Page 4 of Queen of the Underworld

A female who would do his bidding. Who would warm his bed and satisfy his needs, and obey him.

His grip on the leather reins slackened as a feeling coursed through him.

He found the thought of having someone…pleasing.

Yet the Moirai denied him.

He bared his fangs at his realm, mentally baring them at the three females. He had been given the darkest realm to rule, had been betrayed and banished from the mortal world by Zeus, and had been charged with the task of keeping the titans imprisoned, no easy feat given their vast strength.

All he knew was death and darkness.

He was owed something for the centuries he had remained loyal to his duties.

He clenched his jaw until his teeth ached. He growled through them, the sound rumbling across the land together with the cracking of rock as more fissures opened across the plain, blazing bright orange.

He was owed someone.

A sheer cliff across the base of one of the mountains ahead of him snared his gaze and he frowned at it. It was no natural cliff. He peered at it, straining to make it out as he turned his horses towards it, drawn to it and unable to deny the urge to take a closer look. As he neared it, his eyes slowly narrowed, the black slashes of his eyebrows dipping low.

There were markings on the wall of obsidian rock.

Hades slowed the horses and brought his chariot to a halt before it. He hadn’t been imagining them. Upon the chiselled surface of the cliff, markings had been inscribed, forming a circular pattern twenty feet wide.

He dropped off the back of his chariot, his black cloak swirling around his ankles, and cautiously approached the cliff, the pointed toes of his onyx metal boots scraping on the obsidian rock beneath his feet. When he was within forty feet of the markings, the circles and glyphs burst to life. Dazzlingly bright colours seared his sensitive eyes that had grown far too used to darkness and he flinched away, a growl leaving his lips as they pulled taut to flash his fangs.

A gate.

Hades squinted at it until his eyes adjusted to the brightness of the series of glyph-filled colourful rings, each of which rotated in the opposite direction to the previous one.

It had been so long since he had been near a gate that he had almost forgotten what they looked like.

Curiosity tugged him towards the shimmering circular portal despite the wary part of him that whispered to keep his distance.

He wasn’t meant to leave the Underworld.

Not because his youngest brother had decreed it, but because he was well aware of how his power affected the mortal realm.

And this gate led to that delicate light-filled world.

It was one of only two in the Underworld. The other was leagues away. He looked off to his left in that direction, the great black mountains that surrounded him blocking his view but not stopping him from seeing the gate in his mind. Despite the distance between him and it, he could sense the constant hum of its power. He could always feel it if he put his mind to it. He was connected to everything in his realm. It was part of him and he was part of it. Bound to it.

Zeus had made sure of that.

After defeating the titans and overthrowing their father, they had drawn lots. Hades was sure Zeus had manipulated the sticks, ensuring he received Olympus to rule while Hades was cast into the darkness to rule the dead. Zeus and Poseidon had formed a fast bond during the war, one that had left Hades feeling like an outcast within his own family, despite how Poseidon had followed him as eldest while they had been trapped by their father.

How quick his brother had been to follow Zeus instead once he had freed them, shunning Hades.

So, it hadn’t surprised him when Zeus had taken care of Poseidon, giving him the oceans to rule.

They were always taking care of each other.

He sneered, flashing fangs again.

Zeus hadn’t just bound Hades to this realm. He had sowed the seeds that sprouted in his mind to whisper that he couldn’t leave whenever he had the urge to walk in the light for a time to cleanse his soul. Zeus wanted him here, trapped, slowly losing himself. Each year he spent in this realm chipped away at the light within him, allowing more darkness to seep in.

Now, Hades wasn’t sure there was any light left in him.

He couldn’t remember the male he had been.

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