8. Chapter 8
Chapter eight
Corre
C orre couldn’t believe what had just happened. She could still feel his breath hot against her skin and the touch of his hand sliding down the slope of her neck. A blazing sizzle skated up her back. Heat rose to her cheeks.
Theron, the God of the Underworld, was not what she’d expected.
For the first few minutes after his abrupt departure, she couldn’t move. Her feet rooted themselves into the earth as she struggled to process it all. He was no monster disfigured from years of torment in the realm of death and decay. He was … captivating . Attractive.
Her mind lingered on the pitch-blackness of his hair and how it fell in waves almost to his shoulders—his incredibly broad shoulders. He wasn’t withered and ghoulish. He was well over six feet tall, and strong, with taut muscles that flexed when he moved. She thought of the way he’d inched toward her, his dark eyes fixed on hers. Of the deep richness of his voice. The alluring air about him that had made her torn between wanting him to go and begging him to stay.
Of course she didn’t want him to stay. He was evil. Monstrous. The lowest of the low. He’d dug his way into her friend’s mind and sought her out. Hunted her. He’d entered her mind, pushing her against the tree with careful precision. Maybe with a slight tenderness, like he was holding back. It didn’t hurt. It was almost intimate . His body was so close to hers.
A feeling like ice prickled her nerves, slipping through her veins. With a sharp inhale, she pushed the thoughts of him away. Before she could entertain the confusion in her mind, she flipped around and started home She ignored the exciting sensations swirling through her body at the thought of him. The heat burning her flesh.
He’s a monster , she chastised herself. He wanted nothing more than to get information out of me, like he did to Phineas. That’s all.
Still, she couldn’t rid her thoughts of him—couldn’t peel him from her mind and abandon the feelings spiking up her body and snaking down her back.
Instead, she focused on the anger in his eyes and the harshness of his speech. On his disregard for anyone other than himself.
But why had he let her go? He had every opportunity to question her—to interrogate her the way he’d tormented Phineas. He could have tortured her for answers, but he’d only asked for her name. And then he let her go. Why? Was it wrong that she’d given it to him?
By the time Corre made it to the clearing where her cottage sat tucked away from the world, the sky’s warm purple deepened, rising above the earth in twilight. There was a stillness in the air that only accompanied this time of night, when the moon rose so boldly in the sky. A silence, as if she was the only soul in existence, wandering the earth in the space between life and death. As if there was a time set aside for the worlds of the living and the dead to commune, in those very brief moments before the dawn of a new day began.
Maybe Theron had taken with him the world of the dead as he wandered Mt. Olympus. Maybe he breathed in this air the same as Correlia, in these quiet moments of stillness.
Or maybe it was nothing. Just a passing hour before the world finally woke.
Corre’s hand found the doorknob and slowly, quietly, she turned it. With one step, she crept into the entryway. A bright light illuminated the home before she could get her other foot in the door. When the fuzzes from the sudden contrast fled her eyes, she was left gaping at her mother’s angry expression.
“H-hi—”
“Correlia! How could you be so foolish?!”
“Mother, I—”
“No!” She grabbed her daughter by the wrist. “You are not to leave this house for the next twenty-four hours. I can’t believe you broke my trust and did something so dense, so irresponsible, and—” The door to Corre’s room creaked open to reveal a very sheepish Phineas. Her head fell back. She closed her eyes, letting out a groan. Berenice rubbed the space between her eyebrows. “I can’t believe you two thought you could trick me.”
“We weren’t trying to trick you. We were trying to protect you,” Corre said, her head bobbing back up, but her mother just shot her a furious look.
“By putting yourself at risk?”
“He would have hurt you on his way to me!”
“Is that so?” Her mother scoffed, shaking her head and looking between the two young gods in frustration.
“Yes!”
“And why would he have spared me—or Phineas—if he came to find you here only to find us instead?” Berenice waited for her daughter to speak, but Corre looked away.
