7. Chapter 7
Chapter seven
Corre
S omething wasn’t right. A twitch or rogue muscle in her mind was tugging her toward Phineas—toward pain. Her gut coiled, and the blood cooled in her veins. Did something happen?
She’d managed to stay in her room for about an hour, genuinely trying to keep the promise she’d made to her mother, but the soft, teal duvet covering her restless body suddenly left her suffocated. Her room was now too small, too confining.
I have to get out of here . I have to get to Phineas.
She pushed the covers away and slipped on a pair of gold-trimmed slippers that matched her shimmering sun-colored nightgown. It might not be the right outfit to fight in if something really was wrong, but there was no time to change. She had to hurry. The feeling was growing. Pain squeezed her chest as she carefully opened the window beside her bed. Hopefully her mother wouldn’t check on her.
Corre slid out the window, her dress snaking down the side of the cottage on her way down. As soon as her impractical shoes touched the soft soil below, she took off toward Phineas’s house. Following the feeling, she pumped her arms and ran as quickly as her long legs could take her. His house was inconveniently far away, past Athena’s place deep in the woods. But she was making good time.
The setting sun glazed the trees with a deep orange shimmering through rustling leaves. Corre had to squint to where she was going as she entered the forest and followed the uneven trail. Jagged rocks and snapped branches jutting out of clods of mud made for great tripping hazards, and it didn’t help that her shoes were already slick with silk.
She dodged and jumped over every obstacle, refusing to stop. Even when her lungs burned, she kept going. It wasn’t until a figure appeared in the distance that she slowed to a halt.
Her abrupt stop was a little too abrupt and sent her falling to the ground onto a rough patch of thorny brush. She looked up at the figure in the distance, narrowing her eyes to get a better look at the approaching god.
Her eyes widened when she saw who it was. Phineas .
His face was warped in pain as he raced toward her. Sweat leaked from his temples like a cracked fountain, sliding down his tightened jaw.
“Corre!” His eyes were wild, frenzied, and bloodshot.
“Phineas!” she gasped, wiping the mud off her shins and grabbing his arms when he finally made it to her. “What happened to you?” She scanned his face and body until realizing the only sign of distress came from his face. He had clearly been injured. But how? There were no marks or external signs of damage, other than his eyes.
“It was him,” he said, gripping her biceps “Hades.”
“What?” The word came out in a strained whisper. Like all the air had been sucked out of her lungs in a single moment.
“Yes. Now, go! He’s coming for you next.”
“What? Why? How did he find you?”
“I-I think it was a mistake—” he started, but something held him back.
Corre shook her head. “What are you talking about?”
He looked up at her, pain still oozing from his bloodshot eyes. “I went to train with Athena, but when I got there, he tossed her to the ground. At first, he didn’t see me, but when he did…I guess he decided to get information out of me.” His face tightened. “About you.”
An unsettling weight pushed deep into her stomach. “Did you tell him anything?”
“Of course not! You know I would never do that to you. But…he used a power from his mind or something. It was horrible. And he saw things. I don’t know what, but he knows where you are now. You have to get out of here before he finds you.”
Corre tried to say something, but Phineas grabbed her by the wrist and led her in the other direction. “You have to hide. Go farther into the woods. I’ll stay here to make sure Berenice is safe.”
The cool night air bit at Corre’s skin. Her mind was numb, her forehead cold and fuzzy. Her body was limp as Phineas led her deeper into the forest, but she needed to get it together. She had to let him go. The thought of her mother getting caught in the crossfire made her stomach ache.
“Phin,” she said hurriedly. “Go into my room through my window. It’s open.” When he didn’t move, she spoke louder. “Go now! Please .” Blood pounded in her ears.
At first, he didn’t move. Then he nodded and said, “Be safe, Corre.”
“Don’t worry about me. Just get to my mother and make sure Hades goes nowhere near her.” If he responded, she didn’t hear it. The pounding in her ears was overwhelming now. The look in Phineas’s eyes was more than enough to send her racing into the woods. But the thought of her mother made her wish she could go back home.
