Chapter 30
Time Is On My Side
HADES
Twenty-three hours. Almost a day. Feels like an eternity.
I thought she’d break in minutes, an hour at most. I can hear and see everything she’s doing down there if I close my eyes.
Most souls don’t last but a few seconds in those cells without confessing everything to me.
I’m damn tempted to use my powers to force a confession from her.
I can do that. It’s how I judge the dead as they arrive. But it doesn’t seem right.
Which makes me a softhearted fool.
Although providing her with a pillow and food already proved I am that. At least I held out on visiting her myself—not an easy feat, considering that every fucking minute, going down there to be near her was all I could think about.
Charon, who is seated at my breakfast table, sighs loudly. “Can you stop pacing? You are making me dizzy.”
I still and scowl at my feet because I hadn’t realized I was doing that.
“She’s not going to break.” I can hear the resignation in my own voice.
“No,” he agrees. Almost cheerfully.
I side-eye him. “You find this amusing?”
He doesn’t even try to hide his grin. “I find it fascinating, Phi.”
His name for me. A shortened version of Thantophile, which he uses to mean brother of death.
“You won’t even tell me who she is?”
It’s not the first time he’s asked.
I narrow my eyes. “You have never feared me enough, I think.”
Other than Lyra, Charon is the only being who has no fear of me, although unlike her, he believes the prophecy.
The first time we met, when I was still very young, I asked why he wasn’t afraid.
He took one look at me and said, “Don’t worry about me, Thantophile.
If you burn down the world, we’ll take care of them down here.
All souls come to us eventually anyway.”
With an irritated grunt, I snatch the pomegranate right out of his hand, along with the knife he was reaching for. Then I teleport down to Phlegethon and to the woman who is slowly twisting and tying my insides into knots, even while she’s sleeping in her cell.
“Here.” I shove the fruit and knife through the bars.
She’s lying with her back to me. After a second, she turns her head only slightly to glance at me, and then a laugh erupts from her in a short, sharp sound.
“What?” I frown. “You don’t like this fruit?”
Her chuckle is dry as she pushes to her feet and crosses the small space to pluck it from my outstretched hand. “Oh, I like pomegranates just fine.”
Then, ignoring me, she drops to sit on the floor cross-legged, using the stone surface as a cutting board.
She doesn’t even look at me as she cuts the top of the fruit off.
Then, following the natural lines of the sections, she scores the outside of the skin, which allows her to pull it apart like orange slices.
She takes a bite and smiles, humming with pleasure.
Tension curls in my gut at the sound.
“Never seen someone eat one that way,” I mutter.
“TikTok,” she says. “I was today years old when I saw the life hack of how to eat one of these mess-free.”
Maybe I left her down here too long. Now she’s speaking nonsense. “What’s a tick tock?”
She pauses with a piece of the fruit halfway to her lips, then grimaces. “Never mind.”
“I don’t stop minding just because you say so,” I point out in a dry voice.
“It’s been a full day, you know.”
I track the change of subject but decide to allow it. “I know. And yet you haven’t called out for help, demanded release, or tried to make a deal. Not once.” I can’t help the confusion leaking into my voice.
“You could have at least given me a book to read or something.”
“A book? Is that like a tick tock?”
Another pause. “Never mi—”
“Please stop saying that.” This conversation is already a thousand leagues from where I need it to be.
“Yeah, well…” She glances up at me. “It would be nice if you’d stop towering over me.” She pats the floor.
Is she serious?
I must make a face, because she laughs.
“You want me to sit on the ground to speak with you?” I ask.
“Why not?”
“Because—”
I stop when she tilts her head, clearly ready for me to remind her of who I am and how afraid of me she should be. Damn, the woman never reacts normally.
I let out a beleaguered breath. “Why not, indeed?”
I sit down outside her jail cell, leaning against the skulls that make up the wall. I stretch my legs out in front of me and cross them at the ankles, likely getting bone dust all over my wool cloak.
“See?” she teases. “Much better.”
She’s teasing me? There’s another sharp twist to my gut, and yet I find myself unable to hold back a low chuckle. Underworld take me. “You are not what I expected, Lyra.”
“You remember,” she whispers.
I still both at the words and at the way fear widens her eyes the second she says them. But not fear of me, I don’t think. Because she glances around as if she’s waiting for the ceiling to collapse on us.
