Chapter 71
Once Upon A Time
HADES
I shouldn’t fucking be here.
I’ve waited a hundred and fifty years for this strange moment in time with not a lot to go on. A hundred and fifty years of trusting someone I’m actively trying to forget.
Lyra.
Maybe I should just leave? I almost didn’t come in the first place.
Lightning zaps overhead with a thunderclap that rattles even the temple, and I shift against the column of my brother’s house of worship in San Francisco.
It’s the first night of the current Crucible, and Zeus is putting on a show for the watching world.
He’s always cared more about humans’ awe of him.
That is the only reason he desires the throne of Olympus.
He’s an asshole that way. Always has been. Maybe we should have locked him up in Tartarus with our parents.
I sigh, checking the skies. Why am I still standing here?
But I already know why.
I still don’t have any proof that Persephone is in fucking Tartarus, but she hasn’t shown up anywhere else in all this time. Neither has Lyra.
So here I fucking am.
At least, if this woman I’m supposed to name as my champion is a no-show, no one else will witness the classic fool I turn into for a woman I am actively trying to forget. Not that I’ve been able to do that successfully.
I should just leave.
But the last words Lyra said to me won’t let me. They’re what dragged my feet here tonight.
I asked her why I should trust her, and her answer slayed me— Because I’m yours.
Exactly what I thought. Both my heaven and my hell. The irony, given who I am, isn’t lost on me. King of the Underworld, god of death, and sucker for five little words.
But my reaction to those three little words, the way they burrowed into my heart…that makes Lyra Keres just as dangerous for me as I thought.
Movement, a simple shifting of shadows, catches my gaze out in the trees that surround this temple on Zeus’ mountain.
I narrow my eyes but otherwise don’t move. Humans aren’t usually so stealthy. It could just be an animal—
A woman steps into view, but she’s at the farthest end of the temple, and I can only make out her profile.
Ignoring the way my heart thuds irrationally, I tip my head, studying what I can see of her in the moonlight and flashes of lightning overhead. Not short but not tall. Slender in a way that says she’s healthy but has never known indulgence. Chin-length dark hair.
She stares at the pristine columns of the building, and I wish I could see her expression. The way she’s holding her body so tensely, her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides, she looks like a brittle rubber band that could snap at any second.
Then she moves.
Jerky but fast, she bends over and snatches a rock off the ground.
And I move.
Teleporting is easy for gods. A whisper of my will, and I’m standing behind her just as she cocks her arm back to hurl her makeshift weapon.
I clamp a hand around her wrist mid-throw and yank her backward, into me, so I can wrap my arms around her and pin her down. “I don’t think so,” I say in her ear.
She goes wild, thrashing against my hold like a feral thing. “Let me go!”
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I tell her.
She goes still. Oddly still, but the way she’s breathing hard, breasts pressing into my arm with each inhalation, she’s not calm.
“I said”—she grits out each word—“Let. Me. Go.”
I tighten my grip. This one will run if I give her the opportunity. “Not if you’re going to hurl rocks at the temple. I don’t feel like dealing with Zeus tonight.”
Not until I’m ready, at least. If I decide to listen to Lyra and name this woman my champion.
“Well, I do!” She struggles to get away.
Something tells me that whatever issue she has with Zeus…with my brother, it’s always well-deserved… But a strange thread of sympathy stitches through me. Humans aren’t the only ones he ruins.
“He’s an asshole, I get it. Trust me,” I mutter in a low voice. “But if I thought throwing a tantrum would change that, I’d have brought that temple down with my bare hands years ago.”
To my shock, not only does she calm slightly, but she leans back into me. Just for the smallest beat in time.
And I…relax.
Like we’re in sync somehow. Did Lyra know this would happen? Maybe she sent me to someone I would work well together with because she doesn’t fear me?
“If I let you go, do you promise not to attack a defenseless building again?” I ask softly.
“No.”
I sigh. This one is stubborn, apparently. She reminds me of someone.
Then she says, “That fuckhead doesn’t deserve any prayers.”
I swallow back a bark of laughter, a strange warmth sparking in my chest. Mutual hatred is a heady bonding agent. “Careful.”
“Why?” she asks. Is she smiling? It sounds like it in her voice. “You worried someone might want to hit me with a bolt of lightning while I’m in your arms?”
“Talk like that could win a few hearts,” I whisper. Not mine, though. I gave it away a long time ago.