She needed to trust Phineas, though, so she didn’t look back. Pumping her arms and legs in a new direction, she sprinted as fast as she could into the middle of the wood. A place that would hopefully offer her refuge until Theron gave up and returned to the Underworld.
Theron
“Where is she?” Theron cried to the new arrival at Athena’s cottage. He’d been working his way through the god’s senses and thoughts.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” the god lied, but his mind was weak. Theron could see her. The vision of the goddess was clearer this time, but he still couldn’t make out her face or where she might be. He pushed harder into Athena’s pupil’s mind. Who was this girl, and where could he find her? So far, all he could make out was the back of her head. The glimmer of a gown beneath rosy hair. He pushed harder.
The god at his feet howled in pain, and something pulled at Theron’s chest. A sick feeling pooled through his gut. He ignored it. He needed this. There was something about this girl. She was important. Significant. Someone his master needed to know about. So far, he’d encountered Athena and this pupil of hers, but this goddess…the one surrounded by a field of flowers…she had to be Persephone. A goddess of light and life. She was everything he was not. Although he didn’t relish the idea of meeting someone so sickeningly antagonistic to him, he had to pursue her for his master.
Theron intensified his concentration, his temples throbbing. Finally, he saw who the god was trying to protect. A place materialized in the young Hades’ mind. A cottage surrounded by a sea of flowers. A plain, gray-stoned home with a cone-like rooftop. The goddess was there, sliding from an exit on the side of the house and falling gently into the grass.
He needed more information. Where was this place? His powers searched the other god’s senses, deciphering the thoughts made by these strange vibrations. He couldn’t dive directly into someone else’s thoughts without first sensing what they were made of, and then they’d materialize in his mind. It was a skill that took years of grueling training—training that was proving to be worth the pain.
Once he figured out that person’s vibrations—deciphered what they were made of and understood their mind’s movements—he could peer more clearly into their minds. And he had successfully unlocked what was in Athena’s pupil who’d come at just the right time.
The vision shifted, and he saw a front door. Trees on every side. Endless entrances to woods. This house was in a large clearing in what appeared to be the center of a forest, like the eye of a lively storm. But as the door of the cottage opened and the flowers faded away, he saw something else.
A bright flash of light, then pitch-black. Like a tangible night had been draped over the sun. An unsettling coldness filled his body, and there was a scream. It wasn’t from this god, and it wasn’t from anyone in this vision. It was somewhere else. Just like it had been at the village.
He winced.
The loss of focus wrenched him from the young man’s thoughts and senses, and he was back. In a separate wood—from what he could gather—from where he needed to be. But he would soon find her, this flower girl.
“You’re a monster!” Athena’s pupil cried, his round, dark eyes brimmed with fury. Theron studied him carefully. The god was weak but not limp. His muscles were toned enough to indicate he trained, but he had the unblemished skin and uncalloused hands of someone who never knew real pain. The epitome of Olympian luxury.
Theron straightened and wiped the sweat from his face. “Consider this your lucky day. Leave now, and I won’t hurt you further.”
The panting god studied him as his shoulders rose and fell like an ebbing wave. As soon as sense knocked into him, he shot up and ran off. Theron watched him flee in a different direction from the one he’d come from. The young Hades smirked. If the image of a cottage hadn’t been clear, he could have simply followed the god. And why shouldn’t he? It only seemed smart. Time-efficient.
He needed to be strategic.
His servants couldn’t be around him. They would get him caught more easily. They’d only slow him down anyway. He turned to them. “Return to Tartarus. I’ll take it from here.”
“But, sire—”
“Go!” Theron yelled, and the demons scattered.
As their humped frames fell into the distance, Theron returned his attention to the escaping god. His boots scraped against the cobblestones that led to Athena’s house—the goddess now a fainted heap at the end of the path. He weaved through the mass of trees, keeping his mind firm on Athena’s pupil—the signals emanating from his thoughts. He could sense his presence and let it direct him down the winding wood.
