Chapter 28
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
Hades
The Rejection
My queen shattered the curse. Chains that had bound me for an eon fell apart like ancient ash.
My full power surged through my veins, filling voids that had been hollow so long I’d forgotten what it was to be whole. Death magic answered, my connection to the realm snapping into place. I tore down the ward that had kept me from my mate.
I reached her in a heartbeat, cradling her face between my hands. Her skin was warm, her power a vibrant hum beneath my palms.
Pride swelled. A relief so profound it threatened my knees. A joy so fierce it ached.
She was back. After an eon of waiting, of loss, of finding her only to watch her die—she was finally, completely back.
I hung on her every word. Just as the entire stadium held its breath. This was the moment we’d fought for—eternity together, with no one and nothing between us.
But then my mate, my greatest love, began reciting a history woven with half-truths and lies, as though some false memories had been stitched into her mind upon awakening.
Accusations spilled from lips that had always tasted like honey and nectar beneath mine.
“I wronged you.” The confession, hoarded for eons, tore free. “I’m sorry. I’ve been sorry for millennia.” I swallowed, the words scraping my throat raw. “Give me a second chance. Please. Let me make it right. Come home with me, and I’ll spend eternity making amends.”
I didn’t care about dignity. Not with her. I would beg her on my knees before everyone—before my enemies, before the stars.
“Home?” She laughed bitterly. “Where is it, husband? The Underworld? That prison I tried to flee? That sunless pit where I was nothing but your possession? Your plaything?”
I looked at her and saw not just rejection but pure contempt.
“I once asked you,” she continued, her gray eyes like unforgiving stone. “Do you remember? If you ever regretted meeting me. If we had never met, we would never have fallen so far.” She leaned closer, her voice a vicious whisper. “So. If you could take it back, would you?”
I caught her hand before she could withdraw and pressed it against my chest, over the frantic rhythm of my heart. Let her feel it beat—for her, only ever for her.
“Never,” I said fiercely. “I would choose you. Always you. Every time. Living without you in my arms, beside me, laughing with me…that isn’t life. It’s a long, hollow sentence. And I have endured enough of that to last a thousand eternities.”
She hesitated. Something flickered in her eyes. Something soft. Something that resembled the love I knew. Then she wrenched her hand back, and the wall slammed down again.
“I know I do not deserve you.” My admission was a raw wound. “I never have. I caused you pain that spanned eons. Pain I can never undo. But I will be a better man for you. I swear it.”
For one fragile breath, I thought I had reached her. Then her expression iced over again.
“You can’t seduce me again, Hades. I know better now.”
“Not seduction,” I vowed. “Devotion. No matter what you choose, I will follow you. I will win you back.” I let her see the truth, the desperation, the endless dark waiting for me. “Because I can’t let you go, my love. You are my light. My everything. I’ll never let you go. No matter what.”
“You see, daughter?” Demeter spat. “See how dark and twisted he is? His sickness—his obsession—is what doomed you.”
“You’re pathetic, brother,” Zeus boomed. He had descended to stand at Demeter’s side. “Groveling like a beaten mortal.”
Demeter pulled Persephone back, a step away from me. “We tried to cure his sickness. We offered him, so many times, to choose another. To break the bond and spare you. But he spat in our faces. He chose to let you suffer. He refused to free you from the life he forced upon you.”
“I will never take that deal,” I snarled. “I would never do that to her. Breaking the bond would hollow her out. Leave her a shell. It would destroy the very core of who she is.”
“Better empty than trapped with you, you monster!” Demeter screamed.
I turned my back on her venom. My world narrowed to Persephone alone.
“You are mine, baby,” I said gently. “You have always been mine. Even if you walk away, I will never abandon you. I vowed to love you and only you. That was my promise when I first saw you in that garden. You took my breath away. You still do.”
Persephone’s expression remained stone, but I saw the subtle movement in her throat as she swallowed.
“You’ve said your piece, husband,” she drawled, and ice coursed through my bloodstream. “So what will I choose? Mother or husband? A hard life in a sunless realm? Or parties among the entitled?”
I held my breath and let her choose. Even as I fought with every shred of will not to lunge forward, throw her over my shoulder, and carry her back to the Underworld to lock her away forever.
“He’s so toxic,” Demeter called. “Come home with me, daughter. Where you belong.”
“I wouldn’t be Persephone if I didn’t claim what’s mine.” She locked eyes with me, and for the first time, I couldn’t read her. “I can’t forget what loving you cost me. So I’m denying you, Hades. I’ll return with my mother to Olympus. That is my home.”
It was as if she had reached into my chest and crushed my heart in her bare hand.
Zeus laughed, the sound booming across the blood-stained arena. Other gods took up the chorus, their derision a crown of thorns hammering into my skull.
Demeter beamed, radiating triumph as she pulled her daughter into an embrace. “I always knew you would be on my side. Welcome home, my precious girl.”
I stood devastated. Hollowed out. An eon of fighting, of searching, of agonizing hope—fucking gone in a breath.
Behind me, Dante drew a sharp breath at the betrayal. The hellhound let out a wounded, confused growl. No one had foreseen this. It was like they couldn’t reconcile the queen who had endured an eon of suffering, who had shattered the curse, with the one now turning her back on us.
“And that,” Poseidon declared, cruel satisfaction in his silver eyes, “is what I call poetic justice.”
Stardust—Hecate—shot me a glance of pure pity before she schooled her features to stone.
Persephone stepped away from Demeter and Zeus. She moved toward me, closing the distance while I still knelt in the arena’s center—I knelt for no one but my queen, even as she rejected me and shattered my heart.
Her hands rose, cupping my face. Her touch was tender, devastating, her power a faint hum against my skin.
She leaned in, her lips brushing my ear. “By the way, husband,” she breathed. “The Fates lied. Remembering the past didn’t break the curse. You were never the threat.” Her voice dropped, final and cold. “I am.”
I stared at my mate as if she were a stranger. In all my eons, I had never seen this version of her—cold, calculated, and utterly dangerous.
“Let’s return to our home,” Demeter urged, seizing Persephone’s arm. Her grip was frantic. “We’ve lingered in this mortal filth long enough.”
“I will find you, little pale flower,” I said, my voice now a low, taunting purr. It was not a threat but a law of existence. “No matter where they hide you, I will come for you. Always.”
“Threatening me again, husband?” Persephone purred back, a ghost of a sardonic smile on her lips.
“Do not engage him,” Demeter cut in, pulling her backward. “He only seeks to poison your mind again. But take heart: Olympus is warded against him. It is the one place in all the realms he cannot breach. You will be safe there, my precious daughter.”
Persephone held my gaze a moment longer—a silent, chilling farewell—before allowing herself to be led away, leaving me standing amidst the ruins of her cold victory.
Just like that, she was gone.
And I lost her all over again.
My power strummed within me, unbound and complete, yet it felt hollow. What use was a restored ocean if it could not hold the one ship that mattered?
“It is better than losing her the other way forever, my king,” Dante said quietly beside me.
He was right. She lived. She was not erased from existence. Her hundredth life had not ended in a final, silent grave. That alone was the victory.
Even if she had chosen a gilded lie over our scarred truth. Even if she had walked away.
But I would stand by my vow.
As my mind began to churn, plotting a new campaign to reclaim my mate and bring her back to her true home, her final warning circled like vultures in the dark.
The Fates lied. Remembering the past didn’t break the curse. You were never the threat. I am.