Page 74 of Seduced

Do not answer, she thought.I do not want to hear any more. Say nothing more.

But he did answer. He licked his lips once, twice, made a small, whimpering, choking sound as if he was desperately fighting within himself not to cry or scream. And spoke.

“I did not kidnap you, Wyatt,” Hades said. “I only pretended to, because it seemed kinder. It…it happened in the very gaming room you were standing in a few hours ago, the night before I took you from your home.”

“What is your lordship talking about?Whathappened in that card room?” Poppy couldn’t feel her lips.

“I did not kidnap you,” he repeated, as if that was the important part. But then he hesitated some more, and terror gripped her, a terror so great that she wished he had kept beating around the bush for a few hours more. Or days. Or eons. “I…I tried to make it look like a kidnapping in order to spare your feelings. In my defense, it would have worked had it been any other, normaller female.”

“You—what?”

“I’m sorry. I am sorry.”

What on earth was wrong with Hades? Who was this creature, who kept choking out apologies to her as if his heart was being wrenched out of his chest? It wasn’t the Slavic prince, that was certain.

“Stop being sorry and tell me!” Poppy hissed.

She heard him turn his head as he lay on the snow to look at her, but she couldn’t face him, not yet, not ever.

“I am so sorry,” he said again, insufferably. “It’s…it’s bad.”

“Let’s hear it.” Poppy was bursting with curiosity and dread, but nothing could be worse than this suspense.

Everything around them was white and still.

She imagined glittering, fur-covered ladies spilling out of bright townhouses all over Mayfair, the night echoing with their twinkling laughter. She imagined the gentlemen who supported their elbows, she imagined lips red with wine and feet sore from dancing. All around them, London was bursting with the end of parties and balls—it was the height of the season, after all.

But from down here, on the ground, as she lay on the snow besides Hades, it felt to Poppy that hell was not a pit offire, as her brother had explained at great length: rather, it was a place of fear, loneliness and freezing cold.

Hades took a shuddering breath, and spoke.

“Your brother lost you to me in a game of cards.”

nineteen

Poppy

Poppy simply got up and left.

This was not a conscious decision she made: her legs simply decided to take her away from Hades and those words he had just said. She did not say anything, did not think anything. She did not feel anything.

She just left.

It seemed as if the coldness of the snow had seeped into her very soul and had replaced everything within her with ice.

She walked back into the club, ignoring Wilder’s frantic questions about Hades. She must have left him behind, still laying on that snow, trying to kill himself, but she could not think about that right now. She could not think about anything.

She was incapable of thinking.

And thank God for that.

Some time passed. She walked.

At some point, she heard heavy, if somewhat unsteady footsteps behind her, and had the faint impression that Hades had peeled himself out of his icy would-be grave and was following her, but it might have only been her imagination.

Or it might have been someone else, not him.

She neither knew nor cared.

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