Page 62 of Hades and Persephone: Keeper of Sins

“You know that’s not true.”

“Hecate,” I warn.

She ignores it, as she is prone to do. “I have wasted away, Hades.Look at me.” My eyes slide over her body, once lush with curves and full of color. Now, her flesh clings to her black bones, so pale and leeched of color, I am just able to see the black of her skeleton through the thin skin that covers it. With the lace that covers her from head to foot, including the veil over her face and the mane of long black hair down her back, she is like a mirage. A wraith.

Hecate continues, “I have given pieces of my very soul to keep this realm from total collapse. Evil claws at the binds of Tartarus, threatening to devour the unaware in the Elysian Fields. They will torment the souls of Asphodel City and Meadows, Hades, and what are you doing up there with her? Our Queen? She is the life force of this entire realm, Hades. We can’t survive much longer—Ican’t survive much longerlike this, bearing this weight. I am little more than bones and still I find the strength to enchant your canvasses.”

“You know it is necessary.”

Hecate’s lip curls under the lace. “Bring herhome.”

I never imagined doing the right thing, giving Persephone the freedom to choose me and the Underworld, would come with such dire implications.

“I will not force her.”

Hecate’s black eyes shine behind the lace with enchanted smoke and danger. “I will not enchant another canvas until she is here.”

“You would let the Titans free?”

Hecate shrugs her pale, thin shoulder. “Tartarus is on the brink of ruin. You have a much bigger problem than the Titans simply running amuck if Persephone is not. Brought. Home.” She steps into me, her skeletal chest heaving against mine as her voice lowers, the lilt deadly. “We all know you are King of the Underworld, Hades. But she is the Queen. Before her, there was darkness. Before her, you were the King of Death. The God of Death. After her, you became the God of Afterlife. She created this realm, Hades. She birthed life here. It was from the love she had for you, the love she nurtured deep within her core that she brought life into the Underworld. It was from her womb that life sprung from the depths of this darkness, and stars burst in the everlasting obsidian of our unending night.”

Her finger points to the glitteringsky that has been bright with new stars since Persephone’s return to Greece—as though the stars of the realm high above the land of the Underworld can sense her nearness, and feast off the power within her nurturing womb. The thing within her that gives life to the realm of Death.

“This realm is her child, and we know what happens when infants are left without their mothers, Hades.”

“They die.”

Through the lace, Hecate’s breath is a cool wash of darkness against my face. I clench my teeth against a shiver as she whispers, “The Underworld is dying.”

And if the Underworld dies—all of the world dies.

Chapter

Thirty

Hades

My mood hasn’t beenthis dark since Persephone’s return in my life. I’m tense, disturbed. Hecate is right, even though I don’t want her to be. The Underworld needs its Queen. I am going to have to find a way to bring Persephone home sooner than later. If I don’t, the consequences very well may be catastrophic.

Hecate wasn’t wrong when she said the Underworld was dying. It’sbeendying. Together with those closest to me, we’ve been holding the crumbling realm together, but what was so naturalfor Persephone to sustain is draining the eternal souls from our immortal bodies.

We can’t hold on much longer, I know. And if the Underworld dies, not only do the souls waiting for their time to be reborn lose their chance, but they will be cast into an eternal nothingness. The same eternal nothingness that will claim the souls of all who pass until there are no more souls to pass. Humanity will investigate the sudden end to births, and blame it on the evil souls—demons, they’ll cry—spilled from the bowels of Tartarus. They will weep their confessions and pleas to a God who cannot help them.Can’tsave them.

If the Underworld dies, Tartarus will crumble. It will leak not only the evil souls bound to an eternity of punishment for their unimaginable atrocities, but it will unchain the Titans from their prisons within the blood bound paint I’ve sealed over an enchanted canvas. It will unchain them because my eternal life is bound to the Underworld.

I am only as immortal as the realm which I rule.

The portal opens into the basement of the Tower by design. Unknown by the people of today, my club is built over one of the greatest temples dedicated to the God of Death, now lost to time. It once disturbed me deeply, the way humans forgot their Gods and cast us into the idyllic personification of myth. The way we allowed such disrespect, too consumed by self-centered desires and Godly games to care. Now, suchignorance allows me to move unseen between this realm and the realm I rule.

Leuce smirks down at her phone screen. I don’t ask and don’t care, until she throws silver-grey hair over her shoulder, pinning her eyes to mine. Leuce moves with complete confidence, always has. Her unique beauty has paved the path of her self-assurance for millennia. It won’t ever change. I don’t want it to. Not ever.

“What?” My voice sounds dry. My mood is dark. All I want is to return to the Tower penthouse and see her. It’s late, but I hope she’s waiting up for me. I’ve never needed the taste of a woman quite like I need her right now. There is hope in a kiss. More in a freely given heart. Even the most dire of circumstance can be brightened by love.

Leuce’s smirk doesn’t tremble as she flips the screen of her phone for me to see. The image instantly has the blood in my veins boiling hotter than the river Phlegethon. My back teeth grind and the hands I’ve slid into my suit pockets curl into tight fists.

Persephone is awake, all right. What she very clearly isn’t doing, however, is waiting for me.

She’s wearing the red dress I ordered for her. It hugs her body exactly as I imagined it would. Only, the hands on her hips aren’t mine. The man who dips his lips to her neck isn’t me.

---