deep, long strokes of his tongue against mine, and I demanded more. I was a wanton ball of need. Closer to animal than human because I only had one goal in my head.

Everything was heightened. My pulse, his lips, my breath, the warmth of his skin…the way I could feel he wanted me. It felt like my soul had been tied into knots. He tasted like everything I’ve ever wanted or needed. I couldn’t let him go. Not after I’d waited for so long. Somehow I knew that my soul was on a first name basis with this man. He was what I’d been waiting for my whole life.

Mine.

My world exploded into a bright light when he pressed between my thighs and my lids snapped open.

“Fuck,” I panted and swiped the damp hair from my forehead. The inside of my room slowly fell into focus.

It was just a dream. Nothing more.

A flush burned against my chest as images from the dream crashed through my mind, so vivid and colorful it was hard to comprehend it hadn’t been real.

As I drifted back to sleep I was only faintly aware that the man in my dream hadn’t been Hades. It hadn’t been Zeus either.

My soulmate was apparently a stranger…

ZEUS.

The second time I awoke was with a gasp. And unlike the last time, where I’d been caught up in a dream land and still unaware of my surroundings, I was very much aware of the fact that something terrible had happened to me the night before. And that the golden hero who had saved me was Zeus.

I remembered his face. The way his lips had felt against mine.

I also remembered what it had felt like to have my soul sucked out of me.

Persephone was a bitch. Someone really needed to inform Hades of that.

I curled my legs up to my chest and looked around, wondering why I didn’t feel more vulnerable in my bed all alone. She was still out there, I knew she was. A ghostly specter that evidently could freaking eat me. But strangely, I felt at peace.

That was certainly a plot twist. It was bad enough she controlled Hades’ heart, the memory of her preventing him from ever being able to move on. But then she had to actually be dangerous.

I shivered again thinking of the fear I’d felt as I was cornered against the wall. How helpless I’d felt.

I’d never been classified as brave. The thought was almost laughable honestly. But feeling that way last night…it made me want to do more, to be more. I sighed and ran a shaky hand down my face.

I had the feeling I was forgetting something important. But for the life of me I couldn’t think of what it was.

The second I got out of bed I realized something was different. The air was suddenly colder and the fear that had been somehow absent when I’d first woken up came barreling in.

Curious and confused, I sat back on the bed and immediately was enveloped in a sense of calm. Standing up, the calm disappeared. I repeated the exercise a few more times, getting the same results. There had to be some kind of magic on my bed. I felt crazy saying the word magic but obviously after everything I’d seen there was no denying that magic…or some kind of power I didn’t know the name of, really existed.

Deciding to ask Hades about my weird bed thing, I walked to the bathroom. I glanced in the mirror reluctantly, expecting to look like death warmed over. I gasped when I saw how good I looked.

Not just good…amazing. There was a golden tint to my skin that had never been there. I looked healthy and alive…and glowing. My hair hung in perfect waves down my back like I’d gotten it professionally styled. I usually woke up in the morning with my hair looking like Medusa’s hair dresser had gotten a hold of it, but not today. Even my eyes looked more vibrant.

I stepped closer to the mirror when I saw how smooth my skin looked. I had a scar right above my lip where I’d scraped my face against a stone wall after falling over on my bicycle as a child. The doctors had told my mother I was lucky that’s all there was but it had always bothered me.

The scar was gone.

Frowning, I smoothed my finger over where the scar usually resided, noticing all the other little imperfections on my face were completely gone as well.

What happened to me last night?

Had some weird healing voodoo happened when Zeus saved me? Were my looks all that had changed? Because while I was standing here staring at myself, I was also realizing how awake I felt…how good I felt. Like I could go climb Mt. Olympus or something.

Which was significantly different from how I usually felt.

I stepped away from the mirror and practically ran to the closet to throw on whatever I saw first. I needed to talk to Hades…and Zeus.

I needed to get out of here.

I opened my door and let out a little scream when I saw someone sitting right outside my door.

It was Hades.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, my heart threatening to come out of my chest.

He stumbled to his feet, the most ungraceful I’d seen him.

“I was keeping watch. I heard what happened last night,” he stammered, his cheeks blushing as his gaze dropped down my form.

I frowned and looked at what I was wearing, wondering if I’d picked something with a hole in it or something. Nope, just a little sundress.

His words sunk in. “You were keeping watch?”

He gave me an offended look like I should have expected that.

“Do you know where Zeus is?” I asked, looking down the hall like I expected the golden hottie to be standing there watching us like he had yesterday.

Hades frowned at my question. “He left last night after he…saved you.” His lips curl in distaste like he’d tasted something sour.

“I just wanted to thank him,” I whispered, suddenly feeling awkward.

Hades schooled his face. “He told me what happened, but I wanted to hear it from you.”

“There was a ghost. I think it was Persephone. She chased me and cornered me downstairs in one of the hallways. She started to suck in…” My voice trembled as I spoke. My gaze danced around the hallway, looking for any threats. “It was like she was draining my soul,” I finally finished.

Hades looked pained. He stepped forward, his hand outstretched, and then stopped like he didn’t know if I wanted him to touch me or not.

I needed comfort just then. Badly. I stepped forward and buried my face in his arms, my whole body shaking as I relived the night before. I was tempted to get back in bed and let whatever magic was working on it lull me into a false sense of security. Hades held onto me tightly like he knew I was a step away from falling into pieces.

He buried his face into my hair and we just stood there for several long moments that I kind of wanted to last forever. Suddenly he sniffed me.

I pulled back with a frown. “Did you just…smell me?” I asked.

He grinned, embarrassed. “You just smell so good.”

“Different than usual?”

He frowned. “I’m not sure.” Hades gently touched my face, like he was afraid that I was going to run from him screaming at any moment. I leaned into his touch, the feel of him soothing something inside of me.

“I’m getting the feeling that Persephone doesn’t like me,” I told him, trying to break up the intensity of the moment.

Hades didn’t get the memo that I was trying to joke around because he just frowned and stared at me even more intensely somehow.

“It’s not really her,” he said softly, catching me off guard. “I thought it was at first too all those years ago when she first started to appear. But it’s just an imprint of her worst self, somehow forever embedded in this place. A wraith basically.”

“She seemed pretty real last night,” I told him, my feelings irrationally hurt because he still seemed determined to defend his dead love no matter what the evidence showed.

“Wraiths are like that. And what you saw last night, what I see all the time, are definitely the darkest of Persephone’s traits. She could be jealous and callous…even cruel. But you and Zeus are both wrong about it really being her.”

I pulled away from him reluctantly and sighed. I didn’t know what was the truth but even if the spirit last night was just a memory of Persephone’s darkest traits…she was a far cry from how I’d pictured her. I’d thought she had to be some kind of perfect saint to have gotten that level of devotion from him. But maybe Hades was into the darker side of love.

I was totally screwed.

“Yesterday was my fault,” Hades said, holding onto my hand even when I tried to pull it away. “If I hadn’t pushed you away…it never would have happened. Can I make it up to you?”

“Does that include getting me out of this place?” I asked, shivering again as I looked at the walls, feeling like even now there were gazes upon us.

Hades didn’t seem to feel anything because he just smiled. “Do you trust me?”

I hated these types of questions. And I desperately didn’t want to trust him. I felt like we were still on some kind of precipice where he could break me at any moment.

“Maybe,” I finally answered, throwing him a challenging smirk.

A flick of fire seemed to burn in his gaze. “I can work with that.”

He pulled me forward and we weren’t standing in that dreadful hallway any longer. We were in an open field with blades of golden wheat for as far as the eye can see. The sky was remarkable, and it took me a second, but I realized that it was the same perfect blue as Zeus’s eyes.

I wasn’t sure why I was thinking about that right now.

A soft neigh sounded behind me and I turned, stumbling backwards when a pair of freaking enormous white horses were just a foot away from me. I gasped when a pair of white, bird-like wings shot out of one of their backs. The one that had just unleashed the wings stepped towards me and I backed away, panicked.

“Is that…”

“Pegasus,” said Hades with a chuckle, holding out an apple to the one closest to him. “And his mate, Ocyrhoe.”

Ocyrhoe was slightly smaller than Pegasus. Taking a closer look I could see that she had a soft silver sheen to her while Pegasus was almost blindingly white. I repeated Ocyrhoe’s name softly to myself until I thought it sounded just like Hades had said it. She seemed to like that because she stopped munching the apple from Hades’s hand, and trotted over until she was standing right in front of me by her mate. They were at least a foot taller than me and I stared at them in awe.

The beautiful beasts both stuck their noses in my hair and sniffed, their breath sending my hair all over the place.

I giggled, my gaze flicking towards Hades. My laugh abruptly cut off because he was looking at me. And not just looking at me because I had two horses mauling at me. He was looking at me like I was everything.

I flushed under his gaze. It was so…intimate. I stroked Pegasus’s nose absentmindedly, my attention still focused on Hades.

He shook his head as if he’d been in a trance and came to stand behind me, stroking the two horses with his arms around me. “Want to go for a ride?” he purred into my ear.

Ocyrhoe’s wings popped out at Hades’s question.

“A ride…like on them?” I asked hesitantly, what felt like a million butterflies taking up flight in my stomach at the thought.

He pressed a kiss on my neck and I melted against him. “Okay,” I whispered remembering the vow I’d just made that morning to be braver.

I’d thought that our kiss yesterday had been intense. But today every touch seemed to be magnified. He was turning me into a liquid puddle just with a simple touch, and that was with me still being annoyed with him about how yesterday had turned out.

