Chapter 81
Desperate Times, Batshit Measures
HADES
The woman trying to sneak into Lyra’s room while she slept in my arms shudders against me.
“I am yours,” she says. “Your queen.”
That’s Lyra’s voice.
I grunt with shock before spinning her around to face me, hands on both her shoulders. My gaze skates over her, but it’s the long hair, rather than short, that tells me who I’m dealing with.
Something catches hold in my mind, the words she used finally penetrating the shock like darts, and everything around us sharpens and then goes hot.
Because I took her to my bed—present-day Lyra. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t. So much easier to stick to that edict when she wasn’t in touching distance all the damn time.
I failed at that.
But it’s done. I’m not going to hurt her, pushing her away again.
Aphrodite once told me that there’s balance in the universe. That the prophecy I carry, my powers over death and that grave responsibility, would balance out with something equally sweet one day.
I’m hoping like hells that Lyra is the sweet.
Hope is a fool’s errand, but I held out as long as I could.
And I must’ve been right to, because of the word this Lyra just used.
“You’re my…queen.” The words come out both as a harsh demand and as a confused question, my voice wavering over it.
She hesitates.
I see her hesitate.
“I will be.”
Fuck. She scared me. My heart was already thudding, but that one pause made it drop.
Then she tips her head and lets everything she feel show in her eyes, the green and gold both seeming to turn brighter and warmer. “I will be, and I am now, but only if you break my heart first.”
Rejection of that is so violent I stop breathing for a moment. When I finally take a breath, my brows snap together. “Break your heart. I wouldn’t do that.”
“That’s why I’m here. I’m telling you that you have to.”
I let her go, dropping my hands to my sides, swimming through my confusion to figure out why she would tell me that. She never gives me reasons, just cryptic warnings or directions. I’m so fucking sick of it. “You’re here to tell me to break your heart?”
She inhales slowly. “Yes. I’ve seen too many versions of what happens next in the games to count or to tell you about. But there’s only one way we end up together at the end of the Crucible with both of us alive.” She’s holding back. I can tell she is.
“Why?” I demand. “For once, tell me why, Lyra.”
She considers me like she’s trying to decide if I can take it.
“If you don’t break my heart now, and keep it broken until the end of Zeus’ Labor, then the sirens that are part of it will be able to see me.
There’s no version of that future that doesn’t end with one or both of us dead if my heart is whole.
Because I have to be broken and feeling unloved for the curse to hide me from them.
I have to believe that you don’t love me. That you used me.”
I look away, jaw clenching and unclenching. “There has to be another way. What if I break you too much and you don’t even make it to Zeus’ Labor? There’s still Athena’s—”
She puts her hand on my arm, giving me a reassuring squeeze. “This is me telling you to do it now. Be harsh with me. Be cold with me. Keep your distance from me. I’ll make it through both, but I need my curse intact.”
“Fuck.” I spin away from her, running an agitated hand through my hair. “How am I supposed to do that after what we just shared?” I fling an arm out.
Does she remember?
I can’t do this. If I thought going through with naming Lyra my champion was bad…
Gods damn it. If I’d known this was how it would be, I wouldn’t have followed her into that grotto last night.
Did I do something in a previous life to be tormented like this?
It’s as if the Fates have teased me with her all my life, forced me to fall in love with her only to live without her, then to have to break her over and over again in this sadistic contest.
All because she told me to herself.
What a mind fuck.
“Look at me,” she says softly.
I pause with one hand in my hair, which I hadn’t even realized I’d been raking it through. I slowly lower it and face her.
“I am telling you that the version of me standing before you is the future of the girl in your bed right now. I’m telling you that if you do this, as hard as it will be for both you and for her, you will still win my heart in the end.
But more importantly, she’ll live through the games, and we will both be exactly where we need to be when they’re over. ”
“Together?” I demand.
She better fucking say together.
Her smile doesn’t waver. “Eventually, everything will work out the way it’s supposed to.”
Relief is like falling only to be caught before hitting the ground.
I didn’t know love could be like this. Or maybe I’ve always known, because I fell for her so long ago. Agony and ecstasy, trust and too many doubts to count, and all of it tied to someone who, despite my being King of the Underworld, has always had all the power over me.
I’ve never loved anything or anyone like I love her. Spending this time with her every day has made that clearer. “I will hold you to that, Lyra.”
She bites her lip.
Damned if I don’t go instantly hard at the sight, sucking in sharply, gaze pinned to her mouth.
“I think I’ve been in love with you since I was a teenager, when you showed up at my family’s home in the Overworld and told me that you had faith that I’d learn to control my powers, that I wasn’t dangerous.
And for whatever reason, I believed you. ”
I can’t believe I admitted that to her. But the way she glows at the words, like she can’t decide if she should smile or cry, makes it worth it. And more sappy words come pouring out.
“The god of death and future King of the Underworld struck down by love at first sight.” I huff a self-deprecating laugh. “Aphrodite would be ecstatic if she knew.”
Lyra chuckles. “Yes. She would.”
My gaze lingers on her smile before I sober.
