Chapter 71 #2
And all of this hits me in the blink after she said my name.
My fucking name. On her lips.
Underworld give me strength.
I offer her a condescending smile. “Was that so hard?”
Immediately, her expression makes me want to laugh. She thinks I’m a dick. It’s adorable.
No, damn her. Not adorable. Nothing is adorable.
“Now,” I say, more for distraction than anything. “Let’s talk about what you think you were doing.”
She gives me a confused frown. “I thought you already—”
“And with the Crucible starting tonight, even.” I deliberately suffuse disappointment in my voice, only stopping short of tsking. That might be too much.
She sighs. “Do you want an apology before you smite me or something?”
There’s the mouth on her I’ve come to know. I draw arrogance around me like armor. “Most would fall to their knees before me. Beg for my mercy.”
She swallows hard but still meets my gaze. Even as a human, this woman is fearless. Or foolish. I haven’t decided which. “I’m pretty sure I’m dead either way,” she says. “Would kneeling help?”
Fuck. If she keeps this up, naming her my champion is the worst possible thing I could do.
“Is that why you’re here?” she asks. “The Crucible?”
You, my star. You’re the reason. “I have my own reasons for being here tonight.” I mean it to be a warning. To cut off any more questions.
She ignores the hint in my tone.
“Why did you stop me?” She glances at the temple.
I’m done with question-and-answer time and tap my thumb against my chin. “The question is, what do I do with you now?”
“I assume you’re going to send me to the Underworld,” she says.
An option that appeals, but for an entirely different reason. One that has no place in the here and now.
I hum vaguely. “I can do worse than that.” I’m focused more on whether or not I should name her my champion.
Walking away is what I should do, because it’s Lyra. I’ve had over a century to think about this, and I still don’t know, swinging wildly between options and reactions.
Godsdamn.
I am not an indecisive god, but this is fucking impossible.
“Oh?” She tips her head. “I do hear you are creative with your punishments.”
Right. I’ll let her go for now and figure out my next step when she’s not standing so temptingly close.
“I’m flattered.” I give her a tiny, mocking bow. “I could make you roll a rock up a hill and never make it to the top, only to start back over every single day for the rest of eternity.”
“I’m pretty sure Zeus came up with that.”
The hells he did. “Were you there?”
She shrugs. “Either way, it sounds like a vacation. Peaceful, undisturbed labor. When do I start?”
I shake my head. “I’m not going to kill you. Yet.”
It’s a tease, but the wariness that clouds her eyes… I don’t like it. “Relax, my star.”
Her eyes flare slightly.
Shit. Should not have called her that. Not yet. But I’m not taking it back, and I don’t explain myself. Ever.
In the silence that falls between us, she takes in what I’m wearing. I didn’t think much of the worn boots and jeans, the blue button-down shirt rolled up at the sleeves, or the vintage 1800s leather holster that most mistake for suspenders, custom made to hold the axes that Odin once gifted me.
“Do I pass inspection?” I drawl.
Her gaze swings back up to meet my eyes. “You look different than I thought.”
I can’t help it, twitching my eyebrows up in question. Because even my Lyra hasn’t shared something like this before. “And what did you expect? All-black clothing? Perhaps a full leather getup?”
“Don’t forget the horns. And maybe a tail,” she says.
Never knows when to stop talking. Even now.
“That’s a different god of death.” I scoff, then mutter under my breath, “Damn, I abhor expectations.”
“Your home in the Underworld is Erebus,” she points out.
“And?”
“It’s called… Wait for it.” She holds up a hand, suddenly reminding me so much more of the Lyra I know. “The Land of Shadows.”
I’ve fantasized about what it would be like to kiss those lips since I was still a young god of nineteen. But that’s out of the question. She needs to stop talking.
I slip my hands in my pockets so I don’t reach for her. “I always thought that naming was unoriginal. It’s the Underworld. Of course there are shadows.”
She always does this to me—gets me off topic and takes me down murky paths.
“I guess,” she says slowly. Then, after a beat, “I mean, technically, you’re not the god of shadows or even the goddess of night. And if the fire-and-brimstone thing is true, then it seems like it would be quite well lit down there.”
She should know. She’s seen it. But not yet. This Lyra hasn’t seen shit. Fuck, I hate all things time travel.
“You have a perception issue, if you think about it,” she says next.
I rock back on my heels. “I have a perception issue.”
“Yes, you do. If they can’t see for themselves, mortals will believe what they are told. I was always told that Hades is shrouded in darkness, smells of fire, and is covered in tattoos that can come alive at his will.”
The tattoos are real enough, not that that’s the point. I get the sense that I’m losing control of this conversation. Time to take it back.
I trail my gaze down her body with slow deliberation and wait for her cheeks to turn pink. Which they do. Deliciously. “And yet you’re the one dressed in black and with tattoos, my star.”
She glances down at her clothes, then tugs the sleeve of her shirt down, hiding her star tattoos from me. I manage to stop myself from frowning at the gesture, but it’s a close thing.
“So…” I straighten to step closer. Close enough to breathe her in. She smells of oranges and vanilla and the faintest hint of lightning, thanks to standing this close to my brother’s temple. No brimstone, though.
I despise even that much of him on her.
“What’s your name?” I ask to buy myself time to calm down.
“Felix Argos.”
