Chapter 32 Persephone
Persephone
“Wake up, lass.”
The words float down to me and my shoulder is given a gentle shake. I open my eyes to find Hades sitting on the bed beside me, fully dressed in his customary black button up shirt and black pants. Sitting up a little, I yawn.
“What time is it?”
It’s cool and dark in the empty palace, but I’m relatively sure that this place is always a bit like a tomb. Hades looks at me, running his finger down the bare skin of my upper arm. I shiver.
“Before dawn.” He draws my attention to the fact that he has a dress on a hanger, ready to go, presumably picked just for me. “Get moving. You only have a couple of minutes.”
I think of my work, sitting unfinished in the ballroom. “My art. You’ll pack it up for me?”
“Ye’ve completed enough,” he says gruffly. “We’re running out of time, lass. The next two weeks, we will be on the move almost constantly. So there is no time or space for ye to finish. We’ll have to go with what ye’ve already made.”
I rub my eyes, trying to make sense of his words.
“Hades—”
“Later. Get dressed now.”
He is out the door in a few steps. I scrunch my face up, blearily moving to the end of the bed. Due to the lack of running water in this place, I give myself a bath with wet wipes. The rest I give over to the gods of deodorant.
When I pull the dress on, I notice that it is the usual black silk…
but instead of having spaghetti straps or two slits cut up the side, this dress is distinctly doll-like with an almost Victorian neckline.
Its hem brushes the floor, and it doesn’t quite fit me, not the way every other dress I’ve worn since I have met Hades has.
I feel quite dowdy in it. Is this on purpose, I wonder? Or perhaps it was more difficult for Hades to get his hands on something more modern and less modest. After all, we are in an Islam-practicing country…
When I head down to the empty ballroom, Eros is picking up the last storage box packed with my art supplies. He slides me a glance.
“Yer riding with me on the first leg of our drive.”
“What?” I scrunch my face up and follow him as he makes his way out of the palace. “Where are we going?”
Hades is standing with Ares near two identical black sedans and looking rather irritated. “Ye ask too many damn questions, Persephone. Go with Eros. We’ll meet up with ye tonight.”
I raise my eyebrows and open my mouth. Eros puts the box down, clamps a hand on my arm, and pulls me away toward the waiting dark sedan. Instinctively I jerk my arm away, glaring at him.
“Don’t touch me!” I exclaim.
His grip tightens, easily bruising my skin. When I protest, he leans in close, showing me all of his teeth in a humorless smile. “Dinnae be difficult.”
“Enough!” Hades barks. “Let her go, Eros.”
Eros gives me a little shake, his eyes pinning me in place. Hades starts toward him and Eros turns me loose, raising his hands.
“It’s fine. Persephone and I have a lot of road ahead of us to sort things out. Isn’t that right?”
I glare at him, crossing my arms protectively around myself. I look back as I’m getting into the car to see Hades’ expression. He stares at me for a long moment, his jaw clenching. But then he turns away and gets into the driver’s side of the sedan.
Eros pops the trunk and moves the box of my art supplies into it. Then he slides into the driver’s seat, settling in as I close the door. He gives me a tight smile.
“Buckle yer lap belt. Wouldn’t want anything to happen to ye, would we?”
The way he says it has me grasping for my seat belt and feeling goosebumps on both my arms. If that wasn’t a threat, I would hate to hear what Eros actually considers intimidation.
We pull out of the driveway and Eros snaps on the radio. He pulls onto a little highway, heading away from the coast. There are no streetlights after a certain point and no other cars on the road at this hour.
He distractedly flips through stations until he finds talk radio. I squint at him as I listen to the stream of what I assume is Arabic.
What am I supposed to make of Eros?
He’s handsome. Or not that, exactly. He’s pretty.
The dark, carefully combed-back hair, moss-green eyes with their dark lashes, and cheekbones that look chiseled by a divine intelligence…
it all works seamlessly to camouflage the actual man beneath.
It would be easy to look at his obvious, in-your-face gorgeousness and dismiss him without giving it another thought.
But I suspect there is quite a bit more to Eros. The man is currently listening quite intently to the flow of information being broadcast in a language very different from his own. I try to piece him together, fitting him against Hades like a puzzle piece. It makes me curious, despite myself.
“How many languages do you speak?” I blurt out.
Eros shifts in his seat, his mouth tightening at the corners. “Why, do ye need something translated?”
I blush, shrugging a shoulder. “I’m just curious. I assume that you and your brothers didn’t grow up speaking English. Or not only English.”
