“That is not wise.”
“Why not?”
“Persephone—”
“It’s a simple question.”
“It isn’t,” he snapped and regretted the loss of his temper as her eyes widened and her mouth hardened. He sighed. All he wanted to do was get this over with so he could return to her. Could she not see that?
“Fine,” she said and took a step away. Her distance felt like more than the loss of physical touch. “I’ll be here when you return.”
Was she only saying that to appease him?
“I will make it up to you,” he promised.
She arched a brow and, like a queen, commanded, “Swear it.”
He offered the slightest smile, his still-heavy cock spurring his mischief.
“Oh, darling. You don’t need to extract an oath. Nothing will keep me from
fucking you.”
Though it felt like sacrilege to leave her without having made her come.
Chapter III
Return of the Nymph
Hades met Ilias on the top floor of Nevernight, which was dedicated to security. It was a large room, but the walls and ceiling sloped inward to a shadowed point just like the exterior of the building. The room was awash in the pallid light of computer screens, illuminating the stern faces of Hades’s security team, though this was only a fraction. The others roamed the floors below and the dark alleys of the exterior, eyes peeled for anything untoward.
Ilias was positioned before a set of screens on the far wall, one for every holding room. Of the six, four were occupied. They were reserved for anyone who broke Nevernight rules, which occurred nightly and ranged from taking photos to card counting and, on rare occasions, spying.
It was the latter Hades expected to hear about from Ilias, considering his most recent visitors, but as he scanned the screens above the satyr’s head, he caught sight of a familiar face, one that shocked his system.
“Is that Leuce?”
Though he asked the question, he knew the answer. There was no denying the ocean nymph’s white hair and pale skin. It had been a long time since he had loved her, since she had betrayed him, since he had turned her into a poplar tree and forgotten her.
Yet here she was, returned from her prison.
How?
He certainly had not freed her.
“It is,” Ilias said. “She made a scene when she arrived.”
Hades wondered how many people glimpsed her outburst before it was contained. As if Ilias knew what he was thinking, he added, “We have begun damage control.”
“Has she been questioned at all?”
Ilias shook his head. “I figured you would want the opportunity.”
He would, though she had already had plenty of time to herself. Time to think up lies and believe them enough to avoid detection. It was a tactic she knew well and would not have forgotten, given she had spent her years as a tree unconscious. She would have woken up today believing he had only just confronted her about her infidelity—what a shock to learn that more than two millennia had passed. He wondered now if he had done her a cruelty or a kindness.
He watched her on the screen once more. She had pushed her chair against the wall, away from the table. Her knees were drawn to her chest and her thin arms were wrapped around them. She looked small, innocent, though that was not how Hades remembered her.
“What will you do with her?” Ilias asked. Hades knew the satyr wasn’t asking out of concern; he was asking because he wanted to know what he would be tasked with next, which was likely handling the nymph.
Hades looked at Ilias. He had not thought beyond this moment, save that he did not see any reason for Persephone to ever find out about Leuce. He could just imagine how she might react to not only discovering that his lover from the ancient world had returned but how he had handled her treachery—and it wasn’t good.
Leuce was a complication.
“I do not know,” Hades said. “Just…be on standby.”
Ilias nodded and Hades left.
He could teleport into the room, and he often did when he confronted those who had committed wrongs against him, but he wanted time to think, to prepare to face the lover he had forgotten, so he moved from floor to floor, invisible to the crowd, growing more and more frustrated.
Of course Leuce would return only a day after he had managed to reunite with Persephone, he thought bitterly and then halted. That thought gave him pause. Perhaps it wasn’t just a coincidence. Perhaps it had been more purposeful.
Perhaps it had been Demeter.
Suddenly, he was more than eager to confront her, and he did not hesitate.