Page 59 of Hades

This place wasfamiliar.

He took it in, turning first to his left and then to his right. He must have been here before, but the memory was dim, shrouded in dark shadows that left him feeling he had been in a terrible mood the last time he had come to this place. Why?

Cerberus lowered his heads and sniffed the ground, turning in a wide circle, and then began walking in one direction, towards another bridge that looked equally as fragile.

“Is she in that direction?” Hades met the beast’s gaze as Cerberus looked over his muscular back at him.

And then shot off.

Hades cracked the reins like a whip and the horses took off. He urged them on, refusing to let them slow this time, his focus on the direction Cerberus was heading, and that feeling of déjà vu building inside him. He knew this place. He reached for the memory, attempting to force it into focus, determined to recall when he had been here.

When he reached the next bridge, he snapped the reins again and this time the horses thundered over it, throwing dust up in their wake as they crossed a narrow stream of lava. He punched through the heat of it to the other side, where the air shimmered and made the distance waver. Something inside him tugged him in that direction as fiercely as it pulled Cerberus. The beast sped up and the horses matched him.

Hades narrowed his black eyes on the spot beyond the plain that beckoned him, studying the unsettling feeling and the power it had over him. It compelled him to go there, and the closer he got to it, the closer he felt to grasping and bringing into focus the memory that eluded him.

He urged the horses on and they responded with a great surge in speed, outpacing Cerberus.

No.

Not outpacing. Hades glanced at his beloved pet. Cerberus was slowing.

He looked in the direction they had been heading and pulled back on the reins.

Beyond the next river, up the foothills of a mountain, was a great vertical cliff-face, and on that chiselled section of black rock, rings and symbols had been carved.

A gate.

One that was ancient and had been closed for millennia.

Since Heracles had stolen Cerberus.

Cerberus whined and stopped before he reached the river, and when Hades pulled the chariot around to face him, the three-headed black beast was backing away. The urge to force Cerberus to continue was strong, the need to find Persephone filling him with a dark desire to lash out at him. He didn’t have time for this delay. Persephone was close. She had to be.

This was where she had come.

To this gate.

One that linked the Underworld to the mortal one.

Hades drew the horses to a halt and tied the reins to a metal ring in the centre of the curving front of the chariot. His black eyes narrowed on Cerberus, shadows dancing around his boots as he turned towards the beast.

“This is where she came, is it not?” he growled, his voice a deep snarl he barely recognised.

Cerberus glanced at the gate.

And whined again.

Hades removed his helmet, propped his bident up, and stepped down from the chariot. “Move. We must keep going. We must find her.”

Rather than doing as he commanded, Cerberus backed off and lowered his heads, casting a fearful look at the gate that wrenched at Hades, pulling the last of the light up through the veil of darkness. What was he doing?

He huffed and covered his eyes, hatred directed at himself bubbling up inside him. He drew down several breaths, struggling to steady himself and calm the darkness as he clung to that shred of light Cerberus’s fear had drawn to the surface. When he felt calmer, he looked at Cerberus, forcing himself to see how being this close to the gate was affecting him. It had been a long time since Hades had seen Cerberus so rattled and afraid.

While he was desperate to find Persephone now that he felt he was close, he couldn’t make Cerberus do something that would pain him.

Hades looked over his shoulder in the direction of the gate and his eyebrows drew down as something dawned on him.

If Persephone had indeed come this way, then her memories of the day they had met were far different to what he had believed. He had never wanted to dwell on their past, had shunned the urges that struck him from time to time, fear of what she might say holding his tongue.

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