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

Chapter 34

Chapter

Thirty-Four

P ersephone

The stone is warm beneath my feet where I stand at the foot of the massive bed, draped in dark purple fabric woven from the spilled blooms of the weeping pines. Salt from the sea clings to my skin, even though I’ve changed from my gown into the robe of matching deep purple. So deep, it could be mistaken for black in the right light.

If I weren’t so distracted, I would have bathed.

But after leaving Poseidon with a promise to see him again soon, I’d climbed atop Aethon and raced back to the Palace of Hades. The palace that juts up from the black mountainous land with tips of jaggedly pointed stone so sharp, I can think only of claws reaching to tear into the stars tossed into the night sky.

After leaving Aethon to the boy who, I’d come to realize lives in the stables tending to the four horses of the God of Death, I’d raced to the bedroom I now share with Hades. I hadn’t even had the capacity to dress myself in anything other than this robe I now wear after stripping from my wet gown.

My attention since entering this room has been entirely fixed on the massive painting that hangs over the bed.

The painting I’ve thought more than once looks like a demon with veins of magma. The painting I’ve felt both reverence and unexplainable attraction toward since my very first moments in the Underworld.

“You’re back.” The deep pitch of Hades’ familiar rumble calls gooseflesh to the surface of my skin.

Slowly, I tear my study from the painting to the man— the God —who stands leaning into a wall of stone. His hands are dipped into his pockets, and the long jacket he wears hangs open to expose the black shirt that covers his broad chest.

The first few buttons are open, and my gaze can’t deny dropping to the warm-toned skin there.

My gaze drifts languidly from the patch of skin at his chest, up the thick cord of his neck, and finally to land on his face before looking back at the painting. I can’t ignore the flutter of familiarity that strikes me.

For a moment, I am entirely breathless.

Can it really be true? How am I only just putting this together?

“Demeter turns into a Harpy,” I say quietly, still looking at the beastly demon that comes together in strokes of black with veins of burnished orange, red, and gold. Magma.

“Yes.”

“Did you know that Poseidon’s Gods’ Form is the Leviathan?”

His voice behind me is much closer now. So close, that I can feel the heat of his body through the thin silken material that weaves my robe. “Yes.”

God, but his nearness is all it takes to stoke the flames of hunger inside me.

I ache with need I refuse to sate.

I refuse to break first.

My breaths are shallow. “Why does this painting feel so familiar to me, Hades?”

He shifts even closer. There is little more than a hair of space between us. If I inhale too sharply, I will graze his chest.

“It feels familiar because you painted it.”

I feel the truth of his claim despite the fact I possess no talent with a brush in this life. Still, I can’t help but mutter, “I can’t paint.”

“It was because of you I learned to craft with brush and canvas.”

God, but his breath is warm against my neck. I ache to lean into him even as I hold myself steady.

Keeping my attention fixed on the painting, I ask hoarsely, “Why would I have painted something like this, Hades? Why does it hang over our bed?”

I feel his touch before it lands hot against my hips. The sear of contact there charges the heart that thunders in my chest until the roar is so loud, it’s nearly all I can hear. I think maybe he can hear it too, because he twists me to face him. His eyes drill deep into mine as though he can break the mold of shadows that conceals my past life, shedding light over the dark truth of us.

Slowly, his big hands climb from my hips, over my ribs, shoulders, to finally cup my neck. His thumbs press gently under my jaw to tilt my head back so my eyes can connect with his. The same magma that veins the painting swirls in the sparks that escape the flames dancing in his eyes.

Heat spills from him, and the flames in his eyes ignite the wick of need in my core. There is gravel in his voice as he admits, “You painted it because it is my Gods’ Form, little goddess. A form you once loved to look upon but could never touch. It hangs over our bed because you put it there. And after your murder —when I locked away all your other paintings—I found myself before this one and couldn’t…”

My breath hitches. “Hades.”