Her mother had a point. One Corre hadn’t thought of, and one that thankfully hadn’t occurred.
“I guess that could have happened, too,” she whispered, looking back at Berenice and adding, “But it didn’t! He saw me and tried to get something out of me, but nothing happened, and I was fine—”
“ What? ” Her mother’s eyes widened even more, her thick eyebrows springing to her hairline. “You saw him? He spoke to you? He—” Fear filled her eyes as she held onto her daughter’s elbows. “What happened?”
Corre gave her a reassuring smile and threaded her hands in her mother’s. “I’m okay. He was angry and arrogant, and I’m sure he only showed me an ounce of his strength, but I’m all right. He tried to peer into my mind or something but was unsuccessful. Then he left with one of his servants.”
“What?” Phineas gaped. “That doesn’t make any sense. I couldn’t combat him at all, and he practically tortured me. Did you do something to hold him back?”
“No. I-I don’t know. Maybe I did, but I really don’t know. I don’t fully understand his powers. I don’t know how he’s able to feel around our minds like that or how he can move someone without his hands.”
Phineas’s expression twisted. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Why didn’t he attack you?”
“I don’t know, Phineas. Should he have?” Corre snapped. This was getting ridiculous. Her mind was still whirring from the encounter. The last thing she needed was an interrogation.
He rolled his eyes. “Of course not. It just doesn’t add up. How could you possibly resist his powers at all?” He shook his head. “It just doesn’t make sense.”
Corre wanted to give them an answer, but she had none. She had no clue what had happened. Theron seemed to have the ability to control people’s movements and to peer inside their minds, which is probably how he’d been able to make her heart race the way it had. He possessed some kind of power that drew him to her and made him magnetizing.
He was pure evil. She was sure of it. She just didn’t understand him. His motives or his powers.
The room fell silent. Phineas didn’t seem to know what to say anymore, and her mother was lost in thought, concentrating on something Corre didn’t want to explore at the moment.
“Hey, it’s all okay! Right?” the young goddess said, trying to lighten the mood. “Hades is back in the Underworld, and we’re all fine.” She flashed her signature dimpled smile, but the tension in the room remained, the air thick and rotten like spoiled milk.
“Well,” her mother said, her eyes still far away. “I suppose all we can do is wait.”
Corre frowned. “Wait for what?”
“To discover what he gained by coming here.” She sighed. “And to find out what he’ll do next.”
Theron
Theron’s heart wouldn’t stop pounding. He couldn’t think. He could barely make it through the intricate maze of corridors in his labyrinth. I’m just worried about Thanatos he told himself, but Thanatos wasn’t the one who appeared in his mind when the throbbing of blood pounded in his ears. The more he let the image of that girl linger in his mind, the worse the pounding became, and the harder it was to breathe. To focus. He couldn’t even hear what his servant was saying until it yelled his name in his ear.
“Master Theron!” The young Hades turned to the wiry demon in front of him. Its hollow skull barely reached Theron’s waist before it bowed, apologizing. “Master Thanatos wants you straight away. He said not to return to your chambers. He wants you now.”
A new pain cut through Theron’s mind, but this one wasn’t accompanied by that curious burning. It was a memory. A painful recollection that dug through his side like the turn of a blade. The agony that erupted from his body at Thanatos’s blow was not something he wanted to relive, but he knew that might be what he was about to walk into.
He couldn’t get himself to speak, so he nodded at the creature and moved around it, taking a sharp right to the passage leading to the throne room. As he walked down the ominous corridor, dodging drips of some indeterminate liquid, a figure came toward him, exiting the large doors to Thanatos’s grand chamber. Theron could recognize that weasel of a man anywhere.
Nikias.
