Chapter 15 Kaira #2
"Really?" He laughed. "Your actions told me everything I need to know. You ran from your aunt and Medusa the moment you heard something that didn't fit your little plan, and now you're denying what all of us here know."
"Which is?"
"That you're a killer!" he thundered, his eyes turning wild.
"You were born to be a killer, Kaira. You were born to end us all, to end the world as it is, and we keep dancing around the topic as if you're not just one sneeze away from bringing the end of the world to all of us.
I never should have helped your mother escape.
" His words were knives, cutting deeper than the pain of losing everything I loved in my life.
They destroyed the veil I had used to cover the old wounds from reopening, but it was futile.
"Hell, I should have killed you myself while you were still in her stomach.
Then we wouldn't have been here, tiptoeing around the fact that my brothers and all their minions are going to be after you. "
His eyes flashed with sorrow the moment he spoke, and as his chest rose and fell I could feel the tendrils of pain wrapping around the center of my being. Pain that didn't belong to me. Pain that rotted the air around us, dragging over the surface of the table in front of me.
But the regrets I carried were stronger than any rational thought right now. The destruction his words left behind made me feel bare. Stripped of everything I used to be, bleeding in front of these three people who were almost strangers to me.
My palms slammed against the table in front of me as his lips parted, ready for the next assault.
"You blindly came to the one place where they could catch you." His words held a weight I wasn't strong enough to carry. Not now. Especially not now. "The one place where they could own you, and you and your little emotions are not welcome here. Not right now. Not when so many things are at stake!"
I had no idea what happened. I had no idea why it happened, but one moment I was standing on the side of the table, and the other, everything turned dark. My vision, the room around us, everything disappeared except for the pair of emerald green eyes and the mocking smile on his face.
The stench of decaying flowers spilled throughout the room, etching itself into the depths of my mind. "Come on, Kaira," he taunted, laughing at me. "Show me. Show us all what you are."
The roar erupted from my lungs as the ground underneath started shaking, and I flew after him.
My mind blanked out, my hands wrapped around his neck, and I pushed him against the wall.
His back hit it with a thud, his laughter never stopping, urging me to do more.
My fingers tightened against the soft skin, against the pulse point on his neck and the tattoo I kept looking at.
"There she is," he purred, pushing my hair away from my face. "There's my little Goddess." His hand wrapped around my wrist, pushing my hand harder against him. "But is that all you got?"
My eyes narrowed, the fury he unraveled begging to show him what we could do, what lived inside my veins, but just as those thoughts passed through my mind, the ink on his neck lit up like fireworks on New Year's Eve, almost blinding me. His eyes got lost to me, as did the room we were in.
And suddenly, I was no longer at Elandra's place. I was no longer in this moment of time, but I knew the meadow in front of me. I saw it once before, this morning, as a matter of fact, when I just came to the island.
Unlike before, the fear wasn't what gripped my heart in its claws. It was the anticipation. The need. The yearning I couldn't yet understand.
Because I knew who waited there.
Because I knew I would see him.
"Who are you?" I asked, looking at the stranger in front of me as my heart thundered in my chest, wishing to go to him, to be near this creature.
I never saw him before, but I could feel his energy like my own.
I already knew he was one of the Ancients even before he spoke, but the closer he came the harder it was becoming to breathe.
His emerald green eyes ran over my red dress, toward my face, and then over my hair.
Mother rarely allowed me to go and visit Olympus, afraid they would try to corrupt me as she so often said, but now I hated her just a little bit for separating me from the man in front of me. Had I had a chance to visit before, maybe I would have met him.
"Don't be afraid, Kore," he said, his melodic voice wrapping itself around my soul, finding its home right there in the middle. "I'm not here to harm you."
"I know," I said without thinking, standing up from the flowers and sizing him up just like he was doing to me.
The long, dark hair fell almost to his shoulders, framing his face in a way that should've made him look feminine, but if anything it only sharpened his features, creating the contrast with his bright eyes.
"I'm Persephone," I introduced myself first, wanting him to know my name.
Needing him to hear it from me. "I don't think I have ever met you before. "
"You haven't," he confirmed, coming closer and closer, until he stood right in front of me, peering down into my eyes. "I'm Hades," he mumbled, looking at me as if he expected some sort of a reaction. "Are you afraid now?"
"No," I said. "Not even a bit."
Voices.
All I could hear were muffled voices as the scene in front of my eyes disappeared, leaving me with the view of emerald green eyes flashing with concern.
My fingers twitched, still wrapped around his throat, but the anger I felt was gone.
The fury brimming in my body mere seconds ago had died down, leaving me with a hollow space where something else was supposed to be.
Where the vision came from, and no matter how much I tried to grasp it, to remember it fully, I fucking couldn't. As if my mind was slowly erasing it from my memory, leaving me only with the ache spreading from my heart, through my limbs, and all the way to my eyes where fresh tears I couldn't stop had started gathering.
The wetness touched my cheek at the same moment as his finger, chasing a stray tear while his eyes never left mine.
I was vaguely aware of my body pressed against his. Of every muscle, every twitch, every little movement. The scent of fresh rain and the forest registered somewhere in the back of my mind, replacing the stench of decay from mere moments ago.
I was standing far too close to the man I didn't really know, but I couldn't move. My body refused to cooperate and any thought of moving or escaping the fog clouding my mind was met with more resistance somewhere from within me, and I stopped trying.
His lips were moving, those emerald eyes frantically running over my face, but I couldn't hear a thing.
The buzzing in my ears only kept increasing with every passing second, feeding the headache starting at the back of my neck, slowly spreading through my head, and all the way to my face.
My eyes felt impossibly heavy, ready to shut down, to stop seeing, but I couldn't stop myself from looking at him.
I couldn't stop myself from trying to grasp the vision I had and the fact that with each passing second, this stranger I was pressed against felt anything but strange.
His nostrils flared as his hand wrapped around my wrist, slowly lowering my hand away from his neck. The fingers of his other hand dug into my shoulder, slowly shaking me, saying something, but nothing registered. Not a single word.
The chest I was pressed against shook from the force of his shuddering breath and before I could even realize what was happening, I was airborne, snug in his arms, and then we were moving.
Turning my face toward his neck, I pressed my nose to his pulse point, inhaling that intoxicating scent, letting the calmness wash over me for the first time since I came to this island.
Funny, wasn't it? I was here less than a day and within the span of just a couple of hours my entire life got tilted on its axis. I thought the knowledge that my dad wasn't really my biological dad would be the one big secret I needed to understand, but I guess I was wrong.
Hades's arms tightened around me as I wrapped my arms around his neck, hiding my face from the rest of the world. I had no doubt my aunt and Elandra kept following him, but I couldn't care less where we went right now. I was tired. So, so tired, and I didn't want to deal with any of this anymore.
I didn't want to know anymore. I thought I did, but as he moved through Elandra's house, opening various doors in front of us, I realized he was right when he said I was just running when things got too difficult.
I hated him for saying it out loud, not because he was taunting me, but because it was the truth.
It was a bitter truth I wasn't ready to face, so for now, I would hide. I would hide in the arms of a man that felt like home, no matter how fucking crazy that sounded. I would hide because I wasn't ready to face my reality.
And I wanted to run. I wanted to leave this place and never look back, but the mere thought of never seeing Hades again made my stomach turn. So I tightened my arms around him and closed my eyes, pretending that maybe, just maybe, this could all be a dream.