Chapter 13 Ophelia
Ophelia
Hades and I fall into a rhythm. One where we don't speak about the way he touched me, about Persephone, or really anything other than the fact that I need to learn how to control my powers.
Which is fucking going nowhere.
"I can't do it," I groan, staring at the rose bush like it's personally offended me. Hecate and Hades have taken turns training me over the past two weeks, cycling through patience and strategy and barely concealed frustration, and none of it is working.
Today, Hades and Thanatos are both hovering, which makes it worse. Two gods. One exasperated florist. Zero results.
I haven't even made a sprout since that night in the greenhouse with Hades, and my inability to access my powers is grating on my very fine nerves.
No one has said anything, mostly, but I know Hades and Hecate are concerned. I can see it in their faces.
Hades is especially quiet about his clear disappointment, but I know he thinks about that night with the cult member often. Security around the house has noticeably increased, and I can feel the tension in the air.
"Clearly," Thanatos drawls, breaking my self-loathing.
I glare at him. I like Thanatos. His dry humor and deep sarcasm are the only things that have made the past few weeks bearable, but I'm not in the mood. I'm exhausted, deeply irate, and horny.
Hades hasn't so much as touched me since the night of the break-in.
"Hecate says your powers are tied to your emotions," Hades says, his voice controlled. "Think about something that makes you angry or..."
He trails off, and I feel two spots of pink flush over my cheeks. The roses have only appeared when I feel desire, specifically, for Hades.
Hades, who spends more of his time locked in his office than in my presence.
Being near him makes me aware of every single nerve ending in my body. It's maddening. And I cannot channel it, which is making me even crazier.
"Maybe we should move on," Thanatos says, his tone going bored.
"To?" I ask.
"Hand-to-hand."
Hades glares, but I perk up.
"Yes. Finally. Something I can actually do." I'm practically buzzing with energy. I've been begging to be trained to fight, and Hades has told me no every single time. Which is fucking irritating.
"No," Hades says again. "I've told you—"
I ignore him, turning my attention to Thanatos. "I've been in some scraps. I could take you."
Thanatos raises an eyebrow. "You think so?"
"I grew up in Vegas," I remind him. "And I held my own against those psycho robe wearers."
He snorts. "Didn't you get kidnapped?"
"It was two on one!"
He looks at me the way you look at a kitten that's just announced it can fight. "Alright then."
Hades exhales loudly, but he doesn't move to stop Thanatos and me as we abandon the rose bush and move to the center of the space.
Thanatos is a surprisingly good teacher.
Patient. Precise. He walks me through basic blocks, fixes my stance, and explains how to use my smaller frame as an advantage rather than a liability.
He's not treating me like a goddess-in-training.
He's treating me like someone who needs real skills for a real threat, and I appreciate it.
It makes me feel useful in a way I haven't in a long time.
"Good," he says, when I get my stance right. "Now. When I come at you, don't think. React."
"Okay."
He moves.
I block the first strike and almost get the second. Almost.
His hand catches my shoulder, not hard, barely more than a tap, but he's a lot bigger than I am, and even a small connect causes me to stumble.
The temperature drops.
Not gradually. Instantly. Like someone flipped a switch on winter.
I look up.
Hades is no longer pretending to look at his phone.
He's looking at Thanatos. And the expression on his face makes the hair on the back of my neck rise. His shadows are moving, slow and deliberate, unfurling from his feet across the floor like something alive. His eyes have gone full gold, like they did when he ripped the cultist apart.
Thanatos goes very still. So do I.
"She slipped," he says carefully. "It was a controlled exercise."
"You hit her."
"It was a tap. Hades, this is training—"
"We're done." The words are quiet. That's what makes them terrifying. "Leave."
Thanatos looks at me. I give him a small nod, because arguing with Hades when his shadows are eating the floor seems inadvisable. Besides, I know I'm not in any danger.
He is, though.
I think.
Hades' jaw is tight.
"It's fine," I say.
Thanatos nods and walks out.
The door clicks shut behind him, and Hades and I are alone in the greenhouse. The temperature is still low. The shadows are still moving. And he's still staring at the door like he's considering what to do about the man who just walked through it.
"He barely touched me," I say.
"I know."
"So why does your entire vibe right now suggest you're considering murder?"
He finally looks at me. The gold is fading, slowly, back to just amber flecks against the dark. "Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine." I stand, brushing off my knee. "I'm better than fine. I was actually making progress before you scared off my training partner."
"I'll find you a different training partner."
