Page 56 of Hades and Persephone: Crown of Souls

“Demeter wants control of the souls who pass?” Horror quickly follows her words as she realizes, “She wants an army. She wants to make an army of the souls of the dead.”

“Why would she want that?” Poseidon growls low and borderline feral.

“That’s what we have to find out.”

Chapter

Twenty-Four

Hades

When Poseidon excusedhimself to the sea to return with his findings to Atlantis, Persephone sank to her knees in the sand. The look of utter hopelessness in her eyes carves me up like a blade. Lowering to the ground behind her, I cage her body with mine. I take her weight when she settles against my chest. Her touch is like a balm to my dark soul. Even like this.

If she knew the way that I crave her even now, the hunger that burns inside me to root myself into the very depths of her, to spill my seed and watch what we create grow—I’m not sure she would be so willing to stay.

It is nearly all consuming, this need I feel for her. And it is torture to know that my need for her has certainly grown roots inside her. But they are dark and twisting with thorns that barb as they wrap around the bargained piece of my soul the Moirai fused with her own.

The reality is that her hunger is not for me. It is simply to fill the hollowness I carved out of her in my mistakes of the past.Although centuries ago—the trauma of my claiming—I will never find forgiveness, not even if she promises to give it. I am unable to forgive myself.

And yet I cannot bring myself to let her go. I cannot bring myself to let her heart seek another.

“What are we going to do, Hades?” she asks, pulling me from the sticky web of my dark thoughts.

I want to assure her, but I am not certain I can. “We're going to make sure that Demeter does not get her hands on the Crown of Souls.”

She twists in my arms to peer over one pale shoulder at me. “Were you going to place the crown on Minthe or Leuce?”

Her question, so soft, manages to punch the breath from my lungs.

It takes me a moment to regain control of myself. “Never.”

She hesitates before she asks, “Me?”

“Yes.” I don’t hesitate. “When you are ready, it is the crown you are meant to wear.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t think so.”

“You are mother to the Underworld. Who better than you to oversee your souls?”

“They are not my souls, Hades. They areyours.” Her eyes implore me to believe her, but against my millennia, her years are merely a blip. She cannot know what I know. “This realm is yours.”

“No.” I offer her a kind smile. “I have always been a placeholder for you. The Fates?—”

“Stop it!” I brace against the sharp elbow she gives me, nearly cracking a grin but careful to contain it, lest I earn her wrath. “This realm would be nothing without you. You have sacrificed all the parts of you for all of this. For every one of these souls. They are happy here, Hades. I know they are. I've heard their laughter in Asphodel City. There is exquisite beauty here, in thisrealm. It's not what—” Her words break off on a tired sigh. She pulls breath in through her nose, releasing through her mouth. She's trying to get control over her emotions, and I am trying not to be hypnotized by her. “It's not what we think it is in the Living Realm, the Underworld. It’s everything here—and you are the God of Afterlife.”

“You made me that God.”

“No!” She shakes her head again. “No. I may not remember everything about my past life, but I know that I loved you. I loved you, and only you, Hades. I only ever wanted you.”

Her words are the sweetest poison.

I shutter my eyes, inhaling the scent of her hair. She smells like the sweetest garden in spring.

She smells like life, and yet she guts me.

Because I can't tell her that she is wrong, I simply touch my lips to her temple, dragging them over the smooth skin. She is warm and everything that I want. She is all that I need, my lovely little goddess with her soul so soft and sweet.

We sit like this for some time, just the two of us in a realm on the brink of war. She is sitting sideways in my arms now, her legs curled up under her as the sea stretches over sand as though desperate to steal just a touch of her. I can’t blame it. It appears that every living thing is at the mercy of this desire she inspires.

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