While she’s distracted, I take the opportunity to study her more closely. She’s beautiful. Not perfect, though. That’s unusual for gods. But to me, the small imperfections make her more…
Fuck. I almost thought the word “adorable.” What is wrong with me?
And yet I can’t stop staring.
There’s a crease in her cheek from when she was lying down, and her upper lip is a little fuller than her lower lip.
There’s the tiniest bump in her nose, too.
And I was right about that stubborn chin.
I could do without the stubborn part. But it’s the sliver of a half-moon scar at the outside corner of her right eye that draws my attention most. Gods don’t scar unless it’s so traumatic our healing can’t keep up. What happened to her?
Her swinging gaze suddenly settles on me, and she goes still, staring right back. There is something in her eyes that answers the fascination within mine, turns it to heat.
I’ve got to get a handle on this—on her and especially on my reaction to her. All I should be caring about is who she is and why she came.
“This is the third time you’ve appeared somewhere you shouldn’t be around me,” I finally say slowly, still trying to shake off the strange effect of her. “Of course I would remember that.”
She blinks. “You worry I’m a threat?”
“You haven’t aged a day and clearly possess powers. Yet you are not a known goddess. Not even from the other pantheons across the world.”
Her lips part slightly. “You tried to find me?”
Tried to find her? I’ve scoured the records for her, looked for her at every gathering of the gods, asked a few inconspicuous questions.
“Tried” is a weak term. I grimace, more self-deprecating than I should probably show her.
“Therefore…” I don’t answer her question, continuing with mine.
“I have yet to decide what I think of you.”
“Fair enough.”
“You also speak with an odd turn of phrase.”
She laughs. She laughs like her prison bars aren’t between us.
“Yeah. Sorry about that.” Then she reaches through those very same bars to offer me a section of pomegranate and the tattoos on her wrist catch my eye.
As I take the fruit with one hand, with my other, I grasp her wrist. Gently but firmly enough that she can’t tug away.
“What is this for?” I brush my thumb over the fine black ink of the markings. The two stars on that wrist seem to wink at me in response, and through that small point of contact, I feel her shiver.
The urge to pull her through the damn bars and onto my lap so I can make her shiver more for me rises up like a feral animal, sinking its teeth into me hard.
She distracts me by sticking her other hand through the bars and lining the stars on both wrists up. “They form Orion’s Belt. I used to be able to see them from the window in my childhood bedroom.”
I stare at the familiar formation—three stars in a row—and this time, instead of my gut twisting, my heart does. I also tracked those stars from my mortal bedroom as a child.
“I wasted a lot of wishes on those stars,” she mutters.
Me too.
I swipe my thumb over her tattoo once more, hoping to capture another shiver. When she flutters under my touch…pleased is an understatement. I want…more. I always want more when it comes to her.
She tugs, but again I don’t release her.
“Let go.”
“Not yet.”
She tugs harder. “Why not?”
“Because I need you flustered.” To get answers, I tell myself. But it’s a bald lie. I like making her shiver. More than I should.
She glares and tugs again. “You can be such an asshat.”
Asshat. The words she uses. But she’s softened now. Relaxed. Exactly like I wanted her to be when I came down here. For answers.
“You will answer my questions, Lyra.” This time, I put the command of the god of death into the words.
The flare of her eyes is followed by another flutter, not just a shiver but a jump in her pulse against the pad of my thumb that captures my entire focus.
Does she like being commanded by me?
What started as a simple teenage fascination with an unattainable woman who disappeared flips on its head and roars into a very adult, very dangerous flare of need.
One that makes no godsdamned sense. Not when, outside of these cells, she could leave me at a whim.
Not with who I am and what I will do one day.
Despite those and a thousand other reasons, I go still, all my senses narrowing in and focusing on her and her alone.
She stares back, holding my gaze for a brave moment, before she drops hers. Not from fear but to hide her response. I see it anyway, and savage satisfaction rips through my chest.
I’m not the only one fighting this thing between us that is so palpable I’m surprised I don’t see a visible aura.
She swallows, the delicate column of her throat working, and then more words come tumbling out. “Your home would be so much nicer with water gardens outside the walls.”
My eyes narrow sharply. A water garden? I think of where she landed, the flatness of the mountain in that spot, and picture water and flowers and bridges…and Lyra in it. Is that just a fanciful idea…or has she been to my home at some point in the future when there was a water garden?
“Lyra…are you a goddess who wields time?”