Chapter 26
Istared at Hades, my mind spinning. He was a god. King of the Underworld, Lord of the dead, and he'd just wiped a tear from my cheek.
“Light and life,” I repeated, my stomach feeling like it was filled with butterflies. “Are those things you wanted here, in this place?”
“Not at first. I just wanted you.” Desire skittered through my core at his words, and I saw his eyes flash with something new.
“Damn Aphrodite,” he muttered. I raised my eyebrows at him and he sighed.
“Her music, her power. She always does this at balls, and the smoke can only keep so much of it out. She's powerful.”
“Love is powerful,” I murmured. The side of his mouth quirked up.
“See? That's her power. Making us both... soft.”
“Soft?” That's the last word I would have used to describe him. He was wearing the same clothes as he was before, jeans and a black shirt open at the neck. His skin glowed, and I wanted more than anything in the world to touch it.
“Yes. Soft and... passionate. That's what she does.” I tilted my head, trying to clear the image of him lifting his shirt over his taut chest.
“What do you do?”
“That's a big question.”
“You won't answer any of my others.”
“That's not fair. I've answered loads now.”
He smelled of fire and wood-smoke.
“You smell like campfires,” I told him.
“Do you like it?”
“Yes.” I stepped closer to him, the low beat of the music filtering through to me now, my hips beginning to sway of their own accord. “I don't like that I'm not in control of my body though.”
“Aphrodite's power won't make you do anything you didn't already want to,” he said quietly. I looked up into his face.
His eyes were alive with hunger now, deep and shining and breathtaking. Slowly, I reached up, and touched his jaw. A thrill pulsed right through my whole body, making all my muscles clench and heat pool deliciously inside me.
I wanted him. More than I'd ever wanted anything in my life.
He drew a ragged breath, then his hand was on my face, lifting it to his. Our lips met, and fire exploded in my core. Pleasure engulfed me as his tongue snaked between my lips, and desire so strong that I physically ached completely took me over.
I pushed my hands into his hair, pulling him into me, desperate to taste him. I was standing on my tiptoes to get as close to him as I possibly could, pressing my body hard against his.
His arm wrapped around my back and then he was lifting me, his lips moving from mine and kissing hungrily along my jaw, down my throat. I tipped my head back as I wrapped my legs tightly around his waist, the pleasure from his touch making me tremble.
Waves of need pounded between my thighs, and I couldn't think straight as I entwined my fingers in his hair, his lips moving back up my neck.
“I missed you,” he murmured into my skin. “Gods, I missed you.” A small moan escaped me, even as part of me railed against the fact that he wasn't kissing me for the first time, but I had no recollection of ever having done this before.
“I need you,” I gasped. And it was true. At that moment, I would have done anything in the world to feel him inside me, to meld his body with my own, to find a release for this ferocious desire.
Abruptly, he pulled back, his eyes slightly wild as they met mine.
“But you don't love me.”
I stared into his face. The desire I felt for him went as deep as any feeling I'd ever experienced, but love? No.
I didn't love him. I barely knew him. And what I did know was conflicted and confusing.
I had clearly left too long a pause, as his expression hardened, and he lifted me from his waist, setting me back on my sandals unsteadily. Confusion rolled through me. “Of course you don't. You are not the woman I married. You are someone new.”
I blinked, my physical response to him making it impossible to work out his words properly.
“I'm Persephone,” I said thickly.
“We must not do this to ourselves. You can't stay here and this would be folly.”
“What?” I felt like I'd been punched in the gut, a hollow feeling of loss and rejection making anger spike inside me, fueled by the passion still making my pulse race. “You're mad at me because I don't love you? A man I've just met? A man surrounded by death?”
His lips parted and something jet black flashed in his silver eyes. I took a step backwards before I realized I had, the hair on my arms standing up as the temperature plummeted. It's cold when I'm scaring on purpose, he had told me.