“I couldn’t bring myself to remove this one. You hung it here.” His voice is so quiet under the ragged fall of his uneven breaths. Each one teases my lips with a fiery warmth as he holds my face in his hands. “You used to sit and stare at it with this expression of longing on your face.” His eyes drift closed, as though the very memory causes him pain. “It kept the hope alive inside me that you would one day look at me and want only me.”

If a blade sliced my heart in two, I think it would hurt less.

The pain I caused this man in my past life. The regret and blame he steeped in for millennia.

I want to burn it all away with the flames of us.

Catching his face between my hands as he holds mine, I rise onto my tiptoes as I pull his face down to mine. I watch the lash of pain as his eyes shutter. Black lashes women would kill for fan the blade of his cheeks.

I feather the tip of my nose against his and watch as a pained smile cracks the ancient grief that paints his face. I stroke the blade of his nose with the tip of mine, and a ragged sigh tears from the cracks of that painfully beautiful smile of his.

“I love you, Hades.” I let my lips drift across his, branding my declaration into the whisper of a featherlight kiss. When I pull back, the flames in his eyes haven’t lessened at all. If anything, they’ve grown.

I don’t heed the threat that they may grow out of control. Don’t bother to worry that they might devour me whole.

He asks, deep and low, “Are you afraid?”

“Why would I be afraid?”

“There is a monster under my skin, Persephone. It’s never far from the surface.”

A flush rises under my own skin, so hot it threatens the fire in his eyes for the chance to incinerate me. “Does he love me like you love me?”

“Yes.” The word sounds as though it was strangled from a place so deep inside him, a place so dark and dangerous. And yet, I revel in it. Pleasure prickles my skin, sliding over my spine. I have to steel myself against a shiver.

“Then, no. I’m not afraid.”

He inhales a sharp breath. “I don’t know if that makes you a fool or incredibly brave.”

I lift my chin. “It makes me yours.”

His rumble of agreement is deliciously dark. Of both monster and man— God . It reaches across the space that stands between us to caress me, and my body responds in a very, very physical way.

So physical, I watch as his dark eyes alight with fire, and drop to my breasts where my nipples are pebbled under the silky fabric crafted from the threads of the weeping blooms.

Heat strikes hot and violent in my core. I lock my knees to remain standing before him. His nostrils flare. An ominously low roll of thunder spills from his chest on a decadently soft growl.

My stomach flips.

I ask, or more like wheeze, “You said I loved to look at your Gods’ Form, but never touch.”

“I did.”

“Why?” It’s impossible to ignore the blazing fire between us. It threatens to pull me in and trap me for all of eternity.

How doesn’t it know I’d willingly offer myself to the destruction? Willingly spend the rest of forever cocooned in the warmth of its burn.

“My Gods’ Form is intended for Tartarus, Persephone. Specifically, The Pit.”

“Okay.”

“I can swim unscathed in the boiling River Phlegethon.” I nod but feel dizzy with hot awareness. “I am unaffected by the eternal flames that torment the souls of Tartarus. In fact, sometimes I think those flames are of me.”

He watches me look at him, as though seeing the beast that lives under his skin.

I recall the transformation Demeter had undergone in the ancient temple deep below the earth—the one where she’d stolen Addis— Adonis’ life.

My distorted memories of that night had returned after learning of Adonis’ fate. I don’t blame myself for blocking it out. It had been horrifyingly impossible, and I was already facing so many impossibilities.

Still, now I remember the way her flesh, so lovely and flawless morphed over sharp bones of ebony, visible through the translucence of her tightly pulled skin. I recall the way her jaw unhinged, and her eyes changed to pit-less orbs of terrifying black.

Her hands had thickened, fingers stretching into claws that threatened. Her feet were taloned and curled, like an owl’s or eagle’s feet, perfect for shredding the flesh of her foes. The wings that stretched from her back, black and terrible, flapped a call of vicious wind even as the deadly screech tore from between her lips. She’d been a terrible monster, vicious and true to the legend that whispers of such vile creatures.

