30. Sandro
Sandro
I waited. And waited. But I didn’t feel any different.
This end business sure took a long time.
I dared take a peek, and I found both Hermes and Hades staring at me.
“What?” Hermes wagged his finger and shot his flames at me again.
This time, when the fire burned me, I didn’t shut my eyes. I kept them wide open and watched. The flames went out as fast as they ignited me.
“The fruit,” Hades exclaimed. “You ate it through me.”
I didn’t know what he meant by that, but what I knew was I was still here. I still had a chance.
“We’re both going nowhere, King of the Dead,” Hades told him and launched at Hermes.
Without his winged sandals, Hermes didn’t have his speed, so Hades caught up to him with no effort and stabbed him with his daggers.
Hermes used his staff to block the strikes.
“Keep trying. You can’t hurt me. You can’t kill me,” he said with a smile.
“I’ve done it once. I’ll do it as many times as it takes,” Hades said between his teeth.
All I could do was watch them come head to head, unable to stop Hermes or find a way to weaken him.
I looked toward the river, but it was pointless. I couldn’t hold water in this state, and even if I could, he was too close to Hades, so nothing guaranteed I wouldn’t get him too.
The rest of the Underworld was devoid of life or solutions. There was nothing I could use to my advantage.
Hades stabbed at Hermes and somehow managed to get him in the stomach, but that only gave Hermes the opening he needed to bash him again.
My entire being shook at the sight of the blood spurting from Hades’ head as he stumbled back.
Despite what he proclaimed to Hermes, I didn’t know how much more he could take.
He’d said he’d leveled the playing field, but he was still not invincible, and I was still dead.
The idea came to me so suddenly that it startled me, but even so, I didn’t wait any longer.
I jumped back into Hades’ body and used our combined strength to get back up and roll away from Hermes’ next attack.
“Huh. Good trick. But it won’t work forever,” Hermes said as we came head to head again.
Hades managed to hold him off this time, and we looked Hermes in the eyes as if that would stop him.
Something thin and gold caught my attention behind Hermes’ tunic.
Was that…
It couldn’t be.
He wouldn’t dare carry it with him when he was so scared of me.
I phased my head out of Hades’, and just as I thought, my life thread—or a life thread—was tucked inside his tunic.
Hermes’ eyes widened when he realized I’d noticed, but before he could step back, I came out of Hades and put my fingers through the gap in his chest.
My hands closed around the thread.
I’m doing it. I’m finally doing it.
I pulled it out, and it immediately turned transparent like me.
Hermes swung his staff at me, but it went through me, giving Hades the opening he needed. He stabbed Hermes through the head and the heart, and the fraud king fell dead to the ground.
“We did it,” I said.
Hades shook his head.
“Quick. Before he regenerates,” he said.
As if on cue, golden threads wrapped around Hermes and protected him in their glow.
I retrieved the other half of my thread from my pocket, the one the Moirai had given me, and I found the ends of both yarns.
I was so close. So close it was hard to believe we’d made it.
I could almost feel it, my body singing with energy and life again. I could almost taste it.
I didn’t notice them until it was too late. Until they’d already wrapped their claws around me before I’d managed to unite the threads. Before I’d managed to get back my life.
But…
But…
I no longer cared.
It was okay.
Oblivion was better.
I had lived my life. I had lived some sort of afterlife with Hades. It was time to move on. It was time to forget how shit everything had been. The kind of short stick I’d drawn in life.
“No!” Hades shouted.
He reached for me, but Hermes reappeared behind him, staff in hand, satisfaction on his lips and hatred in his eyes.
“Just face it, cousin. You’ve lost. You have lost!”
Hades’ fingers brushed through mine. A cold energy washed over me.
Shit. What’s happening ?
Its effects only lasted for a moment. A part of me that wanted to fight. That wanted to try. But it was gone as quickly as it had appeared, and then the end didn’t seem so bad anymore. Again.
Hermes came for Hades’ head. Hades ducked to the side and stabbed him in the eye. Hermes groaned and fell to the ground, and Hades drove another dagger into his back.