“Good girl,” he murmured, and for a second an image of him saying that in a far sexier situation popped into my head.

Who knew I would like something like that?

I walked over to the left side of Ocyrhoe. “Um..do I need a saddle? How do I stay on?” I asked timidly. She might have been smaller than Pegasus, but she was still far taller than me.

Proving she was way smarter than any horse back home, she kneeled down. Hades picked me up and gently placed me on her back, smoothing a hand down my spine as if to calm me. “You just hold on here,” he told me, gesturing to her silver mane.

“Won’t that hurt her?” I squeaked as Ocyrhoe stood up. I had no choice but to grab onto her beautiful locks or I would have fallen off. She didn’t even make a sound as I gripped her hair tightly, maybe trying to prove she wasn’t bothered by it.

Hades smiled up at me…and his gaze almost seemed adoring. It was hard to protect the gates to my heart when he was staring at me like that, those midnight blue eyes of his trying to tell me something I wasn’t ready to believe quite yet.

He rubbed his hand soothingly on my leg once more before he walked away and smoothly hoisted himself on Pegasus’s back. Pegasus hadn’t even kneeled down at all. It was pretty hot to watch actually.

“Ready?” Hades called to me as he gripped Pegasus’s blindingly white mane.

Before I could even answer, Ocyrhoe took off. I let out a small scream as I gripped her mane so tight, I had no idea how she wasn’t bucking me off. She soared into the sky blue void above us. I heard Hades whoop in pure glee somewhere behind me but I was too scared to try and look for him. Ocyrhoe smoothly leveled out and I let out a small, hysterical sigh of relief that I no longer felt I was about to fall out of the sky.

Hades appeared next to me. Pegasus’s wings were barely moving as he kept pace with Ocyrhoe, knickering softly at her.

“What do you think?” Hades asked excitedly. He was taking my breath away right now. He looked young…and carefree. Like he’d left all of his problems and sorrow down on the ground behind us. It was like he could be whatever he wanted up here, like his pain was something that couldn’t exist in the sparkling sky.

I was still holding onto Ocyrhoe’s mane in a death grip, sure at any time she was going to get tired of having me on her back and buck me off. But even with the fear flicking at my chest, I had to admit…it was spectacular up here.

“I love it,” I called out to him, and his beautiful smile grew even wider. It was hard to tear my gaze away from him to look at our surroundings, he was that fantastic.

When I did manage to drag my eyes away from Hades, I had to admit, wherever Hades had brought me, I was in awe. The golden fields filled with what I assumed was wheat, stretched out as far as the eye could see. Even up here soaring above it. The contrast between the vivid blue sky and the gold wheat was entrancing…and peaceful. I couldn’t see another living being, or dead being for that matter since Hades was of course the God of Death.

“What is this place?” I called to him.

“Mine,” he answered, like that was supposed to explain a lot.

I pretended to be annoyed, and he chuckled, a sound that caressed my skin.

“It’s a place I created when I needed to relax and be away from everyone.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You mean get away from all the non-existent people in your fortress?”

Ocyrhoe neighed softly beneath me, almost like she was laughing at what I’d just said. I squeezed my legs around her a bit to let her know I’d heard her.

Hades grin dimmed a bit and I immediately cursed myself for saying something wrong. I wished there was a way to bottle up his good mood and make it last forever. It was a scary thing to feel like you could live or die in someone’s smile. And I was starting to feel that way about Hades.

“My duties are a bit delayed while you’re here,” he explained as he looked out into the distance with a thoughtful look on his face. “The Fates wish for me to actually have time to spend with you, so the dead kind of just wait around for the time being. Normally my home would be filled with souls all wanting things from me, day and night, with no end in sight.” He sighed and finally looked back at me. “So I slip away and come here when it’s too much.”

I felt way too touched about the fact that he’d brought me to what he considered his safe place.

“Let’s race,” I called out suddenly, wanting to make him smile again. I clicked my heels, feeling like an idiot while doing so, and Ocyrhoe luckily got the message and took off.

I heard Hades laugh behind me and then he and Pegasus were neck and neck with us. There wasn’t really a landmark for us to race to since everything was the same gently rolling hills of golden wheat, so we just flew. For hours and hours it seemed like, but I couldn’t remember having more fun.

Hades clicked his tongue eventually and both Pegasus and Ocyrhoe began to make their way to the ground. “They could keep on going for days I’m pretty sure, but I want to show you one more place,” Hades explained softly as we landed. I nodded and smiled, exhilarated from the day but slightly exhausted at the same time.

These mystical creatures certainly had stamina, I could only imagine what that meant in the bedroom.

My cheeks flushed at the thought and Hades gave me an inquiring glance. “Can’t read my mind here?” I asked cheekily.

He frowned, deep in thought. “I should be able to in this world since I created it. It should be just like when I took you to Mount Olympus. I haven’t been able to read you at all today.”

“Is that a bad thing?” I asked slowly, an image of Zeus’s lips on mine and my slightly altered appearance today suddenly seeming even more significant.

His eyes scanned over me and I knew he was cataloguing the slight changes to my face. He hummed non committedly. “I’m not sure what it means.”

“Seems like a good thing to me,” I told him, sticking out my tongue at him.

His grin blasted through my heart once again and he reached up and lifted me gently off Ocyrhoe, sliding me down his body as he set me on the ground.

I could feel my pulse going a million miles a minute just from the slow brush against his perfect body. We stared at each other, both grinning wildly I imagined, until Pegasus snorted loudly.

Hades laughed again and pulled two apples out of thin air. He handed me one for Ocyrhoe and then fed Pegasus the other one. “Thank you,” I whispered meaningfully to Ocyrhoe as I gently stroked her mane. She snorted softly and nuzzled against my face.

A few minutes later, Ocyrhoe and Pegasus disappeared into thin air…just like that. I looked at Hades questioningly, feeling a little heartbroken they were gone. I’d fallen in love with them today and I hoped that wouldn’t be the last time I got to see them.

Hades took my hand and squeezed it reassuringly. “Pegasus likes to pop in whenever I’m here. We’ve been friends for a long, long time. You’ll see them both soon enough.”

I was ridiculously happy about that, not just because I would see them again, but because Hades seemed to be planning a future where I would still be in it.

Of course I had to survive his psycho ex still. I didn’t want to bring that up right now though, not when everything was going so perfect.

“Ready?” he asked as he pulled me against him. I’d no sooner nodded than I found myself laying on my back on a sandy beach, a cushion supporting my head, and the night sky up above me. It took a second for my eyes to adjust because the field we’d spent the day in had been under a cloudless sunny sky. This sky was cloudless too, but instead of the sun, I saw a brilliant full moon above me and what seemed like a million twinkling stars.

Hades was lounging beside me, one arm behind his head as he gazed up at the moon, a pensive look on his face.

Out here, under the velvety night sky draped in diamond drops of starlight…this was where Hades belonged. As much as he had been carefree today out in the sun, he was made for the dark and the shadows. He belonged in the secrets you held close to your heart and never told another soul. He thrived in the places most people turned their back on. Hades was made for a place filled with quiet confessions, mournful sighs, and dark dreams.

His sadness called to me. And wasn’t it funny that the girl who had always craved the sunshine was suddenly desperate for the dark and everything he kept there.

“Is this one of the places you’ve created as well?” I asked.

He turned his head to look at me, his blue eyes almost black in the darkness. There were flecks of starlight in them, almost as if the night sky was reflected in their depths.

“This is a recreated memory,” he told me, his gaze dancing across my features. He tore his gaze away suddenly, as if he couldn’t stand to look at me. “When my brothers and I finally defeated my father we drew straws to see what of the world we would rule. Zeus of course got the sky, Poseidon got the sea, and I got the underworld.”

I stared enraptured at him as the waves crashed against the sand just a few feet away, mist from the waves sprinkling over our legs every so often.

“I tried to figure out a way to kill myself after one day down there. Out of the three of us, I’d always thrived in the light. I’d always been considered the softest in the family. When I drew the underworld for my kingdom, my brothers actually cried for me,” he chuckled harshly. “Of course their worry for me didn’t extend to taking the job themselves.”

I softly touched his shoulder, his pain so tangible I felt like I could choke on it.

“I begged the Fates to end me. And instead of granting my request, they sent me here. I spent a week in the darkness, listening to the sounds, watching the stars, pacing in the shadows. And when I emerged I was changed. I had a new appreciation for the dark and everything it offers.”

“But your favorite place is still a golden field under a perfect, sunny sky,” I whispered as he finally looked at me again, vulnerability in his gaze as if he expected me to judge him for his confession.

“Sometimes I feel like I’ve become so accustomed to the darkness that I might just disappear. A day under the sun reminds me I’m still alive as much as I surround myself with the dead.”

He sighed and the heaviness in my breath warned me of what he was about to say.

“Persephone needed the sun. I would take her there whenever our kingdom became too much for her.”

I flinched like I’d been struck. Today I’d felt closer to him than any person I’d ever known. And all along he was picturing her, he was spending time with me in her favorite place.

It was always going to be Persephone.

I had no chance.

I stood up, ignoring the water that splashed against my legs as another wave broke onto the shore.

“How dare you,” I told him in a voice laced with hurt…and rage.

He stood up as well, reaching out to me. “Elena-” he began.

“Are you even willing to let anyone else in?” I seethed, channeling all the frustration I’d felt since this journey had first began. “Can the curse even be broken if you’re unable to stop mourning someone who’s been gone for centuries? We need to find a way for me to go home if that’s the case.”

