Page 28 of Hades

“We’ll find her,” she whispered and placed her hand on his arm, that simple touch ripping more of his strength from him. She gently squeezed the black metal plate of his vambrace and with more conviction said, “We’ll find her, and we’ll make them pay.”

Pay.

Yes. They would pay. The darkness rose again at that word, writhing like a living being inside him, growing stronger and vanquishing his softer emotions. Megan eased back, her hand slipping from him, her expression growing more cautious. She was wise to leave his side. The tendrils of shadow that twined around his legs were restless, eager to rip apart whoever had taken Persephone from him, and while he didn’t want to hurt Megan, he wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t.

“I’ll go question the guards,” Marek put in.

“I’m coming with.” Valen’s tone brooked no argument.

Hades continued to stare at the fruit trees, his mood blackening as his tears dried up and only a hunger to bloody his claws remained, beating in place of his heart.

“How is this possible?” Calistos’s frustration was clear in his voice.

As expected, Calindria backed him up. “There are wards around the palace to stop Mnemosyne from entering.”

It hadn’t taken the twins long to fall back into a strange kind of synchronisation. They had always thought and acted in very similar ways, and when the two of them had been together, they had often finished each other’s sentences or said the same thing at the same time.

Esher growled, his voice blacker than the River Styx, “Perhaps there are other traitors in our midst?”

The fury mounting in Hades took a sharp darker turn at the thought there might be. The wards he had put in place only stopped the enemies they knew about, anyone lower than a god or goddess, or soul other than a soldier from his legions from entering the palace grounds.

Someone unknown to them had slipped inside and stolen Persephone from him.

Someone who had to be a god or a goddess.

He dug his claws into his palms and snarled as he glared at the palace and then the mountains. He would find whoever was responsible for this and he would kill them, and then he would condemn their soul to Tartarus.

And he would kill them again, every hour of every day for the rest of eternity.

The ground beneath the pointed metal toes of his boots split, fault lines shooting out in all directions, and Megan gasped and leaped out of the path of one. Ares snatched her arm and pulled her to him, tucking her against his chest.

“I can’t help but think this is what the enemy wanted,” Keras said, his tone grim and as dark as Hades’s mood. “They want Father in disarray and not thinking straight.”

Hades was already beyond disarray and not thinking straight. Persephone was everything to him, and without her he was nothing.

No, he was something.

A beast.

A heartless, vicious and malevolent beast who would lay waste to this realm and all in it. If he couldn’t identify who had taken his love from him, he would kill every last soul and have Thanatos end them in the veil, so they would cease to exist. He would grant no afterlife. He would give them only the eternal void.

The same darkness that burned inside him would devour them forever.

“She’s your ultimate weakness,” Megan murmured, and Hades sensed her eyes on him and everyone else’s leaving him to land on her. “That’s why they targeted her. The enemy knows that if they can weaken you, they can take you. This was… They have to be desperate.”

He agreed with her on that. Only a fool would incite his wrath like this.

“It makes sense.” Ares looked from his wife to the others. “Everything about Mnemosyne’s plan is falling apart. This reeks of a last-ditch attempt to gain the victory she wants.”

“An extremely dangerous one,” Keras said. “Angering Father isn’t wise.”

The mountain behind the palace cracked wide open as Hades thought about Persephone in the hands of their enemy and the ground shook so violently that there were several grumbles from behind him as people lost their footing.

“You need to keep your head,” Keras growled, sounding far too much like Hades.

When had his son grown into such a strong leader? When had he become so much like him? Persephone had told Hades of the turn Keras had taken, how dark he had become and how Enyo had struggled to tame his darker side to bring him back to them.

Just as Persephone had once tamed his.

---