I was moving farther and farther away from him. From Hades. And from the cocoon that was Hermes once more.
If I had the energy, I’d want to say goodbye. To say sorry. But I didn’t even…
Sais flew through the air. Fervor overtook me unexpectedly, and I…
I no longer wanted to die. I didn’t want to be forgotten.
The Wraiths beside me were reaching for me again, undeterred by Hades’ daggers, but I was done with them. I was done with them and Hermes and everyone else who wanted to control me or get rid of me.
I joined the threads in my hands. A quick knot pulsing under my fingers.
And then everything slowed down. Everything went…quiet, almost. As if time had frozen.
I looked at my hands. My fingertips lit up, a glow that traveled up my arms, burning me and turning my limbs to gold dust.
I closed my eyes in a flurry of gold, but despite how destructive this moment may have looked, I felt peaceful.
Images flashed before me. Moments.
Mother Red Cap drawing blood from my finger.
Going to Tomasz to ask for help.
Burying Pluto with my own hands.
Trying to stop Austin from hurting my dog.
Meeting Loki for the first time when he tried to kill me because he thought I was the one who had murdered Tomasz’s parents.
Inking my first tattoo.
Going through school, everyone pointing at the sickly boy who needed extra attention and care and couldn’t hear without his aids.
I even remembered things I shouldn’t be able to.
Like seeing my mothers for the first time in my life, when they took me under their care and gave me a home.
A woman who believed slapping me would make me shut up and a man who would slap her in return when the abuse didn’t have the desired results.
There were so many things, so many memories that lasted both a lifetime and seconds as they played out before my closed eyes like a movie.
Memories of lives past.
A fox shifter that never found his mate.
A witch in charge of her own coven in an attempt to reverse her terminal illness.
A human completely unaware of the supernatural world but knowing something was missing from her life.
It was true.
I’d lived many lives before this one. I had been more than just Sandro. More than just a sick boy with a death sentence.
If only I’d believed Hades sooner. If only I’d known.
But I guessed Hermes would have still stolen my life, and I would have still died.
As more lives flashed before me, the deeper I breathed, the more my heart filled, and the more my nails dug into my palms.
Hades, handsome and tall as always, down on his knees, bowing before me.
“ My love, my beauty, will you do me the honor of being my queen and ruling the Underworld beside me ?”
Even as a giant, he was as soft and mushy as anything around me. A hopeless romantic who’d been handed the toughest job imaginable. Judging people’s lives wasn’t easy, and neither was condemning anyone to Tartarus, the Meadows, where the good souls were sent, and Elysium, where heroes lived forever after.
Despite all that, despite the horrible job and difficult responsibility, he’d managed to retain his humanity. It might be reserved exclusively for me, but it was humanity nonetheless.
We made each other stronger by being together.
If only my mother could have realized that before she’d doomed us apart. If she could have seen there was nothing wrong with our love.
But she, along with most other gods, had been convinced that life couldn’t be married to death. That warmth couldn’t be wed to cold. And that I couldn’t be with Hades.
We’d gone against everyone. Against nature itself.
And I would do it all over again.
Only a fool would turn down an epic love like this. The kind of love that challenges your very soul, your very being. The kind of love that makes you feel more complete than anything you’d ever experienced. The type of love they would write for centuries to come. The type that would live on in legend rather than the history books.
Because love like this couldn’t be erased.
“ I love you ,” he whispered on my lips, towering over me, burying his big godly cock deep inside me, claiming me for the first time like I’d wanted to be claimed since I set my eyes on him.
“ I love you too ,” fell from my lips like a prayer, pleasure and pain thrumming between my legs and reverberating through my entire being.
“Sandro?” I opened my eyes.
Mother Red Cap stared down at me, the dark caverns of her lair behind her, and I sat up on the same slab Hades had been on when we’d invoked him.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
I nodded.
“I am.”
It was true.
Because I knew exactly what I needed to do.
I knew exactly who I was, what I had to protect, and why.