He’d begun to map out an idea for how he might proceed when Hermes appeared in his office dressed in all white. His shirt was halfway unbuttoned, and he looked very flushed.
Hades raised a brow at the god and was about to comment on his attire when he spoke instead.
“We need you,” he said.
Hades’s brows slammed down over his eyes, and Hermes’s next two words had him out of his seat.
“It’s Persephone.”
He did not need to say anything more, and they were teleporting, appearing before a curtained lounge with white couches. The air was thick with a suffocating white smoke that flashed bright with colors as music roared around them. Hades knew this club. It was the Seven Muses, and it was owned by Apollo, who sat on one of the couches, looking bored while Persephone lay on the one opposite at an odd angle, as if she’d collapsed there. Her eyes were closed and she wore nothing but mesh and gold leaves.
While he liked the dress, he would have preferred being the sole person to
have seen her in it. She needed a gods-damned blanket, but the best he could do now was call up his glamour to conceal the booth.
Hades ground his teeth. This had to be part of her fucking bargain with Apollo.
“What happened?” he demanded.
“What does it look like?” Apollo asked. “She drank too much.”
Hades glared at the god, who was perfectly sober. Persephone had not had years to build up a tolerance to alcohol like the rest of them. She could still get drunk, though unlike mortals, her body could recover far faster.
“I tried to get her to leave after she threw up the first time,” said Zofie.
“But she refused.”
As he stared down at Persephone, she opened her eyes. She did not seem to realize where she was and her brows furrowed.
“There you are, Sephy,” Hermes said, sitting near her head. “You had us worried.”
She kept staring at him, and Hades wasn’t sure she heard the god at all.
Finally, she glanced up at him and asked, “Why did you call him? He hates me.”
Hates me? Hades’s whole body recoiled at those words. When had he given the impression that he hated her? He’d gone to her work hours ago to beg her to hear him out about the Leuce situation. He took a breath, reminding himself that she was, in fact, incapacitated at the moment.
Though the words still ate at him.
Instead of denying her statement, Hermes said, “Blame Zofie.”
Hades gazed at the god questioningly, but if he had to guess, since Zofie was the aegis, she’d insisted that Hermes get help. He felt a bit of relief that the Amazon had accompanied them. Likely Persephone would have continued to lie here under the scrutiny of the club otherwise.
He lowered to his knee beside her. “Can you stand? I’d rather not carry you out of this place.”
Once more, she frowned. A touch of hurt bled into her eyes before anger pushed her into a seated position. He tried to hand her a glass of water Zofie had pushed into his hands, but she refused it, mouth tight.
“If you don’t want to be seen with me, why don’t you teleport?”
Obviously, she had forgotten how jarring teleportation could be. “If I teleport, you might throw up. I’ve been told you’ve already done that once tonight.”
Hades got to his feet as she rose and swayed. He caught her around the waist. For a moment, she sunk into him, and he welcomed the way she let her head rest on his chest, but when his arm tightened around her, she pushed against him.
A wave of frustration made Hades feel heated. He wasn’t doing a very good job of schooling his features either. He felt the coldness of his gaze in his core.
“Let’s go,” she said and turned from him, holding her head high as she made a path out of the club.
Hades cast a spiteful glance at Apollo, Hermes, and Zofie before following her.
Antoni waited, opening the door as soon as he saw them emerge from the club, and despite their obvious dark moods, he smiled.
“My lady.”
“Antoni,” she said with a crisp nod, which was far from her usually warm reception of anyone who wasn’t Hades at this point. He watched as she bent and crawled into the back of the Lexus on her hands and knees. Thank fuck he had continued to cloak them in glamour so that the world hadn’t seen her ass.
Once the door was closed, they were locked inside with their anger, a tension that built and made him feel electric. Usually, he’d work through this physically, but there was a long list of reasons he couldn’t do that this time, among them that Persephone was not sober. It didn’t stop him from fantasizing, though, which was both satisfying and torturous.