“Are you even listening?” There was an edge to the voice that brought Hades out of his thoughts, and he met a pair of brown eyes. They were set in the face of a mortal man with dark, curly hair and thick glasses. He was Hades’s first bargain of the night, and potentially his last.
He could not focus on this right now.
“No,” Hades admitted, and as hard as it was, he offered an apology.
“I’m…sorry. Please continue.”
The young man’s lips were pressed thin, a reflection of his anger, but he sighed and continued. Before Hades had zoned out, the man had explained that his grandmother had been his guardian since the age of five and she was now dying.
“The doctor has given her two months to live,” he said. “Please…she’s all I have.”
Hades frowned at the young man. “I will not bargain for the life of a soul,” he said, and though they were the words he always used to deny a request like this, they were harder and more painful to say this time.
His rejection just seemed to spur the mortal on.
“Then I need to bargain for something else,” the man said, searching for ideas. “The money to get her the care and medicine she needs. Maybe there’s a chance—”
“Have you asked your grandmother what she wants?” Hades interrupted him.
He blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Have you asked your grandmother if she is at peace with dying?”
“She doesn’t want to leave me,” he said defensively.
“I did not ask you if she wanted to leave you,” Hades said. “I asked if she is at peace with dying.”
The mortal did not respond.
Hades rose to his feet. “Ask her. Respect her answer.”
It was what he wished he had told Persephone.
He left the suite and headed into the lounge, where mortals were gathered beneath low light playing poker, blackjack, and roulette among other games.
“Will you take another contract?” Ilias asked, coming to stand beside him.
“No, no more tonight,” Hades replied.
Ilias nodded. “Then I’d like you to meet me at the Grove in an hour.”
Hades raised a questioning brow.
“This is something you have to see,” the satyr promised.
Hades did not question him beyond that and left the lounge. As he passed Euryale, the gorgon inhaled, her head rising, casting light over her scarred and blindfolded eyes.
“Troubled, Lord Hades?” she asked.
“More than you can imagine, Euryale,” he said, continuing to the balcony that overlooked the floor of Nevernight.
As he looked down at the floor, he recalled the first time he had seen Persephone. If she had existed during the Trojan War, it would have been her beauty that had launched a thousand ships.
She’d sat with Lexa, Sybil, and Adonis. He remembered worrying over whether she liked Adonis and if she’d leave with him, though he had known then he wouldn’t let her leave because the urge to claim her, to mark her, almost sent him to her side then. He had been both bewildered and disturbed by his fierce need for her and had returned to the Underworld only to find that her thread was woven with his—that she was his fate, and even now, in the face of all this pain and anguish, he did not want it any other way.
He sighed, rubbing a spot just over his heart that felt tense and knotted, when his phone rang. When he saw the caller was Antoni, he answered with dread in his stomach, because this likely had something to do with Persephone.
“Yes?”
“Ha-Hades?” Antoni asked.
“Who else, Antoni?” he asked, frustrated already.
The cyclops laughed nervously. “Of course, my lord. I am sorry, my lord.
It’s just…uh…I was on my way to pick up Persephone, you see? At the Pearl where she insisted on going after work, and…uh…she’s gone.”
“Gone? ” Hades repeated.
“She just…vanished. Zofie said she was there one moment and gone the next.”
“Fuck,” Hades said under his breath. He hadn’t considered that Zofie likely could not follow when Apollo chose to call on his bargain with Persephone.
“Where is Zofie?”
“She’s…with me.”
Hades was quiet for a long moment as he attempted to locate Persephone through her magic, but the connection was dead, which only added to his irritation.
“Wh-what would you like us to do?” Antoni asked.
“It’s likely you can do nothing,” Hades said, though he would try to send Ilias’s team to search for her. There were a number of clubs Apollo was known to frequent.