The gangly man with hair as yellow as wheat, but as slicked back as mud on an old boot, was Thanatos’s appointed general. He was here to be trained for battle—to lead one of the fleets of the Underworld not yet under Theron’s rule. Nikias had been trained to help with the affairs of Tartarus, and he despised the soon-to-be leader of this world. Neither Theron nor Nikias had ever gotten along, and they couldn’t be more of the other’s opposite. Nikias liked things organized, rigid, and, in Theron’s opinion, unbearably boring. And to the bony general, Theron was unruly, bad-tempered, and not fit for leadership.
Needless to say, the two had never gotten along and didn’t pretend to like each other.
When the pale general smirked at Theron as he passed him in the hall, it made him both irritated and uneasy. The smug look on Nikias’ face was not a good sign, having just left Thanatos’s chamber. Theron picked up his pace. The anticipation and speculation were getting far worse than the pain he was sure would come from the punishment itself.
He reached the chamber doors without another second to lose and threw them open with one heavy push. The muscles in his body were so used to work that the task was effortless, even though the doors were lined with thick, platinum spikes to ward off intruders. The slight pain was nothing to Theron, but the squeezing of his stomach as he faced his master was a different matter entirely.
“Ah, if it isn’t my pupil.” Thanatos’s toad-like voice rattled through the dark cathedral.
Theron tried his best to look strong. Confident. He needed an air about him that would swat unwanted assumptions away when his master prodded his mind and senses. He knelt before Thanatos, bowed his head, and tried to focus his mind on nothing but the present moment. He couldn’t show any indication of fear or weakness, or his master would detect it and attack. The powerful leader spoke. “You were gone much longer than I’d hoped, boy.” The words echoed through the room. Theron tried even harder to keep his anxiety at bay.
“I had to track down Persephone,” he replied, head still bowed. “And she was worth inspecting. She’s a goddess much more powerful than she appears. Perhaps stronger than she even knows. I had to learn more about her. I needed to report about her to you.”
His master was silent. Theron didn’t let his mind or feelings wander. A feat he hadn’t accomplished to this extent until this very moment.
Thanatos tapped one sharp nail against the arm of his throne. “So you found her?” The heaviness in Theron’s chest lifted. “What did you discover?”
The young god’s head flipped up to meet his master. “She’s a goddess of nature. Of life. But she’s strong and possesses unusual power. She’s young, about twenty years of age, very unlikely to have learned the skill of the senses by a tutor.” He got to his feet but kept his gaze on the black eyes of his superior.
“Is that all you learned?” his master croaked.
“I didn’t have time to learn anything else—”
“Are you not taking the blame again, boy?” Thanatos bellowed, his voice amplified by the size and near-emptiness of the spacious room. “Nasty habit of yours. It almost sounded like you were blaming me .”
Theron bit his tongue, fighting back the fear rising in the back of his throat.
I’m stronger than this . I’m strong.
“No, of course not. I took too long finding her. It’s my fault.” Then something pricked up in his mind. Her name. He’d learned her name. “And—” He opened his mouth, but something compelled him to stop. He couldn’t fully grasp why, but for some reason, handing her name over to Thanatos felt wrong.
He’d never cared about doing anything wrong before. Ever . His whole purpose in life was to do wrong. Why was it so hard to give his master her name?
“What is it?” Thanatos snarled.
“She’s the goddess Persephone. She’s strong, and she trains with Athena. That’s all I know,” he said, tucking her real name somewhere in the back of his mind where his master couldn’t find it. He was strong enough to protect it, so he kept his mind firm—air-tight—so his master wouldn’t press for more.
The large god leaned his bulbous head against the back of his throne. “That isn’t much, but it’s something,” he mused. He tapped his finger against the throne a few more times, each tick longer than the last. “Howodd that you couldn’t learn more. Your demon spotted you with her for quite some time.”
Theron swallowed hard and avoided his master’s heavy gaze. “She’s able to control her senses and thoughts more than the others. It was an unexpected occurrence but provided valuable information.” He sounded robotic, rattling off such a technical report. It was something Nikias would do. The thought made him sick.
