Page 9 of Hades

Beside him, Megan huffed.

“Ah, it’s not your fault, sweetheart.” Ares held the child in one arm and slung the other around his wife’s slender shoulders, tugging her into his embrace too. The ten-inch difference in their height meant Megan’s head landed against his chest. He grinned down at her as she angled her head back to scowl at him, no real malice behind her death look. “Just the perils of being the one who is around the most. She’s bound to act out with you rather than me.”

Megan’s lips flattened.

“Maybe I should be in the field and you—” She cut herself off when Ares’s expression lost all warmth, growing deadly serious. She sighed and toyed with Adora’s toes. “I know. I know. No need to give me that look.”

The same look Hades had given Persephone far too many times, one that said he would never let her place herself at risk when he could keep her protected instead.

Persephone adored Hades for being so protective, but it was stifling at times. The look Megan wore said she felt Ares’s overbearing protectiveness was stifling too. Another thing Persephone could understand. She also wanted to be included in this war, helping where she could rather than being forced to remain on the sidelines. Ares was as stubborn as his father though. Despite Megan’s ability to heal, a skill that could prove useful on the battlefield, he refused to let her leave the palace grounds.

Megan’s eyes brightened as she noticed Persephone approaching.

Ares frowned at her reaction and then twisted slightly and looked over his shoulder, and the same light entered his eyes. “Mother.”

Calindria turned sky-blue eyes on her and that familiar pang lanced Persephone’s chest all over again as she looked at her only daughter. Persephone held a hand out to her, and as expected, Calindria tucked hers behind her back rather than taking it. The supple black leather gloves that covered her from her fingertips to her elbows would prevent Calindria’s touch from harming anyone, but she still didn’t believe it.

Even when Persephone could see the pain denying herself physical contact with her family caused her.

Calindria’s smile was small when she realised what she had done, an apologetic light entering her eyes as she met Persephone’s again. Her daughter didn’t need to apologise. She could only imagine the mental torment of having a gift that felt more like a curse, one that kept her from touching others.

Besides Thanatos that was.

The pain flared in Calindria’s gaze again when she glanced at Adora, laced with longing that had Persephone inching a step closer to her, wanting to comfort her. One day, she would be brave enough to touch the child and she would see nothing bad would happen.

Calindria toyed with the decorative lacing on the front of her black under-bust corset, an item of clothing that Persephone found as intriguing as many of the modern outfits her sons and daughters-in-law wore. She also found the fact that many of her daughters-in-law and her daughter refused to wear skirts or dresses fascinating, and a little strange, but she was coming to learn all the terms for the clothing they wore. Such as blue jeans and woollen sweaters, which were Megan’s favourites, together with footwear she calledsneakers.

The shoes didn’t seem very sneaky. Often, Persephone could hear Megan coming from a distance in the palace, her footwear squeaking on the marble floor of the ground level.

Rather than the sky-blue dresses she remembered Calindria in as a child, her daughter now preferred to wear soft black leather trousers and her corset, paired with knee-high boots in matching leather, and a thick black cotton top beneath her corset that scooped low across her chest and had capped sleeves.

It made her look like a warrioress.

And Persephone had never been more proud.

Her daughter had grown up strong and fierce—as strong and fierce as any of her brothers.

Thanatos took that moment to appear only a few feet behind Calindria. The towering onyx-haired male furled his black feathered wings against his bare back and strode towards Calindria. He swept her up into his arms, catching her off guard, and her shriek cut off as he turned her to face him. Her whole face lit up, and by the gods, it was good to see. She wished her daughter would smile at her that way. Perhaps one day.

“Did you miss me?” Calindria asked as Thanatos tucked a strand of spun gold behind her ear and then feathered his fingers across her nape and closed his hand over it in a possessive way.

In answer to that question, Thanatos gripped her nape and kissed her hard, deep, with the same passion that burned within Hades. It roused an ache in Persephone, strengthening her need to see him, and she couldn’t hold back her sigh.

Thanatos tensed and broke the kiss, threw her a look that revealed his surprise to see her, and quickly set her daughter away from him. Calindria laughed and didn’t let him shirk her. She wrapped her arms around one of his and settled her head against his biceps. The god of death cleared his throat. Awkwardly.

“Must I remind you I was in favour of your relationship?” Persephone said, her tone as light and teasing as Calindria’s had been.

Thanatos rolled his broad bare shoulders, shifting his wings.

“You are not so uncomfortable around Hades.” Persephone caught the flicker of something in his eyes that said he was more uncomfortable being close to Calindria when he was around her father, not less. She waved him away and sighed. “Hades will realise how perfect you are for one another before long. You must grant him some time since he only just got his daughter back.”

The words were said with a lightness that immediately transformed into a heavy sensation within her as they left her lips. She looked at Calindria and wanted to reach for her again when her daughter’s fair eyebrows knitted and hurt welled in her eyes. Thanatos chased it away for her by wrapping his arms around Calindria, pinning her to his side, and gazing at her with so much love in his silver eyes that Persephone felt jealous.

She couldn’t remember the last time Hades had looked at her like that.

And she was beginning to fear he never would again.

Chapter 3

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