Page 2 of Queen of Shadows and Roses
At Hades’ silence, tense jaw, and darting eyes, Zeus’s face paled as he tilted his head. ‘Brother?’
‘I need to know that Persephone is safe,’ Hades hissed through clenched teeth. He felt panicked; that warm glow in his chest—their soul bond—was missing. The notion of his love being no more tasted bitter on his tongue. Daggers of pain and turmoil tore at his heart.
‘Of course she is.’ Demeter, Persephone’s mother, strode towards the man she loathed. ‘She is with the gods of Olympus,where she belongs.’ With a haughty smile, she raised her brow; oblivious to the mage’s curse, she was typically contemptuous towards him. ‘I still have three months with her, Hades,’ Demeter spat.
Persephone, stifled by her mother, still loved her and had agreed to spend half of the year with each of them following Demeter’s meltdown over her bonding with Hades.
‘So, where is she?’ Hades ground out.
They scoured and turned Zeus’ kingdom in Olympus inside and out, but Persephone had disappeared—vanished—along with their bond. Hades knew he had lost her.
‘What have you done?’ Demeter screamed at Hades, who looked at her from between his hands. His movements were listless, and he sank to the ground, his heart in shreds.
‘I judged a mage. She cursed me,’ he uttered as he closed his eyes.
‘Tell me everything, Brother.’ Zeus placed a hand on Hades’ shoulder.
Hades explained how he had judged the malevolent old crone and the curse she had placed upon him: the curse to lose his one true love… Persephone.
‘Magic is a threat to us all,’ Zeus bellowed as multiple forks of lightning shot through the sky. ‘I decree that we, once again, take control of the mortal realm. We shall go to war! Any being with witchcraft will be destroyed,’ the god of the sky yelled as Demeter sat beside Hades, both a shell of their former godly selves.
‘It’s all your fault,’ Demeter growled through her sobs.
‘I know,’ he whispered, holding his bowed head.
CHAPTER 1
TWENTY-TWO YEARS LATER, LONDON.
PERSEPHONE
There was a Lamia demon at Starbucks.
Of course there was.
I sipped my extra-shot latte and sighed. She was glamoured, looking like a regular businesswoman heading home. Dressed in a black trouser suit, her red hair piled atop her head, she wore sunglasses—a bit out of place in the evening, but a necessity. Their crimson pupils were a bit of a giveaway and tended to freak the hell out of humans. As a witch, I could sense her true essence, and it made my skin crawl.
Double crap on a cracker. So much for a quiet evening.
The demon had eyes on a couple of youngsters—perhaps around fifteen years old. She was clearly sussing out her next meal. Lamias didn’t need to feed often, but when they did, it was grim.
Fucking demons.
After the war, everything changed.
The gods reclaimed control of the mortal world, and the battle between them and humanity was catastrophic. It raged for nearly a year—bloody, ruthless, and always tilted in their favour. Sure, some gods fell. Or maybe a few were conveniently eliminated by their own kind. I wasn’t there, and honestly, I didn’t care.
What mattered was the aftermath.
The chaos cracked something open, and things that should’ve stayed locked in the dark slipped through. Demons. Nightmares. Creatures born of shadow and blood. The Underworld had spilled over, and the world never quite healed.
This Lamia was one of them.
But her time was almost up… I was going to make damn sure of it.
Humans stayed blissfully unaware of the monsters lurking in their cities. Most attacks were blamed on deranged people—and to be fair, there were plenty of those too. The rest of the magical community—shifters, fae, and the like—had learned to blend in, carving out hidden enclaves within human society and playing nice under the watchful eye of the Council of Magic.
My brethren, witches and mages, worked tirelessly to rid cities of the problem ghouls, but we had to lie low since the gods had returned to our world. We had to be careful. The gods banished witchcraft, and the Council of Magic, along with witches, mages, and covens, went underground. And the slaughter of my people? It was history repeating itself—just like the old witch trials, only bloodier.
