Page 80 of Monsters in Love: Lost in the Underworld

“I can feel you,” she whispered, touching a hand to her heart.

“I can feel you, too.”

My body was no longer just my own, like hers no longer solely belonged to her. We were each other’s, ours, two sides of the same coin. Inextricably tied as one.

“Well… this complicates things.” Hermes threw his hands in the air then rested them on his hips. That insufferable god couldn’t stop interrupting.

“You mortals. You foolish, foolish mortals. Always doing something to upset the balance of the world. Fucking Zeus, riding wooden horses into wars… spitting the Styx into the mouth of a psychopomp!” The last bit was louder, his frustration growing with each word.

“If you go back now, you’ll need the Underworld. If you stay here, you’ll need the mortal realm. You’re forever caught between the two, Moira.”

“So take her back and forth.”

“What?” His jaw went slack at my words.

“You take Persephone to the mortal realm and back again.” I shrugged. It was a casual movement I had seen Hermes do countless times. It felt odd, given my usual posture, but I was more relaxed that I had been in centuries, even as my world and being had been completely rewritten by my lover.

“Persephone,” he groused, then continued, “is a goddess. Queen of the Underworld. Not some mortal who got herself into an impossible situation.”

“Hermes.” I felt my eyes blaze with my rage. “Youdid this. You brought her here for your own amusement. You will take her back and forth, as you do Persephone, or I will tell Hades of your actions.”

He stilled. Even as a god, Hermes feared Hades. “I have many jobs, Charon. I’m a messenger for the gods and an escort for the dead. I won’t always be available for the whims of your lover.”

“When you are busy Dionysus will take her.”

Dionysus had been watching the scene with a quiet aloofness, but sputtered at my words. “Wait a moment?—”

I turned my glare on him, cutting him off. “Did you or did you not steal Semele from the Underworld?”

I pivoted back to Hermes. “And shall we discuss Herakles? You have both spurned the rules of the Underworld. Now you must repay me for the insult. You will transport Moira when she needs it.”

The gods looked at each other. Hermes sighed in defeat, but Dionysus hissed at him under his breath. “You always get me into terrible situations.”

Hermes ignored him and turned back to face us. “Fine.”

Dionysus grumbled, but nodded.

“Good. Now leave. Come back tomorrow and return Moira to the mortal realm.”

With a flutter of winged sandals, they were gone.

“How couldyou do something so stupid?” I stroked Moira’s cheek. I couldn’t stop touching her, couldn’t stop staring into those eyes. I had gone from ignoring to hating to loving this woman in a matter of hours.

It was ridiculous considering the length of my life up to now. Mere hours turning the course of centuries. Yet I couldn’t imagine a life without her now. I understood how the gods fell for mortals with just a glance now.

“It was a calculated risk,” she huffed. “I’m athief. I stole your heart, then I stole my fate.”

“You stole the thread from the Moirai,” I chided.

“I’m living up to my name.”

“So you are.”

She stretched up onto her toes. I met her lips. We were patient this time, no longer stoked by rage-fueled lust. I trailed kisses down her cheek, laved over the wound from my bite. It was no longer open. The teeth marks had closed over with silver, a permanent mark on her body from me.

I hummed with satisfaction. “Your bite. It’s silver. You’re marked as mine.”

Moira wrapped my hair around her hand and tilted my head to the side, baring my neck to her. “Yours, too.”

My little thief and I had thwarted fate and the gods, branded each other with our obsessive desire, and linked our very souls. Gone were my days of monotonous existence. Gone was her life of uncertainty.

The future would be many things, but it would always be interesting.

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