He flinched like my words had struck him, and started walking towards me in a determined manner. “Make me forget then,” he said to me before his lips were crashing against mine. In an instant we were gone from the shore and instead he was pushing me through the doorway of my bedroom.

I should have pushed him away, unwilling to compete with a dead woman…but his kisses were magic against my skin.

And I was obviously weak when it came to matters of the heart.

He walked me back until my legs hit the bottom of the bed.

“Lie back.” It was a soft command, but a command all the same. I moved to the middle of the bed, my gaze locked on him as he prowled towards me. I was needy between my thighs and the heat in his eyes only grew as he watched me squirm. One button and then the next; by the time he freed his shirt and bared his chest, my clit was throbbing and I was wet and practically panting with anticipation. The rest of his clothes disappeared in an instant then, a rather nifty trick. He stood there, proud and unashamed as I took him in.

There was no denying Hades was a god in every way. His abdomen rippled with dips and shadows. A small smattering of hair framed his -oh my—I swallowed a lump—it was more than I thought it could possibly be.

I wanted this. I wanted him. More than I’d ever wanted anything else in my life. A brief image of Zeus appeared in my head along with a nonsensical trickle of guilt. I quickly pushed it away and focused on the perfection standing in front of me. I fisted the silk comforter on both sides of my hips as he climbed on the bed. I watched in awestruck fascination as he began to press his lips to my ankle, kissing and licking his way up my body until he was groaning.

I gasped when he began to suck and taste my inner thighs as he spread my legs wide.

“Fuck, Elena.” He growled my name and then proceeded to destroy me with one lick. My cry broke free just as my head slammed into the bed. I squeezed my eyes closed as he sucked my clit through the lace of my underwear, lapping and teasing with his tongue and then teeth until I was nothing but a writhing mess of a creature.

I bowed into his mouth and with a groan, he peeled my underwear off until I was bare under my dress. My lips parted, but I couldn’t form a single word. I could only watch and feel and breathe through the pulsing ache in my core while he kissed me everywhere like he couldn’t get enough.

I didn’t think it would be like this. I’d heard the stories of girls’ first times. How awkward and almost lonely they’d been for the partner they’d picked and immediately regretted.

I’d thought it would be the same for me. Instead I was being consumed, being given so much pleasure that my mind was having a difficult time absorbing it all. There were so many emotions. I was obsessed in this moment with knowing him… with finding the smallest places and where the lightest stroke elicited the rush of his breath or hunger to flare in his eyes.

I couldn’t have comprehended what it would feel like to have the breadth of his muscles beneath my hands, the heat of his skin and the long drag of his tongue as he savored every inch of my body, ruining me over and over again with his touch.

Who would I be after he finished with me? I’d thought I’d already changed in just the short time that I’d been here in this psychotic wonderland, but this… this right here was destroying any semblance of the small-town girl I’d once known.

After stripping me of my dress and bra, he began to whisper soft kisses in the sensitive dip behind my ear and along my neck, the side of my breast and down to the curved indentation at my waist—he cherished every part of me until I couldn’t think…I could only feel.

Desperate, I grabbed his erection. Silk and steel, he melted into my hand. “Elena,” he hissed, and tucked his nose beneath my chin. I held him, pushing from tip to base and pulling back, rubbing my fingers over him in a caress. I was beyond inexperienced, relying solely on the way he reacted under my touch. I ran on repeat until he was panting and thrashing into my grip as inhuman growls ripped out of him.

A dark part of me wondered…had she made him lose control like this? Had she made him feel as good as this? Was he thinking of her right this minute? Was he wishing it was her as he kissed me like he would die without my touch? Was it her he was imagining as he came undone in my hands?

“Enough,” he growled. He pinned both of my arms above my head, as his mouth crashed down against mine once again. Hades sucked my tongue into his mouth, and then it was me squirming and begging for him to touch me. How had I ever thought I’d been kissed before? A girl should be warned when she’s in the presence of an imposter.

“Touch me, please,” I begged.

And he did. Fuck, he did. While one hand held me prisoner, the other grazed my breast. I cried out and looked at him.

“Are you burning for me like I’m burning for you?” he murmured.

I thought I moaned a yes, but it was impossible to form words as his fingers left a burning trail as he made his way down to where I’d been begging for his touch. A low moan from the back of his throat settled in the air as his fingers dipped between my folds.

“I want to see you,” he muttered. I let my legs fall apart, too undone to be self conscious at all. He rubbed me softly, slipping to where I was the wettest, he gathered my heat and teased me by painting me in tight tiny circles… but never where I needed him the most.

“Please, please, please,” I keened. I begged and screamed until his perfect fucking fingers slid into me at last.

“Ohh.” I groaned, loud and shameless, as he reached in and tipped forward, pumping and rubbing me into a full-out cry. He felt so freaking good.

“Perfect,” he said in a pinched voice, as if he was on the precipice of finding nirvana. I bowed from the bed as he led me on a path to bliss.

“Please.” I begged for something, anything. “Make me come, please make me come.” I tried to move. Pinned down, my only option was to flex and roll my hips, bringing him deeper, faster, and taking in his growl as he crushed his mouth to mine. I was reacting on instinct, trying to follow whatever would bring the most pleasure. He was making me lose my mind.

He ground his palm down into the perfect place and that was what sent me over the edge. I screamed and exploded into a million sparks as I came all over his magical hand. When the haze cleared he’d raised up on his elbows staring down at me. His body was a protective and possessive frame as he nestled between my thighs and began to spread me open. His eyes resembled starlight again, like they had on the beach just moments ago. I could see my future in his gaze and it made me brave.

I wanted to give him everything.

“I want you, Hades” I whispered, latching on to his shoulders and hoping that he could read in my voice and in my eyes all the things I didn’t have the courage to say.

You’re changing me. You’re undoing me. I’m falling in love with you.

“Elena, love.” The words passed his lips a millisecond before he reared back and thrust inside of me. He froze when he realized what had just happened. I was frozen as well, a cry on my lips as I tried to adjust to the feeling of being full…the feeling of being complete.

“Why?” he whispered as he stared down at me with a mix of trepidation and wonder. Obviously not knowing what to say. My cheeks flushed in embarrassment but before he could think any more on it, I wrapped my legs around his waist and tried to pull him even deeper inside of me. He wasn’t having any of that though. He grabbed a hold of my hips and stilled me as he laid his forehead against mine. We laid there connected, breathing in sync while my body adjusted to his size and he wrapped his mind around the fact that I’d just given him my freaking virginity.

The stillness did nothing to calm down the fire he’d lit inside of me though.

“Please,” I finally gasped. It wasn’t enough for him to be inside of me. I needed more. He still had a hold of my hips but I tried to roll them anyway to push him into action.

His shoulders shook with the low rumble of his laugh. “Give me a second, baby. I- it’s doing something to me knowing I was your first. I want to make this good for you.” Taking my sigh into him, he focused on my mouth and began to kiss me until I was breathless once again. Our connection deepened as he finally rose onto his hands. I clenched around him in response, and his nostrils flared. My fingers trailed along his shoulders and down his arms, following the definition of his muscles as they flexed beneath my touch. His body was perfect, unreal in it’s gorgeousness.

“I don’t want this to ever end,” he whispered in a low gravelly voice. “Being inside of you like this…it will never be enough. I’ll crave this every moment of every day, for forever.”

I try not to fall in love with his words. I know he’s saying them in the heat of the moment. Hades probably doesn’t even realize the promises he’s making to me. My heart doesn’t listen though as I watched him throw his head back and pull out of me. We both groaned, the glide exquisite and seemingly necessary to my existence. Waiting another heartbeat, he slid in again. He pulled back and found a gentle rhythm, moving in and out, and cherishing me until my head lost the same battle as my heart. His body was telling me I was everything. Please let this be real.

He licked his lips and I draped my arms around his neck, using them as leverage to lift up and kiss him. “So good, Elena. It’s too good…,” he mumbled against my mouth.

And it was. So intense and so good my toes curled as I wrapped my legs around his backside. I was beyond overwhelmed; the feel of him buried in me, knowing I was really here in this moment, with his voice whispering in my ear to hold on, don’t hold back, give me everything….

I couldn’t hold on. All I could do was fall deeply into every sensation and lose myself in them. I felt connected to him in every possible way, not just physically, but emotionally as well. A warmth spread out from my chest at the realization that what had seemed like an ending as I left my mother’s house had actually become my beginning, the start of a new chapter with Hades as the hero of my story.

Right here, in this bed, clarity reigned as his mouth claimed mine again, teasing out a moan so he could claim that too. He owned me. I would give him anything. Take it, take all of me, take everything and anything. And he did, wringing out every ounce of pleasure. He knew where to touch, how to extract the smallest whimper and the largest groan. I could never tire of being with him, with him over me and in me, pushing, pulling, driving, and devouring until the ache became a need. A need so intense and all-consuming, I began taking from him. Calling out unabashedly to move faster, go deeper, push harder. Don’t stop, never stop, never stop making me feel this good and needy and so, so full. Please, I beg. Pleading with him, pleading for I don’t know what….

His head dipped to my nipple. Taking me into his mouth, he teased with his tongue and bit down, hard, only releasing me when I gasped and clutched his hair. But I didn’t pull him away; I held him in place. I wanted more. I wanted the edge of pain. It was the only thing that was keeping me from floating away, lost in the ecstasy I’d discovered with him. He did it again and this time I went a little wild, raking my fingers down his back and bucking my hips to meet the increased pace of his. Everything he was doing was magnified in the pulse between my thighs. It started as a slow flutter when he first entered me, but it had built into a steady cadence. I focused on the feeling of him. I was climbing high, fast, and he was coming with me. Throwing my head back, I relished in our connection, kneading my fingers into his back, his muscles flexing with control as he pushed me to a place I’ve never known, didn’t know existed.

