Page 4 of Hateful Prince

“No.”

Blazing azure irises met mine before his lips twisted in a smirk. “There she is. Always fighting me.”

“Cain, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just met you here at Blackwood. I’m not... Persephone.”

The smile slowly faded from his lips, his body recoiling as he pulled away and really looked at me. It was like my words had finally penetrated whatever fog he’d been stuck in. “You really don’t remember? It didn’t come back to you...” His gaze grew distant, telling me he’d retreated into his mind palace.

Shifting until he was seated on the side of the bed, he dropped his head in his hands and took a few long breaths. The man was so painfully beautiful, naked and posed the way he was, but there was an agony in his presence I hadn’t ever sensed from him. No, that wasn’t true. Cain wore grief like a sweater on a chilly fall day. The difference was now he seemed to know what he’d been grieving.

“I thought it came back. That I had you back with me, but... fuck, the Fates wouldn’t be so kind, would they? Of course you don’t remember a godsdamned thing. Of fucking course you belong to someone else, and I was too late to claim you. Your memories weren’t taken. You don’t even have them—and you never will. That’s not how reincarnation works. Everything we went through, the way you finally loved me... it never happened for you. Now I have to walk through this life and watch you love someone else, and I can’t do a damn thing about it because if I kill him, it’ll take you too.”

The words fell out of him in a rush, like water bursting through a dam. He was talking to himself more than me. It was hard to know if he even remembered I was still here.

A soft cry left him as he tugged at his hair, his body still bowed and facing away from me.

“You were supposed to be mine. Mine for all eternity. Instead you were torn away from me after little more than a season.”

The torture in his voice reminded me of a condemned soul begging for mercy. I didn’t know how to help him. I wasn’t this woman he claimed me to be. Was I?

“Cain.” I reached out to touch his shoulder, but he turned on me, catching my wrist and staring into my eyes.

He whispered a kiss over the palm of my hand, breathing a word into the center as though for safekeeping. “Hades.”

I had to blink, my mind not fully tracking yet another sudden turn in the conversation.

“What?”

“My name. It’s Hades.”

And the penny finally dropped. The air left me like wind from a ship’s sails.

“And you think I’m Persephone.” Where his words were impassioned, mine were wooden.

“No, goddess. I know you are. We are destined. Your soul has been bound to mine for lifetimes. I’ve scoured the earth searching for you since I lost you, and I’ve loved you to the depths of my being every moment.”

His declaration was beautiful and poignant, but it wasn’t all-encompassing love I felt in its wake. It was sorrow. Sorrow, because it wasn’t meant for me, Dahlia. It was for some other woman. His Persephone.

The woman he loved, chased through lifetimes, wasn’t me.

He was in love with someone else.

A little laugh bubbled up. Hadn’t he warned me of this very thing? So why did it hurt so badly?

Because he was just inside you.

Well, this is awkward.

I pulled my hand away, scooting back as far as I could. “I’m not her.”

“You are. Do you think I would mistake you? I’ve known your soul for countless years.”

“I’m. Not. Her. Cain.”

“Hades.”

I shook my head, trying to wrap my brain around the new moniker. “When did you remember who you were?”

“When we came together. It all rushed back. Me. Us. Our past. I thought it would have for you too.” He sighed, his eyes dimming again. “But then I realized the truth. My memories were stolen or blocked while your soul was reincarnated.”

---