Page 7 of Hades and Persephone: Threads of Fate

“Are you sure? Because he kinda makes me think of Hades, Hades. Like, the real deal God of the Underworld.”

I scowl at Willa, watching a very small breeze work to sway her mass of dark curls.She’s a nut.“I’m sure.”

She focuses back on dusting away my work. “So, why were you at the house last night?”

“I just needed a night to myself.” I sigh, wonderingif I should confide in Willa. She’s been trustworthy so far, but I’ve never had a friend I could share my secrets with. I’m not even sure how to begin.

As though sensing my thoughts, her voice softens. “You know you can share with me, right?”

“Yeah, sure.” I’m not sure. I’m too new to this to be sure.

“I’m just saying, if you need someone to talk to, you can talk to me. About anything.” She promises, “I won’t judge.”

I throw her a raised brow. “You judged an awful lot when I told you I’d be working for Hades.”

“I was jealous.” She waves me off, admitting, “Okay, so I judged a little. You just feel really innocent to me, and he feels like he has an eternity of experience. The balance was off, you know? It felt a little off in the beginning, anyway.”

“And now?”

“Now—” She shrugs. “I don’t know. When he came here to take you to lunch—” She whistles low. “Guuurl, that man looked at you like you were the light of his life.”

“He did not.”Why is my heart slamming in my chest?I hear my pitch rise. “Did he?”

She nods. “Yeah, he really did. Made me think the balance had shifted. Because you look at him like you’re not sure.”

“And he looks at me like he’s sure?”

Willa laughs. “If he really was the God of theUnderworld, I’m positive he’d have stolen you away already.”

Her words have an unintended effect on me. Every part of my body responds, my flesh coming alive.

The very idea of being swept to a place of myth and fantasy with Hades—by Hades—has an unquenchable fire igniting in my core. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt so consumed by heat. By desire. By a deep, dark need that was sewed into the very fabric of my soul before it was ever given to this body.

Feeling suddenly unsteady, as though the world beneath me is shifting, the foundation of my reality cracking, I drop my tool to steady myself against the scribed stone.

The earth trembles beneath me, sand and debris falling away to reveal a sea of steps so deep and long, it fades into the shadows of the black deep below. It’s so dark, I imagine this dark will gobble even the light of flame. Suffocating it.

I grip the engraved stone, which we’d thought was the base of a temple. It’s not the base, I realize in horror. It’s a header—an entrance into somethingelse.

I cling to it as the sand beneath my body falls, the hole in the earth yawning. I think a whimper spills from the depths of me. Maybe it’s a scream. I can’t be sure because I can’t hear much beyond the earth that shakes and crumbles beneath me. Maybe it’s an earthquake, I think, as my fingertipsslip from where they cling to the header of this deep shaft, and I fall into darkness.

The white overheadis painfully bright. I realize, after a few blinks and the telling slope of the tightly pulled fabric, that I am in a tent. The medic’s tent. And I’m on a bed.

Memories assault me then. One after another. The ground shaking, crumbling, falling away to reveal a terrifying pit of steep stairs into a depthless sea of darkness.

Oh, my God, Willa. Willa had been beside me.Had she been hurt?

I struggle to sit, whimpering, “Willa?”

A hand connects with my chest and I’m pushed gently back into the bed. “Rest. You need rest and fluids.”

“Where is Willa? Is she hurt?”

The medic tips his head to the side. His frown is so deep it’s almost clownlike. He assures, “No one is hurt, Annie.”

No one is hurt?But the ground—the earthquake…?

The medic reaches for my head and plucks a cloth from where it rested on my forehead. He dips it into water, twists, and replaces it. It feels delightfully cool on my fevered flesh.

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