Chapter 19
Chapter
Nineteen
Ravencrux
Waking to Her Touch
Poisoned.
The word didn’t capture it. Didn’t come close.
I was dying. Slowly. The curse from Hera’s Whip ate me from the inside out, cell by cell, turning my immortal flesh to rot.
Fever dreams consumed me, twisting reality into endless nightmare.
In every one, my mate was in peril. In every ending, I was late.
Always seconds too late, arriving only to cradle her lifeless body, to watch the light gutter and die in those beautiful gray eyes I’d loved across countless lifetimes.
The urgency gnawed through my organs and shredded what remained of my sanity.
Wake up. Get to her. Save her. This time.
But my body was a prison. Paralyzed. Unresponsive. My eyelids were sealed with lead. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak beyond a broken whisper. Couldn’t do anything but burn.
Then I felt her in my bed.
A warmth my dying body recognized even as my mind clawed through the haze.
“Perseph—” The forbidden name almost escaped. I swallowed it back, tasted blood. “Bloom?”
My voice was barely audible. She probably couldn’t hear me. I was still trapped between waking and dying, caught in the hollow where gods fade.
I needed her. Needed to hold her. To feel her alive and whole and safe in my arms. Proof that this time, I hadn’t failed.
Then, like a miracle torn from fate’s throat, I felt the curse leave my blood.
The poison that had been eating me for days, burning through my veins and turning my power against itself, began to retreat. My flesh knitted itself back together. The wounds from Hera’s Whip, which had refused to close, finally sealed.
I forced my eyes open. My vision swam, blurred with fever and pain. Shapes bled into shadows.
But I saw her.
The outline of a beautiful woman hovered above me. Radiant smile. Soft curves. My mate.
Relief hit me so hard it hurt.
I reached for her with a trembling hand. My fingers brushed her cheek, and she leaned into the touch instantly, pressing against my palm as if she’d been starving for it.
Joy detonated inside me. Relief, lust, need, love—all flooding my veins at once, more intoxicating than any poison.
My mate had always been like this. In every lifetime, every version of herself, this never changed. She knew me. Her body recognized mine even when her mind refused to remember.
I pulled her down. She came willingly. Eagerly. She’d already been leaning over me as if she couldn’t bear the space between us. Her hands framed my face, holding me like I was precious. Like I might vanish if she loosened her grip.
I closed my eyes and let myself feel it—her need, her hunger, her desperation.
My mate had missed me.
A savage satisfaction almost tore a laugh from my throat.
Her soft, warm lips crashed against mine. Her tongue traced the seam of my mouth, urging, demanding entrance.
I was about to give it. About to take everything she offered.
Then the wrongness hit me like a gut punch.
My awareness snapped into razor focus. The curse was gone. My strength surged back, and my senses sharpened.
And I knew with cold certainty:
This woman was not my mate.
She wore Bloom’s perfume, the exact blend of jasmine and night-blooming flowers. She’d used Bloom’s soap; I could smell the moon blossoms on her skin. She had gone to meticulous lengths to mimic my mate’s scent.
But she wasn’t her.
The feeling was wrong. The taste was wrong. The energy was wrong.
Her soul did not call to mine.
A shadow blade materialized in my palm at my summons. I pressed its edge to her throat before I realized who was in my bed.
Morrigan stared back at me.
My trusted second. In my bed. In my arms. Wearing my mate’s scent like a costume.
Rage seared my chest.
“Morrigan,” I snapped as I dismissed the shadow blade. “What the hell are you doing in my bed?”
“I healed you,” she said, her voice tight and wounded. “I purged Hera’s poison from your veins. You finally woke up because of me.” Her eyes held a bitter edge. “Not even a thank you?”
“Thank you,” I said, my voice flat and cold as a grave. “Where’s Bloom?”
The pause before she spoke stretched thin, then snapped.
“She didn’t make it.”
Four words.
The cold that flooded me was deeper than any curse.
I was out of the bed before my thoughts could catch up. My hand locked around Morrigan’s throat, lifted her, and slammed her into the wall.
Death hummed in my fist, unforgiving and hungry. It wanted release. Wanted to tear her apart and send her screaming into the void.
I held it back. Barely.
“Talk,” I commanded. “Now.”
“She’s gone,” Morrigan choked out. My grip didn’t loosen. “She won’t come back this time. It’s over, Hades. You have to move on.”
“Move on?” As if the love that had sustained me for eons could be shed like a worn coat.
“You couldn’t before,” Morrigan continued, her chest heaving up and down.
