Page 56 of Hades and Persephone: Threads of Fate

A thing of madness.

Not even the mist of the sea can cool me, its splash sizzling into steam over my heated flesh as I race over sand. My movements are driven by instinct. I am not man, but beast. I am not composed, but the picture of chaos. I am not mortal, but God.

The itch intensifies, burning the marrow that boils in my bones. I roar to the everlasting night, watching as the magical night-blooming narcissuses birthed from the baren womb of this realm cower in the wake of my rage. My fists crash into the stone at the base of Mount Olympus, its roots as toxic and far-reaching as the venom that spews from Medusa’s serpent crown. Rubble shakes loose as the mountain shudders under my wrath, my mind still lost to the madness of Tartarus, and the inky blood that flows like rivers over my palms. A rockslide tumbles from high above, crashing into the sea as the land trembles beneath my feet. Souls cry out in the distance, but I think nothing of them as my palace comes into view, rising into the inky darkness of an everlasting night. A mountain of glittering onyx, lit by firelight, its towers spearing high like daggers plunging into the belly of an everlasting night.

Crashing through high arched doors, I fall to my knees on the polished stone of the palace foyer. The air I suck into my lungs stings like the bitter cold of afrosty winter, the heat surging alive within me repulsed by the nip of icy cold even as I push off the stone, my palms leaving a mark of moist steam behind. Or is it blood?

I don’t care. I can care about nothing but the itch. The pressure inside my bones that feels as though I will, at any moment, erupt into a mist of torment.

Another roar rattles the onyx and obsidian mountain in which I’ve carved my palace. The chandelier of twisted opal and God’s-bone quakes overhead, the everlasting fire shuddering as though under the siege of breath. My eyes burn.

Everything burns.

The need I can’t name rises like a wave of magma to sear the aching organ that thunders in my chest. The need I can’t name rides the wave, a seductress of monsters into the forefront of mind. A single image. A girl. A woman. Sunshine and flowers and the seductive warmth of home. My mate.Mine.

I find myself tunnelling through the palace. Dark, twisting passageways wind like veins, and I am the blood that surges, seeking the heart. Craving her.

The taste of sunshine is a balm on my ravaged mind, ribboned with the sweet fragrance of blossoms.

The itch grows stronger. More insistent.

The portal. I need to get to the portal.

For the first time in a long time, I curse my waning power. My inability to summon a portal to and from the Underworld at will.

Insanity fractures my mind, cracking my focus as I fumble, my talons tearing at the shifting shadows of my Godly flesh, searching for the itch. For reprieve.

I find none.

The madness swirls.

The portal grows near and an animal roar of need rips from me. The gust quiets even the eternal flames of the candles that light my way, fed by the blood that spills an everlasting river from the cut limbs of the Hydra who haunts the sinkhole. Plunged into darkness, my Godly vision sharpens, seeking shape in the black obscurity of perpetual shadows.

“Hades!” A woman screams my name, and I pause. My ears twitch.Her?“Hades, stop!”

Not her. I turn again, finding the portal I seek into the realm of the living. To her.

A hand connects with my back before a hiss falls from the female behind me. Nothing can touch me now and survive. Not in this form. Not after my time in the pits of torment. Not with the heat of Tartarus and the burning river Phlegethon that shrouds me in the scorch of sin.

“You can’t go through the portal in this form, Hades.” The voice is frantic, pained. “You just left Tartarus—if you come into contact with her like this—you—you’ll tear her apart.” The portal crackles with energy as I grow closer. The familiar voice screams again, shrill as a wraith bent on an invasion of my burning soul. “You will incinerate her! Hades,stop!”

I can’t stop. The itch is too much. Too deep.

I need her. She is the relief I seek.

Sheis the thing that pulled me from the depths of sin and suffering. The only thing with the ability to do so.

I step through the portal, turning at last to view the being at my back. Recognition flickers somewhere beyond the itch. A name I’ve known since the beginning. A friend. Hecate. She is drenched in shadows; struck by the flickering light of the flame she holds in her palm. Her other hand has been stripped of flesh to the very bone, glistening black in the shadows that dance among the picture of gore.

I am present enough to know I did that. Burned the flesh from her hand.

I am not present enough, however, to heed her warnings.

The portal closes, silencing Hecate’s shrill shriek.

There is no turning back now.

Not as the portal opens into the elevator that smells ofher. The elevator that will take me to her, soaring high into the sky, and yet encased in the flames of the Underworld, untouchable by even Zeus.

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