Page 29 of Hades

But she was gone.

Stolen from him.

The darkness writhed harder and he could feel himself slipping as her absence weighed on him. He needed her back. He struggled to think as his mind clouded with pleasing visions of tearing through his enemy, of hunting them down one by one and killing them all—starting with Eris and Harleena.

He tried to push those thoughts aside, seeking the answers he needed, not the bloodshed he wanted. She hadn’t just left. Someone had taken her. Someone who had been able to slip past the wards.

Unnoticed.

It wasn’t possible that the guards wouldn’t have seen whoever had taken her, not unless they were invisible. Only he had that power, thanks to his helm of darkness. With it, he could go anywhere without others seeing him. But his helmet was safe in his armoury.

So someone else had to possess the power to pass by his guards without them noticing.

Who?

He racked his brain, fighting to think straight as the need to find Persephone built to an unbearable degree and the darkness tightened its grip on him.

Valen and Marek reappeared.

Valen scrubbed a hand through his wild violet hair, pushing the longer lengths back and then rubbing the shaved sides of his head. “A guard saw Mum walking the grounds. When he spoke to her, she didn’t respond.”

Marek’s tanned features settled in a hard expression, the gold and green flecks in his rich brown eyes brightening with his frustration. “The guard said it was like she wasn’t aware of him.”

Hades rocked back on his heels as it hit him and he growled, flashing his fangs. “She was dreaming. Find Morpheus and find him now!”

At once, Marek, Valen and Daimon disappeared, leaving a trace of black smoke behind them.

Thanatos stepped away from Calindria, his expression hardening. “Morpheus is loyal—”

“As were your sisters and brother.” Hades cut him off, levelling a hard look on the god of death.

The towering male’s silver eyes flared with ethereal blue and for a moment, Hades thought he would be foolish enough to argue with him and defend the god of dreams. He backed down instead, falling back in line with Calindria, who cast him a worried look.

She turned that look on Hades, her blue eyes softening as they lingered on him, and then her features shifted, morphing from concern to something else. She dropped to her knees and tore her black leather gloves off, cast them aside and planted her hands in the dirt. Her eyes screwed shut as she leaned forwards, her face painted with concentration.

Hades waited, unwilling to hope that his daughter could locate her mother in the same manner Persephone could find others. Her connection to the earth was strong, and she was capable, but he already knew in his heart that she would fail.

She sagged forwards, her golden hair falling to obscure her face, and her shoulders shook on a deep inhale. In a broken whisper, she said, “I can’t find her.”

“What if she’s being held in the same realm you were?” Calistos edged a step closer to his sister, his eyes stormy and a breeze playing with the tips of his ponytail. “You wouldn’t be able to sense her. It’s too far… and if they have her in a cage away from the ground like they did with you… It’s a possibility. Somewhere to look.”

“The enemy knows we would look there.” Thanatos issued an apologetic look to Calistos and Calindria as he said that, because both cast him a wounded look, as if he had just cut their hope down and killed it. He tunnelled his fingers through his black hair and his dark eyebrows knitted, and then he huffed. “There is another possibility. Persephone could have been taken to the mortal world.”

Hades’s mood plummeted into a black void and the shadows around his feet surged outwards in all directions. They ripped into the ground and the bushes that lined the path, and he had to exert all the tattered shreds of his will to stop them from attacking his children too.

It would be just like Mnemosyne to do such a thing.

She knew he couldn’t go to the mortal world.

“Go there,” Hades growled as he took a hard step towards Calindria. “Go there and use your powers. Find Persephone.”

Calindria shot to her feet, dismay crossing her face, but before she could speak, Thanatos gently took hold of her arm and moved up beside her. She cast him a pained glance.

“Calindria’s powers are deeply rooted in the Underworld—in the power of death this place holds.” Thanatos stroked her bare arm, his gaze steady on her, and she looked down at her feet and rubbed her arm too. “She may not be able to sense things through the earth outside this realm.”

The way she curled in on herself and withdrew told Hades she thought Thanatos spoke the truth and that it wounded her. Centuries apart from her family, but she had still grown up to be much like her brothers. She wanted to be useful, and it pained her when she felt she wasn’t.

He almost smiled.

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