“And that, little human, is why you can not stay,” he hissed. And I mean hissed, as though he were actually a reptile.
The dark smoke around us billowed suddenly, and rushed back towards him, the music and sound of the party smashing into me like a physical hammer.
“Hades!” I shouted, but it was too late. He had vanished.
Unspent desire and tension ripped through me, and I barely contained the scream trying to crawl its way out of my throat as Hecate stumbled towards me.
“I know that smoke bubble,” she slurred. “You and Hades were getting it ooooon.” She waggled her eyebrows at me, a stupid grin on her face.
“Are you drunk?”
“Yep.”
I rubbed my hands across my face, trying to dispel the lingering taste of Hades, the little pulses of excitement still rippling through me, and the surges of anger and fear that had followed them.
“Hecate, tell me what happened before. Why did I leave? Why did the gods take away all my memories?”
“Persy, please—” she started but I shouted over her.
“Hecate, I'm fucking serious, I've had enough!”
Her face morphed into a frown and she put one hand on her hip.
“It didn't go well with lover-boy then,” she said eventually. I gritted my teeth, exasperation making me feel like my body wasn't big enough to contain what I was feeling. I was ready to fucking explode.
“Tell. Me. What. Happened.” I spat the words out one by one, and Hecate grimaced.
“Alright. But if Hades—” her words were cut off abruptly by the sound of the gong.
“No! No, no, no!” But the commentator's voice bellowed across my fury.
“Is everybody ready for the third and final test? This one's a really good one, I promise you! Where is the lovely lady? Come on over Persephone!”
I closed my eyes, trying desperately to slow my heart rate, to calm down. One more test. Just one more. I had to do this, or some poor bastard would drown in sand. But after that, I wasn't giving up until somebody told me what I needed to know.
I walked slowly and serenely to the middle of the room, trying to look the complete opposite of how I felt. A new hourglass had appeared next to the first two.
It was as large as the first one, and currently empty.
I glared at it. And this is why you can't love him, I reminded myself.
He doesn't give a shit about people dying.
You still want to fuck him though, the contrary part of me chimed in.
Stupid damn bad-boy attraction. But I knew, deep down, that it was so much more than that.
I'd never felt anything this intense before in my life.
“So, are you ready?” the commentator asked me, from where he stood by the hourglass. I nodded at him. It didn't matter one jot if I wasn't. “For your third test—” he began, but a resounding crash drowned him out, and everyone snapped their attention to the source of the noise.
From the darkness Erebus had been guarding earlier came a flash of orange fire, and a distant scream.
Kitchen fire, was my first instinct but then I remembered we were in a world of gods and magic.
Kitchen fires wouldn't cause this much disruption, would they?
There was another flash of fire, then a bird erupted from the shadows and I wasn't the only one who gasped.
Its wingspan was massive, easily three times my size, but that wasn't what was most attention grabbing.
The whole creature was on fire.
It wasn't a bird at all, it was a phoenix, I realized.
With a mighty beat of its wings all the tablecloths nearest it burst into flame, and the people standing closest darted out of the way.
There was a white flash and Hades' smoke form suddenly appeared in the middle of the room, an arm held high.
The phoenix froze in mid beat of its wings, and my heart leaped into my throat.
“What is the meaning of this?” Hades roared. “This was not the Trial we agreed upon!” There was another flash of white, and Zeus appeared next to him, his eyes alive with crackling purple lightning.
“Oh but this is much, much better! It appears you have a gatecrasher, big brother. I forbid you to get involved,” he sneered. The temperature plummeted.
“You forbid me to deal with trespassers in my own realm? Who do you think you are?” Hades hissed.
“I am your King,” Zeus replied, growing fast so that he towered over Hades. “Fill the hourglass! Persephone's new test is to rid her guests of this pest!”
“What?!” I exclaimed, and spun to see a tiny form in the hourglass. I swear my heart stopped beating for a second as I recognized the figure.
It was Skop.