As he continued to focus, and as flashes from the young man’s mind returned to his own, something tightened in his bones. An odd, unpleasant sensation.
He growled and kept his focus. She had to be Persephone. She was too young to be Demeter, from what he could tell. But he needed to see her—to peer into her mind and feel out her powers—to know for certain.
Suddenly, the god’s presence vanished. Theron twisted to spot any sign of him, but there was nothing. Twigs and muck cracked and squelched beneath his thick, black boots as he crept toward one end of the forest. There was something there—someone. First, it was a feeling, and then a twin cracking of sticks caught his attention. He froze. Peering around a stalky tree, he heard rustling.
He crept closer, avoiding any possible detection. A beast stalking its prey. He grabbed hold of the thick tree trunk blocking his view and swung around, launching himself at the source of the noise. His shoulders fell when all that was there was a thin fawn hobbling away.
Sighing, and swiping a large hand through his thick, inky black hair, Theron closed his eyes, searching for that male god. A vision materialized. The young god turned toward a clearing. His eyes shot open, and the feeling thickened. Before the sensation dissipated, he made a beeline to his right and weaved through the mass of trees until he reached the end of the forest’s gaping mouth. And then the feeling stopped, something else taking its place.
That’s when he saw her.
Not in person, but in a clear vision in his mind. In a clearing by that cottage. A waif of a goddess next to Athena’s male pupil. He could only see her outline, but he now knew where to go.
Theron’s lips curled into a wicked smile.
“I have you, Persephone.”
Jumping off a boulder, the young Hades hastened through the trees. Their paths would meet naturally. He just needed to feel out for her.
He kept his mind open but guarded, so he could feel her but she couldn’t feel him. Not that she could have his skill, but he couldn’t be too careful.
Dodging shrubs, rocks, and more hobbling animals, Theron raced through the maze of the forest, narrowly avoiding smacking into trees at every turn, his cape snagging onto ragged bark, and pushing himself off others. He was getting closer. Her life force was fixed in his mind now, coursing through his veins. It wouldn’t be long. Excitement fizzed through him. Her power was strong. Appealing. Delicious. There was something … different about her, and he would find out what it was.
His boots splashed in a thick puddle of mud, squishing as they un-suctioned from the ground, and then he saw it—an enormous boulder next to a tree as tall as a double-story structure. It was wide enough to conceal the body of a slender, young goddess, who’d clearly just been running. Hiding.
His heart raced, but his pace slowed. The last thing he wanted was to have come all this way only for her to hear him and escape before he caught her. He crept closer, slow and calculated, until he made it to the large rock, his gloved fingers pressed against its smooth slope. With one more step, he caught a glimpse of her. The rosy, golden knot tied on the back of her head and the shape of her arm.
A smug, self-satisfied smile broke across his long face. There she was—just one jump away. He had her.
As he made that one last leap, she turned enough for him to glimpse the side of her face, and his foot slipped. He couldn’t catch himself, even with his powers. Usually, his mind was quicker than that. He never so much as tripped. His mind was too fast, too refined. The powers that flowed so effortlessly through him always kept him from hitting the ground. But something about her made his mind fill with static.
There was a vulnerability on her face as she turned to survey the area. A smattering of freckles covered the delicate bridge of her nose. He couldn’t see her entire face, but he saw enough. Maybe too much. Did all goddesses look like that?
No. Of course not. He’d seen many today, and none of them had come close.
He repressed a grunt and got to his feet, hoping she hadn’t heard him, but as he regained his footing, he heard her voice, shaky and loud, calling out from behind the tree. “Who’s there?” Her voice was melodic. Bold. He saw beyond the facade.
Theron took a deep breath and pushed himself over the lip in the ground, planting his feet on the grass level with the top of the boulder. The goddess was still partially hidden behind a tree’s thick trunk. “You sound so brave,” he teased, slowly moving toward her. He could see the sharp outline of her shoulder and the flutter of a shimmering gown. It glinted in the rising moonlight streaming through the trees, like an ethereal blanket of stars.
