Chapter 37
Hades' POV
The scream split the air like a blade.
Hades whipped his head around, shadows coiling tighter around him, ready to strike. But his heart stuttered in his chest when he saw her—Elara—cornered, the second beast lunging toward her.
For the first time in centuries, fear speared through him.
Not for himself.
For her.
He moved, shadows spiraling at his command, but he knew—he knew—he wouldn't make it in time.
"Elara!"
But then the world changed.
A golden light burst from her, searing across the library. It tore through the beast in an instant, unraveling it into nothing but ash. The glow clung to her skin, wrapped around her hands, poured from her like the raw breath of creation itself.
Hades froze.
The shadows he had summoned faltered, hanging in the air like smoke. His entire body went still as he watched her stand there, trembling, but alive—untouched, radiant in power that was not of him, not of the Underworld, but something greater.
Something that should not be.
Her chest heaved, her eyes wide as she stared at her hands. "I... I don't know what—"
She didn't finish.
She didn't need to.
Because Hades felt it. The way the air shifted, the way her very presence pressed against his realm. It was power raw and unshaped, a spark that could burn everything or heal everything.
He took a step toward her, slowly, carefully, as though approaching a wild flame. "Elara..." His voice was low, reverent, weighted with the truth he wasn't ready to admit. "Do you have any idea what you just awakened?"
Her eyes shot to his, full of confusion, of fear, of denial. She shook her head, whispering, "No. I just... felt it. I just—reacted."
Hades' jaw clenched. His hand twitched at his side, aching to reach for her, to ground her, to feel for himself that she was real. That she was here. That she hadn't been torn from him in the space of a breath.
Instead, he forced himself to stop just a few feet away, his gaze locked on her like she was the only thing left in the world.
She thought herself ordinary. She had said it again and again. But gods didn't lie to themselves, and neither could he. Not anymore.
Elara Everwyn was no ordinary mortal. She was something else.
Something that both realms would covet.
Something that both realms might fear.
And yet all Hades could think, as the golden glow faded from her trembling hands, was how close he had come to losing her—
and how utterly impossible that thought had become.