Page 73 of Queen of the Underworld

That near-smile caught him off guard and threw him off balance to have him staring at the ground as he pondered something.

When was the last time he had really smiled?

Hades looked at her, aware she was the reason he kept coming close to doing something he couldn’t remember ever doing before. She was the cause of this growing feeling of lightness inside him.

She twirled the leaf in her fingers, her gaze creeping back to him, and her question caught him off guard this time.

“Did you really mean what you said?” She circled a tree as he frowned at her, gracefully gliding back into view on the other side of the trunk and casting him a shy glance as rose climbed her cheeks. “Would you shake this planet to its core if another male looked at me?”

“I would,” he growled, his mood taking a sharp, dark turn at just the thought of another male gazing upon her.

Hades wasn’t sure whether it pleased her or not as she turned her cheek to him and kept walking, her luminous emerald eyes on the leaf. He wanted to ask her, but the thought she might laugh at him or reject him had the question sticking in his throat, and once again he felt vulnerable, as if this bewitching female had stripped all his armour from him.

They reached the edge of the orchard and she looked back towards the tower, sheer longing on her face as she turned her gaze from it to the black lands that stretched before her in the opposite direction to the tower.

She pointed with the leaf. “What is that?”

Hades glanced at the long building constructed of columns of onyx stone and dark wood. “A stable.”

“For horses?” Her eyebrows rose and she looked pleased at the thought it might be.

“For Cerberus.”

For a moment, she had looked interested, her eyes bright with something akin to excitement, but the moment he mentioned his beloved pet’s name, she was backing away into the cover of the trees. He tracked her with his gaze, not liking that fearful edge her eyes held as she kept them locked on the stable. She feared Cerberus, when she had no cause to because the hound would never harm her.

When she caught him watching her, she was quick to say, “I am just a little tired.”

Covering her fear and perhaps shame too. Because she had judged Cerberus on his appearance and believed him to be a monster that would savage her?

In the same way she had judged Hades.

She wouldn’t look at him. She cast her gaze at the leaf and remained staring at it with her head bent for almost a full minute, hiding in her study of it. When she nibbled her lower lip and repeated herself, he took the hint.

Hades held his hand out to her.

She didn’t hesitate to place hers into it.

He closed his fingers over hers, savouring the feel of them and the trust she had shown by taking hold of his hand, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for her to do, and teleported with her. When her circular room materialised around them, she didn’t snatch her hand away.

She lingered.

Her gaze drifted to meet his.

Hades wanted to draw her into his arms and kiss her, but pushed back against the desire, maintaining control and fearing that if he let his desire get the better of him, he would only destroy the progress he had made with her. She hadn’t protested about being taken back to the tower, and she seemed to have genuinely enjoyed his company.

Both of those things left him feeling that this day with her had gone well, and that it was best to leave before he overstepped the mark.

He lifted the hand he held and pressed a kiss to the back of it, breathing in her delicate scent of lilies, and murmured against it, “Goodnight.”

He teleported away from her, but in the moment before he disappeared, as his hand slipped from hers, he heard her whisper.

“Goodnight, Hades.”

And his heart swelled with warmth and hope that drove out the darkness.

Chapter 20

Persephone had come to a decision in the two days Hades had remained away from her, leaving her to gaze from the balcony at the orchard where they had walked. She was going to ask him for more freedom so she could explore this small part of his realm.

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