Chapter 55
Chapter fifty-five
HYPNOS
Iliana rested against him. She wasn’t asleep yet, but she was getting closer with each exhale.
The movie played on, a low-budget sci-fi flick about space travel they’d agreed on after bickering over what to watch.
There were glaring errors in theory, and the dialogue was ridiculous, but Hypnos kept his commentary to himself.
Not because he didn’t have opinions. Gaia, did he—but because she was peaceful. Unworried. And for once, she was in his arms because she chose to be.
He hadn’t lied earlier. He wasn’t Thanatos—no matter how badly he wanted to believe he could have this. That he deserved it. That he could be more than a god of sleep and regret; someone she could trust. Thanatos and Anubis had changed, their walls coming down for her. Could he do the same?
He once believed he was broken beyond repair, a god beyond saving. Then Iliana smiled at him, and he felt something he’d nearly forgotten.
Hope.
Here she was, choosing to sit beside him. Laughing at his jokes and looking at him without fear or wariness. Just Iliana, seeing him as he was and deciding he was worth her time.
The notion terrified him as much as it thrilled him. If he let himself hope, what happened when it fell apart? She’d realize he was broken, bitter, and incapable of giving her what she deserved.
“My darling husband.”
Pasithea’s voice slid through his mind, sweet like honey. Poisoned honey. The timing felt as though destiny itself were mocking him. Of course. The moment he started to hope, the past came back to haunt him.
This time, he didn’t tense. He felt cold recognition.
“What do you want?” he asked. He didn’t bother acting as if he were interested in anything she had to say.
“To see you. Tonight,” she said, urgently.
“No.”
The simple word seemed to surprise her. “Hypnos, please. I want to see you. To explain everything to you. To give us closure.”
He looked down at Iliana’s peaceful face, remembering her words. I don’t need you to joke or to smile. I want you to be who you are, to feel what you feel. That’s all.
“I already have my closure.”
He meant it. Once, he would’ve begged for answers. Now, with Iliana at his side, her giggle still ringing in his ears, and her honest words embedding themselves into him, he didn’t need Pasithea to hand him closure. He was finding his own.
“What?” Pasithea’s confusion came through their connection. “The mortal? She does not even trust you, Hypnos.”
“She chose to be in my arms tonight.” The words came out steadily, with certainty.
“How can you know she is not using you? That she—”
“Even if that were true,” Hypnos cut her off, “it would be more honest than anything you ever gave me.”
And that was the difference. Pasithea had wrapped lies in sweetness, manipulation masked as love. But Iliana called him an ass to his face. Told him she was wary of him. She’d been honest about every feeling.
If Iliana were using him, she’d be candid about it. He’d suspected for a while now that what was going on between them was shockingly real.
When Pasithea spoke again, she lost her honeyed tone. “You’re making a mistake.”
“The only mistake I made was loving someone who saw me as a tool instead of a person.”
Iliana moved against him, her hand unconsciously clenching into his shirt.
“I won’t make that mistake again.”
“Hypnos—”
He closed their connection with more force than necessary. His shoulders sagged in relief and, for the first time, not regret.
On-screen, the protagonists confessed their love, and Iliana fell against him, giving up her fight to stay awake.
Hypnos tensed as soon as the curse moved in.
It always tested his defenses when she first fell asleep, searching out weaknesses and trying to slip past the barriers around her subconscious. Even though it was more aggressive than ever before, he wouldn’t allow it to overpower him. It couldn’t. At least not yet.
Not while he watched over her.
Hypnos strengthened his hold over her subconscious, anchoring her to his dreamscape but letting her guide what she saw. He could control her dreams, keep her safe in sleep, but the moment he wasn’t touching her was when her curse would strike.
Rather than ruminating about Pasithea’s visit, Hypnos let himself fall into Iliana’s mind.
He found himself in the same sun-warmed meadow he’d taken her to when she was dying.
His memory. Iliana lay on her back in the grass, her face turned toward the sky, amber light softening her features.
She looked ethereal. Alive in every way that mocked her proximity to death and the curse hovering right outside.
Hypnos could feel the undertones in her dream; the emotions she’d only recently voiced. There was grief in the corner of the meadow, shadows that didn’t belong in the sunlight. Longing that made the breeze taste bittersweet. Loss in each blade of grass she touched.
