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

Chapter 11

Chapter

Eleven

P ersephone

I’m not sure how long I’ve been in the Underworld, but the fact that I’m here, and this is real, is becoming more and more believable as the hours stretch into days.

Days. Funny, I still think of the passing of time as days here in the Underworld, when night is an eternal beast.

The sky is a nearly constant canvas of glittering starlight. The only change is that of the two moons that appeared the night we had sex on the balcony after my— Hades calls them memories —of my previous life. They were full and brilliant, burning blood red and veined in gold and onyx. Now, they are only half visible.

If the laws on these moons is the same as that of the earthly moon, then I’d say I’ve been here just over a week.

I haven’t left Hades’ castle. In fact, we’ve rarely left his bed. While the moons had been burning bright and full, I’d been plagued by a burning need for the man that I’d been unable to sate. Even now, there is an ache between my legs. I’m not sure if it’s from being had by him so many times or if the need is beginning to rear its head again.

If Mama knew…

The thought of my God-fearing mother knowing just how insatiable I’d become for the man—for the God of the Underworld?—

If she knew the Underworld was real…

I can’t even. I just can’t. She would lose her mind.

Firm fingers find my chin, guiding my gaze to flames cast in ebony. My heart contracts. The man is dangerously beautiful.

He studies me. His firm touch gentles as he moves his hand to curl around the back of my neck. He draws me up to stand, and the scent of woodsmoke and rich sin envelops me. The ache between my thighs becomes an insistent pulse. Hades’ nostrils flare and he swallows hard.

“You’re insatiable.” I’m not sure why, but there is a slight wrinkle of worry between his brows as he says the words. A dark foreboding clings to the undercurrents of their meaning, casting an army of questions into my mind even as a sharp blade of shame cuts through the need that surges alive within me.

“I’m sorry.” Hades forces my gaze back to his when I try to hide my eyes. To hide my shame.

“Never apologize to me, Persephone.” Something sad slithers through the ribbon of determination in his words. I can’t read it. Can’t decipher it. “I am the God of the Underworld. I am the bearer of sins, but the sins between us have air because of me .” When I frown up at him, lost to the dark mystery of his words, Hades sighs. “Do you understand what I am saying to you, little goddess?”

“No.”

He rolls his lips, that wrinkle of a frown deepening.

Fear flutters in my chest.

“We’ve been sequestered to this room long enough.” He draws in a deep breath, his broad chest expanding with it. “I think it is time you reacquaint yourself with your true home, don’t you?”

I want to press him for answers. I want to smooth out that wrinkle of worry that doesn’t belong between his brows. I want to assure him that whatever it is he fears, he has no reason to fear it. But I can’t. I am entirely unable to push him in this moment. I don’t know what I am to push him for.

Instead, I give him a small, compliant nod. My smile is even smaller than my nod, filled with weighted hesitancy.

His hand moves from around my neck to weave with my own. He tugs me through the room to another that is overfull with gowns of every color. It’s a sight. Really, it is. If I thought the closet he provided for me before was insane, this is next level.

“Hades.”

“Women in the Underworld very rarely wear pants,” he explains, gesturing to the dresses. “But if you wish it, I will ensure you have pants made for you.”

“Made for me?”

“Before—” His jaw pulses. Something thickens in my throat as I wait, holding my breath. “In your first life, you preferred fabrics crafted exclusively from the spilled hearts of the Weeping Pines.”

“The what?”

“In the Grove of—” he pauses. Plucking a wispy toga style gown from a hanger, he hands it to me. “Get dressed. I will show you.”

I’ve never looked so beautiful in all my life. Never looked—never felt—so at home in any piece of clothing I’ve ever worn as I feel in this gown. It’s the faintest blue and alluringly translucent. It’s not so see-through that I’m putting on a show, but rather just enough that I can see the silhouette of every curve that plays over my body.

A thorough snoop in the massive dressing room revealed a stocked makeup table tucked into a nook in the wall. Never having been one for makeup, it doesn’t take long to ready myself. But it’s as I pulled my waves over my shoulder to run the soft bristles of the brush through my waves that I realize the very end of my hair is now a deep red. The color bleeds softly into my natural blonde, as though it’s climbing slowly up each strand.

And it’s there, staring into the mirror under the flickering flame that casts a dim light into the space, twisting ribbons of red around my finger, that the memory of a vision floods my mind. I see it clearly, as though I am watching the scene of it play out like a movie in the glass of the mirror where I am frozen, staring at myself .

The once golden dots of sun-kissed freckles that bridge over my nose from cheek to cheek have paled significantly. They’re there, but less pronounced. And within the usually bright, clear green of my irises, threads of deeper green weave. Even my lips, always a pale, almost delicate pink, have deepened in color as though they’ve been dipped in the same dye that stains the ends of my hair.

I see myself moving from the darkness into the light. In my mind, the stains of the Underworld are washed away under the light of the realm I’d been born to.

I see a woman—familiar and…

Fear slams hard inside me, like a fist to my belly. Air leaves my lungs in a rush, and I tear my finger from the ribbon of my hair to slam my hands into the surface of the table. I suck in air that whirls inside my chest like a cool arctic breeze around my shook heart. It takes me a moment to steady myself. To banish the vision—the memory—the image of the woman I’m beginning to truly believe might have been my mother in another life. A Goddess. A cruel and hateful being.

Lifting my head once again to meet the eyes of the new vision of me in the mirror, I feel the very first knots of acceptance stitch into place.

Maybe, just maybe this is real after all.