Page 26 of Hades and Persephone: Keeper of Sins

She stirs life inside of me. She awakens the parts of me that have been dying since she was stolen, gruesomely taken from me in an act that weaved the web of destruction that would follow in the centuries to come.

When I returned to the Underworld to retrieve Cerberus, Hecate had informed me, that for the first time in the last century, the stars had stopped falling. The Tree of Life in the Elysian Fields, not only stopped shedding leaves, but began to bud again.

A new bud has not been observed since the Day of Death in the Underworld, where the one truly living thing—the one thing with a soul bound to life and not death—had been violently, brutally, betrayed. Murdered.

Stolen.

The food sours in my mouth at the memory, and I push my plate away.

The way I raged in the past when the memory ofPersephone bound beneath the waters of the Lethe, her dark green eyes wide in death—it had been intense. My grief had shaken the Underworld so fiercely, that the earth itself trembled. Land split, allowing Poseidon to circle the land he did not swallow in his seas. Lives were lost, souls claimed.

Atlantis had fallen.

“Is everything all right?”

I blink the fire from my gaze, dipping my eyes to the obsidian gloss of the table. It takes a moment, but the magma of Tartarus in my veins slows its flow, cooling.

“Yes.” My voice sounds rough even to my own ears.

She shifts across the table from me. Awareness slithers through the valves of my heart, Medusa’s serpents rooting precariously in the depths of the organ that beats exclusively, dangerously, for the oblivious little woman who holds the soul of my mate in her fragile human body. This chance I have with her now, I know without even visiting theMoirai,The Fates, is the last chance I will be given with her soul. If she is taken from me again, the heart inside my eternal chest will, undoubtedly turn to stone, trapped within a grief I will never recover from. The Underworld will collapse. The prisons of the Titans, bound by my blood, will fail. Freeing the beginning of what will be the end of all that has ever been known.

She touches me, and I breathe. Her hand is small against the stone of my shoulder. “Hades?”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

I grind my teeth, keeping my head bowed as I tighten the reigns of my splintering control. If she knew the way I burned when she touched me, she would not do it. And yet, I don’t want her to stop.

I want to loose the God that claws at the flesh of the man that contains him, and claim her. I want to swallow her screams and cries. To play the chords of her unwilling pleasure until she gifts me with the moans I ache to devour. I want to shove inside her body, to claim her innocence and ravage the purity of her warm heart, consuming the whole of her for my own so that I may never lose her again.

I want her soul. The God within rages for it, willing to steal to possess it. Whatever the cost.

But the man knows better. The man has lived in this human form for centuries, shoving at the consuming grief of the God that threatens to overwhelm him.

Her hand moves over my back, and the God hums his approval.

If she knew the way she affected me with just this simple contact, how the threads of her freedom frayed under her friendly comfort, she would certainly flee me.

“I had a rough day.” With a scrub of my hands over my face, I lift my now cool gaze to hers. “I apologize.”

Her full mouth shifts into a soft, innocently caring smile.I ache to taste it.

“Would you like to talk about it?” she offers.

Would I like to tell her that the continuation of the Underworld, the Middle World, The Oceans, and even the golden expanse of Olympus, is tied to her willingness to deliver me her soul? No. No, I would not.

Slowly, I shake my head. I note the disappointment that shadows her lovely green eyes, like emeralds mined from the riches of the earth, and ask instead, “Are you tired?”

She sucks her lower lip.I’ve never been more jealous in my life.Her voice is soft. “No.”

I have to clear my throat. “Will you join me this evening, then?”

Caution battles the shadows in her eyes. “Where?”

“On the rooftop.” I add when she hesitates, “For conversation.”

Her eyes flick to the ceiling, full lips parting.

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