And Poseidon. The Leviathan!? How can such a thing be?

My mind races over the magnitude of his claim. The impossibility of it. How can he be so massively powerful—a thing so deeply ancient and truly terrible that the threat of it remains today?

My eyes drift back up to Hades’. He’s waited patiently as thoughts whirl in my mind.

I croak, “Demeter is a harpy.”

“Yes.”

“Poseidon is the Leviathan.”

A muscle tics in his jaw. He doesn’t like it when I speak of Poseidon. There is a niggle of pleasure in the ember of his jealousy, but it is quickly snuffed when I recall the reason for his possessiveness. The way I was manipulated into playing the strings of his heart, crafting a terrible melody of betrayal and pain that has lasted millennia.

Guilt burns like acid in my belly.

Hades’ nod is clipped. “We’ve established this, little goddess.”

“Why is Poseidon so powerful when Demeter is…” my words drift off when his brow arches high.

“You think Demeter lacks power?”

“Well—” I stutter, because she is. Her scream is so vicious, it can burst the very organs that offer humanity life. “I mean, I know she is powerful. But she is no Leviathan.”

“No.” Hades nods again, darkly. “She is not.”

I shiver. “You, Zeus, and Poseidon are called the Big Three.”

“Yes.”

“I, like the rest of modern humanity, has always thought it was because of how—what—you rule.” I pause, waiting for him to nod. Agree. Anything . He doesn’t. I huff and set on again. “I thought it was because the three of you rule over realms unto your own. Zeus rules Olympus, Poseidon the Seas, and you the Underworld.”

When I pause again, Hades commands roughly, “Go on.”

I swallow hard and audibly. When I wet my lips again, it’s nervous. Hades devours the motion with a hunger that ripples like a physical touch over every inch of my skin.

His hands remain at his sides.

“That’s not the whole reason you’re seen as the Big Three, is it?”

“No.”

My inhale is sharp as a blade. There is a tremble awakening in the core of me, as though I am only just now becoming aware of the colossal reality of what I stand before. Who I stand before.

Who I am in love with.

My human mind had put restraints on the truth of what it means to be a God.

To be one of the Big Three.

The flesh of the man he wears has dulled the truth of what I face and made it wholly easier to digest.

Now, that beautifully crafted reality is shattering under the stress fractures of the truth.

“You’re going to make me say it.”

“I want to know if you’ve come to the truth.”

Oh, I think I’ve come to the truth, all right. It’s connected with my belly like a wrecking ball, slamming into me with the vicious weight of a tsunami wave.

I shiver, even as I stand in the circle of a deadly heat.

I ask, “What is Zeus’ Gods’ Form?”

Hades smirks, looking very much like the Devil I suspect he is. “He is what modern humanity describes as an angel. He rules on his throne high in the sky, a being of thunder and violence sheathed under the guise of impossible beauty. White feathered wings lined in the faintest hue of gold burst from his back, so big they dust the floor when he walks. His flesh becomes golden, as though dusted with a fine powder of lightning.” His lip curls. “To humanity, he is a sight so beautiful, they are brought to their knees.”

“And you?” This time, I truly do wheeze.

Oh, yes. His smirk is most definitely devilish .

“I bring them to their knees for a wholly other reason, little goddess.”

I drag my eyes over the length of him, before connecting with the flames that rage and roar behind his eyes once again. Every breath I breathe feels stolen. Every inch of my skin hums with awareness. Even my fingertips tingle with the need to reach out and touch him. To feel him.

To explore what lies beneath .

The hunger in my core twists violently, stealing a stolen breath. His eyes track my every little movement, drinking me in as I sink my teeth into my lip. I’m buying myself another moment of silence to contemplate the reality of my want. The consequences I may face if I ask for what I want.

I want to see him.

I want to look upon the beast of his Gods’ Form.