Liar.
“So…” She glances to the side of the temple and the way down the mountain toward the bridge and the city across the bay. “What happens now?”
My entire world narrows to her face. Cosmos, what a question.
What happens now. She’s real. She won’t disappear on me.
That wasn’t an option I considered when I made my “Lyra is off fucking limits” rules.
What I want to do is take her and run…and spend an inordinate amount of time making sure she smells like me and not like my damnable brother.
But real Lyra, present-day Lyra, a Lyra who doesn’t leave me for ages—she’s even more dangerous to me than future Lyra. If I’m struggling this much already, within minutes of being around her, maybe I don’t name her my champion. I walk away, find another way to get Persephone out.
“What did you mean about being cursed?” That scent of lightning on her skin reminded me, and I need a distraction.
Her eyes get shifty. “You don’t know?”
“Tell me like I don’t.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
I lift a single eyebrow and see the resignation in the droop of her shoulders before she takes a visible breath.
Her words come out in a hurry. “Twenty-three years ago, when I was still in my mother’s womb, she and my father came here to make an offering and pray for blessings on the birth.
Her water broke, and your brother apparently took offense at her defiling his sacred sanctuary.
As punishment, he cursed her baby—me, as it happens—that no one would ever love me. There. End of story.”
The. Fuck. He. Did.
I’m going to destroy him. Strangle him with his own dick and hope he chokes on that ego of his.
But that curse makes no sense. Not with the feelings even this human version of Lyra stirs in me. I’ve been trying hard to feel nothing for her. With the added curse, shouldn’t I truly feel nothing? It’s not fucking working if that’s the case.
“He made you unlovable?” I ask slowly.
She gives a jerking nod. I can see in her eyes that she believes that with her entire being. A history is there, lived experiences that dull their green color and pale her cheeks.
It’s real. I think. I’m going to have to try to find out more, but I won’t have time before the Crucible starts. Selection is tonight.
I need to think. I can’t do that with her here.
So I wave a hand at her. “You may go.”
She startles. “I can…go? Really—”
I lift my eyebrows slowly, taunting her. “You wish to argue?”
“No.”
“This way,” I say.
Why in the names of all my hells am I offering to walk her down? She got up here without being caught just fine.
Pathetic excuse for self-control.
Thankfully, she doesn’t break the silence. Which means I’m not expecting it when Lyra suddenly stops walking.
I stop, too, glancing back. “Problem?”
“Um…” She stares past me, and I follow her gaze. Ah…she’s worried about the crowds on the main street we’ve reached seeing her with me.
“Don’t worry about them,” I say. “Only you can see who I truly am. Everyone else just sees a regular mortal man.”
She still looks doubtful.
“Come on.”
She finally gets moving again. We emerge onto the teeming sidewalk, and she pauses, then offers me a small salute. “I appreciate you not smiting me.”
Every single part of my body clenches at even a hint of her leaving by choice.
Before, she was very clear that she wasn’t controlling when she came and left me.
But right now…it’s a choice. She’s still in the world, in this time, with me…
and even though I told her to go, I also want to keep her by my side, find out what makes her laugh, find out how she tastes when I kiss her, and I can’t do any of that.
If I name her my champion, she’s going to hate me. But worst of all, I need to stay the hells away from her. How am I supposed to do that as I get her through those games alive?
She’s watching me, waiting.
“Be more careful with your words, my star,” I say in a voice as out of my control as the rest of me, and rough with it. “You never know when the gods might take up the gauntlet you just threw down… And any other day, I probably would have.”
I mean to scare her away.
Instead, her eyes flare with interest. “Smiting is a quick death,” she whispers. “There are worse things.”
My chest tightens as I search her expression. Does she feel it, too? This Lyra doesn’t know me beyond my roles as god of death and King of the Underworld. The bogeyman as far as she’s concerned. And yet the way she looks at me…
Fuck my life.
My control shreds a little more, and I can’t help myself. I lift a hand to draw a fingertip from her temple to her jaw, just the barest touch. She’s so soft, and the quiver I invoke in her isn’t fear…it’s for me. I stare at her, and she stares at me.
“You’re right, my star,” I murmur, dropping my gaze to her lips.
Just a taste. Before she hates me. Before I put her through the games.
Before I have to walk away from her at the end of it.
But I won’t do that to her. If I name her champion, I need her to focus on surviving.
And only surviving. “There are worse things.”
I’m so fucked.
I straighten abruptly, spin her around before I can give in and kiss her until she moans my name, and give her a little push into the crowd.
She walks away.
It hits me that technically we met around the same age. Although now that she’s a goddess, who knows how far into the future she was when she traveled back in time to me?
Don’t do this to her.
I promised myself that I would never drag her into my world, into my hells. We’re too dangerous together. Tinder and fire, set to go off and take the world down with us.
I can’t do it.
I fucking won’t do it to her or to me. Even if future her told me to.
I’ll find another way to get Persephone out.
When she disappears around the curve, I turn away only to pull up short at the sight of my Lyra high on the hill. Long hair twisted up haphazardly, dressed in some kind of tracksuit that I think I’ve seen before.
She’s already turning hazy around the edges.
I think maybe she calls to me. Her lips form my name and then only two words. “Trust me.”
Then she’s gone. Again.
I was right before. I’m so fucked.