Page 92 of Queen of the Underworld

“Your thoughts are dark, my love. Speak to me of them,” he husked and then something akin to shyness crossed his eyes before he narrowed them, hardening them again and driving out the emotion.

Because he had called herhis love.

He had revealed his feelings to her, and maybe to himself too, and by the gods, she wanted to reach up and frame his face and tell him that it was all right because he was her love too.

The side of her she couldn’t quite shake yet made her hold her tongue instead, and she didn’t push the words out, because she wanted him madly in love with her, unable to live without her and willing to do anything to have her as his queen—his equal—before she told him what he wanted to hear.

How things had changed.

Her demanding dark god had stolen her from her world and brought her to his one, declaring she was his queen now, whether she liked it or not, and now he hesitated and often grew uneasy around her, and soft admissions of his feelings were enough to fell him and make him falter.

He wasn’t alone.

These feelings were new and a little frightening to her too.

But they would face them together.

“I am fine,” she murmured softly, wanting to reassure him that her mood wasn’t anything to do with him. “I was thinking about Olympus.”

He growled low, as if just the thought of her thinking of that place was enough to put him in a dark mood of his own.

Because he thought she wanted to return there.

How wrong he was.

She lifted her hand to his chest and sighed as she tore her gaze away from him to settle it on the trees as his heart thundered against her palm, the hard rhythm betraying his feelings together with the flare of heat in his eyes. He liked it when she laid her hands on him.

“Tell me about your family.” Each word that left his lips was carefully weighed, and she smiled at the fact he knew it was a sore subject for her and one she wasn’t likely to want to talk about. “I have met your mother, Demeter, a long time ago.”

Herdarkness, as he had called it, stemmed from her family, and while just the thought of talking about her life in Olympus hurt her, dredging up memories and opening wounds she constantly tried to seal, she resolved to do it in the hope that it would prompt Hades into speaking of his darkness.

“Then you probably know my mother is oppressive,” she muttered and slipped free of his grasp, part of her feeling bad for how she had spoken of her mother, and the rest of her growing angry as she recalled everything her mother had ever said and done to her. If she was going to talk about her family rather than change the subject this time, she needed to be moving to unleash some of her pent-up frustration. “She is the reason I created the forest.”

She touched the trunk of the first tree and frowned as she felt nothing. Hadeshadshut her power down again, placing it beyond her reach, and disappointment was swift to sweep through her as she gazed at her hand on the dark bark.

She loosed another long sigh and let the words tumble from her heart. “The whole of Olympus is oppressive.”

He snorted. “You are not wrong about that.”

The corners of her lips curled into a faint smile as he moved past her and leaned against a tree, his expression dark.

“So many gods and goddesses my age have the freedom to move around the city, doing as they please, their positions quite different from my own.” She pressed her palms to a tree and leaned forwards, so her chest rested against it as she gazed around the trunk at Hades. She pulled a face. “I often wonder if my life might have been better if I had been born into one of the servant classes. At least then I would have my freedom for part of the day. My only family treats me as if I am someone who should do her bidding without question, even if what she wants me to do is abhorrent to me.”

His face slowly darkened, his eyebrows meeting hard and his lips turning downwards, and the dark power he emanated grew stronger as the shadows cast by the trees wavered and flowed towards him.

She pushed away from the tree, fighting to hold her tongue and failing. “I am a prisoner in my own home.”

Guilt swept through her the moment those words left her lips and she cast her gaze down at her bare feet, battling the urge to take them back.

They were the truth.

One she hadn’t wanted to admit to herself.

“For centuries, I have obeyed my mother, attempting to please her… fearing upsetting her. I have walked in her shadow, have borne the cold words meant to carve my strength from me to keep me in my place, and have followed convention to the letter, but my mother… she stole my last freedom from me and something within me just… snapped.” Or shattered. She felt it might have been her heart. She loved her mother, but her decision to marry her off to an idiot of a male who thought he could own her and she would simply move from obeying her mother to obeying him instead, had been too much. It had broken her heart, and that heart still ached even now, when she was miles from Olympus.

Because she feared she would one day have to return there and this freedom she had found with Hades would become but a fading memory.

She started as Hades’s hands came down on her shoulders and his heat met her spine.

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