She goes as stiff as a corpse for long enough that I start to worry before her chin drops to her chest.
“Highly unlikely,” she mutters. “Zeus made sure no one can ever love me.”
The silence that drops between us might as well be a roar of dull sound. Zeus cursed her to be unlovable? It sounds like something my brother would do. But…why in the name of Tartarus would Lyra send me a cursed human as a champion?
Also…I like her. If she’s cursed to be unlovable, shouldn’t I feel…nothing?
I drop my arms and take a step away. Her back to me, the woman shoves her hands in her pockets.
“I…find that hard to believe.”
My one small admission of doubt seems to turn her against me, her entire body going stiff. “Listen, I’m fine now. You can move on…”
She turns around.
If her admission a second ago was a roar of silence, the way my entire body takes the hit as I catch full sight of her face might as well be a thousand spears to my gut.
It requires every ounce of my not insubstantial self-control to keep from doubling over or taking her by the shoulders to shake answers out of her.
Lyra.
This is Lyra.
My Lyra…only not. Same age as every other time I’ve seen her. Same green-and-gold eyes and stubborn chin. Shorter hair, though.
This can’t be right. What in the name of the evils of Tartarus is she doing here? Is she just…fucking with me now or something?
And why is she staring at me with horror in her eyes, as still as a mouse staring at a lion?
“I’m afraid one of us shouldn’t be here,” she quips. Then, based on what her face does next, immediately regrets those words.
But I’m just…more confused.
So I say nothing. I need more. Anger—at her and myself—slowly builds like heaping fuel on a slowly growing fire, and I stand with my arms crossed, taking in every detail of her.
She’s dressed differently than before—jeans, black fitted shirt, and a jacket with lots of pockets. Basic current-day human garb.
When I’ve seen her any time before this, she’s been almost relaxed with me. Like she knows me. But now, I get the feeling that she doesn’t know if she should run…or bow.
I fucking hate being put on the back foot like this.
Because she sent me here. Choose her as your champion, Lyra said. But the girl is…her.
Gods damn it, Lyra.
“Do you know who I am?” I demand.
She pauses before answering. “Should I?”
My eyes narrow. I do not have time for her flippant bullshit. I need an answer to that question. A real answer. Now.
Playing on her nervousness of me, I deliberately take two long, slow strides directly into her space. “Do you know who I am?”
My Lyra would have snapped that yes, of course she does. But this Lyra… She goes pale. No way is she faking her fear, even as she refuses to back down from me.
“Hades.” She swallows. “You are Hades.”
A thousand thoughts hit me all at once.
Her physical response, more than her words, tells me that this woman in front of me is not the Lyra I’ve known for ages, but I’m starting to get a glimmering of an idea as to what she is.
I’ve always assumed my Lyra is a goddess who can manipulate time somehow, similar to my father’s power, only maybe not very far along in her use of it, given that she doesn’t seem to have control over much, including how long she stays in one place and time.
Is this Lyra’s beginning?
Ages after my own beginning, and yet she’s been sewn into the fabric of my life all this time. A glittering single thread that should have no bearing, and yet I suspect if I ever tried to pull it out, everything would unravel.
My Lyra must be from a future I still have yet to reach.
This Lyra’s future, now, too.
How in the name of the Primordials did she go from this human form to the goddess I know? I add that as question one million and forty-two to my growing list of questions about Lyra and regroup. Lyra sent me to the human version of herself for a reason.
This is how we get Persephone out of Tartarus.
That’s what she said.
By me making Lyra my champion. Lyra, who I’m trying not to love and need to stay away from. Human Lyra, who could die in those ridiculous games.
Fuck.
My gut rejects that so hard, it takes Herculean effort not to show it to her now. Right now…I need…
What do I need?
To figure out what to do with her. That’s what I fucking need. And that’s the trouble with messing around with time. Lyra told me to come here, choose her, for a reason.
Meanwhile, this human version of her I’m dealing with knows nothing.
And if I learned anything from my father before we shut him up in Tartarus, it’s not to mess with time.
I’m pretty damn sure the wrong choice is telling her that a future version of herself sent me here to put her in the Crucible. I don’t want to break her.
So what do I do with her?
The only option I see is to play into her obvious assumption that bad luck landed her with me catching her here about to throw a rock at Zeus’ temple. As far as she’s concerned, I’m just another asshole god like my brother.