Thanatos cackled. “No wonder you took so long. What a curious discovery.” The deity’s chapped mouth curved into a ghoulish smile. “We will have to learn more about this Persephone, indeed.”
Without warning, one of Theron’s defenses fell. Foolishly, he let himself get excited at the thought of learning more. Of possibly seeing her again.
His master saw right through him.
“Why do you feel this way, Markus ?” he growled.
Theron flinched. Thanatos only ever called him by his former name—the name his birth parents had given him—when Theron was failing him. Things were going to slide sideways fast if he didn’t think of something quick.
“Feel what way, master?” he asked, immediately knowing it was the wrong reply.
Thanatos’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you want to see this girl again?”
His body tensed, his hands curling into fists so tight his nails carved into his palms through his gloves. He had to stay in control.
He looked into his master’s eyes with complete composure and said, “She’s someone worth keeping an eye on. Someone who might cause us trouble.” Thanatos scrutinized his pupil’s stare carefully, so Theron continued quickly. “We need to learn more about her. She’s my adversary in every way. I only desire to learn of her weaknesses and strengths so I can take her down when the time comes.”
Thanatos’s head fell back, but his eyes were still narrowed. “How do you even know what to look for?”
Theron sucked in a shaky breath. “I only know what needs to be done for my reign. I can’t have a goddess up there growing the world we need desolate. You said so yourself before I left. And now I know how unexpectedly strong she is. Having someone so powerful and such my opposite is clearly not going to do me any good. I only wish to keep her under my control. That’s all.”
The room was so quiet even the demons standing attention at Thanatos’s sides seemed nervous for the large deity to speak. It took more effort than usual for Theron to keep his heart beating at a normal pace.
Finally, the ashen deity sighed. “Very well.” Theron’s shoulders relaxed, a weight rising from his shoulders. “But you have no need to go up there any time soon. You’ll stay down here and complete your training.” The excitement that had sprung to life in Theron’s chest immediately deflated. “You can focus on the girl when you’re ready to focus on your reign.”
Theron bowed his head, avoiding his master’s eyes. He felt Thanatos’s body bend forward to gaze at him more closely. “Is that all right with you?” he baited.
“Of course.”
“Good. Now, go. You’re dismissed.”
Theron turned around and left in long strides across the room. Once safely in the corridor, he let his defenses fall, finally able to breathe. But there was a tightness that ricocheted up his ribcage and into his chest when he thought of that goddess. Of the swirls of emerald, gold, and earthy browns in her impassioned eyes. Of the way her lips had parted when his body was close to hers. Of the way the tremor left her voice after one small conversation. Of the smooth skin of her neck and the curve of her legs, partially exposed from the slit in her gown.
His blood burned, even worse than before, and when he made it to his quarters, he let himself fall into bed. He replayed their conversation over and over in his mind. He savored every word that had spilled from her pouted lips. His mind hovered over every part of her body. And before long, it was clear that his blood was burning for her .
He ached for her.
He had to see her again.
He couldn’t wait until his training was complete. Surely, Thanatos had sensed the urgency in his desire to see her, and that’s why he wouldn’t let him go. But he had to. His training could take months, maybe even another year or two if Thanatos dragged out the process. He couldn’t wait that long.
He had to find a way to go again soon.
When the decision was finalized in his mind, he let out a long breath and kept his mind steeped in thoughts of her. He closed his eyes. “Correlia,” he said softly, as if the word was something forbidden. In a way, he supposed it was. He’d hidden it from Thanatos—a move he’d never been brave enough to do.
His master had always seen through every one of his lies, weaknesses, and hidden thoughts and secrets. Thanatos would put every vulnerability and secret out on display and lash out at him until Theron was afraid to feel anything other than anger again or to have any thoughts that were just for him.
But somehow, he was able to keep this one.
She was his secret.
And he craved to learn more.