Page 10 of Hades

Persephone pushed away from and turned her back on her grim thoughts, refusing to allow the poisonous fears and doubts to cloud her mind and make her believe they were destined to lose this war. To rid herself of them, she focused on her family, shutting out the world around them to give herself a moment’s respite.

The new additions to their family had only made it more wonderful to her. Her sons were all madly in love with incredible women, and her daughter had fallen for one of the most powerful gods in the Underworld. She couldn’t have asked for a better match for Calindria, or for any of her sons either.

If Ares made Megan look small, then Thanatos dwarfed Calindria. The seven-two god loomed a good fifteen inches over her, and even stood four inches taller than Hades. Her lips curled as she remembered how irritated Hades had been when Thanatos had grown taller than he was, and how he had levelled a dark look on Persephone when she had mentioned that it wasn’t only Thanatos who was taller—his twin Hypnos was too.

Her smile became a full-blown grin and her cheeks flushed as she recalled how fiercely Hades had taken her that night, staking a claim on her that had seen them still making love when dawn had come.

“Mother.” Ares’s disgruntled voice broke into her thoughts, scattering them. He looked appalled. Possibly disgusted.

She flushed all over again when she noticed the way vines had sprung from the black earth to snake up her legs towards the apex of her thighs, slipping between the layers of her green dress, and pretended she hadn’t seen them.

“Have you seen your father?” she said, her voice even, with not a trace of the embarrassment she was feeling in it.

Ares grunted, “Clearlyyouneed to see him.”

Thanatos shook his head, the picture of a gentleman as he too pretended he hadn’t seen what had happened. “I have not seen my god-king this day. Is he not at Tartarus?”

She silently thanked him for his diplomacy as her cheeks cooled. “No. I cannot feel him there.”

Ares slid her a look, one she caught the meaning behind. She almost scowled at him. She hated that she felt compelled to constantly ‘keep tabs’ on Hades, as Ares put it in his mortal vernacular, but she was worried about him and feared he was vulnerable when alone.

The enemy wanted to open a gate between this realm and the mortal world and then force it to remain open, allowing the two realms to bleed together and form a new one. The easiest way to do that now their sons had closed all but one of the permanent gates was to use Hades’s blood.

His blood had the power to create a gate.

The enemy had gotten hold of it and come dangerously close to opening a gate with it in the past.

They had also come dangerously close to killing him.

Which meant it was perfectly reasonable for her to be concerned when she couldn’t sense him. She hadn’t been able to sense Calindria in all the centuries she had been a captive of their enemy after all. What if Hades was now their captive too?

Her hand drifted to her stomach as the coldness inside her began to spread again, the warmth she had felt from being around her family giving way to it as fear and doubt began to creep into her mind. She hated that feeling. They had faced danger before. This wasn’t the first attempt to destroy their family.

But everything felt so much more uncertain this time, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that they wouldn’t make it through.

That the unthinkable would happen.

Persephone looked at her children and thought about the members of her family who weren’t there with her. Her heart clenched and she struggled to get air into her lungs. The thought that they might be taken from her—she just couldn’t.

It hit her that was what was different this time. She had such a large, wonderful family now and she feared she would lose them all.

That she would lose Hades.

Persephone steeled her heart again. Her children were all warriors—gods—and no one in the Underworld was as powerful as Hades. They could win this. Survive this.

The chill remained.

Ares handed Adora to Megan and took a step towards Persephone, his dark eyebrows furrowing and his deep brown eyes flooding with concern as he placed a hand on her shoulder. The weight of it felt good, and his strong grip calmed her, together with his words.

“Father is with Keras. They’ll be fine, Mother.”

She swallowed and tried to nod, tried to cling to the hope his words gave her, but it flitted away before she could take hold of it and she shook her head, her face crumpling as she met his gaze. “I can locate Keras. He returned to his palace and that prompted me to look for Hades.”

Megan bounced Adora in her arms. “Maybe he had other business that needed his attention? Maybe he went to speak with the legions?”

“I suppose that could be the case.” Persephone felt a burst of hope and this time was quicker to grasp it and hold on to it. “Some of the legions are posted far away—too far for me to sense Hades if he was there.”

Not without expending the kind of energy that would have her needing to rest for a day to recover her strength.

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