Page 63 of Hades

Hades sighed. “Your wife has almost enough diplomacy and grace to offset the broad faults in your personality.”

“Could say the same thing about Mum,” Ares grumbled.

Hades pinned him with a hard look, one that had Ares finally keeping his mouth shut, and then softened it as he met Megan’s gaze. “Do not let him drive.”

“Hey!” Ares frowned at him. “I drive that thing better than you do.”

Hades scoffed at that outlandish declaration. “I have never broken a wheel on it, let alone the axel… four times.”

His second-eldest son scowled at him but didn’t deny it. Megan looked Ares up and down, a worried crease forming between her eyebrows, and then glanced over her shoulder at the chariot.

“Maybe I should drive.” Her shoulders tensed when Ares turned his glower on her and she gave a tight shrug. “Not because you’re bad at it or anything. I just thought… it might be exciting.”

Another sigh escaped Hades as he looked at the chariot, leaving his lips before he could contain it. “Persephone finds riding in the chariot exciting.”

“I really don’t want to hear any more than that.” Ares pulled a face and placed his arm around Megan’s shoulders, turning with her towards the chariot. His shoulders shook as he shuddered and muttered, “Now I’ve got to ride on the damned thing knowing they got all frisky on it.”

Frisky was an understatement.

Hades grinned, flashing fangs, but his smile quickly faded when he caught the rest of the gathered looking equally as horrified and embarrassed as Ares. Enyo didn’t know where to look. Thanatos looked as if he was blanking it all out, his silver gaze distant. Calindria was blushing.

Keras looked mortified.

Hades held his gaze, silently wondering how his son would look if he knew he had been conceived on the back of that chariot. Keras’s expression shifted, his jaw going slack, as if he had read Hades’s thoughts, and then he snapped out of it and gathered himself and went to Cerberus.

“Come on.” Keras patted Cerberus’s flank but the beast refused to move.

Hades went to him and rubbed his central head, and then the left and the right one. “Return to the palace. Guard Megan and Adora for me while I retrieve Persephone.”

Cerberus perked up, his luminous blue eyes leaping to Megan. It hadn’t taken Hades long to notice that his beloved pet had developed a soft spot for the Carrier and her daughter, even though the beast had only seen them a few times since Persephone had taken them to the pocket realm.

Hades went to the chariot and retrieved his black horned helmet and bident, and then went back to Keras. His son was right, and the best route to the mortal world now was via Olympus. He couldn’t take everyone on the chariot with him because there wasn’t room, and opening this gate or the one in Tokyo was too great a risk.

Megan eyed the chariot and then the horses, and he saw a flash of her at the end of that golden field in Italy, when he had brought Persephone to the surface so she could meet the female Ares had fallen in love with. Megan had been terrified then, but she didn’t seem so afraid now.

She looked as excited as she had said she was about riding on the chariot.

Cerberus moved past him and nudged Megan on her back, gently pushing her towards the chariot. Ares stepped up onto it and held his hand out to her, and she took it. He hauled her up beside him and then released her and reached for the reins.

Megan beat him to it. “I’m driving, remember? We’ll take it at a nice steady pace. No broken wheels or axel thingies.”

Ares’s look soured. “Fine. Just hold them like this and then when you’re ready, gently do this motion with them and the horses will go.”

Megan cracked the reins.

A little too hard.

The chariot lurched forwards as the horses took off and Cerberus barked, the sound rolling like thunder across the land together with Ares’s explosive curse as he quickly took hold of the reins and Megan to stop her from flying off the back.

“I said gently!” Ares’s voice grew quiet as they shot into the distance.

“Do you think they will be all right?” Thanatos looked after them, his black feathered wings twitching restlessly, as if he was thinking about flying to help them.

Hades kept his gaze on them and Cerberus as he bounded after them. “They will be fine. He might have broken the chariot many times, but Ares is a skilled rider. He will see Megan home safely.”

“And we shall see Mother home safely too.” Keras came to stand beside him.

Hades looked at him and then down at his leather trousers. He reached a hand into his pocket and pulled out the pillbox, and Keras’s gaze darted to it. His son’s fingers twitched as he lifted his hand, as if he wanted to snatch the pills from Hades’s grasp.

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