I could see the moment when he lost it… lost himself as I already had.

Gone was the controlled restraint and in its place was a wild abandon. Giving in to my demands, his hips thrusted with a determined pace, driving forward, pushing harder until each strike elicited a guttural grunt from him and an exacting cry from me. Sweat pebbled on his brow, beading and rolling, dropping to my chest where it slid between my breasts. I watched, fascinated, as his eyes followed it down and the black of his pupils blurred into the dark blue with a need so powerful it would scare me if I didn’t feel the exact same way. My mouth found his, licking and sucking and tasting. I was starving. And he was the only one who could feed my hunger.

“Hades,” I whispered, and he didn’t know it then but I made a promise in that moment. I promised him that it would be him forever.

And I thought he made the same promise back.

12

ELENA

I startled awake, alone. The bed was cool next to me, as was the air as it settled over my skin. My body ached in all the right places since Hades had made sure and gone the full distance after my first mind-blowing orgasm.

I smiled through my stretch, my hands above my head and my toes pointed. If I let myself, I could get lost in the hotter than hell memories of Hades’ hands on me, and his lips, and the way his body fit perfectly into mine, but I would’ve really liked to find my missing person and entice him into bed to recreate the perfection. Now that I’d gotten a taste of it, all I wanted was more.

I grabbed his shirt from the floor and slipped it on while walking into the living room portion of my bedroom suite. His skin was burnished gold in the dim lighting of the lamp that sat on the coffee table beside the couch where he was sitting, writing in what looked like a journal.

He pulled at his lower lip with his fingers. I stood in the doorway, watching the rise and fall of his bare chest, in complete awe that I just slept with this perfect creature. He looked up.

“Did I wake you?” he asked.

I frowned at his rigid jaw and his tone. Affectionate Hades was gone, a stranger securely in place.

“No, I… You weren’t there when I woke. I missed you,” I told him tentatively as I shifted in place uncomfortably.

His eyes fell back to his journal. “I don’t have to sleep like a human. Go back to bed.”

“But I’m cold without you,” I teased, walking up behind him.

Bending down, I grinned into his neck and slid my hands down to rub his chest. He tensed, and his quick intake of breath told me I had his attention. “Come to bed, please.”

Pinning my fingers between his, he snapped, “I need a moment, Elena. Give me a fucking second to be alone.”

Right. That hurt.

My heart plummeted to my stomach. I yanked my arms away and wrapped them around myself. He didn’t move. And before he had a chance to, I darted to the bedroom and slammed the door behind me. I threw myself on the mattress, head buried in the pillow. Last night meant nothing to him when it meant so much to me.

I’ve been dismissed. I could see it now. He’d asked me to make him forget last night. And that’s what I’d done. I’d forever be the girl who temporarily distracted him from the girl he actually missed. I was the girl he’d fuck when he had a need.

But I’d never be the actual girl he wanted.

I pulled a blanket around me, fury replacing the hurt. I’d known sex with Hades would be a risk, anything you put your heart into was. But his disrespect was intolerable. I wouldn’t allow him to treat me like shit because he was a broken bastard. I deserved more than that. I dragged myself to my feet, slipped to the door, and locked it, wishing he had picked somewhere else to sulk other than my beautiful suite. It was going to be forever tainted now. The memories, the feelings, the experience I wished I could take back. How soon could I get out of here?

My room felt stale and dark, but I flung myself onto the bed and took up a new chant. I would not cry. I would not cry. I wouldn’t. Tears were for fools. They didn’t wash away pain or free you from it. A long time ago, when my dad had left, I’d begun to see them as a weakness. This Grecian funhouse was bringing out the worst in me. My lids burned as the tears threatened. What had I done?

AN HOUR PASSED before there was a soft knock on the door that separated the sitting area from my bedroom. I ignored it, hoping he would get the hint and use the other door in that room to let himself out. He knocked again, and after I didn’t answer, I heard the lock disengaging in the door. Of course the bastard would have a key, this was his house after all.

The door opened.

“Elena,” Hades softly called in a devastated voice. I ignored him.

He startled me when he sat on the bed beside me. His footsteps had been so light that I didn’t even hear him move. He reached out and brushed a piece of hair away from my tear-stained face.

“I’m so sorry,” he said in a choked voice. “I shouldn’t have done that. I didn’t mean it.”

I sat up and scooted as far away from him as I could. “Get out of my room,” I hissed at him.

He crawled across the bed towards me, his eyes burning as he reached out and enfolded me into his arms. I wanted to fight, but all I could do was cry. He’d ruined everything.

“Let me go,” I sobbed.

“Ask me something that’s possible,” he said to me as he buried his face in my neck.

“I won’t be treated like that. I’m not something you can just throw away when the mood suits you. Last night meant something to me. I didn’t force you to be with me.”

“I’m so sorry. It’s the truth, Elena. I want to be with you. But that was the first time I had slept with someone that wasn’t Persephone. To be with you, I have to work through my emotions without hurting you. Last night was a big lesson for me.”

He dragged his forehead to mine, forcing eye contact. “Please forgive me. It won’t happen again, I promise you.”

“I want to believe you.”

“Give me a second chance.”

So much sadness was in him. It was in me too, ever since my father deserted us when I was child, yet I wondered if it had to be that way. This was new territory for both of us, and we would have to work together to figure it out.

I brushed my lips against his.

“I may be a fool, but I will.” We stayed stuck to each other for minutes, and then he laid me down so that he was lying on top of me. I ran my fingers over his back while he nuzzled my neck.

“Don’t you have some King of the Underworld tasks to get to?” I asked on my way to complete distraction.

He brushed a kiss against my lips. “I have some time to show you just how sorry I am.”

He nestled between my thighs and I giggled, sinking my hands into his silken hair.

I DIDN’T KNOW how long we lay wrapped together. My limbs were like jelly. Incapable of holding myself upright, I stayed snuggled into his side. Hades rubbed my back, his fingers soft on my bare skin. Finally, I looked up, gauging his reaction to make sure I didn’t lose him to dark thoughts like I did last night. His eyes were closed, and he looked relaxed. His cheeks were soft, his jaw wasn’t clenched as I’d noticed it got when he was tense. He opened one eye, smiled, and then opened the other to fully look at me.

Before I said anything, he gripped under my arms to bring my lips to his. I leaned back to look at him and slipped my hand through his ebony hair that had become disheveled from my grip. I brushed my mouth against his, once and then again. I snuggled back into his arms, but I wasn’t cocooned in his warmth for long. He slid out from beneath me and leaned on his elbow. He stared while I lay flat on my back. I immediately covered my chest, but he stopped my hands.

“I want to look at you,” he said, smiling.

And he did, every curve and inch of my body. Moving to my stomach, he drew a circular path around the planes of my abdomen, getting lost in his own thoughts. His fingers came to a sudden halt. I grabbed his chin, forcing his gaze to meet mine. “Hey, don’t go anywhere. I want you to stay with me.” For the briefest moment, his eyes widened. There was a vulnerability within them, and then it was gone. He became blank, shutting down and shutting me out. I sensed his internal struggle against falling back into his comfortable pain. He clenched his jaw, rolled onto his back, and broke all contact with me. His lids closed tight, and my heart lurched in my chest.

As soon as he let go or got close to me, he withdrew or tried to push me away. I wasn’t going to let that happen. I scrambled onto my knees beside him. I grabbed his chin and mimicked his stern tone, saying, “Hades, look at me.”

He didn’t move. He lifted his hands to press the palms against his eyes, his long fingers covering his forehead, reaching into his tousled hair.

“Talk to me.”

It was heartbreaking to see him, a god, splintered in this way, unable or unwilling to move beyond the misery he’s convinced himself he should live with.

After a moment of silence, I lost my patience. “You are an obstinate, confusing asshole!”

I think his lips lifted in a hint of a smile, but I couldn’t be sure.

“I’m going to be honest with you, and if you get mad, so be it. I’d rather fight for you than let you slip away with a ghost. Persephone is gone.” Her name stung my lips. “Her death was tragic, and I can’t imagine the pain you endured. She died thousands of years ago, Hades. I can only presume to know the love she had for you, and with that, Persephone would not have wanted you to suffer her death for a millennia. You loved her, but it’s okay to let her go.”

I wasn’t sure I believed the words I was saying even as they left my mouth. I wouldn’t be forgetting Persephone’s specter any time soon. I wasn’t convinced she was actually gone, but I knew Hades wouldn’t believe that the demon that had almost eaten my soul, was actually her. Sometimes denial was a bitch.

His brooding silence sliced my heart with each passing minute. Getting frustrated, I pulled against one of his arms, and he allowed me to move it easily, lifting his other so his wary eyes could open. I kneeled naked by his side, grasped his hand, and waited for him to speak.

“It’s much easier not to feel anything,” he said finally.

His jaw clenched as he contemplated his thoughts. “It’s hard for me to let go of what happened, forget the past, and trust what I feel when I’m with you. I can’t relive the pain I experienced. It almost broke me.” On a sigh, he continued, “When I’m with you, Elena, I forget about everything. I forget about Persephone and what happened. I feel alive again. And then I feel guilty for forgetting her in those brief moments of happiness you have given me.”

I wished I knew how to help him. “I’m not Persephone.” My voice wavered as I said it. Longing to touch him, I gently stroked down his cheek and ran my thumb along his full bottom lip. “You deserve to be happy, Hades.”