He joined her on that grass. “Why here?”
Iliana turned to him, smiling as brilliantly as she had before falling asleep. She shrugged, rolling onto her side to prop her head on her hand. “I’m not sure. It just feels right.”
Hypnos could sense what she meant, even if she didn’t fully understand it.
This meadow was the first place he’d truly protected her.
The first place she felt safe since the curse took hold.
But it was more than that. He could feel the memory leaking through her subconscious.
A different field from a different time.
Her father’s voice explaining cloud formations. Her mother’s hand in hers.
The last time she felt absolutely safe.
She’d taken his memory, the peace he’d offered, and woven her own into it, creating a place to remember. This was how she grieved, carrying their memory forward and finding safety in it without forgetting what she’d lost.
Hypnos studied her, memorizing how her lashes outlined her hazel eyes and how the wind toyed with her auburn hair. He reached out and brushed a loose strand from her cheek with his fingers.
“Do you enjoy helping people fall asleep?” she asked.
Her simple question pulled Hypnos from the trance she’d put him in. “It’s satisfying. Sleep heals and gives peace.”
Iliana traced his jaw with a featherlight touch, sending longing through him. “I wish I didn’t have this curse so I could find comfort in your power.”
Something in him cracked. “You aren’t at peace?”
She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Once I’m asleep, it feels amazing. When I’m in your dreams, in the meadow, I feel protected.” Her hand fell onto his chest, over his heart. “But when I’m awake, when I’m trying not to fall asleep…”
She trailed off, and he waited.
“I don’t trust myself,” she finally said. “The curse uses sleep against me, making me hurt myself. So even though I know,” she tapped her temple, “I know you’re protecting me. Even though I want to trust you, there’s this part of me that panics when I drift off.”
Her eyes met his, apologetic. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Hypnos. I don’t trust what happens when I’m not conscious to control it. Does that make sense?”
Hypnos swallowed roughly. It made perfect sense. She trusted him with her sleep, to keep her safe once she was under. But the act of falling asleep, of surrendering when her own mind had been weaponized against her? That was different.
“I don’t want you to feel that way,” he said. “I know I was an ass when you came to me, but I feel like we’re moving past that.”
“We are,” she told him. “This is about the curse, not about you.” Her hopeful eyes searched his face, then she put her hand on his chest once again. “So…you don’t hate me?”
Hypnos jerked. “I—I don’t.”
Iliana rolled onto her back, staring into the endless dream sky. “Good. I don’t hate you either.”
She said it as if it had never been in question.
“I’ve seen pain,” she breathed. “I’ve lived it, and so have you.”
The dream darkened in his periphery. Her grief was pressing against his consciousness. But there was something else there.
Guilt.
She turned to him again, and he could see it in her eyes. “Am I grieving wrong? Should I hate the world? Should I hate you?”
He could sense the confusion roiling through her, and he could relate. There’d been days when he could barely breathe through the anger, and then days when he felt nothing at all. Laughter, followed by immediate self-hatred for the light emotion.
She felt it too, and she didn’t know which version of grief was real, or which one she was supposed to feel.
He was at a loss for words. She saw through his armor. That being happy, even for a moment, was forgetting; forgiving.
“There’s no right way,” he said. “You’re carrying the burden of your parents’ deaths, but not letting it stop you from healing. You haven’t let it swallow you.”
He’d heard her speaking to her parents when she assumed no one was listening.
Little things like what she’d done that day, her hopes that they were proud of her.
He should’ve stopped listening to those private moments, but he couldn’t.
He was mesmerized by her words. She didn’t erase them from her life but carried them with her.
“I wouldn’t view my actions as the healthy way to move on with your life,” he muttered.
Her eyes were bright with interest—that same sharp curiosity she had when the others taught her something new. “Who hurt you?”
Pain washed through him, but not as strongly as it once had. Time had healed his wounds, but he’d held onto them.
He looked at Iliana. Here she was, with grief and stress, worry and pain, and she was thriving. She’d asked him if she’d been grieving wrong, but he now knew his words to her had been a lie. There was a right and a wrong way to grieve, and he’d been the one to screw that up.
He’d rarely spoken to anyone about his retreat from the world, but he wanted to share that with her. To explain, even though she wouldn’t remember once she woke. “My wife used me. Used my love, my name, my power. I didn’t see it until it was too late.”