“You should have seen how she looked at me when she realized who I was. She was horrified.”
“I doubt she was horrified,” Hecate said. “Surprised, perhaps—maybe even mortified if her thoughts were anything like yours.”
Hecate gave him a knowing look, but Hades was not so sure. Hecate had not been there.
“I have never known you to back down from a challenge, Hades.”
“I haven’t,” he said. He had done the opposite—he had, essentially, bound her to him for the next six months.
Hecate waited for him to explain.
“She played me.”
“What?”
“She invited me to her table for a game, and she lost,” Hades explained.
By tomorrow morning, his mark would appear on Persephone’s skin, and when she returned to him, he would offer her the terms of their contract. If she failed, she would be a resident of the Underworld forever.
“Hades, you didn’t.”
He just looked at the witch-goddess.
“It is Divine Law,” he said.
Hecate glared, knowing that was not true. Hades could have chosen to let her go with no demands upon her time, and he had chosen not to. If the Fates were going to connect them, why not take control?
“Do you not want her love? Why would you force her into a contract?”
After a moment, he admitted aloud, “Because I did not think she would come back.”
He did not look at Hecate, but her silence told him she pitied him, and he hated that.
“What will you ask of her?” she inquired.
“What I ask of everyone,” he said.
He would challenge the insecurities of her soul. By the end of it, he would create a queen or a monster. Which, he did not know.
“How do you feel when you look at her?” Hecate asked.
Hades did not like that question, or maybe he didn’t like his answer, but he spoke truthfully, nonetheless.
“Like I was born from chaos.”
Hecate grinned.
“I can already tell I’m going to like her.” Then her eyes flashed with amusement. “You must tell Minthe you are to wed when I am present. She will be furious!”
CHAPTER V – A CONTRACT SEALED
Hades found himself in Tartarus.
In the beginning of his reign, he came here more often than any other place in his realm. Post Titanomachy had been a dark time. Born of war, Hades knew nothing else but blood and pain, but he had not spent his time in Tartarus out of a wish to exist with the familiar. He did so out of a wish to punish those responsible for his dark beginning—the Titans.
Overtime, he had needed that less and less.
On rare occasions, he still came to channel residual rage.
Tonight was no different.
He stood in his office, a cavernous but modern room at the peak of one of the mountains of Tartarus. It doubled as a chamber of torture, its walls covered with weapons Hades had used on many unfortunate humans and humanoids who found themselves restrained before him, many of them holding secrets, even in the afterlife. Part of the floor was glass, and from this elevated space, Hades looked down upon level after level of torture.
Over the years, the prison had evolved. It had begun underground, with levels spanning miles and miles, all dedicated to punishing the most wicked of crimes and torturing souls in absurd ways—with wind, icy rain, and fire, and the more efficient sentences of choking on tar, eagles and vultures eating livers, and flesh being torn from bodies by razor sharp teeth.
While those forms of torture still existed, Hades evolved with the world above, carving out the mountains and creating isolated cells for various forms of psychological torture. Whatever the variety, Hades only cared that it produced the same result—suffering.
Hades swiped a bottle of whiskey from his desk and took a drink before snapping his fingers, summoning a soul. The man was the one Sisyphus had shot dead in the yard of his fishery.
Isidore Angelos.
His hands were bound behind his back, his legs restrained. His chin rested against his chest. He was asleep.
Souls tended to continue in the Underworld as they did in the Upperworld, meaning they stuck to routine, even though they did not need it.
Sleep was an example of this.
“Well, isn’t he handsome,” Hermes said, appearing in Hades’ office.
The God of Trickery often came and went from his realm, having taken the role of psychopomp—a guide to souls—centuries ago. Hades glanced at him. The god was in his Divine form, gilded and garish. He had great white wings and a pair of short horns that poked out of the side of his head, almost invisible amid his curls. His golden eyes appraised the mortal.