He winced.

“I’m not the woman you fell in love with all those years ago. My future is not tied to Persephone, just as my past is different from hers. Maybe it’s time to take a leap of faith. Believe in me.” I sounded desperate, even to my own ears. For an inexplicable reason, I needed him to believe in me. He remained silent, considering my words for a long moment.

He finally sat up, his chest an inch from my breasts. He dug his fingers into my hair and held me still as his thumb rubbed over my bottom lip. Our eyes remained connected as he answered me with a sweet kiss. I leaned in, parting my mouth to accept his tongue. Falling back to the bed, he took me with him, covering his body with mine in a blanket of heat.

“MASTER!” The call for Hades was accompanied by pounding on the door as one of the servants frantically tried to get Hades’ attention. “Master, are you in there?” came the distressed cry. Hades cursed as he pulled away from me, creating a pair of pants out of thin air and sliding them on as he marched to the door. I frantically pulled up the sheets so I was covered. I wanted a super power where I could create clothes out of nowhere too.

Hades pulled the door open. “What is it? This better be important.”

“Her garden, you have to come see it!”

Hades was out the door before I could ask what the servant was talking about. A sense of foreboding filled the air as I hurriedly put on my clothes and flew after them. There was no sign of them in the house, and I hated what must’ve been Hades’ godlike speed as I tried to think of where in the gardens they could be. “Her garden,” rang in my head, and I had a feeling of dread as I jogged towards the scorched plot where Hades had taken me before.

As I turned the corner and finally got to the area where I thought I remembered the garden being, I gasped in amazement. I must have gotten lost and walked to the wrong place, because the garden in front of me was unlike anything I’d seen before. A multitude of flowers, fruit trees, and greenery fill every inch of the plot. The colors and sweet smells of the flowers were more vibrant than anything I’d ever sensed before. Everything was larger than it should’ve been, as if the plants were determined to be the best and brightest the world had ever seen. Thousands of butterflies flitted about, the colors on their wings shades that I didn’t think were possible. It was as if I’d stepped into a veritable Garden of Eden, like that image that I saw in Hades’ crystal room.

All of a sudden, I was yanked into someone’s arms and lips came colliding down upon mine. “It’s you, it’s really you,” Hades cried as he spun me around.

I flinched as if I’d been struck by a belt. He couldn’t possibly mean what I thought he was saying.

“I’m who?” I croaked, my voice trembling.

“Persephone, you’ve returned to me. The curse is broken,” he said as he set me down, an elated smile filling his whole face.

“Hades,” I choked out. “What are you saying?”

“Don’t you see…you are her,” he told me, gesturing towards the garden. “You created this. It only would have returned for Persephone. When we made love, the garden came back because the curse was broken.” He said this while looking happier than I had ever seen a person look. Meanwhile, I felt like I was dying inside.

As soon as he set me down, I backed away. I felt destroyed inside, like all the light I’d ever held inside of me had been demolished.

He didn’t love me. He loved her.

I’d never be anything but a replacement for the girl that he once loved with his whole heart. The spirit that was still haunting his every thought.

I had to get out of here.

13

ELENA

I ran out of the garden as fast as I could, not knowing where I could go to get away from him. I didn’t hear Hades behind me, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t just pop up at any moment. I ran around the side of the mansion and found myself in yet another garden. I sprinted through a path enveloped on both sides by rose bushes. The thorns tore at my skin and hair and I was sure I was a terrifying sight with my crying and my cuts.

Last night I’d thought my life had turned into a dream. Little did I know it was actually a nightmare. I could see a thick forest of trees at the end of the path and I raced towards it, preparing myself to run into the barrier that I’d encountered all over the property. To my surprise and delight, I was able to run straight into the woods.

There was an overgrown dirt path that led through the trees and I blindly followed it, just wanting to get away.

I came to a screeching halt when the path darted to the left and there, standing in the middle of the trail, was a man. And not just any man…him.

As soon as I saw him, the dream I’d had the morning before came rushing back. Everything that wasn’t him floated away in my mind. Looking at him, it seemed like I still had to be dreaming. Because there was no way he could be real.

He was brutally beautiful, like nothing I’d ever seen. He looked shocked to see me, his pouty lips open as if in surprise. His eyes were a startling silver color that contrasted perfectly with his long black lashes and dark brown hair that had fallen into his eyes. My eyes traced his sculpted jaw and down his collarbone, needing to see every inch of him.

“Hi,” I said softly.

His gaze widened and he took a step back. “You can see me?” he asked, excitement threaded through his voice.

The timbre of his voice was enough to freeze me in place and heat my core…a miracle in the current circumstances.

“Yes?” I answered, confused.

He took a few steps towards me and clenched his fists as if he was trying to stop himself from coming any closer. The beautiful boy hopped a few times in place. “I can’t believe this. I mean I’d always hoped… but I-” his words trailed off and he grinned at me bashfully. “I’ve been desperate for you to talk to me for what feels like forever,” he said, pushing some of his hair out of his face.

“I’m sorry, do I know you?” I pressed, even though I already knew the answer. I didn’t know him. But at the same time, it was almost hard to believe that I hadn’t known him my whole life. The second I saw him something inside of me had recognized him… had believed he was something important to me.

He gave me a blinding grin, and I saw him then. I saw what a pure heart he had. I’d never met anyone before that I could just tell right away there wasn’t anything lying under the skin, hidden from sight.

“You don’t know me yet. But I can’t wait for you to,” he said humbly. He was suddenly standing in front of me then, and a part of me noted that he was evidently something other than human as well.

I didn’t really care in that moment though, not when he was looking at me like that. Like he found me to be the most interesting, wonderful person he’d ever seen.

You thought Hades had looked at you like that, my inner voice reminded me.

But this felt different. There was no baggage, no other intentions. This man standing in front of me just wanted to be mine. It was like our souls recognized one another and that was endgame.

“I feel like I’ve been waiting forever for you,” he said softly as his hand tentatively touched my face. I found myself leaning into the stranger’s touch, and I’d never had anything feel so right.

Suddenly a growl ripped through the forest. I swung around and saw a skeletal monster stalking towards us.

“Take my hand,” the man said urgently, and I grabbed it without thought, somehow knowing I could trust him above anyone else I’d ever met in my life. As soon as our hands connected everything began to spin around me. The skeletal demon rushed towards us, an inhuman scream like he’d been mortally wounded spiraling around me. And for just a second his form seemed to flicker, and it almost looked like… No, it couldn’t be.

The forest and the monster disappeared in that instant and I was surrounded by a bright white light. My savior cradled me in his arms as the white light danced around me and I leaned into his touch as his lips grazed down my neck.

Abruptly the white light was dispelled and I found myself in a place that I’d been hoping to never see again.

Mt. Olympus.

He let me go reluctantly and took a step away right as Zeus came around a corner, his gaze widening as he saw me standing there.

“Elena,” he said urgently, and then he was standing right in front of me.

“Please don’t take me back to him,” I whispered before falling into his arms and weeping. I could feel the sweet stranger’s gentle gaze on my form as I sought comfort from Zeus’s embrace. It didn’t feel jealous or angry, it just felt concerned…and loving.

“Whatever it is, we’ll fix it, little human,” Zeus said softly as he let me get all my tears out.

Finally, when it didn’t feel like there was another tear left in my body, I reluctantly went to pull away from him. He didn’t let me go far though, and I didn’t fight him. I was desperate for comfort, although I wouldn’t mind it coming from the pretty stranger still watching me avidly like I was the air he needed to breathe.

“What happened, Shade?” Zeus snapped, his voice like thunder as it echoed down the golden hallways around us.

“She came upon me in the woods,” he said. “She saw me.” His voice was filled with awe as if that was a miracle. “And then Death appeared and tried to come after her. She was terrified, so I brought her here,” he explained.

“Death?” I asked slowly. “Was that monster Hades?” I trembled there in Zeus’s arms as an image of the Grim Reaper-like figure took over my mind.

“That was his god form,” Shade explained somberly. I rubbed my arms as goosebumps spread across my skin.

“I see,” I whispered. I hated that I could still feel Hades on my skin. I hadn’t been exaggerating when I’d thought last night that he was changing me. He was still there, hovering under my skin, imprinted on my heart in a way that might be impossible for me to ever erase.

I felt so tired in that moment…so old.

“He’ll come for me,” I said wearily.

“I won’t let him take you from here,” said Zeus firmly.

“Can you take me home?” I asked hopefully, imagining what it would be like to feel my mother’s arms around me, to lean on my tree by the river.

“I’m very sorry, Elena. But you’ll never be able to go home again. The Fates will never free you from the curse.”

“Hades said the curse had been broken,” I told him beseechingly.

Zeus’s clear blue eyes were filled in sympathy for me. I hated that.

“There has to be something we can do,” said Shade passionately. I tried to give him a small smile and he soaked it up like I’d offered him the moon.

“The curse hasn’t been broken,” said Zeus.

“How do you know?”

He frowned and hesitated and something churned in my stomach as I waited for whatever terrible thing he was about to say.

“One of my gifts is that I can see past events. When I touched you…I saw what happened with Hades in Persephone’s garden,” he said softly.

I stared at the ground in shame as if it was the most fascinating thing I’d ever seen. “I fell in love with him but Hades didn’t fall in love with me,” I said softly. “He just thinks he did, because he thinks I’m her.”

“He’s an idiot,” Shade swore and I looked at him, confused and amused at the same time at how fiercely he was defending me.

“You don’t even know me. I could be terrible,” I told him.

