Hades and Persephone: Crown of Souls (Gods of Myth #3)

Chapter 10

Chapter

Ten

H ades

I see the moment the vision leaves her. Watch as the memory—of what I do not know—releases her from its relentless hold. She springs up and away from me, as though desperate for space. As much as I ache to fulfill her every desire, to answer the call of her every wish, I am unable to abide her in this. In space. From me.

In the thrashing of her waking nightmare, a memory so ancient it should have been lost to the folds of time, the sheet had slipped from her body. Now, she is naked where she leans over the balcony railing, sucking in deep breaths of open mountain air.

The sight of her cuts me like a blade through the belly on a battlefield, spilling all that I fight to keep contained.

Pushing from the lounge chair with the sheet in hand, I move to close the distance between us. Her body trembles, but her hands leave wet prints when they move from the dark stone railing to grip the sheet like a lifeline. Gently, I pull her hair from where the sheet traps it beneath the sheet, feeling emotion lodge in my throat when I see it. The spread of red. As though the ends of her hair have been dipped in liquid rubies.

Desire bludgeons me. She is lovely.

She shudders, calling my attention from the ends of her hair to her .

“Another memory?” It’s the first she’s had in my presence. There had been no reaching her.

“I—I—” She scrubs her face with clammy hands. “I don’t know, Hades. I hope not—but?—”

Locking my hands on the railing in front of her, I cage her small body with my much larger one. Her scent curls around me, a drug I do not possess the strength to deny as I dip my head just a fraction to inhale. Sweet floral with undertones of something other now. Something darker. Richer. Something that promises everlasting life drenched in hope.

The sun-baked wheat that had once clung to the undertones of her sweet scent has vanished to be replaced by this?—

I inhale again. I cannot place it.

It emanates from the core of her—and my body—my body aches to respond. The need is primal, primitive. It is baser and pressing. It is a need the like I’ve only experienced once before. A moment of broken will wrapped in an eternity of scathing regret.

I clamp my teeth and tighten my hold on the railing so that I do not reach for her.

I will not break again. I will not take that which she does not mean to give again.

She speaks into the silence, her voice dripping with confusion. “I don’t know what is real anymore.”

“If you tell me what you saw,” the words fall roughly from the chains of restraint in which I bind myself, “I will tell you if it is real.”

She surprises me when she spins in the cage of my arms. In my chest, I feel my heart respond with a contraction that is so violent, it threatens to drop me to my knees at her feet. But I would happily kneel for her. I would bow to her, a willing prisoner to the only woman who has ever existed with the power to be my undoing.

She tips her head back and my gaze meets the glass in hers. Fuck me, but I am too weak to face her tears.

“Persephone…”

“Did I—” A frown tugs at her lips, furrowing the smooth between her eyes. The glass begins to leak in shining streams that reflect prisms of silver against her night-pale flesh. An echo of building emotion rattles in her inhale. Her eyes lift to mine. “Did I birth the Underworld, Hades?”

I force my gaze to hold hers even as shame urges me to cut the connection. I know now the memory the Fates—the twisted Moirai—fed her. It has to be them. They are the only power great enough to counteract the poison of the Lethe.

“Yes,” I bite out, my gaze finally cutting from hers to burn on the mountain which harbours the three sisters. Anger simmers, boiling the very blood in my veins. Why, of all the memories to feed her, would they reveal that?

“You—God, Hades—” Her voice breaks as she shakes her head, as though to shake away the memory of our first joining. The force of it. The awakening of darkness within her. The hunger I’d been eternally incapable of feeding since.

Until now.

Fear kicks in my heart as I realize that now that she knows—now that she’s relived it—my deepest regret—will that insatiable hunger be reborn in her?

I want to fall to my knees and beg the Fates for mercy. I cannot watch her beneath another man. I cannot listen to her sighs of pleasure as her eyes hold mine, the claws of a rightfully vengeful woman shredding the very heart that beats in my chest.

She surprises me when she falls into my chest. Her body shudders violently with a force of emotion that momentarily paralyzes me. Until it doesn’t. Wrapping my arms around her, I hold her tightly as emotion leaks from her in rivers to run down my chest. Spearing my fingers into the silk of her hair, I cradle her head and soothe her with soft kisses.

When she finally gathers herself, the words she speaks against the heart that beats like a wrecking ball inside my chest shocks me. “I felt it all, Hades.” Her whisper is coated in despair I ache to kiss away.

“I’m so sorry, little goddess.”

She pushes back to peer up at me. Her hands shove between us to palm my face. Her eyes, filled with such resolute bravery, fasten on mine. “I felt everything,” she says again. “I felt the descent. I felt the vicious bite of your touch, your fingers digging into my skin.” I flinch. She holds me. “I felt the knife of your invasion, like I was splitting in two.”

“Please,” I beg. I haven’t begged in centuries.

“And I felt you . I felt your desperation. Your agonizing loneliness.” Her voice is so soft, so gentle. “I felt the betrayal you felt. The darkness you’d lived with for so long. The death. I felt the hunger for life that burned inside you, Hades. And I fell in love with you then, even as I hated you for the weakness you fell to. I—” She rises onto her tiptoes even as she pulls my face closer. Her breath whispers across my lips. “I felt everything.”

“Persephone…” I haven’t felt so broken since the moment I learned I lost her to the Lethe. To the betrayal of her mother, my sister. Demeter.

Her lips touch mine, featherlight. “I forgive you, Hades.”