“But now you’re telling me to risk all of that, after waiting for you for thousands of years, after having been so patient and damn well terrified through the Crucible Games—an ordeal that I didn’t want to put you through in the first place and only did because you told me to.
” I shove a hand through my hair again. “Now you’re telling me to break it all. ”
She takes a step forward, and I take a step back. Hurt flashes in her eyes, but she stops pushing. “I need you to trust me. I will be your queen. But this is the only way.”
I shut my eyes, because I can’t think when I’m looking at her. And for maybe the second time in my life, I wish I had a higher power than me to pray to.
What do I do?
“If I do this,” I finally say slowly as I open my eyes again, “I need you to stay here. I need something of you to hold on to.”
She swallows hard, giving a tiny shake of her head. “You know I can’t promise that. I don’t control when I come and go.”
“Fuck,” I mutter. “I don’t think I can do this. The Crucible is bad enough. But this… You’re asking too much.”
I can see the way her eyes darken, the gold almost disappearing into the green. Is it hurting her to do this as much as it is me? Does she even think about it after she flits off to wherever she goes?
She clears her throat. “I’ve already survived this, and I know where we end up. You just have to trust me that this is the right thing to do.”
“Fuck.” I repeat the swear word several more times, tension vibrating off me the same way my bident vibrates when it hits metal, not absorbing the strike but reflecting it back outward.
Like she’s determined that I won’t push her away, she takes a step toward me, and I go rigid.
But she keeps coming, taking one step, then another and another until she’s close enough to cup my jaw. “What will help you hold on?” she asks softly.
“Why won’t you let go?” I demand, pushed beyond my limits. “You’re the reason there’s a prophecy, because I’d burn the world for you.”
Shock reverberates through me as the last word passes my lips. I didn’t mean to admit that. I never wanted to put that on her shoulders. Or maybe I was terrified that she’d look at me like the monster I’m supposed to become.
Like she looks at me lately as I push her away over and over.
But she doesn’t. This Lyra only gives me a smile. “I know you wouldn’t.”
“You can’t know that,” I snarl. “You scare the shit out of me, Lyra.”
“I know you wouldn’t, because I wouldn’t want that.”
Not what I expected her to say. “You think I would?”
“What I mean is, you know that burning down the world would hurt me.”
I’m shaking my head. “I don’t understand—”
“I know you, Hades. You can’t burn down the world, because you love me, and that would hurt me. You would never hurt me. Not if you could help it. That’s why you hate what you’re doing to…her…me…for the Crucible.”
The mountains of Olympus may as well shake under my feet the way that hits. Have I been so busy protecting her from myself, worried about my reactions, that I never considered that?
Could she be right?
The longer we’ve spent in the Crucible, the more my feelings for her have grown, until I couldn’t help myself and took her to my bed.
I’ve been so scared all this time of what she could do to me. Her power over me. The craving I have for her. “What if something happens to you, and the world takes you away from me? What if I can’t help myself? What if they deserve to be punished? What if I do it for you?”
A shadow passes over her features, but she pins a smile to her lips, surety scaring away whatever dark thoughts she just had.
“Life is never without problems,” she says slowly.
“Whatever trouble I get into, I promise you I can get myself out. I don’t need you for that.
I just need you to wait and hold me afterward. ”
“I’ve waited for you this long.” The whisper tears from my throat, even as my heart is thudding painfully hard against my ribs. I believed I should stay away from her for so long, but then I realized that I just…couldn’t. But this…this hope…she’s giving me.
Can I believe in it? In her.
“What’s a few more seconds,” she whispers.
A few more seconds, I could handle. But after having her permanently in my life, without being taken away from me over and over, I don’t know if I could go back to years…centuries.
I shudder.
“Just…think about it. And maybe one day you can make me a promise that you’ll fight it, if the prophecy does come for you. Fight it for me.”
“Fuck, Lyra. You ask the world.”
“Only because I know you can give it,” she says. Then lays her lips to mine.
She doesn’t do more than press sweet, heartbreaking kisses against me.
Soft kisses. Kisses I accept reluctantly, trying so damn hard to hold myself still.
And I almost outlast her. But when, with a sigh, she goes to draw away, I can’t stand it, and my hands move of their own volition to cup the back of her head, threading in her hair.
With a groan of desperation and need, I take over.
I bypass gentle and sweet, replacing them with a feverish need in every brush of my tongue against hers, the way I nip at her lower lip. The way I control every second and yet am so completely out of control myself.
On a deep sigh, I slow until we stand mouth to mouth, breath to breath, just absorbing each other.
“You can do this,” she whispers against my lips. “I promise. I’m telling you the way through. I need you to have faith in us. In the us I promise we become.”
Why does it feel like she’s still not telling me something important? But I can’t fight her any more. I don’t want to. I press my lips to hers one last time before gentling and putting my forehead to hers, wrapped tightly around each other, eyes closed, breathing her in.
Then there’s a terrible, endless emptiness I’ve become so familiar with over millennia.
When I open my eyes, I’m alone.