Shade was already shaking his head before I even finished speaking. “You’re wonderful,” he blurted out, his face flushing a thousand shades of red.

His absurd crush was doing a really good job of soothing the pain that was currently writhing through my veins.

Before I could delve into the mystery that was Shade, Zeus took my hand. “You might not be able to go home, but you can stay here. I’ll make sure Hades can’t take you away.”

I hesitated, thinking of the raucous party taking place when I’d first come here.

“I’ll make sure you’re not bothered,” he promised with a smile, as if he was reading my mind.

Which he probably was.

Stupid fucking immortals.

“Alright. Thank you,” I told him.

“I’ll show you your room,” said Zeus, thankfully able to read the exhaustion across my face as he began to lead me down one of the many halls in this enormous place.

Shade hovered behind us as we walked. The hall twisted this way and that way until I knew I would be hopelessly lost if I ever tried to go anywhere myself. Evidently he and Zeus had similar ideas for architecture.

My heart panged as I thought of Hades for the millionth time since leaving him. Even now I missed him. How ridiculous was that? I was the ultimate doormat, destined to pine after someone forever who could never love me.

Zeus led me to an elegant room decorated in the same sparkling ivory and gold as the rest of what I’d seen in this place. The highlight of the room was the giant bed centered on the opposite wall. I was salivating at the thought of being able to sleep away everything that had happened today.

“Everything you’ll need will be here. There’s a bathroom through that door as well,” Zeus explained. He hesitated like he wanted to say more and then sighed and began to walk back towards the door. “I’ll let you rest and then we can talk later,” he told me.

I smiled gratefully, already envisioning what the bed would feel like.

“We’ll talk later?” he asked hopefully…as if I had a choice in the matter with him as my benefactor at the moment.

“Of course,” I told him, admiring the blinding smile he gave me. He was a mystery, they all were.

Zeus didn’t look twice at Shade before leaving the room and I turned my attention to the mysterious gorgeous male I’d somehow picked up today.

“I feel like you have more to tell me,” I told him, lifting an eyebrow.

“I’ll explain everything soon. But I need to go right now,” he said in a dejected tone. His eyes closed for a second as if he was listening to something, and when his silver eyes opened back up, there was pain in their beautiful depths.

I nodded and we just continued to look at each other, like we couldn’t get enough.

“Before I go, I just wanted to tell you something,” he began nervously.

I gave him a reassuring smile, perversely glad for any extra minute I could get with him.

“The man you end up with won’t fall in love with you,” he whispered in a gravel filled voice that had me picturing silk sheets on my skin and muttered curses as his tongue danced across my body. “He’ll walk into love with you. His eyes will be wide open and he’ll choose to take every step. Hades says he’s guided by fate…by destiny. But that’s why he’ll be better for you, Elena. Because it won’t matter to him what the Fates had to say. He’ll always choose you. In a hundred lifetimes. In a hundred worlds. In any version of any story. He’ll choose you. He’ll find you. Hades could never give you that.”

“Are you describing you? Will you be that man?” I asked softly, something fluttering in my heart, pushing out all the disappointment and self-loathing I’d been feeling.

“If you’ll let me,” he whispered before he faded from view, his form drifting away in the breeze like grains of sand.

I missed him the second he was gone.

14

SHADE

“Where have you been, my love,” Aphrodite whined as she approached me from behind. Her voice made me cringe. It was funny how things could change. I’d once thought she was perfect. I’d felt like the most blessed being in existence to have her attention. As the primary consort to her, I’d spent a lot of time getting to know every inch of her body.

And that was why I was in trouble. I wouldn’t ever be able to touch her again, not unless it was against my will. Not now that I’d found her.

My real name wasn’t Shade. Shade came from the fact that I was quite literally dead. I existed in spirit form… a shade of my former self. Aphrodite had been visiting Hades one day on business when she’d seen me, hovering in the hallways, confused and lost as to how I’d gotten there. She’d taken me with her and from that day on I was hers.

I owed Aphrodite everything, but I no longer belonged to her. I belonged heart and soul to Elena.

It had been so many thousands of years since I’d even thought of my real name that I forgot it sometimes. But I craved the moment I could say it out loud to Elena. Since the moment I’d seen her I’d daydreamed what my name would sound like as it fell from her lips, preferably when she was in the midst of an orgasm I was giving her.

Elena was my soul mate. My heart had recognized her from my first look at her perfect face. I didn’t know how it was possible for a spirit to have a fated mate but I knew who she was with every fiber of my being.

And I guess maybe I’d been stretching the truth when I’d told Elena that fate would have nothing to do with the perfect man for her. As my soul mate there was plenty of fate involved. The difference between Hades and I though, was that I would pick her over everything, even if it ruined my life. There was plenty of choosing involved in that.

I flinched when Aphrodite’s hand drifted down my chest and stepped away trying not to make my distaste obvious. If Aphrodite had me sent back to the Underworld, well… I’m sure Hades wouldn’t be very eager to help me out.

“What’s wrong, my beautiful lover?” she purred in a throaty, sensual voice as she slid past me and situated herself on a settee in a way that I know was supposed to be appealing but which did absolutely nothing to me.

If it was possible for me to break out in a cold sweat, I would. Aphrodite was jealous, selfish, and would undoubtedly do everything she could to ruin my existence and Elena’s existence once she found out.

Elena was worth anything terrible Aphrodite would do to me, and I’m sure she would be very creative in her punishment. But I would rather cease to exist than allow anything to happen to Elena.

Aphrodite’s little smirk dropped and I could see determination build in her gaze. She snapped her fingers and music started to play, a song that had played in a particular hard fuck I’d given her. I shifted uneasily, wondering what she was going to do. Her hand went to the strap of her gown and everything inside of me was screaming for me to run.

Fuck. Someone help.

It was right at that moment that Aphrodite’s husband, Hephaestus, stumbled in, drunk off his ass. He was hideous, but didn’t seem to have a mean bone in his body. Aphrodite was terrible to him, flaunting me and the others in his face constantly as a reminder he would never be what she wanted.

Usually I just felt bad for the bastard, but right now, I was ready to worship the ground he walked on.

Aphrodite glared at Hephaestus before waving me away as he flopped down on the settee with her, almost breaking the thing.

I left the room as quickly as I could without arousing any attention, she’d already been wondering where I’d been disappearing to.

But I couldn’t help it. If I didn’t get a glimpse of Elena in a day, it felt like I was dying all over again.

I hesitated in the hallway, knowing I should just go to my quarters. But how could I now that she’d met me and somehow actually been able to see me?

I had to see her once again.

I closed my eyes and imagined her room in Zeus’s castle, shivering as I shifted through space. I opened my eyes and there she was, fast asleep in the bed. I’d never seen something so lovely. She let out a soft moan and sighed something that sounded a little bit like Shade.

I couldn’t resist taking her hand, the feel of her skin against mine somehow the most erotic touch I’d ever felt. “Eros. Eros is my name,” I whispered to my sleeping beauty.

I knew then that Elena was going to destroy me.

And somehow, I didn’t care.

15

ELENA

It took me a while to fall asleep. It was quiet, too quiet. I guess I’d gotten used to the creepy cracks and moans of Hades’s lair. The fact that the place did that should have given me all the information I needed about Hades. That he chose to live in a haunted mansion when he could have made the place into anything he wanted said a lot about him as a person.

Just saying.

Now that I was alone, the pain I felt over Hades’ betrayal rose to the surface. It beat at my heart and mind. I saw every interaction with him in a new light. He was always looking for me to be someone else. To be her. There was never a time he saw me…he was always just seeing the promise of her.

My heart was broken. But more than that, it felt like my soul was broken. He’d become a part of me last night. He’d sewn a piece of his essence into me and I didn’t know how I was ever going to be able to get him out.

I hated being the broken-hearted girl. I’d spent years trying to convince myself there wasn’t anything wrong with me, that something had been wrong with my father when he’d chosen to leave. All my old demons were crawling to the surface once again, whispering in my head that I would never be enough for anyone. Anyone I ever cared about would eventually tire of me and realize that something was wrong inside of me. I wasn’t anything special. I was just a girl, a plain and simple girl, with nothing to offer anyone. Shade might look at me like I held the world right now. But eventually even he would see the truth.

At least that was what my demons told me.

Lying there in the dark, I could see how my future would have turned out with Hades.

It would have been cold and lonely.

He would have only ever tolerated me, because no matter our similariates or what that stupid fucking garden said, I would never have been her.

I could see now a life where I did everything to please him. Where I killed myself to try and make him happy. I would have made him my world, while he would have made me nothing but an afterthought.

Ten years down the line, would I have been brave enough to break free, knowing I would be ruined? Would I have been brave enough to remove the dagger that was Persephone and walk away for good?

I didn’t know. Because right now, after just a short amount of time. It felt like I was dying.

I finally fell asleep. And of course, I dreamed.

Zeus and I laid in bed, our bodies intertwined. His kisses turned soft at first as he slowly coaxed my lips open with his tongue. His hand moved up my back and into my hair, positioning me to deepen the kiss. His other hand moved to cup my breast, his thumb teasing me until I couldn’t help but arch into his hand, moaning softly into his mouth.

He abruptly pulled away from the kiss. A sound of protest came out of my mouth until my shirt was pulled over my head. He angled me to the side, laying me back on the bed as he hovered above me.

“I’m going to taste every inch of you, starting with these.” He popped the front clasp of my bra, pulling the cups to the sides, exposing my breasts to him. I could feel my face turning a deep shade of red, my face and chest burning as he stared, lightly tracing my skin.

