Page 51 of Hades and Persephone: Crown of Souls

“Interesting,” he muses, but I hear what sounds like whirling—and thendripping? There is movement around me as Poseidon—Poseidon!!—stands.

Poseidon is standing beside me, as though this very thing happens all the time. Like it’s no big deal that I’m chilling with the God of the Sea.

Honestly, I can’t tell if I’m fan girling, freaking out, or about to hurl.

At the sound of rustling, I can’t help but steal another peek at the God. Bracing myself for the thing, I exhale a breath of pure relief when I see that he is fastening something dark and green around his waist, and it is effectively covering said thing. It looks suspiciously like seaweed that has been sewn into a makeshift fabric.

His lips hitch into an unmistakable grin of pure male roguishness that has certain red spilling into my cheeks, as if they weren’t red enough.

“You were never bothered by my nakedness before. I apologize for my assumption now.”

My face is still burning, but I feel my discomfort waning bit by bit. “You said we never slept together.”

“We didn’t.”

I frown. “But your nakedness never bothered me?”

He lowers his hulking body to sit next to me in the sand, but not quite as close as before. He is trying to give me space. To ease my discomfort.

I am grateful.

“I am a creature of the sea, my friend. If I am moving through the waters, I am in my Mer form, which, as you saw—” His lips quirk in a teasing grin. “Has little need for clothes.”

“Oh.”Duh. I feel like an idiot.

“In the city of Atlantis?—”

My head whips to the side. I blurt, “Atlantis is real?”

I shift just a bit closer in my excitement. I can’t help it. The nights I spent reading about the lost city while my house slept are countless.

Poseidon tips his head curiously to the side. “You truly have no memory of before?”

I shake my head, my new flame of excitement getting hit with a big fat wave of reality. I breathe, “No.”

He lifts his chin in simple acceptance. “Atlantis is very real. It was an island of the Gods, remaining a mystery even today for the wonders it held and the whereabouts it existed. You see, it held the most powerful portal between the realms.”

“You mean between Earth and the Underworld?”

Poseidon studies me with those unusual blue eyes that seem to invade my soul through the windows of my eyes. He pulls in breath, expanding his already massive chest. “Between all the realms.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means that Atlantis had been, and still is, the most powerful city to have ever existed.”

“But it—it sank.”

“It did.” Poseidon smirks like a man who has won a prize far greater than the game he’d played. “Thanks, in part, to you.”

It’s my turn to frown. “Me? What did I have to do with the sinking of an island?”

“You must first understand that this ancient island was the heart of all realms, but more, it was a realm unto its own. Its power was so great, it fed the realms of Olympus, the LivingRealm, and the Underworld alike. Power surged in constant supply from this heart into the realms surrounding it, like the arteries from the heart in your chest now.” Poseidon leans back on his palms in the sand, and I am only a little struck when his feet stretch into the water and fail to instantly turn into a fin. “Legend says Atlantis was the first of the land pulled from the seas, created by Chaos, herself.”

“Chaos?” It’s not the first time the Goddess of Matter has come up in conversation, but for some reason, I see her as powerless in my mind. Shackled, somehow, even though it isn’t something I can make sense of. To know she created a land of such immense power is not the way of a shackled Goddess.

I dismiss the thought.

“Yes, Chaos, the Goddess of Matter,” Poseidon tells me as though I don’t know. To be fair, he has no idea what I know or don’t know. He continues, “After Atlantis, Gaia, Mother Earth not to be outdone by her Mother Goddess, pulled Pangea from the sea. It was an astonishing feat of astronomical power. Pangea was rich with resources and beauty, but it was no Atlantis.”

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