He squints out the dashboard, taking his time to respond. “We all grew up speaking Scottish Gaelic.”
“Ah.” I nod, running my hands over the fabric that covers my knees. “I should have probably asked Hades that by now.”
“Is that so?” Eros slides me a glance. “Tell me something. Do ye usually make a habit of getting so up close and personal with the men who hold ye hostage?”
My eyebrows jump up. My face suffuses with heat, the blush spreading all the way to my neck. I lick my lips.
“No,” I murmur.
He purses his lips, turning back to look straight ahead. After a minute, he slows the car.
“We’re going to stop for gas,” he says. “Start looking for highway signs.”
I glance out the window at the rocky, sandy landscape. “I don’t speak Arabic.”
His lips curls. “Of course ye dinnae.”
When he finally finds a place to stop, he pulls the car up to the pump and climbs out of the sedan.
My arms and legs aren’t cramped yet, but I get out anyway, just to escape the car for a few minutes.
Sharing a car with Hades’ brother is starting to feel oddly like walking a tightrope in front of an expectant audience.
I’m not sure what exactly it is that he wants but I have the feeling that it doesn’t matter to him.
Whether I balance perfectly or fall several stories to a grisly death, it seems like his mind was already made up about me before we even got in the car.
I stretch my arms over my head as he starts to open the trunk. Eros lifts out a black canvas bag, closes the trunk, and sets the bag on it. He nods at the bag.
“Go on, then.”
I frown at him. “What?”
He lifts his chin, staring me down. “Have a look in the bag.”
“What’s in it?” Arching a brow, I drop my hands. I pin him with a suspicious look. “Is it a bag full of human hands or something?”
“Why the fuck would ye even ask that?” Eros shakes his head at me, unzipping the bag and flashing a rubber-banded wad of euros. “It’s cash. A million euros.”
“O-kay…” Furrowing my brow, I hug my arms to my chest. “That’s nice for you.”
He growls, pushing the bag closer to me. It slides off the trunk and hits the ground.
“Take it and leave,” he bites off. “I’ll drive away. Ye can flag a cab. We can separate, right here, right now. Ye can quit pretending to like Hades.”
“Why are you…” I trail off, clutching at my chest, baffled. “Did Hades tell you to do this?”
He glares at me. “No. I’m just exhausted by the little act that yer putting on.
The grateful, subservient captive and the unhinged, insane tyrant?
That doesn’t play well to anyone else who has to witness this little charade.
” He flicks his fingers, looking disgusted.
“Take the money. Go whisper sweet nothings into some other poor sod’s ear.
” He spits on the ground. “We’ll all be glad to see the back of ye. ”
My gaze darts down to the bag of money. Then I scrunch up my face and look back at Eros.
“Are you mentally ill?” I ask, a little heat behind my words. “Do you not care for your brother at all?”
He slams his hand down on the sedan’s trunk with a metal BANG. It’s loud enough to make me jump, my eyes widening.
“Dinnae ye think that I know what’s best for him? Hm? He likes structure. He likes consistency. We’ve created quite a fair sized empire, big enough for just the three of us. No outsiders need apply.”
I glance at the money again.
Is Eros right?
Would I be doing everyone a favor if I just left now?
“I don’t think so,” I say quietly, answering my own question. “Hades would come after me.”
“A million euros will buy ye quite a head start, Persephone. Ye should take it. And ye should leave. Because nothing good can come of ye staying. Ye have to know that.”
Is he right?
Can I actually picture myself staying with Hades and being content? Do I trust Hades to become a fixture in my life?
I don’t know. And that fact kills me.
Eros turns around, searching the gas station behind him. “Ye’ve got three minutes to decide.”
He marches off to the building, looking grim. And I am left with the bag.
When he returns, I’m sitting in the sedan, my seatbelt already tight across my lap. The black canvas bag sits on my lap.
He opens his door, peering inside. “What are ye doing?”
“I decided that I need more time to think it over.” I shoot him an icy look. “So I will keep the bag. But I want you to drive on, as if this never happened. Then if I disappear in a few days, we will both know exactly what happened.”
He tenses his jaw. “Yer in over yer head, Persephone.”
I push my cheek out with my tongue. “I’ll be the judge of that, Eros.”
He gives his head a tiny shake and climbs in, starting the car. As soon as he pulls out onto the road again, he flips the radio station until it hits a woman wailing in Arabic. He turns it up and doesn’t try to talk to me for hours and hours.