Page 33 of Hades

Hades kicked that thought aside and focused on the god who knelt before him.

“I cannot trust you now. If you want my trust again, you must earn it,” Hades growled and without looking at Thanatos, he added, “Take him to Tartarus and question him.”

In Morpheus’s defence, he accepted his fate without protest, and almost looked relieved as Thanatos pulled him onto his feet. Thanatos led him away, Hypnos falling into step behind them, and Hades sank back onto his throne, his mood rapidly darkening.

Questioning Morpheus wouldn’t reveal more than he had already figured out for himself. Mnemosyne had tricked the god. She had done something to the memory she had given him, triggering his power to make the dreamer move physically through their dream without him being aware of it.

Movement beyond the trio of gods he had just sent on their way caught his eye and his mood only blackened further as he spotted two soldiers approaching him. The blue and green crests on the Corinthian helmets they carried tucked against the sides of their chests in their left arms marked them as men from the third and seventh legions. The grim looks on their faces, and the fear he could sense in them, said whatever news they were bringing him, it wasn’t good, and they believed he would react badly to it.

Keras watched them approaching too, his green eyes cautious and sharp, and it touched Hades when his son moved to stand close to him. Protecting him. That feeling of warmth that battled the darkness inside him only grew when Calindria moved to Hades’s other side, flanking him.

A united front.

What he couldn’t have with his brothers, he apparently had with his children, if he allowed it.

The two soldiers halted at the furthest set of columns and pressed their right hands to the breastplates of their black armour.

“My god-king,” they said in unison.

“Speak,” he growled.

The one on the left stepped forwards. “The third legion suppressed a skirmish in the region close to the Elysian Fields. Several casualties occurred, but the citizens were quickly subdued and order was restored.”

The moment he finished speaking, the second soldier stepped forwards. “A calamity has befallen several villages, caused by an eruption. The seventh legion is working to find trapped villagers, but our captain does not have much hope of finding any alive after the pyroclastic flow.”

Hades curled his black talons over the arms of his throne, deeply aware both of these incidents were his fault.

His mood was affecting everything in the Underworld.

But he wasn’t sure he could stop this descent into darkness.

He needed Persephone back.

He couldn’t bear knowing she was out there, in the hands of his enemy, and that Mnemosyne might be hurting her right that second. Persephone was strong, he knew that, just as he knew that he was weak without her, vulnerable to the darker side of his blood that now wanted to make him its mindless slave.

Urged him to wreak havoc upon this world and watch it burn.

Hades dug his claws into the bones, fury mounting inside him, directed towards himself and his enemy. He needed to be stronger. Persephone wouldn’t want him to surrender to the darkness. She wouldn’t want him to lash out at the world and everyone in it, painting their realm with blood as he had in the days before he had met her.

But he wasn’t strong enough to hold back the tide of his rage as hopelessness bound him in tight tethers thick with thorns that pierced his soul, poisoning his mind with images of his love in Mnemosyne’s hands. When the twisted vision of her cried out in pain, he gnashed his fangs and was only half-aware of the shockwave that bucked the land and shot out in all directions from him.

Terrified screams rang in his ears and he smiled slowly as their sound gave him pleasure.

He wanted to hear them again.

He shook the earth again, a tremor that fractured the mountain behind him and had the river spilling over its banks. Water swirled around his ankles and lava hissed as it hit the liquid, sending up plumes of writhing mist.

Fissures snaked out around him, glowing bright orange with molten rock.

“Rein it in,” Ares barked as he appeared in the middle of the temple just as a column crashed to the ground.

In his arms, Megan gasped.

Adora wailed.

Hades pulled back on his rage, quelling it in an instant as the sound of the baby’s cries hit him in the chest. Never. He never wanted his granddaughter to fear him.

He pushed to his feet and went to her, but Ares twisted away from him, shielding Megan and Adora from his touch. Hades looked at his son, the demand to let him see Adora that had shot to the tip of his tongue falling away as he met Ares’s bright fiery eyes.

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