I’m afraid.

I rasp, “Will you show me, Hades?”

“You want to see my Gods’ Form?” His voice couldn’t be deeper.

Fear wars with desire, and desire wins out. I want to know him. All of him.

Even if that means I come face-to-face with the frightening parts of him.

A shuddering breath escapes me as I shuffle just a little closer.

We’re already close, so the shift urges me to tip my head back. To expose my throat to the darkness that lurks beneath his beautiful skin.

Hunger erupts in his eyes, spilling magma into the flame.

Prickles of heat battle the shiver that slithers down my spine.

I finally whisper, “I want to see all the parts of you, Hades. I want to know all the parts of you.”

He sounds pained. There is a broken kind of hunger that whispers of eternal starvation when he warns roughly, “You can’t touch me, Persephone.”

He’s waiting for me to agree, but I can’t.

I feel the same way about his vehement warning that I never explore Tartarus. Just as something calls me closer to that darkness, I am called to the darkness within him.

He takes my, “Show me,” as agreement that I will not touch him in his Gods’ Form.

His hands, so big and burning with warmth, connect with my face. His eyes are pools of danger, and yet I could sink into the deep of them for the rest of forever.

When he crashes his mouth to mine, the kiss is deeper than even the deepest crevice of this realm. It cuts through me to my core that aches with a brutal emptiness to be filled.

My eyes are closed as I kiss him back, losing myself to the pain of this hunger that flares inside me. A hunger I am fully aware only he can sate.

My fingers are twisted into the lapels of his shirt. My hips crash into him, seeking to close the space that stands between us. He’s so warm even now, I swear just a little longer and the fabric of our clothes will go up in flames.

But my flesh doesn’t hurt in the heat. If anything, it only serves to light the wick inside me. I crave it. Hunger for it in the same way my womb hungers for his seed. With absolutely no explanation to be had for it.

My tongue slips out to graze his. I am caught momentarily by the heat of it against my own. That burning need in my core clenches violently, and I moan into his mouth. He devours the sound with a growl. When he sucks in a sharp breath through his nose, and his body shudders in physical response, I know he can scent the need that spills from my body.

I’m past being embarrassed that he can scent my hunger for him. There is no hiding it. No changing it.

And when his hard arousal only grows against me in response, I can’t help but revel in the obvious way he responds to that scent.

“You need me inside you,” he taunts.

“ You need to be inside me ,” I rasp.

He’s trying to make me crack and beg for him. I won’t.

In this, I will be the victor.

His laughter brackets a dark promise. “I’ll make you beg for me, little goddess, before I sink inside you again.”

“Then I guess we’ll both starve.”

“Challenge accepted.” His hand shifts to the tie of my robe. He’s ready to taunt and tease, but I catch his burning wrist.

He lifts his head to peer into my eyes. I demand, “Show me, Hades.”

His jaw hardens, as though he’s trying and failing to gather control of himself.

I realize then that he’d been trying to distract me. Using my ever-burning hunger to make me forget this new desire to see the other side of him he’s yet to introduce me to.

It won’t work.

I see that realization settle when he looses a sigh, stepping back to put space between us.

Then he steps back again. “Are you certain?”

“Yes.” No hesitation.

“You can look, but do not touch,” he warns again. And then it happens. The transformation.

There are no other words for it.

It’s like something out of a fantasy novel. Inky dark shadows leech from his skin to swirl in the air around him. The vision of him blurs as he shifts seamlessly into something other.

I realize now that although I may have captured the physical aspects of Hades’ Gods’ Form in the painting that hangs over our bed, I failed to capture the magnitude of him.

The swirling shadows quicken with a vibration that demands fear, but I only have wonder to offer it. I am entranced, entirely captivated.

He is exquisitely horrific. Where most would see something terrible and frightening, a being of nightmare and devastation, I see something else entirely. It is as though a piece of me comes alive at finally being reconnected with this side of him.