"I don't want a different training partner. I want to learn. I want to be able to defend myself, which is what you keep telling me I need to do, and Thanatos was actually helping." I cross my arms. "You can't lose your mind every time someone touches me in a controlled exercise."
"I didn't lose my mind."
I gesture at the shadows still curling along the floor. "Hades."
He looks down. The shadows retract, smoothly, like he's reeling in something on a line. "Better?"
"Marginally." I tilt my head. "Train with me."
He goes still. "What?"
"You heard me. If you're going to send Thanatos away, you take his place." I hold his gaze. "Unless you're worried I'll kick your ass." I pretend to look him up and down. "You are smaller than Thanatos. I'd have a good shot."
It's a provocation and we both know it. Because though Hades is lithe in a way that Thanatos isn't, he's by no means someone I could take.
I watch something move through his expression, calculation, awareness, and something else I can't name.
"Fine."
He moves to the center of the floor, shrugging off his jacket and draping it over a planter. He rolls his sleeves to the elbow, and I try very hard not to notice his forearms. The tattoos. The way he moves like everything is deliberate.
I fail.
He's hot. I hate it. My body responds to him even when I don't want it to.
"Stance," he says.
I focus and get into position. He circles me slowly, and I resist the urge to track him, keeping my eyes forward the way Thanatos taught me.
"Better than I expected," he says, from behind me.
"I told you I could handle myself."
"You told me you grew up in Vegas."
I roll my eyes. "Same thing."
He comes at me from the left, faster than Thanatos, and I barely get my block up in time. The impact travels up my forearm, and I use it, redirecting, spinning away. He lets me.
"Don't let me be generous," he says. "If I give you space, take it as a trap."
"Noted."
He comes again. And again. Each time faster, each time with less warning, and I stop thinking and start reacting. My body remembers what Thanatos taught it. Block, redirect, move. Don't plant your feet. Use the weight of the other person.
I'm not landing anything on him. He's too fast, too controlled, too everything. But I'm not going down either, and that feels like a victory.
Then I catch him.
Not much. My elbow clips his ribs as I redirect a grab, and it's barely anything, but he registers it, a small pause, and I see the surprise in his expression before he smooths it away.
I grin. I can't help it.
"You're smiling," he observes.
"You weren't expecting that."
"No," he admits. "I wasn't."
Something shifts. The sparring was already charged, already something more than exercise, but that admission does something to the air between us.
He comes at me again, and this time when I redirect, I end up inside his guard.
Close. Too close. My back presses against his chest, and neither of us moves.
I press back against him. He's hard, and I hear him hiss against my ear.
I'm not sure which of us closes the distance. Maybe both. Maybe neither, maybe gravity just decides it's done waiting. But then he spins me around, his mouth finding mine, and the greenhouse goes very quiet.
He kisses the way he does everything, controlled and deliberate and completely devastating. One hand comes up to my jaw, tilting my face, and I let him, because I've been thinking about this for weeks and my body has apparently decided my brain no longer has voting rights.
I kiss him back.
And the roses bloom.
I feel them before I see them, that warmth spreading from my chest outward, and when I open my eyes, the cleared space around us is white with flowers. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Climbing the trellis, curling up the glass walls, filling the air with something sweet and impossible.
Hades pulls back slightly, looking at them. Then at me.
And something in his expression breaks the moment.
It's too much. Too reverent. Too layered with three thousand years of wanting someone who is not me.
I step back. The roses halt their growth and begin to wither.
"Ophelia—"
"Don't." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "I need you to be honest with me."
"I am being—"
"Who are you kissing right now?" I hold his gaze. "Because I need you to be sure. I need you to know. Not her. Not the memory of her." I press my hand against my chest, trying to ease the ache there.
He goes very still.
And then, slowly, his expression closes. Not angry. Something worse. Controlled. Careful. Like he's putting something away somewhere I can't reach.
"I should let you rest."
It lands like a door shutting.
"Right," I say, because what else is there. "Sure."
He picks up his jacket from the planter, rolls his sleeves back down, and doesn't look at me.
"You did a good job today," he says, as though that is somehow going to make things better.
Then he's gone.
I stand in the middle of the greenhouse, surrounded by dead flowers I grew without trying, my lips still warm from his mouth, and I hate how much that last line almost undid me.
Almost.
My hands are shaking.
And I stand there for a long time, listening to the silence he left behind, trying to figure out when exactly this stopped being just another stop on my train of survival.
Trying to figure out when I started hoping it might be the last one.