Page 6 of Hades and Persephone: Threads of Fate

“Hades…”

“And you will give it all to me. You will not hold back.” His eyes pin mine. “Do you understand?”

“This isn’t real.”

“This is very real, my little goddess.”

I shake my head even as his grip tightens. “Hades—I’m leaving in a few months.”

His eyes search mine. “What if you didn’t?”

I gasp, working to shut down the hope that rears in my heart. “That’s—impossible.”

“Why?”

“Because…” I stammer. “I have to go home. I have responsibilities. School. A life.”

“Then it’s real until you leave.” He brushes his lips over my temple to growl low in my ear. “Say yes.”

“Hades—”

“Say it.”

I’m breathless. “Yes.”

He hums low in my ear and I shiver. “Now say you’re mine.”

I don’t hesitate this time. “I’m yours.”

“Only mine.”

The words fall as a whispered pant into the charged space between us. “Only yours.”

“Good girl.”

Chapter

Three

Persephone

“How arethings with the hot billionaire?” Willa drops her kneepad to the ground beside me, lowering to her knees on the cushion. She picks up a brush and begins dusting away centuries of build-up, working behind me as I move slowly chipping away solidified earth and sand that hides an inscription—a carving we found only this week—in the base of a temple.

This new temple base was discovered some time over the weekend, when someone climbing to the main site tripped over the rise of stone, took a moment to uncover some packed ground, and found the engraved rock. It’s removed from the main site in anunexpected location. I’ve been here on my knees for two days now. I am obsessed with uncovering this inscription like I’ve been obsessed with nothing else. Well, nothing but Hades, that is.

But I’ve done my best to put the brakes on all that. At least for the duration of my period, which has not only been terribly heavy, but put me in a terrible mood. It’s put me in such a terrible mood that even last night, I’d shucked my duties at Hades’ house to sleep in the small room I share with Willa at the communal house.

“Hello?” Willa singsongs, bumping her elbow into my side. “Earth to Annie.”

I sigh. “Things are fine.”

“Are they?”

I tear my gaze from my work to frown at my friend. “Why wouldn’t they be fine?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You slept in our room last night rather than in that cushy bed the man-god provides for you.”

“Hades isn’t a god.”

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