She turned to face him. And he stopped.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said, her voice low and steady.
Theron wanted to say something back. Banter. Threaten her. Anything. But his throat went dry. The stream of silver from the stars illuminated every beautiful feature on the goddess’s face. The freckles dusting her nose and cheekbones. The fullness of her lips. The soft curves of her body, covered only by that light piece of glittering cloth. The longer he looked at her, the more his skin burned in a way he’d never felt before.
When she lifted one of her thin eyebrows, he frantically gathered his thoughts. He couldn’t let her have the upper hand. She needed to know that no one was more powerful than the God of the Underworld.
He mustered a smirk. “Is that so?” He laughed softly. “You really aren’t afraid of me?” He stepped closer. The quickness of her breath was evident through the shallow movements of her chest.
She stepped away when he got too close, but as she staggered back, a gust of wind rippled through her dress. She caught the cloth but fell back against the tree, not before a branch clawed its way down one side of the skirt.
Theron glanced down at the slit in her gown, and that warm spark in his veins relit at the smooth, sun-kissed glow of her exposed skin. As the burning filled his body, he wondered what kind of power this was. Did the goddess Persephone have powers that could shake him like this? Make him burn? Make his heart race?
His eyes widened when he noticed the very thing he’d expected from the beginning. The thing that reassured him that he was still in control: her legs were shaking. His lips once again curled into a wicked smile. She was in the palm of his hand.
He took the steps necessary to close the gap between them. With her back against the tree, she had nowhere to run. A smarter goddess would have run—tried to, anyway—but she stood her ground, glaring up at him, never once looking away. There was something strong about her—a strength he hadn’t seen in anyone since stepping out of Tartarus and into this pathetic land of the living.
She might be brave, but she was incredibly stupid.
His massive frame towered over her, the shadow of his body swallowing her up as he peered down into her eyes. They held a foolishly harsh glare, which stayed fixed beneath her knitted brows. The strikingly vibrant green that swirled in the earthy brown-gold of her eyes only contributed to the enigmatic glow about her. But still, she was a fool.
“Why do you not flee before me?”
“L-like I said,” She cleared her throat. “I’m not afraid of you.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I think you know that I see through you. That I won’t feed on such a lie.” His voice had fallen into almost a whisper as the space closed between them, her body almost touching his, and again, that fire tore through him.
“I don’t care what you think. I’m not afraid of you, and I would appreciate you leaving Mt. Olympus immediately.”
His smile dropped. “What?”
She squared her shoulders and pushed herself away from the tree. Looking straight up into his eyes, she said, “I want you to leave.” There was no more tremor in her voice. Her body wasn’t shaking. His eyes fell to her leg to be sure, but she swiftly covered it up. “You’ve overstayed your welcome here.”
Fury shot up his chest. “How dare you.” He stepped toward her again, but she backed away, her eyes fixed on his, completely unwavering. “Do you know who you’re talking to?”
“Yes. Theron, God of the Underworld. I know all about you.”
“What could you possibly know about me ?”
“I know that you want everyone to be frightened, but for all we know, you could be completely powerless. A regular—albeit chosen —god like everyone else. Someone who wants to feel important by acting big and tough.”
The fury she’d spiked in him earlier burst into a ferocious storm. He opened his mind and took hold of hers, his power grasping onto her so he could back her up against the tree. “Does this feel like powerlessness to you?” he growled, but she kept her glare steady on his. The frown carved upon his face deepened. “ Well ?”
He made a point not to hurt her. He didn’t want her to think he was a raging animal with no control over himself or his powers. That he was some primitive, barbaric, unrefined beast. He knew a certain lackey in Tartarus who always liked to spread those lies, like a pale spider weaving its slimy web. Appearance mattered. So did control.
He needed the gods and goddesses on Mt. Olympus to know that he had the power to do anything he wanted but that he was also an expert in controlling it and wielding it at his every whim and command.
But he’d be lying to himself if he denied the fact that he was also desperately trying to push his power deeper into this goddess so she could feel his unfathomable strength and raw, unmatched power. To feel that he was greater than any other god on or under Olympus. That he was someone to be both feared and respected.
