Page 84 of Hades

But Hades had his answer.

He turned to leave, satisfied that Mnemosyne hadn’t left with a single titan to aid her.

“You will not win,” Cronus’s voice was a deep rumbling growl of thunder and malice, dripping with venom and laced with pleasure Hades presumed came from him savouring the opportunity to taunt him and sow doubt in his mind. His father chuckled, the sound as rough as the walls around him and as black as the pit he called home now. “You will fail… son. The Underworld will fall. The Olympians will follow it. This world will be ours again.”

Hades angled his head towards the grate but didn’t look at it. “That will not happen.”

Cronus only laughed in response, the unsettling sound echoing around the cavern and seeping into Hades’s bones.

Hades walked away before doubt could take root, swiftly covering the ground between him and the exit. It wouldn’t happen. Mnemosyne would fall. The Underworld and Olympus would be safe, together with the mortal realm.

And his father was going to continue to rot in his cell.

He breathed a little easier as he placed some distance between him and Cronus, the chill leaving his bones and the icy talons of fear releasing his heart as he travelled up towards the light. The titans in the cells he passed jeered and growled at him, but he ignored them, his focus on what came next and on something else.

When he reached the last of the cells belonging to the titans, he veered right, down another narrow path, and stopped before an empty cell. He pressed his hand to the rock near the heavy solid door and closed his eyes, feeling the wards and the magic that enhanced them. Cassandra’s magic. It was strong, reinforcing his barriers and charms enough that no one would be able to break the titaness out once he threw her into this cell.

Hades opened his eyes and looked at the door.

It was ready.

His claws scraped over the rock as he closed his fist and his shadows twisted and twined around his legs as he slowly smiled.

It was time to put Mnemosyne in her new home and end this.

Chapter 23

Relief rolled through Persephone like a calming wave as Hades strode into the room and his blue eyes swung up to meet hers. He lifted his head and tipped his shoulders back, all signs of whatever was troubling him erased from his handsome face as he took stock of the occupants of the war room. He moved past them all, heading directly for her, and she turned towards him as he approached, unable to resist the urge to meet him. She reached both hands out to him and he took them, clasping them tightly and halting mere inches from her. He bent his head, his gaze locking with hers, and the corners of his lips curled slightly into the barest hint of a smile.

“I am glad you are unharmed,” he husked.

He was more than glad. He was as relieved as she was to see he hadn’t been wounded during the battle and to be back with him.

“Tartarus?” she asked, not needing to say any more than that for him to know what she was asking. She knew where he had gone the moment Thanatos had informed her he had left Hades in the lower reaches of the prison.

Hades shook his head. “All in order. Mnemosyne may have made off with many allies, but it looks like we reached Tartarus in time to stop her from attempting to free the titans.”

Persephone exhaled a shaky breath, some of the tension flowing from her shoulders as she heard that.

Hades turned his head to his right, towards the large table that occupied the centre of the room, and she studied him for a moment longer, seeking out the slightest hints of his feelings. The tight lines that bracketed his mouth as he surveyed their children and the legions’ commanders, and the rigid set of his jaw, together with the uneasy edge to his blue eyes revealed everything to her.

Cronus had rattled him.

Her husband hid it well whenever his father sowed discord in his mind, but she had learned to see through the façade to his true feelings.

Whatever Cronus had said to him played on his mind as he listened to Thanatos and Keras relaying their reports, and Ares and Valen breaking up the flow of information with sharp remarks that betrayed how badly they wanted to get back into the next fight as much as their pacing did. The two of them couldn’t stand still. Ares paced on one side of the room, Megan’s watchful concerned gaze tracking him. Valen strode back and forth on the other, moving between one bookcase and Eva where she leaned near the door, toying with a knife.

Daimon looked worried as he kept a watchful eye on Cassandra, his fingers gliding up and down her arm as she talked about the cell she had been working on for Mnemosyne.

Keras and Thanatos were doing a better job of remaining focused on the present, affecting a calm air that deep in her heart she knew they weren’t really feeling. None of them were. They were all restless with a need to track down Mnemosyne and stop her before it was too late.

And it really felt as if it was close to being too late.

Mnemosyne was far wilier than Persephone had given her credit for, and it worried her. The titaness was up to something and breaking so many out of Tartarus was only a small part of her plan. She wanted to believe the goddess of memory intended to use that force to mount an attack on Tokyo, but for some reason the thought she might left her uneasy, as if she was missing something.

Persephone brushed her thumb across the back of Hades’s hand, offering small comfort when crimson bled into his eyes.

“Say that again,” he growled to Thanatos.

---