I am a God. I am the God of the Underworld, of death and afterlife. And yet this tiny human woman with the soul of a Goddess pulls unwilling tears from my eyes. Her gentle offering of forgiveness I do not deserve drops me to my knees.

“I don’t deserve your forgiveness.” I cling to her as though she is the only solid thing to ground me to this realm—my realm. Her realm . “It is not an excuse. There is never an excuse for the things I forced you to endure—for the rape—" My voice shatters on a broken sob as I press my face into her belly. “But I was lost to the madness of Tartarus. Lost to centuries of darkness and despair. Of agony. And you—you were the first thing I saw that made me feel alive. Made me feel hope. I—I was a monster, and I don’t deserve this. You. Your forgiveness. But I want it and I’ll take it anyway. Because maybe I’ll always be a monster.”

The sheet opens as she spreads her legs around mine, pushing her body closer to mine as we linger in a tangle of limbs on the cool stone of the balcony. Celebration is a distant, distorted thing in this moment of dark revelation. Her hands on my face are firm as she forces my eyes to hers.

There is power in her eyes now. Within the emerald, glittering strokes of malachite burn. There is raw strength in her voice, love in the exposure of our past. “ I forgive you, Hades. No one decides who I forgive, but me . No one dictates the truth in my heart, but me . I forgive you . And you are mine to forgive.”

She climbs higher in my lap to drop her mouth to mine. That scent—the new darkly rich scent I cannot place bursts from her to infuse the very air that surrounds us with the heady scent of its warm allure.

It feels wrong to want her like this after everything, but I can control my body’s longing response to hers no better than I can control the tides of Poseidon’s seas. Still, as she rocks her core into my aching length, my hands move from her back to her hips. I hold her in place, unable to take from her right now even as she kisses me deeper, her tongue slipping past my lips to stroke against my own.

She’s usually so hesitant, but not now. She’s driving me mad.

“Kiss me, Hades.” Her hands fall from my face to the sheet that separates us. She nips my bottom lip, soothing the sting with the tip of her tongue. I am a moment from breaking. “Please.” My lips move against hers and fire burns so hot in my veins it spills magma.

I claim her mouth like I want to claim her body, pushing inside her the only way I can allow myself in this moment. She moans again, a husky lullaby of enchanting need I know I will never forget.

Her body jerks as she yanks at the sheet, spreading her legs wider as her little hand comes around the pulsing length of me. She strokes me once, twice, and hungry need spills from the tip as she continues to kiss me. We trade breath, nip, suck, and groan. She spreads her legs wider around me as my hands fist the sheet over her hips, my fingers knotting into the fabric in an attempt to cling to control as she guides my tip to the crease of her—sliding my tip through the wet of her core.

Stars wink behind my eyes as a blazing inferno of need ruptures deep inside me. I fucking want her like I want— I’ve never wanted anything like I want her .

This is more than need. It’s more than madness.

“Little goddess.” It’s the only warning I am able to give her.

That scent, the new scent is so strong now. It’s permeated every molecule of air I drag into my starved lungs, feeding the hunger that roars deep inside me. The hunger only she can sate.

She rocks her hips into me as the sheet pools around her hips, exposing the milky pale of her back and the red-tipped ends of her hair to the stars that wink down on us. My hands move from her hips to the swollen globes of her ass, and I squeeze as she teases the tip of my cock with a taste of her sweet cunt. And then she pulls back to line my tip with her entrance, her exquisite eyes locked on mine.

The heady scent spills from her in intoxicating waves that nearly blurs my vison of her with the need to consume. My jaw locks and the muscles in my back and legs tighten with restraint. I could shift my hips and dive into the deep of her—so deep I spill every last drop of my seed into her sweet womb—but I don’t. I hold my restraint as I hold her lovely eyes.

She whispers, “I forgive you.”

With an agonizing slowness, she lowers her body over mine, sheathing me in the sweet, warm wet of her. She doesn’t stop taking me, every inch, until I am fully rooted inside her—my tip pressing into the very womb I ache to fill with a need that is more than primal. Older than ancient.

A deep groan looses from the cavern of my throat as she rolls her ass back into my hands, rolling back down into the thickness of my cock that longs to fill her so full, she screams into this night. Screams to the realm that she is home.

Instead, I remain perfectly still as I offer her the use, the submission of my body. I watch, mesmerized by the wonder of her as she moves over me, taking her pleasure from me. The pace of her rhythm picks up, turning desperate. She pulls back to plunge down harder and harder. Her breasts bounce and little cries spill from her parted lips. Music in the night .

“Hades,” she cries my name. Yes, little goddess. Say my name . “I need—I need…”

“Anything,” I gasp. “I am at your mercy.”

“I need you to hold me. Kiss me. Touch me.” Unable to refuse her, I tip my head forward to taste the trickle of sweat that beads between the pale globes of her breasts. It tastes of that scent. The scent that urges me to slip into madness. “ I need —” Her head falls back as that scent explodes into the night. Erupting from her as the climax she seeks finally builds to a point of rupture.

I am ensnared in the trap of her as pleasure is pulled from my body in response to the tremor of her undoing, and the scent that floods the air around me.

With my eyes fixed on her, I see the moment her head tips back and she sighs her pleasure to the sky. See the moment the tear in the darkness of the eternal night splits, and the two moons that have been absent since the day of darkness—the day of her death—appear.

Only, they aren’t the brilliant white they once were.

No, now, they are blood red and burning bright. One veined in molten gold. The other threaded with liquid onyx.

The twins.