Page 59 of Queen of the Underworld

It had used Persephone’s reaction to him to fuel his fears and weaken him, and then it had poured shadows through his mind, blackening it to strip his humanity from him. He had left her the moment it had seized him, clinging to the last threads of his control long enough to shut her in the tower and cast a ward to protect her. One he had known he wouldn’t be able to undo while lost to the darkness.

It had taken him then.

Torn him down and rebuilt him as a monster.

He remembered nothing of the first day. On the second, he had found himself deep in an area of the realm far from the temple, his hands bathed in blood and carnage surrounding him, a sea of broken bodies so distorted that he had come close to retching.

For the entirety of the third day, Hades had locked himself in his chambers in the temple and had fought the darkness, slowly clawing back control. An ache to see Persephone had grown inside him, a desire to speak to her of the darkness. He wanted her to know of it and how it took him, if only so she knew how to defend herself and maybe not provoke him.

That part of him also hoped that if he spoke to her of his pain, that she would speak to him of hers.

The thought of sharing his pain with her had only given the darkness something to use against him to weaken him again. Fear had settled in his heart, tormenting him with the thought that she would mock him, that she would laugh at him, and it had merged with other fears. Fear that he might not have come back this time. Fear of what might have happened to Persephone without him there to keep her safe. Fear that he might be the one to harm her.

Aware that he was losing control, Hades had cast new wards on his chambers, keeping himself contained, and had fought the darkness. He had battled it with memories of the times Persephone had gazed at him with heat in her eyes, the softness of her voice, and the sweet scent of her, and it had worked.

Just memories of her were enough to drive the darkness back.

That had strengthened his hope, and by the fourth day, he had quelled the darkness enough that he had felt close to normal again and had returned to his duties. But he was tired, exhausted from the constant fight against the darkness, and from the fear and doubts he had drowned in.

Hades didn’t feel much better today.

He glowered at the ground, feeling as if invisible arms were pulling him down into a dark mire, troubled by how fierce the darkness had been, and that Persephone had been the one to provoke it and had given it the strength to hold him under its spell for a whole day, or possibly two, before he had surfaced and begun to claw back control.

She could tame the darkness in him, but she could also make it wild. He needed to be more careful around her. What he needed to do was speak to her about the darkness, but while part of him wanted to do that, ached to let someone in at last, the rest of him snarled at him to keep it secret. It growled and snapped fangs, and barked that he couldn’t trust her, that she was an Olympian and she would mock him, would use knowledge of it against him somehow.

Or believe him a monster.

Telling her about the darker side of his blood would drive her away.

“Never,” Hades growled, crushing the thought of telling her. He wouldn’t do anything that would jeopardise his future with her. He couldn’t lose her.

She was his now.

Wasn’t she?

He silenced that fear and his thoughts of her, focusing back on his duty and refusing to succumb to them as he did whenever he was alone, whether that was in his bedchamber or when he was moving between places as he was now. He even thought about her when he was walking with Cerberus.

He had even talked to his pet about her.

Cerberus hadn’t been pleased by that. The great three-headed beast had snapped and growled, gnashing fangs that were each as long as Hades’s forearms. Apparently, Cerberus didn’t like Persephone.

Hades’s gaze betrayed him and strayed to the jagged tower that punched high into the crimson sky, its backdrop a volcano that had become restless in the last few days, causing several more to erupt around it as it spilled streams of lava down the harsh planes of its face. The heat thickened the air and dampened his nape, irritating him. He wiped the sweat away with the leather palm of his gauntlets and bared fangs at it, and it cracked in response to his anger, a wide fissure splitting one side of it open. That fissure belched bright orange waves of molten rock.

Making the temperature soar.

The river of lava swept downwards into the canyon and he held his hand out, scowling at the mountain and drawing on his power and his connection to the Underworld. The black rock of the mountain knitted back together, healing before his eyes, and once it had been restored to how it had been before his mood slipped its leash, he lowered his hand and drew in a fortifying breath as his fingers trembled and a wave of fatigue rolled through him.

He needed to conserve his strength, something he wouldn’t have to do if he had been able to sleep at all the last few days rather than fighting the darkness Persephone had provoked or lounging on his bed restless from thoughts of her.

Still, he also needed his throne temple, and the flow of lava into the canyon would have been too much for the river. It would have broken its banks and consumed his smaller temple there at the base of the canyon and his throne with it. Extracting the building from the cooled lava and restoring order to that area would have cost him more in strength than healing the mountain.

Hades rubbed his tired, gritty eyes and growled. Maybe if he went to see Persephone and saw she was all right he would be able to sleep.

And maybe she would recoil in disgust as she had the last time he had seen her and he would be plunged into a mood so dark the entire Underworld would erupt in flames.

Or the darkness would take him and he wouldn’t come back this time.

Hades glared at the tower, his mind turning over everything that had happened during their evening together. He had thought it had been going well. He had learned things about her and had been gentle bar a few slip ups, and he had held himself back more than once. She had spoken to him and had been civil, for the most part.

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