“Perfect,” he said softly, as if to himself, before he dipped his head, capturing my breast in his mouth and sucking it in deep. My back bowed off the bed, my hands flying into his soft as silk golden hair. The sensation was unlike anything I could describe, making warmth flow to my whole body. He took his time licking, sucking, biting, and caressing every inch of skin above my waist, frequently returning to nip and kiss my lips during his exploration, until I was a writhing, wiggling body of need.

“Please,” I whimpered at one point, begging to be put out of such pleasurable agony. But Zeus either didn’t hear me or chose to ignore me as he continued his devastating ministrations. He returned to my mouth, sucking on my bottom lip. His hands brushed through my hair, his fingers pressing into my scalp. He ground his pelvis into mine, and I instinctively ground back.

He sat up, breathing heavily as he discarded my shorts, pulling them and my thong over my hips and down my legs. Again, he stared, taking in the length of me. I squirmed under his scrutiny, reaching to cover myself with a sheet, but he grabbed my wrist, halting my progress.

“Don’t.” He brought my palm to his lips and kissed it softly. “Don’t ever hide yourself from me. You’re perfect. Every inch of you.” He traced a line of kisses from the center of my chest down the rest of my body. His nostrils flared as he breathed me in. “Your scent is intoxicating. It’s been driving me crazy since I first saw you. If I don’t taste you soon, it will drive me insane.”

I had an idea of what he planned to do, but the reality was more than I could have imagined. His tongue felt wicked as it licked me deftly. I raised my hips and ground against his mouth, trying to get closer. His mouth latched on, sucking, as he touched the right spot perfectly. I didn’t last long. My orgasm erupted from my body and out my mouth in a long moan. The sound must have excited Zeus, because he growled against me, prolonging the climax and sending more aftershocks coursing through me. Spent, my limbs like jelly, I wasn’t sure if I could move. I raised my head. Zeus was still between my legs, nuzzling against me while lightly kissing the insides of my thighs. I plopped my head back down, and he made his way up my body, stopping to bury his face in my neck, breathing me in. He wrapped his arms around me and held me close. I brought my arms around him as well, my hands like a magnet, digging into his hair, my fingers playing with the silken strands.

I woke with a gasp, an ache between my legs that I was desperate to relieve.

I squeaked when I noticed that Hades was standing a few feet away from me, staring at me like I’d ruined his life somehow when the opposite was definitely true.

“I knew he was just waiting for the right opportunity,” Hades growled, his dark gaze caressing my skin. I pulled the covers up, unable to take it.

What the hell had happened to Zeus running interference for me? And what the hell had that dream been about.

There was a burning in my chest as I stared at him. I loved him, so freaking much. Why had he done this to me?

Zeus appeared on the other side of my bed just then, appearing out of nowhere with a loud pop that I suspected was more for a dramatic effect than anything else.

“I thought I made it clear you weren’t welcome here?” he said calmly, the tension in his body belaying how he really felt.

Hades didn’t even bother to look at him, keeping his midnight gaze on me.

“Come back with me,” he whispered almost tenderly. “This has all been a misunderstanding. You’ll see.”

“You’re in love with a ghost,” I said, my whole body trembling. “That’s never going to change.”

“Elena-”

I held up my hand, cutting him off. “There’s nothing else to say. You ruined your chance at happiness today. Over someone who doesn’t even deserve an ounce of the devotion you continue to give her.”

Hades’s cheek twitched, a sure sign he was feeling out of control.

“It’s ironic, Elena, that you would run into the arms of someone just as sick as I am,” he murmured.

He brushed his hand through his hair and let out a sigh that held a thousand unsaid words. “I don’t have to own you to love you, Elena. Remember that when you’re lying in his bed tonight,” Hades told me softly before he turned away.

It took all I had to not run after him as he walked out of the room.

I stared into the empty hallway for a long moment before turning to Zeus whose face was suspiciously blank.

“What was he talking about?” I asked slowly, dread curling in my gut.

He didn’t say anything for what felt like an hour. And when he did finally open his mouth, I wanted to scream at his revelation.

“Persephone was my lover as well,” he said softly.

My heart somehow broke a little bit more, jealousy and hate over a dead girl filling every inch of my body. I looked away, staring at the window and wishing there was a place I could go to escape them…to escape her. And I swore as I looked in the window, there in the reflection of the glass, I saw Persephone’s face.

Continue Elena’s Story in Taken By the Darkness

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I’ve been obsessed with greek mythology since I was a little girl, checking out every book in the school library to read the myths over and over again. Hades always enthralled me. I’d always wondered what the true relationship of Hades and Persephone was. Did she really love him? Was he really as obsessed and devoted as the stories made him to be?

Once I started my career as a writer, he began knocking around in my head, and I wondered…what if Hades’ true love wasn’t Persephone? What if Persephone was actually the villain in his story?

And that’s when Elena came into the picture.

I’m sure some of you wanted this to be an M/F book, and it actually started that way. Until Hades was a huge idiot.

It felt more natural that Elena’s heart would have been splintered after that. The human heart is a fragile thing after all, especially when it comes to the big, life changing love she had for him.

Let’s just hope for Hades’ sake that he can redeem himself.

A special thanks to my dear friends Summer and Mila for supporting me, reading through my nonsense, and being my constant cheerleaders. I love you both so freaking much!

Another thank you to Caitlin, my P.A., who is just an overall badass and inspires me every day.

And last, but certainly not least…thank you to you for reading my stories and ultimately bringing them to life when you step into the worlds I’ve created. It’s kind of the age old question…does a book exist if no one reads it? Or maybe I just made that question up, lol. Look at me being all philosophical.

Love you Fates, thanks for bringing my books to life…as well as me.

First Impressions by C. R. Jane

Copyright © 2018 by C. R. Jane

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review, and except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

For permissions contact:

crjaneauthor@gmail.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

BLURB

Eva Taylor has been locked in an attic for 4 years.

Failed by the foster system, and left in the hands of a woman who hates her, and a man who wants her, Eva has given up hope of ever having a life.

When she finds a mysterious letter from Rothmore College addressed to her in the trash, Eva’s future suddenly comes alive. Now all she has to do is figure out a way to escape her attic prison, make her way across the country to New York City, and figure out all the things that point to the fact that she isn’t exactly normal…

Along the way Eva meets new friends, explores new places, and stumbles across three beautiful, charismatic, and alarmingly otherworldly men. Do they hold the key to Eva discovering who she really is, or are they just good at first impressions?

When I sound the fairy call,

Gather here in silent meeting,

Chin to knee on the orchard wall,

Cooled with dew and cherries eating.

Merry, merry, Take a cherry,

Mine are sounder, Mine are rounder,

Mine are sweeter, For the eater,

When the dews fall. And you’ll be fairies all.

-Robert Graves,” Cherry-Time,” Fairies and Fusiliers, 1918

Fairies were real once…

-the Lore of Fairies and Fairy Land

Be careful who you trust,

the devil was once an angel.

-Ziad K. Abdelnour

PROLOGUE

DAMON

I’m lonely even though I’m surrounded by people. The three of us have walked the world since what seems like the beginning of time, cursed to stay here and atone for our sins. We’ve been kings, war heroes, gladiators, musicians, and actors. We’ve reigned the hearts of men, and then faded from their minds when it was time to start anew. I didn’t want to fade away this time. I was always on the search for this thing that was missing, something I couldn’t name but felt incomprehensibly, almost like a hole in my heart that needed to be filled. Just as in other times we were gods in this century, worshipped by everyone, and I couldn’t deny that anyone observing from the outside would believe I had been more than blessed. I had everything I wanted, nothing was out of reach. Only I knew I was actually cursed. I found myself on my balcony most nights, brooding into the darkness, wondering what I was missing and if I would ever find it. I yearned to feel complete. I was tired of this emptiness.

CHAPTER 1

EVA

I sat up with a groan when the fighting became so loud it roused me from a deep sleep. What had I been dreaming about again? I’d had the same dream for weeks now and although I tried to write down my dream as soon as I awoke, the dreams always slipped away from me. A brief picture of the most gorgeous faces I had ever seen flashed through my mind and then quickly disappeared. Waking up every morning after such beautiful dreams had begun to feel like my heart was breaking every day. Strange.

Mr. and Mrs. Anderson were always screaming at one another. I guess it was better than when they screamed at me, but their words nonetheless pounded into my head giving me headaches and wishing I didn’t have such good hearing. I crept softly from the army cot I used for a bed, to the bucket of water in the corner of the room. I needed to use the bathroom, but I didn’t want them to know I was up. That would only make the screaming get worse. As I washed my face I glanced at the dusty, cracked piece of glass I had found in one of the attic chests. I looked pale. I guess that was to be expected when I hadn’t been allowed out in the sun for months.

When the neighbor boy had seen me through a crack in the fence, and Mr. Anderson had caught him trying to talk to me while I was helping with the gardening, that was all it took to get me restricted to my attic room for what felt like the hundredth time. The only outside breeze I had felt in months came from the small round window on the far wall. It was too high for me to properly see out of it, but I had figured out how to wrench it open with a broken broom handle and now at least I could get some airflow in my room. The rest of the room was dusty and dim, filled with old trunks and forgotten, broken things. I felt that at this point I belonged here. For I too was a forgotten and broken thing.

