Page 49 of Hades

Chapter 14

Keras loomed high above the lands, standing atop a towering mountain that had pushed from the black earth only a week ago. It was now fully formed, the cooled lava-riddled face shimmering in the light from the roiling red sky. Shadows fluttered around his leather shoes, the thick, warm air toying with them and his onyx hair as he surveyed the palace far below him. He inhaled a shaky breath and slowly released it, another failed attempt to centre himself and calm his turbulent mind.

He had thought coming to this place, so far away from everyone, would give him a moment to clear his head and his heart, but seeing the palace in its entirety, including the smaller mansions that belonged to him and his brothers, only gave the creeping tension a firmer hold over him.

His green gaze scanned the buildings, tracking the specks that were guards or members of his family as they came and went, moving around the grounds. The place had lost something since his mother had been taken—a spark of light that had stopped it from feeling gloomy and oppressive. Now, whenever he was at the palace, he felt as if he couldn’t breathe. The darkness he fought to hold back constantly pushed for freedom, battering the cage of his will, and it was growing increasingly harder to retain control.

Enyo had noticed it, of course.

She had stopped her daily trips to Olympus, enlisting her brother—Ares, the real god of war Keras’s brother had been named for—to seek information that might point to Persephone’s location instead.

He loved her for that.

More than she could ever know.

Keras needed her at his side—within his sight—now more than ever. The thought that she might be taken from him as his mother had been taken from his father gnawed at him and had him awake most nights, unable to deny his need to hold Enyo tightly, clutching her to him as if that could stop something so terrible from happening to her.

If she had noticed how fiercely he held her—how desperately he clung to her—she hadn’t said anything and was good at hiding it. His wise goddess no doubt knew his innermost thoughts and fears. She always knew.

Keras was tempted to sink to his backside, but instead remained standing rod straight. If he sat, he would slide into despair, letting it wash over him. He would let the weakness that infested him steal his strength from him and would end up sitting for hours, slumped and dejected.

He was a son of Hades.

A son of Persephone.

He would not let this weakness inside him win. He wouldn’t let it tear down his strength and flood him with hopelessness. He wouldn’t give in to despair.

He was strong and he would stop at nothing to find his mother.

He would do all in his power to reunite her with his father.

He bit out a ripe curse that carried on the wind, swept away from him as a stronger gust buffeted him. This world needed him to be strong and do that. He didn’t have time to rest. He didn’t have time to wallow in his own pain. There was only time for action. His father needed him to be the one to take control. The Underworld needed it.

Keras glanced off to his left, where fiery mountains launched ribbons of lava into the crimson sky, casting a bright glow across the land. Rubble streaked their cragged faces, blocks shaped by hands rather than nature, and fractured walls struggled to remain standing in places, forming a spine that snaked down the slope to buildings that were still intact, but doomed to the same fate.

The fourth legion had thankfully moved swiftly to evacuate the area when the land had suddenly fractured and then collided, pushing up to birth the mountains.

The village had still suffered catastrophic losses though, and it wasn’t the only one like it. Across the Underworld, the landscape was changing, growing more formidable by the day. Where once there was uninterrupted flat land, there were now great crevasses and towering mountains. Where there had been mountains, there were now new plateaus caused by eruptions so violent they had obliterated an entire range. Craters had been left across vast stretches where similar explosions had happened, shaking the Underworld and all in it.

It was an upheaval.

And it mirrored what was happening within his father.

The realm was only responding to his pain, and from where Keras was standing, it looked as if it couldn’t take much more of it, which meant his father couldn’t either.

Keras wasn’t sure how much longer he could convince his father to wait.

And he could understand his need to leap into action and find Persephone, because if he had been in his father’s shoes, the world would be suffering as it was now, ravaged by violence and ripped apart by his shadows as his need to find Enyo mounted.

A sigh leaked from him as he thought about the news he had to bring Hades, aware that it would be the last straw for his father. Standing atop this mountain wasn’t going to change the reports the legions had brought to him. Avoiding his father wasn’t going to make it easier to tell him. It was only going to make things worse.

Reluctantly, he stepped, teleporting to the main palace and landing outside it. He strode into the vestibule, nodding his head to the two men who guarded the entrance, and headed for his father’s study. The spacious room was unoccupied and the papers spread across the huge black desk looked as if they hadn’t been touched in more than a day. The glass that Hades had set down on the reports from two days ago during their meeting was still there, the ambrosia it contained untouched.

Keras backed out of the room and tried the library next, but Hades wasn’t there either. He found Megan and Adora in the drawing room, and dipped his head to the Carrier before he pivoted and headed for the war room, his pace quickening as a feeling grew inside him. When he didn’t find Hades there, that feeling in his stomach became a twisting, clawing thing that had him teleporting to his parents’ bedroom.

No one was there.

Keras stepped back to Megan, startling her. He didn’t have time to apologise as she gasped. Instead, he bit out, “Where is Ares?”

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