Page 104 of Hades

Hades was more concerned with his own daughter as she blew out her breath and crouched before the cage. Mnemosyne tried to shuffle away as Calindria reached through the bars to her, but Hades’s shadows held her in place. From his angle, he could clearly see when Calindria touched her.

She gripped the titaness’s wrist.

Nothing happened.

Calindria’s fair eyebrows knitted hard and she glared at her hand on Mnemosyne’s wrist, her face twisting in lines of concentration.

And then relief.

Ashy black spread outwards from beneath her palm, covering Mnemosyne’s hand and then sweeping up her arm. Mnemosyne screamed and thrashed as the darkness rolled across her skin. Calindria released her and stood, her hands shaking as she quickly pulled her gloves back on and cast a worried look at everyone, including Thanatos. She flinched as Mnemosyne bellowed in agony and arched off the black ground, turning her face away, towards Thanatos.

The god of death held her shoulders, kneading them as the darkness cascaded over Mnemosyne, turning her flesh to brittle ash that crumbled as her screams ceased. It swirled around the cage, and everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief as it remained within the bars.

Except Hades.

He growled as the ash began to gather in one spot, clumping together.

She was reforming.

“Thanatos,” he snarled and the god of death teleported to him and seized hold of his arm.

Together, they disappeared.

Inky black pricked with endless glittering stars of all colours burst to life around him and he floated through it with Thanatos. The steady beat of Thanatos’s wings filled the strange silence as he carried Hades towards a point where the stars seemed to gather, arching across the darkness like a great spine of mesmerising light.

A shape formed.

Feminine.

Small.

Mnemosyne was a shadow of herself, painted in shades of darkness, and she turned as they approached. She shook her head and in his mind he heard her pleas for mercy.

He had none to give her.

He dropped to his feet before her and reached out to press his palm to her chest, closed his eyes and focused.

Her soul felt tiny, trembling beneath his touch, a fragile thing that reeked of desperation.

Hades closed the talons of his gauntlet around it.

And crushed it out of existence.

Chapter 29

Hades had never felt so tired as he did when Thanatos pulled him out of the veil and they landed together in the Underworld. He strode forwards on unsteady legs, the pressing weight that had been on his shoulders for centuries slowly lifting from them as he headed for the group gathered around the gate.

He knew it the moment Persephone looked at him. Her gaze was like a caress. It was strength. It was life. It poured energy back into his tired limbs and had his steps growing steadier as they carried him towards her.

She rose to her feet, saying something to Cassandra, who remained on her knees beside Cerberus, and then she was running to him.

Hades smiled and opened his arms for her, and as soon as she was close enough, he folded them around her, pulling her tight into his embrace. She wrapped her arms around him, holding him as tightly as he held her, her relief flowing through him, and her love flowing around him.

“Is it over?” she whispered and emerged from his arms, tilting her head back to gaze up into his eyes.

He stroked his fingers across her cheek, wiping away a smear of blood, and nodded, all the relief he felt echoing in the words that left his lips. “It is over.”

She sagged in his arms and held him again, pressing her cheek to his chest. He stroked her back, slowly finding his feet in this moment, struggling to believe it really was over now and half-expecting someone else to suddenly emerge as the one behind the foreseen calamity and for the war to begin again.

---