There is a warm oozing of peace where there should be a sharp crackle of fear.

He’s what demons are made of.

No, he’s the inspiration for the devil, I realize. The thing Mama spent a lifetime warning me away from. The creature Dad vowed to protect me from always.

And here I am, in love with him. Mated to him.

My very soul woven into the fabric of his own in a way the stitching will never come undone. Not ever.

“You’re beautiful.” I want to weep with the truth of the words.

“Your idea of beauty is skewed, little goddess.” His rumble is far rougher in this form. As though blasted with gravel and glass.

It strikes at my raw heart. But I think I like the pain.

He stands taller than in his human form. At least eight feet to the tip of the horns that curl from the top of his head. To my five-foot-three, he is truly massive. He’s wider, too. His shoulders having claimed at least another three inches on either side. Muscles ripple under a tight pull of inky rolling shadows, and veins of magma snake across his ebony skin. His eyes are pits of fire. No whites, no iris or pupil. Just fire. Horns adorned with a ribbon of magma and swirling shadow catch the shifting light that spills down from the violet ceiling that rains stars.

I drag my eyes down muscular legs, thick thighs, and feet that could seriously maim. Back up, my gaze drifts slowly before catching on his groin. He’s entirely uncovered, and even though he’s in this form that is so far from human, I can’t help the blush that burns in my cheeks. It’s so hot, it leeches into my neck and chest until the fire of it threatens the whole of me.

I swallow. It’s audible.

He’s huge . Gigantic. Massive. Impossible…

I swallow again even though my tongue is dry.

Then I croak, “Wow.”

“You don’t have to worry about me in this form, Persephone. I can’t touch you.” My eyes snap up to his. I can’t tell exactly where he’s looking with his swirling gaze of flame, but I blush hotter all the same.

“I wasn’t—” I start but cut off. Because I was .

Oh, the ways my mother would skin me if she knew the thoughts that whirled in my mind now.

I wonder what it would feel like to have that inside me. It’s so big, so thick and long and veined in ropes of burning heat.

But no. The fact he says he can’t touch me in this form aside, his dick in this form would split me in two. Never mind the little hook-like thing that juts proudly from the upper base of it.

What is that?

And why can’t he touch me?

Just the thought has the burning ember of aching need in my core sparking.

“Why can’t we touch?”

“In this form, I am made for The Pit.”

Is that supposed to be an explanation?

“I don’t know what that has to do with anything.”

Hades makes a noise that edges on frustration. “The Hell many humans imagine is based exclusively on The Pit.”

And that would be why we’ve taken Hades’ image and crafted the devil. Welp, no one ever said humanity was original.

Hades continues, “It is, quite literally, a place of burning torment. It is hotter than any magma that spills from the volcanoes of earth. It challenges even the heat of the sun, though such a thing has never been tested.” Hades smirks. “I stripped Hyperion of his sun power before he could ever challenge the heat of The Pit.”

My head tips gently to the side. Somehow, I sense those flaming orbs track me. “What would happen if you touched me?”

Maybe it’s the shadows that swirl. Maybe it’s the flames in the orbs of his eyes. Maybe it’s just a sense. But his dark face darkens.

“I would destroy you.”

I suck in a sharp breath, my eyes dragging the length of him again. Power rolls off him in shadowy waves, enthralling me. The hunger in my core intensifies.

Hades growls a low sound of warning. He takes a step back, talons sliding over stone.

I shudder, but it’s not with fear.

A new desire—or kink—has been unlocked. Who knew?

A few months ago, I’d been the virgin without friends, determined to dig up the past in the hope of paving a future for myself.

Look at me now, in love with a—God? Monster? Demon? Devil…

I don’t even know anymore.

Everything I knew about everything went up in shadowy smoke the moment this man stepped into my life.

I reclaim the space he put between us. “Have you ever tried to touch me?”