But her mind was a fortress, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t make out what she was feeling. How could someone like her block that part off from him? It must be because I’m holding back , he thought, so he pushed a little harder into her mind. A slight shock of excitement sizzled through him at the idea of exploring her thoughts. The start of an image flashed before his mind for a spark of a moment before they turned to black, and he was blocked off again. Like he’d run into a thick, icy wall.
His eyes darted to hers. “What are you doing?” Lines formed on her forehead. He let out a low growl and tried harder, pushing as much as he could without making her feel any pain.
That thick wall started to crack.
When he saw that field of flowers pop into his head, he knew he was back in, but it only lasted another instant. This time, she ripped herself away from his mental grasp and was able to back out of his shadow. “I said, leave !”
His jaw slowly dropped. Her eyes were ablaze—two unmatchable, fiery stones—and her stance was strong. She’d defied him, both in mind and body.
“Who are you, really ? Surely, you’re not Persephone. You’re no Goddess of Life and Nature. You’re surely one of war. Of combat or wisdom, or some other source of strength.”
Her eyebrows knitted together again. “How did you know that I’m Persephone?” Success soared in his chest.
“I know all about you, too, you know.” He lowered his face to be closer to hers. “I’ve seen you in the thoughts of your friends.” Her lips parted slightly. He momentarily faltered. Quickly recovering, he continued, “And now I know you even more. I’ve felt your strength. I know your mind.”
“You know nothing ,” she hissed. The words escaped her mouth in rushes of breath against his throat. Her eyes shot daggers into his. Something in his stomach flipped, and that now-familiar burning intensified.
It was hard for him to breathe, but he made himself stay composed. “We’ll see about that.” They stared at each other, both refusing to be the first to look away. It wasn’t until Theron noticed the darkening sky that he initiated the break.
Thanatos’s angry, deformed face crossed his mind, along with the familiar pain of the deity’s claws striking his flesh. Fear curdled in Theron’s stomach. He had to go.
But . . .
He studied the goddess’s face. She watched him carefully, panting and glistening with a thin layer of sweat. Stray hairs had come loose from the knot fastened at the base of her skull, now framing her face in ice-pink tresses. Her stance didn’t waver. No matter how much he looked at her. No matter what he did or said, she didn’t falter. All fear was gone from her being.
It made no sense. This was no ordinary goddess.
He needed to know her name. Her true identity. Not just the title she bore.
For Thanatos.
“Who are you?” he pressed. She glowered at him. He took a slow, silent step forward, eyes fixed on her, daring her to answer. After another dangerous minute away from Tartarus, he said, “If you tell me your name, I’ll leave immediately and return to the Underworld.”
She frowned. “Why?”
“Because you’re strong. So…” He lifted his hand and trailed the back of his fingers down her neck. “Brave.”
Her eyelids fluttered, but then she jerked away. “Do you promise you’ll leave?” Color rose to her cheeks.
His mouth twitched into a smile “Of course.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Correlia,” she said, folding her arms. “My name is Correlia.”
Correlia .
“Sire!”
Theron whipped around to see one of his demons bounding toward him.
“Sire! We’re late! Thanatos has called for us!”
Fear simmered in Theron’s chest. “Let’s go. Now .” He did his best to contain the terror rising in his throat. The demon nodded, but it didn’t move. It was waiting for him.
Another feeling Theron didn’t recognize flitted through his chest. It happened when he’d thought of leaving and how he’d likely not return. He turned enough to catch a glimpse of the glistening goddess, that feeling intensifying.
“Sire!”
He snapped his eyes forward. “Y-yes, let’s go,” he said and started his journey back to the Underworld. He wanted to take one last look at the fearless goddess behind him, but he knew his demon might catch something in his eyes that wouldn’t bode well for him. Something Thanatos would surely find out about.
A weakness.
So he kept moving. Kept looking ahead. No matter how much he wanted to see that look of fire in her eyes, just one more time.