Chapter Seventy-One
Fallyn
My mood remained south of foul after another hour on my feet.
Ash was kind enough—or smart enough—to give me space, seeming to understand his safety was in peril if he didn’t, though that didn’t stop the strange, sidelong glances from time to time.
Our intimate time in the grassy knoll had done little to soften my anger at him.
He’d lied to me about everything, about who he was.
The only thing he’d been forced to forget was me.
He knew exactly who he was, he’d had every opportunity to come clean.
Perhaps I should have known. His other face, his fighting ability, his strength and stamina, the fact that the average mortal forged blades couldn’t kill him.
The Fates must have been howling with laughter at me, throwing the signs in my face, and I hadn’t known. Was I angrier at myself or Ash?
Not Ash, I reminded myself, not for the first time.
Hades. God of the dead. King of the Underworld.
His true name, his title, his very being felt like a weight that settled over me like the snow that blanketed the mountains to the north.
Hecate said my memories would return slowly, but guilt was like an acid in my stomach.
The look on his face when his memories returned was nothing short of agonizing.
The way he fell to his knees, my name on his lips.
My name, yet not.
This entire life I’d been Fallyn, but snippets of memories I couldn’t fully glimpse slipped through the fingers of my mind like smoke.
I could hear the truth of people I loved calling me Persephone.
It rattled my soul with each pass of memory, each voice different, each voice someone who loved me that I couldn’t remember.
They were flickers of a fire, brief and intangible.
How was I supposed to move forward as two people?
Did Hades care about me as Fallyn? Or did he only want Persephone? Were we even different people?
Not even people. Persephone was a goddess of Olympus. How the fuck was I supposed to be that?
“It’s not like you to be so quiet.” Hades’ voice was a battering ram against my thoughts after a long period of silence as he fell cautiously into step with me.
I responded only by increasing my pace, desperate to put distance between us.
Several moments of silence went on as he waited for me to speak.
Blissful, peaceful silence that spoiled, turning awkward for no reason in particular.
As if the moment had soured, like fruit past its prime.
His soft chuckle preceded his halted steps.
“So that’s how it’s going to be, is it?” But a shriek erupted from me, the harsh bark of the tree suddenly digging into the skin of my back and Hades filling my field of vision. “Cut the shit.”
“Fuck you.” The obscenity fell from my lips, the falsehood of it tearing into my chest with a poignant ache. “I fucking hate you.”
“What exactly do you hate?” His words, his expression, was so carefully guarded in a way that made my ribs constrict painfully enough to bring tears to my eyes.
“You’re the god of the dead. King of the Underworld. When exactly were you going to tell me? How many times had you seen me hurting over my father? Or Thaddeus? I’m so angry—”
“What exactly would you like me to have done?” he snapped.
His voice didn’t raise but his tone was enough to cut the hardest of metals.
“I’m in exile, same as you. I have no dominion over the Underworld right now.
Not until this curse lifts. Do you get it now?
Why I couldn’t help you? Why couldn’t check on them?
I would have put them in the Elysian Fields for you.
I would have pried them out of whatever afterlife they’d given themselves, knowing that they could never have imagined the paradise I would have given them for you. ”
At my gasp, his eyes narrowed on mine. I tried to push him away, but he dug his heels in, further pinning me against the tree as I struggled.
My hands sought to clash against his face, his shoulders, anywhere I could, but his hands grappled with mine, winning the fight to pin them harmlessly to the tree at my back.
“You talk a big game. That you hate me. But I’m here to tell you that you’re a bad liar, little shadow.
You don’t dislike me. You dislike that you don’t dislike me.
And you’re angry at yourself. I think I got a little closer than you anticipated, maybe even closer than you’ve allowed anyone else, am I right?
” Tears fell in messy torrents as the fight left my body and all I could do was stare at Hades as my chest cracked and cleaved into pieces.
“You’re allowed to want me. Fuck, I want you to.
I want you! You don’t have to run from me.
I may be Hades, the king of things that go bump in the night, but I lay all those things at your feet.
Every one of those terrors will die to protect you at my command.
You don’t need to fear the darkness, Fallyn. The darkness fell in love with you.”
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe, air stubbornly refusing to fill my lungs.
My heart pounded in my ears just the same.
His eyes softened. “I know you don’t remember yet.
But I do. I have loved you in every lifetime.
With every name you’ve had. I love you still.
It doesn’t matter if your name is Fallyn, Lore, Diem, Hyacinthe—although your father was kind of a dick to name you that.
I know you’re struggling with who you were versus who you are.
I am uniquely qualified to assure you that you are the same person in every lifetime.
You are every bit as beautiful in each one.
” His voice dropped to a pained whisper.
“I will never be your nightmare, regardless of the name you go by. Fallyn. Persephone. Something else entirely. My thirst for revenge on the Morningstar burned so brightly I saw it even when I closed my eyes. Now I know why. Even the curse couldn’t diminish my eternal love for you.
It could dim my memory of you, but not the feelings. ”
“Hades…” One word. A plea. A reverent admission. A dying wish. Something cold and hard hit my hand, now free from Hades’s grasp, sobering me in an instant. I brought it to me to examine; a dagger. The very one that had held him for decades.
“You don’t believe me? If you’re so afraid, kill me now and be done with it.
I will not be the reason you live your life in fear.
” He guided my now-armed hand to his neck, where the tip of my knife now marred the tender flesh of his throat, his Adam’s apple bobbing—the only tell he gave that he genuinely didn’t know what my next move would be.
And truthfully, I didn’t either. He would kill me.
He had killed me. Over and over. In every lifetime I’d ever lived.
The evidence overwhelmed my mind. My hand tightened around the knife.
His intake of breath sent the blood rushing through my veins.
With a gasp of my own, I wrenched my blade from him, tears forming.
“I can’t.” I was too weak, allowing my heart to win against my better judgement. It was why I didn’t kill him in any of my last lifetime. I couldn’t then, just as I couldn’t bear to now. I met his gaze as steadily as I could. “I won’t.”
“I’ve known you by many names.” His gaze flicked to my lips. “In countless lifetimes. And I have loved you in each of them. And you’ve loved me too. Just as you love me now.”
A beat. Two.
“Yes.”
The admission wasn’t out of my mouth when his lips crashed into mine, merging calm and chaos, bringing my entire awareness to a needlepoint, where all that existed was us.
The world could have ended around us and I’d never have known.
His hands pinned mine above my head, one hand encircling both wrists, leaving room for his other hand to trail lightly down my neck, chest, to my hip, leaving scorching trails tingling in its wake.
“I will rip realms apart for you.” His voice was velvet-smooth as his finger tipped my chin to look at him.
To witness the searing sincerity that lay there so plainly for me.
His lips were right there, his breath tangling with mine, his warmth, his scent enveloping me.
“I will be the villain in anyone’s story.
But not you. Never you. I refuse to be your nightmare. ”
My lips were back on his before I’d made the decision to kiss him.
Hunger unlike anything I’d ever known exploded in my gut, a yearning so deep it could fill an ocean.
Memories sparkled in the back of my mind, the millions of times we’d done this prior, but this felt different.
Defining. Acute agony and sheer bliss simultaneously.
He didn’t hold back. His tongue warred with mine, claiming my mouth as his lips slanted over mine, his hands pulled me flush against him.
It was several heartbeats before I remembered the knife still between us. Still threatening him. Threatening us.
I tried not to see that as foreshadowing.
We were ahead of the curse this time. We could save each other.
I held to that as deftly as I held to him. I would save us both.
Somehow.