His face is dark and angular, his jaw hard. Twin fangs rest on his full bottom lip as he glares through flames at me. “I am made to destroy God and Titan alike. To ruin the eternal souls the Crown of Souls and House of Judgement deem worthy of my torment. You, Persephone, are entirely human. One touch and I would incinerate all that you are. Eternal soul included.”

Why can’t I heed the warning in his words? I can tell that he believes them. Can tell he fears the mark of his own touch.

I should, too.

And yet, I don’t.

“I am human, but my soul is that of a Goddess, Hades.”

“I tried in your past life,” he admits. I swear, I see him flinch. “It only took me coming close to you to bubble your flesh with blisters and boils—and you were a whole Goddess then, of body and soul,” he hisses through sharp teeth. “Now your body is human. Vulnerable. I won’t do it again.”

My eyes drop from his, down the length of his body. Again, my gaze snags on the proud length of his swollen arousal where it hangs weighted between powerful legs.

I suck in a sharp breath as a stabbing pain slices into the hollow emptiness that plagues me.

Slamming my palm into my belly, I cut my gaze to the open balcony where twin moons, full and heavy and bright, both burning blood red, one marbled gold and the other liquid onyx, peer back at me.

“They weren’t always this color,” Hades murmurs roughly into the silence.

I don’t look at him. I’m caught up in the pull of the moons. It’s magnetic—as though my very womb is attached to the twins by an invisible thread.

I manage, “What?”

“The moons,” Hades’ deep voice rumbles like a forbidden caress. “They were once brilliant white. One veined gold the other onyx. Now, they shine red.”

“Why?”

Hades shakes his head. “I don’t know. It was never this way before. Before your return.”

That thread gives a violent tug. The pang in my womb nearly makes me cry out.

As it is, I wince.

Hades seems to sense it, because he takes a single step forward in concern before stilling himself. “What is it?”

“I don’t—” I swear, the urge to touch him pulses along that invisible thread from the moons to my hollow core. “I think they want me to touch you.”

“No.”

Tearing my eyes from the moons, I study the monster. My monster . My soul mate. The God of the Underworld.

Maybe it’s a good thing Mom and Dad can’t see me now. Maybe it’s a kindness that they think I’m dead, so their human minds bound in the concrete of their beliefs, won’t be shattered by a truth they would never be able to accept.

Ignoring the prick of loss in my chest, I take a step toward him. My voice sounds stronger than I feel. “I’m not afraid, Hades.”

“Persephone,” he warns.

“Just try.” I take another step. A little of that pain in my core eases even as the yawning hollowness grows. Another step. “For me.”

He remains still as a statue.

Another step.

I’m not even sure he’s breathing.

Another step.

He grids out, “You feel nothing?”

“Just warmth.” And raging need that brutalizes my insides.

Another step.

Energy crackles along Hades’ skin, the ribbons of magma appearing liquid as they surge between the dips and rises of muscle.

“Stop,” he commands.

I freeze. Inside my chest, my heart is cracking to a thunderous tune of wild hunger. Blood rushes behind my ears, swirling in my mind. I feel dizzy with it, and yet somehow, I am steady as I wait.

His wide chest swells with big breaths that he drags loudly into his lungs.

“Did I get this close before? As a full, not-so-vulnerable, real Goddess?” Okay, so maybe I’m a little jealous of myself.

It’s a wild feeling. Don’t recommend it.

Hades shakes his head. Slowly. “No.”

Hope crests in my chest. “How far did I make it last time? Before the blisters?”

I dare another step. We’re standing with maybe two arm lengths between us, but the warmth that rolls off him is more than tolerable. It’s soothing.

I crave more.

“Not this close.” The words grind from the depths of him, wrapped in restraint. The shadows tremble, as though he’s holding himself back.

The twin moons outside give another tug. This time, it’s not gentle.

My womb contracts.

Hades’ nostrils flare and I swear his fangs lengthen.

I know what I must do.