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

Chapter 24

Chapter

Twenty-Four

H ades

When Poseidon excused himself 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 are yours .” 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 this realm. 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 After life .”

“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.

I am not sure if it is her power, or that of Chaos. Or even the power of Aether that I’d seen swirling bright on the scans Hermes had shown.

Her soul is a custodian of ancient power, and such relics are never safe.

“What is that, over there?” I follow the finger she points out to the sea, and the island that stands apart from all else.

There is no land that connects it to the rest of the Underworld, although there is a narrow mountain pass large enough for Cerberus to travel with the very rare souls who earn themselves such passage after entering the Acheron, though the rest of the way must be done by ferry. It is an entirely self-sufficient isle.

“It is the Isle of the Blessed.”

The intake of her breath is hitched. It reminds me of the sound she makes when I first invade her body with my own. It is the sweetest sound, and my response, even now, is undeniably physical.

The way that I crave this woman—this goddess—it is not natural.

“Like The Elysian Fields?”

“No. The Isle of the Blessed is for the purest souls.”

“Oh,” she breathes, her eyes dancing over the waters that separate the beach from the isle. “The souls who are clean of sin?”

“No.” She looks at me this time. At the wrinkle between her brows, I explain, “All souls sin in the Living Realm. It is too easy to fall to sins simply by living life.”

“Then how are they considered pure.”

I don’t tell her that her confusion now stems from her religious upbringing. Or that her views on the relationship with sin and the afterlife have been engraved into the foundations of her very thought process by that upbringing.

Instead, I tell her, “The Isle of the Blessed came after the Underworld formed. Think of it like a diamond, if you will. It is a beauty that is formed under extreme pressure, like those who inhabit it. It is rare, but there are souls who enter the Underworld who are wrought with agony from their time in the Living Realm. These souls are delicate, sensitive souls, much like your own, Persephone.”

“I’m not delicate and sensitive, Hades.”

My laugh is short and quiet. “Your delicate and sensitive soul does not make you weak, little goddess. Quite the opposite.” She doesn’t look convinced. “You felt their pain upon their arrival, and upon their entrance into the Cities of the Underworld. They were—discontent with their afterlife, plagued by their time in the Living Realm, and in general, unable to integrate within the societies of the Underworld. And it wasn’t long after that the Isle rose from the sea.”

“Okay…”

I smile at her impatience. “The Isle of the Blessed houses the souls of the highly empathic. They are tender souls, sponges for the emotions and pains of others. It is not simply their traumas they suffer and cling to, but the traumas of all whom they encounter. Living was torture for them. Isolation is their reprieve now as it was in the Living Realm. Many of these souls were so plagued by their earthly overload, that they ended their own lives.”

She gasps, “Is it punishment, then? The Isle?”

Again, she is confused by her upbringing. “No. Of course, not. It is reprieve. It is where their souls can heal. I do not travel there out of respect for them, but you used to visit often.” I dislike admitting this, but I resent the idea of lying to her. “Poseidon used to take you there often. The souls found great comfort in the peace you offered.”

“Poseidon?”

“You were very close friends.”

Distaste pinches her expression and I feel my eyes narrow before they snap wide at her hot declaration. “I never slept with him. I asked, and he told me we didn’t. I believe him.”

The haughty way she holds her jaw, I can’t help but ask, “Do you recall having partners, Persephone?”

The question burns like acid on my tongue.

She rolls her lips and denies me my answer as she asks one of her own. “Why don’t they find peace in your presence?”

“I do not naturally carry a peaceful presence.”

“I disagree. I’ve never felt so peaceful as I do with you.”

“Nonetheless,” I say firmly. “There is a— darker part of me these souls find naturally abhorrent, and I respect them enough to keep my distance.”

She tips her head to the side. “Tell me about that darker part of you.”

It is my turn to refuse her question. “No.”

She sighs, but doesn’t look away from me as she says, “You know I’ll love you anyway, right? No matter the monster you keep under your skin, I’ll love him just as much.”

My eyes narrow on her a second time as I study my little goddess for memories she might very well possess of the monster I contain deep within. When I find no horror, no fear, I am convinced it is not so.

Not yet at least. For now, there is time.

She breaks my study to peer across the stretch of water toward the quiet island, a little frown playing heavy at the tips of her mouth. Maybe that’s why I am surprised when, after a long silence, she blurts, “I want you to take me to Uranus.”

“No.” For my insolence, I receive another sharp elbow. I growl. “Stop that.”

“Stop telling me, no,” she retorts stubbornly.

“Uranus is dangerous, Persephone.”

“That might be.” Her shoulders lift in a senseless shrug. “But Poseidon said that Atlantis felt when Uranus was castrated. Maybe—maybe he really did sire the sentient island with Chaos. Maybe he knows what happened to her. Maybe it was Gaia.”

“What was Gaia?”

“Poseidon said she was jealous of the island of Atlantis, and that she pulled Pangea from the seas in effort to best Chaos’ creation. Perhaps when she failed, her wrath was too much.”

I am a creature of heat, and yet it is ice that chases her words through my body. “You think, in a vengeful wrath, that Gaia destroyed Chaos?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I think we need to see Uranus.”

“It's too dangerous,” I tell her again. Her human mind can’t comprehend the creature Uranus is. Even stripped of his godly form, torn from his human flesh—he is a terrifying thing to behold.

I can't see her face, but I know she's rolling her eyes. Still, I smile. I just can’t help myself. Her ire is addictive.

There is something about riling up this tiny woman that fills me with undeniable pleasure. She gives me her weight as she looses a sigh. Then she pulls my arms tighter around her belly, cocooning herself within my body. The act steals my heart as stealthily as it steals my warmth.

She could steal the very last of my immortal soul, and I would not fight the possession.

“Please, Hades.” It’s emotional warfare. “For me. Please.”

“I’ll find a way to make visiting with him safe for you.” I tip my head and let my eyes close as I inhale the scent of her hair, my mind racing with yet another unpleasant conversation I must have with Hecate.