Page 32 of Queen of the Underworld

Never.

That fierce denial screamed in his mind and the barriers he wanted to lower around her came back up, shielding him from the potential hurt of her rejection.

He would not speak to anyone of the darkness.

But he would rectify his latest mistake.

He stalked back towards her and reached for her arm, compelled to fix what he had done and tend to her, but before he could take hold of her, she twisted away from him and ripped a section of her green dress off, using it to dab at the small cut that had spilled a scarlet trail down her arm.

Her glare was a knife in his chest as she distanced herself from him and he couldn’t bear it, so he bared his fangs at her.

He had tried to be gentle, going against everything he was in order to please her, but it was far harder than he had anticipated, especially when she was so intent on provoking him.

When she turned away from him and drifted towards a window, her back to him and her hand pressing the scrap of green fabric to her wound, his anger deflated and his expression softened. He lifted his hand towards her and uttered words in his tongue that he feared telling her, because he was sure she wouldn’t believe him if he said it in a language she could understand. He was sure she would turn on him and lash out at him again, inflicting another wound that would strengthen the darkness he wanted to vanquish.

For her.

“I did not mean to harm you,” he murmured.

Rather than demanding to know what he had said this time, she remained with her back to him, her shoulders set in a rigid line and her spine rod straight. Telling him without words that she wasn’t interested in him. That she wanted him gone.

His hand dropped to his side and he barely bit back the growl that rolled up his throat. Had he been one of her handsome Olympian males, no doubt she would have forgiven his error. She would have believed his words, ones he lacked the courage to tell her even now, when some foolish, soft part of him believed they might make her forgive him.

He only had to tell her.

Hades tried to get the words to leave the tip of his tongue, but the longer he struggled, the more the darkness rose to fill his mind with the things she had said and how she had compared him with the males of her world.

And had found him lacking.

The shadows beneath his boots grew restless as his mood blackened, a desire to travel to that white city and hunt down every male who had touched or even gazed upon his queen blasting through him. His talons flexed, eager to rip into flesh and spill blood, and he could feel it as his eyes transformed from blue, to crimson, and then to obsidian encircling fiery pupils.

Hades spun on his heel and stormed to the staircase, forcing himself to leave before he did something else he would regret. Something that would only cement her opinion that he was a monster.

When he wanted to be a man.

Not a king to be feared. But a man to be loved.

One worthy of his beautiful Persephone.

Chapter 8

Persephone flinched again as the door to the tower slammed below her with enough force that the entire structure seemed to sway, her fingers tightening over the wound and making it sting. The oppressive feeling of darkness that had been building in the room slowly cleared as the shadows that had become restless in time with Hades gradually settled and she felt she could breathe again.

She stoked her anger, clinging to it as fiercely as she clung to the piece of her dress she had pressed against the wound, denying his obvious desire to tend to it, and refused to regret anything as Hades moved beyond the sphere of her senses.

That cursed regret clouded her feelings despite her best attempts to deny it and had her drifting to the balcony to look for him, to foolishly try to reassure herself that the transformation from the male who had been almost kind to her to the one who had accidentally hurt her hadn’t been her fault.

Even when she knew it had.

She hadn’t meant to provoke him. She hadn’t been able to stop herself. Whenever she felt he was judging her, she was overwhelmed by an urge to lash out at him, to deal the first blow in order to do what—protect herself?

By the gods, was his reason for turning on her the same?

She had known her words were hurting him, but had told herself she was imagining it, that the cold and cruel god-king of the Underworld wouldn’t care about someone as lowly as herself saying such things to him.

Cold and cruel?

Persephone lowered her gaze to her bare feet.

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