“Because there was always one more reincarnation. One more chance. But the Fates said the hundredth would be her final life. No more cycles. No more game. No more suffering. A clean cut.” Her eyes searched mine, desperate, pleading.
“I know it’s hard. I know it hurts. But you’ve endured this loss before. You can survive it one more time.”
My hand clenched. Her face flushed dark. Still, she didn’t struggle. She just stared, that searing mix of lust and longing and pain in her gaze.
And I felt nothing for her suffering. Nothing but cold contempt.
I could only feel my mate’s pain. Always. Only ever hers.
“How?” The word scraped out. “How is she gone?”
“She persuaded me to go to that French town.” Morrigan’s voice remained steady, too steady, despite the pressure on her throat. The calm of a rehearsed lie. “To get the plant. The only thing that could counter Hera’s curse. We found it, but there was an ambush waiting. Minor gods. Dozens of them.”
I listened. I cataloged every word, every detail.
“I fought for her,” Morrigan said. “I tried. But I couldn’t hold off that many. One of them got a blade into me. When I woke up…” She swallowed against my grip. “They were gone. She was gone.”
My heart burned, a peeling agony, as if my chest had been split open and the center of my heart sawed through with a dull blade. I’d lived in terror for my mate this entire lifetime, knowing that once she was gone, it would be over forever.
One hundred lives. And on the last one, I’d failed her anyway.
“You should never have taken her out of the academy,” I snarled and hurled Morrigan across the room. “I entrusted you with her safety. With the one thing that matters more than my own existence. And you failed.”
She slid down the far wall, crumpling to the floor like a broken doll. But then she pushed herself up, brushed off her clothes, and stood to face me.
“My loyalty is to you first,” she countered. “You would have been stuck in that state without the cure.”
“Not at the cost of my mate!” The outraged words tore from me. “Never at that cost!”
“But I brought back the plant,” she insisted. “Just as she wanted. To save you.”
That’s when I suddenly knew for certain.
Something was deeply wrong.
The door slammed open.
Orren and Dante burst in, weapons drawn. They froze at the scene, their confused gazes darting between Morrigan and me. They’d never seen me turn on one of my own.
I’d led this team for centuries. Watched more than half our original number fall to the endless tragedy of my mate’s cycles. I had grieved every loss. Never once had I raised a hand against those who stood beside me.
Until now.
“You drugged us,” Orren rumbled. “Where’s Bloom? Where is our queen?”
Dante said nothing. He only stared at Morrigan, his face a mask of dawning horror and betrayal.
“I did what I had to do,” Morrigan said, her gaze sweeping over each of us. “She isn’t coming back. Don’t you see? We can finally move on. We can finally be free.”
“Free?” Dante’s voice cracked.
“Haven’t we suffered enough?” Morrigan’s tone sharpened, rising.
“For millennia, trapped in this cycle. The same shit over and over. Hades broken by his obsession, and us chained to his tragedy.” Her eyes found mine.
“Now it’s over. I’m sorry I broke first. I’m sorry I couldn’t wait any longer.
But I couldn’t watch you diminish further. Not when I had the power to stop it.”
Morrigan’s lie hummed in the air.
She’d always been a competent liar. But I was the God of Death. I knew the taste of falsehood. The scent of betrayal.
“It was you.” The realization struck. “All along. You were the mole.”
Dante looked between us, then understanding dawned, and his face paled.
“They never could have breached the wards on my lake house,” I said, my predatory stare remaining on Morrigan, cold rage boiling through me. “The wards were keyed to my blood. To my team. The only way in was with a key from the inside.”
Silence choked the room.
“How could you, Morr?” Dante asked, his voice breaking. “We’ve bled together. We’ve buried our family together. How could you do this?”
“How could I?” Morrigan’s laugh was a bitter, sharp thing. She turned to me, and her eyes blazed with a resentment centuries deep. “Have I ever meant anything to you, Hades? Have you ever seen me as anything more than a useful tool?”
The accusation hung in the air.
“I was yours first,” she continued, her voice trembling. “Before her. I was in your bed. We had something. Then you saw her, and you left my bed cold.”
My jaw tightened. I remembered. Eons ago, a brief entanglement. It had meant nothing to me—a physical release, a momentary comfort in the dark. I’d assumed she understood.
Clearly, I was wrong.
“Yet I stayed,” Morrigan said. “I swallowed my pride. I gave up my throne, my title, my realm. I abandoned everything to follow you.”
“I never asked you to stay,” I said, the words cold and harsh even in my ears. “I never asked for your sacrifice.”