A sharp crash from down below startled me from my musings and I accidentally sent my water basin flying to the ground. There was a sudden silence from down below and then I heard steady footsteps start to ascend the stairs to my room. I shuddered. I didn’t know who was worse. Mrs. Anderson with her cruel comments, her cursing, and her fists, or Mr. Anderson with his leering looks and his hands that lingered too long along my body. When I attempted to push him away, Mr. Anderson’s attempts at sensual strokes were replaced by the crack of his palm or fist against my face. They both considered themselves very religious and were convinced that the so-called “feelings” I seemed to invoke in every male (and sometimes female) that I came into contact with meant that I had come from the devil. They felt that it was their duty to drive the devil out of me whether it was by their words or their fists. When the “feelings” supposedly spread to Mr. Anderson, and he claimed that I must have cursed him because he couldn’t get rid of them, Mrs. Anderson decided that I needed to be locked in the attic for extended periods of time. I had been up here off and on since I was 14.

I couldn’t remember my parents, but assumed I had them at one point. I could remember a feeling of being loved, a feeling that my life had once been more than loneliness and broken dreams. I remember getting to go to school with other children who laughed with me, instead of at me. I could remember affection and warmth. I had once even had friends. I had once been happy. Something had happened to my memory and although I could remember that feeling of being loved, my only clear memories began when the tall, thin, beak nosed woman, Ms. Rankis, had picked me up from school, and told me that I needed to go with her. I had spent the next seven years in and out of foster homes until finally arriving with the Andersons. It had been a long 4 years since then. I came back to reality when the wooden door to the attic crashed open. It was Mrs. Anderson.

Amelia Anderson was a miserable looking woman. She was about an inch taller than me (I think I am around 5’8), but outweighed me by what seemed like at least two hundred pounds. Her forehead glistened with sweat from having to come up the stairs, and her frizzing, graying, black hair was pulled back haphazardly into a messy mound on top of her head. She was still in her nightgown, a shapeless grey sack that showed too much of her abundant cleavage. I suppose she wore such things to attempt to feel sexier, but it was a grotesque sight to me.

“Feeling lazy this morning, are you?” she griped at me.

That was one of her common complaints against me, that I was lazy. I wasn’t sure what exactly I was supposed to be doing that would make me not lazy since I was only allowed out of the attic room to use the restroom and bathe, but obviously I couldn’t say that to her.

She yanked my arm forward and pushed me down the first set of stairs. I hurried into the outdated, faded, blue wallpapered bathroom to use the restroom and brush my teeth. I knew I only had 5 minutes to get ready for the day before she would be back in to haul me up to the attic. I peered into the mirror above the sink as I washed my hands. I would do anything to get rid of the picture staring back at me. I didn’t know if I was pretty or not, I just knew that something about me inspired bad things to always happen.

Mrs. Anderson had tried to chop my long blonde hair off before, but I had always strangely woken up the next morning with it back to its original length. She had also burned my arms and chest with a lighter, which although horrendously painful, never actually left a lasting mark. At first her inability to permanently maim me had inspired her to beat me to within an inch of my life out of anger, but eventually she saw my “ability” as a way for her to do whatever she wanted to me without fearing anyone would find out.

The Andersons were careful not to draw blood with their abuse however. My medical records listed that I had a mild case of hemophilia. I suppose it was before they had seen my records, or maybe they were just testing to see if it was true, but Mrs. Anderson had stabbed me in the arm in a fit of rage one of my first weeks with them. I had fainted right away, more from the shock of the stab wound than the blood loss, so I wasn’t sure how bad it had actually gotten. All I know was that I woke up on my cot in the attic, my arm wrapped in bandages. The Andersons never spoke of the incident, but they did from that time on make sure to never make me bleed again.

I suppose I should have been dead from at least a hundred of the things they had put me through, but somehow my body healed itself and I had held on. This didn’t fill me with relief however. There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t wish I was dead. I had long ago given up on the hope that a white knight, or anyone for that matter, would arrive to save me from my torment.

The bathroom door was thrown open just then. I guess my five minutes were up. I was once again yanked upstairs to the attic. I waited for what was sure to be another onslaught of pain but she surprised me when she sat down on a chest by the door with a huff.

“The Reverend Darby is stopping by for lunch today with his wife,” she said.

I didn’t know where she was going with this.

“Unfortunately, this means that you will have to come down for lunch as well. Reverend Darby has specifically asked that you attend,” she snarled.

I was surprised at this. The Andersons kept questions about their “foster child” to a minimum by telling people that I had severe developmental disabilities, and couldn’t be let out of the house. They used me as a way to garner praise and sympathy from their cohorts who were so amazed that the Andersons were so selfless in helping out such a troubled youth.

I had been with them since I was 13, and I could count the number of times I had been taken somewhere on both hands. While dining with the minister who inspired such fervent religious ferocity in Mr. and Mrs. Anderson should have filled me with dread, I couldn’t help but feel elated at the thought of getting to go downstairs and maybe see out the window. It was spring now, I’m sure the gardens around the house would be blooming. Mrs. Anderson was known around town for her immaculate gardens. She used to have me help her before the neighbor boy incident, and getting the chance to bask in the flowers around me had always energized my spirits. Now she hired someone to help her since I wasn’t allowed into the yard.

“They are coming at 12:00 sharp. Make sure you are dressed appropriately. If anything goes wrong I’ll beat you so badly that not even the devil will be able to heal you for days this time,” she added with a nasty grin.

With that, she waddled out the door, slamming it behind her. I heard the sharp click of the lock before her footsteps sounded down the stairs again.

I glanced at the rickety, scratched table next to my army cot. I had an old clock on the table that saved me from going mad. At least I could count down the hours before I could finally go to sleep and dream everyday. It was 10:30, I had an hour and a half before she would be back. I shook off the temptation to go back to sleep. I needed to get ready and do some of my homework for the week. Although I wasn’t allowed to go to a traditional school, the Andersons had at least kept up with my studies by enrolling me in a stay at home program that was paid for by the state. I had tested out of high school over a year earlier, at 16, and now had started college classes. The work was dull, but at least gave me something to do to pass the time. I walked to my closet, again quietly (at this point it was habit), and looked at the offerings.

There were three shapeless dresses hanging neatly up. All three covered everything from my neck to my ankles, and looked like something a polygamist woman would wear. I had snuck a magazine upstairs that I had grabbed from the trash the last time I had been downstairs and I knew that these dresses were definitely not any type of style that I would have wanted to be seen in if I ever got to go outside again. But Mrs. Anderson insisted I wear them. She thought it would help distract from “the devil” inside of me apparently.

I grabbed a blue checkered printed one, and slipped it on. It hung loosely on my body with the exception of my chest. Although I hadn’t seen much to compare for a long time, I believed that I had larger than average breasts. At least Mr. Anderson’s wandering gaze always seemed to focus on them, and they looked somewhat larger than the ones I saw on the models in the magazines I poached from Mrs. Anderson’s castoffs. I smoothed the front of the dress down and went to sit on my cot and start my homework. My stomach grumbled. In the excitement of the Reverend’s visit, Mrs. Anderson had evidently decided I didn’t need to eat breakfast. Lunch couldn’t come soon enough.

Keep Reading First Impressions HERE!

BOOKS BY C.R. JANE

C.R. Jane’s Amazon Page

The Fated Wings Series

First Impressions

Forgotten Specters

The Fallen One (a Fated Wings Novella)

Forbidden Queens

Frightful Beginnings (a Fated Wings Short Story)

Faded Realms

Faithless Dreams

Fabled Kingdoms

Fated Wings 8

The Rock God (a Fated Wings Novella)

The Timeless Affection Series

Lamented Pasts

Lost Passions

The Sounds of Us Contemporary Series (complete series)

Remember Us This Way

Remember You This Way

Remember Me This Way

Broken Hearts Academy Series (complete duet)

Heartbreak Prince

Heartbreak Lover

Ugly Hearts Series: Enemies to Lovers

Ugly Hearts

Academy of Souls Co-write with Mila Young (complete series)

School of Broken Souls

School of Broken Hearts

School of Broken Dreams

School of Broken Wings

Fallen World Series Co-write with Mila Young (complete series)

Bound

Broken

Betrayed

Belong

Thief of Hearts Co-write with Mila Young

Siren Condemned

Siren Sacrificed

Siren Awakened

Siren Redeemed

Kingdom of Wolves Co-write with Mila Young

Wild Moon

Wild Heart

Wild Girl

The Alpha-hole Duet with Mila Young

Real Alphas Bite: A rejected mate shifter book

Sports Standalone with Mila Young

Scoring Her

Stupid Boys Series Co-write with Rebecca Royce

Stupid Boys

Dumb Girl

Crazy Love

Breathe Me Duet Co-write with Ivy Fox (complete)

Breathe Me

Breathe You

ABOUT C.R. JANE

A Texas girl living in Utah now, I’m a wife, mother, lawyer, and now author. My stories have been floating around in my head for years, and it has been a relief to finally get them down on paper. I’m a huge Dallas Cowboys fan and I primarily listen to Beyonce and Taylor Swift…don’t lie and say you don’t too.

My love of reading started probably when I was three and with a faster than normal ability to read, I’ve devoured hundreds of thousands of books in my life. It only made sense that I would start to create my own worlds since I was always getting lost in others’.

I like heroines who have to grow in order to become badasses, happy endings, and swoon-worthy, devoted, (and hot) male characters. If this sounds like you, I’m pretty sure we’ll be friends.

I’m so glad to have you on my team…check out the links below for ways to hang out with me and more of my books you can read!

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Contents

Copyright

Full Page Image

Dedication

Join C.R. Jane’s Readers’ Group

When Darkness Calls

Epigraph

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Author’s Note

First Impressions

Copyright

Blurb

Epigraph

Prologue

Chapter 1

Books by C.R. Jane

About C.R. Jane