“Hades.” Charon has to stop and wrestle the fear out of his tone. “The entire lower city will be a conflict zone if they come for us.”
“I know.” I clasp his shoulder. “I’ll get us through, Charon. Have no doubt about that.”
I just don’t know how yet. I can’t act until Zeus does. I’m torn between the hope that he won’t strike immediately and the fear that he’ll draw this out until we’re all going out of our minds.
The entire ride back to the house, I can’t quite shake the fear that I’ll arrive and Persephone will be gone. That Zeus will have somehow slipped past all my defenses and taken her back. That she’ll have realized I can’t truly protect her like I promised and decided to take her chances on her own. That she’ll recognize me for the monster the rest of Olympus thinks I am and flee. A thousand scenarios, each fed by the knowledge of how ugly things are going to get. I had planned on multiple scenarios when we started this, but nowhere in those were what happened tonight.
Some things you can’t take back.
When I find her and her sister sitting in the living room with the three pups playing around them, it feels like being sucker punched. They’re here. They’re safe. For now.
I sink onto one of the chairs and catch Persephone’s gaze. She piles two of the puppies into her sister’s lap and sits back. I approve. Pushing Eurydice right now is the wrong call. She’s just experienced… Well, we won’t know exactly what she’s experienced until she rouses enough to tell us. Which takes time.
So I sit there and watch silently as Eurydice slowly comes back to herself. It starts with her petting the puppies and ends with a shuddering sigh that comes out more like a sob. “I was so scared, Persephone.”
“I know, honey.” Persephone lets Eurydice lay her head in her lap and carefully strokes her black hair, a soothing touch.
There’s nothing soothing in her hazel eyes. She looks at me, and I’ve never seen her so fearsome. A true dark goddess, bent on retribution. She banks the expression almost as soon as it crosses her face, and I hate that she hides this part of herself from me. A trembling smile pulls at her lips and she mouths, Thank you.
In that moment, I’d do it again a hundred times. No matter the cost. It’s all worth it for her.
Fucking anything for her.
Chapter 26
Persephone
My sister’s story comes out in fits and starts. About how she and Orpheus were supposed to meet in a part of the upper city that she’s not overly familiar with. About how he never showed. About how he ignored her texts and sent her calls straight to voicemail, even as her fear grew and a strange man refused to leave her alone.
I keep stroking her temple and hair, soothing her in the only way I can. Her palms are skinned from where she fell, so terrified that she barely noticed the scrapes until now. Her arm is bruised from where he slammed her into the side of a building before she escaped him the first time. There are bruises on her knees from where he threw her to the ground on the other side of the bridge.
I note and file away every single injury. As much as I want to blame Orpheus for this, there’s only one person responsible. Zeus. Even thinking his name has rage flickering higher inside me. I want blood for blood.
When Eurydice drifts into silence and her eyes slide closed, I finally look at Hades again. He’s already on his feet, draping her in a throw blanket that had been on the couch from the last time I was reading in this room. It feels like a thousand years ago.
He passes me my phone. “Update your other sisters.”
Right. Of course. I should have thought of that myself. I accept the phone but don’t unlock it. “You made a huge sacrifice saving her.” He’d shot a man. He’d beaten him. I think if I hadn’t yelled his name, he wouldn’t have stopped beating him. I don’t know how I feel about that. I wanted that man to suffer, but seeing such unrestrained violence was shocking.
“It’s nothing.”
“Don’t do that.” It’s difficult not to raise my voice, but I’m painfully aware of my sister’s head on my thigh. “We’ll pay the consequences for this, and I’m not sorry you saved her, but I also am not going to let you brush it off. Thank you, Hades. I mean it.”
His big hand cups my face. His dark eyes hold a legion of thoughts that I’m not privy to. “I’m sorry you had to see me lose control like that.”
I don’t want to ask the question, but I make myself put the words to voice. “Did you kill him?”