Chapter Sixty-One #2
Minthe trembled, her lips opening and closing as she fought for the right thing to say. “She’ll never love you. She’s a rose in a graveyard, doomed to wilt. She doesn’t belong here. Her presence is an insult to us all!”
His answering smile was chilling. As absolute as death itself, and just as terrifyingly final.
“You were warned before, Minthe.” The ground quaked, making her clutch the nearest dead, blackened tree for support.
“When I’m finished with you, even the Fates themselves won’t find the remains of your thread.
” The black waters of the Acheron churned, black glinting into a frothing mist that surged forward with a hiss.
Minthe’s hand shook, coming forward to reveal a dagger. Even as the river betrayed her, reached for her, she found her legs under her, running forward with a wrath all her own. The river would reach her, but she would reach us too.
“If you won’t be mine, then she won’t have you either!”
Her dagger flew through the air, tumbling end over end, towards Hades’ chest. One hand had Hades controlling the Acheron, and the other hand held me flush to him. Why wasn’t he letting go?
It was in my desperation to keep him safe that I shattered. It wasn’t the breaking of a single part of me, but a shattering of everything I was. The dagger glinted black as it surged. Magic didn’t just channel through me—it ripped.
I screamed as my magic undid me. The ground, dead and barren before, answered. It pulsed with a strange sensation, an echo. Not alive, but not entirely dead. Sentient.
Please, I begged it. If I only used magic here once, let it be now.
The dagger clattered the ground from the force of my magic at last breaking through, skittering into the sands at Hades’ feet.
Minthe’s scream broke into a horrid gurgle as her body folded over and over, collapsing inward.
Her flawless ivory skin morphed, turning to stalk and petals.
Her hair that was always so painstakingly neat, unraveled into stems. Her voice faded into an angry hiss and then a horrid silence.
What fell before us at our feet was not a female nymph, but a heap of mint, bitter and sharp in the crackling air.
The only sound was the roar of the Acheron which echoed in my ears as it receded at Hades’ command, the tension between us throbbing like a wound.
I staggered back, staring back and forth between my trembling hands and what remained of Minthe.
My knees buckled. “I killed her—I’m so sorry.
Oh, gods—” I was too afraid to see Hades’ expression.
If he’d been so angry on my behalf, what would he think of me killing someone he had once shared a connection with?
What did I think of killing someone? What will I feel when the cold numbness wears off? I could feel the tempest of emotion surging beneath the cloak of my shock in wild extremes.
Hades knelt before me, a hand grasping mine gently, pulling me into him, steadying me.
“You didn’t kill her.” His voice was a low rumble like the ebb and flow of the river as it finally calmed. I realized I’d been saying it over and over again, a morbid mantra.
I sobbed. “I did. I lost control. My magic—” How did my magic work?
“What you did was give her mercy she didn’t deserve.
” His gaze was sharp and still glinting with violence when he looked at the heap of mint on the ground, its roots already turning brown.
“I would have flayed her soul for what she tried to do to you. She deserved the worst kind of torture. Compared to my vision, this is… kind.”
“Kind?” I choked.
Hades turned toward me. I didn’t miss the way his eyes, so violently angry, softened entirely when they met mine. His thumb brushed my tears away with a gentle caress.
“She raised a blade to you. And to me. Yes, you were kind. I would have left her in the worst sort of agony my magic could afford for eternity. Her end would not be in silence. And I would have enjoyed it. Your end was kind, indeed. An ending she would have begged for and never received had it been me doling out her punishment.”
“Gods.” My breath hitched on the horror of what he’d said. “You mean that.”
“Of course I mean it.” His shadows writhed like living things around us, thrumming the air. “She wanted to root into my life. And yours. I’d say she got exactly what she wanted.” He helped me to my feet. “Forever under your hand, your heel, and your whim. A fitting punishment, is it not?”
Gods, he sounded so proud. There were two halves of me. One half that blistered under the weight of Minthe’s demise. And one that savored it. Reveled in it.
That part of me scared me.
“I made her into a plant.” My inhale stalled in my throat. I was wholly uncertain whether to cry or laugh at the irony.
His lip curled up, just barely, but it was there. “You made her useful for the first time in her existence.” Hades’s tone cut like the fall of a guillotine finding its mark. Pointed. Abrupt. Final.
“I didn’t want this.” My eyes found Minthe again. “This isn’t me. I didn’t even know I could.”
Hades’ mouth pressed to my temple, sending a rush of warmth in my chest, thawing the ice there. “Then allow me to want it for you. Allow me to bear it. To relish it on your behalf.” His voice was a growl. “You didn’t punish her, little shadow. You survived her.”
“How did you know to come?” I asked.
“The Acheron is a river of laws above almost all else. When Minthe trapped you, a living soul on its banks, it cried out in fury. It called to its master to bear witness.” His eyes darkened, trailing to Minthe.
“And on some level, I could feel you. Your fear. I think the Acheron amplified your call.”
“Thank you,” I whispered. “And I’m sorry. I only came here because I thought you were in trouble. I wanted to help you, not hinder you.”
Hades’ forehead pressed to mine, a relieved chuckle escaping him. “You are many things, Persephone. A hinderance is not one of them. But do me a favor, don’t come down here again.”
“It was Minthe.” I admitted. “She sent a specter with a Hades Whisper. I thought you needed help. I didn’t mean to defy your orders.”
When his lips collided with mine, I was too exhausted, too raw, to do anything but fold into him and kiss him back.
There was no room for light, for teasing, or for sweetness.
This was raw, edged with a primal realness I’d never before experienced.
He flooded every sense, bombarded every facet of me, until I didn’t know where he ended and I began.
His lips moved against mine with the edge of someone who had fought being alone for so long and lost. His groan of satisfaction at my hands fisting in his black robes to pull him closer had a smile tugging at my lips and elation bursting in my chest when he dragged me against the hard plains of his body in turn.
He was the darkness to my light. He was the storm that fed the spring. The death that must eventually take, and I was the spring, the life that gives.
We were the cycle that continued in light and darkness, without end, and in him I found infinity.