Page 6 of Taming Winter

I glowered at her. Though only a few inches shorter than her, her larger-than-life presence made me feel small, and I despised it. I was a cornered animal tracking a predator, ready to lash out at any possibility. "What if I need to piss? Gonna hold it for me?" I snarled.

She raised an eyebrow, and a feral grin broke across her face. "Have you needed to? In one hundred years, have you ever asked the fury for a pee break?"

The room became fuzzy at the edges. It was as though I was careening forward only to come to a rapid stop, sending me flying over the edge. My eternal torture hadn’t given me much time to consider anything else, but she was right. Her malevolent grin spread. "You're dead, handsome. You don't need to eat, drink, sleep, piss, or shit. The only thing that will exhaust you is separating from me for any extended time."

The reality of my situation consumed me, sucking away any warmth and making it hard to breathe. Her eyes flickered, and her smirk told me what I was only just beginning to grasp. There was no escape. My murderer would be in my presence for eternity. There wasn't even the opportunity to hide in a bathroom to get a break.

Hades approached me and patted my cheek with a touch that was anything but comforting. Her palm spread a blistering heat that reminded me of my death. "Here's the deal. Half the year, I'll be sending you on assignments. It's long overdue that I have influence in Olympiara, and since I'm not permitted to roam the land of the living, you will be my knight on this chessboard. The second half of the year, I'll allow you to recover. Being apart from me will wear on your soul, and I don't need you turning to dust."

She leaned in until the scent of exotic spices washed over me, and the heat of her breath hit my cheeks. "Be good, and I'll reward you. Fight me, and I'll make your afterlife never-ending suffering. It is in your best interest to work with me, Wolfe."

I tilted my head in until our noses touched. "I want to gut you from lips to spleen," I murmured

"Don't threaten me with a good time." She chuckled. Her fingers twisted into my hair and yanked my lips to hers. We crashed together in a violent, unfeeling tangle that spread bile up my throat. I fought against the grip, but she held me mercilessly tight. When she let me go, she bared her teeth. "At least we're being honest. I like honesty. You want my honesty? Chaining you up brings me a twisted pleasure, because men like you think they own the world, and I can put you in your fucking place. It's just an added benefit that I can get my dirty work done at the same time. But make no mistake, handsome, I hate you and your kind, and if this bores or irritates me, I'll return you to that fucking pit."

She shoved me so hard that I slammed into the wall. My hands braced against the cool stone at my back to steady the shaking spreading through my arms from the idea of returning to Tartarus. I hated her. I resented the boiling pot of fear in my gut ready to spill over at any moment. After a life spent around torture and death, my own torment shouldn’t affect me so, but it did. She had broken me into little pieces that were crumbling to shimmering dust. It was pathetic—it was weakness, something I had never accepted in life and that infuriated me now.

The room filled with the echoing sound of footsteps, causing me to turn my attention from the demonic bitch in front of me to the stairwell. Lamia walked into the room carrying… "Is that a fucking dog bed?"

Hades grinned. "Oh Lam, you always know just what I need. Thank you! Leave it right next to my bed."

That helplessness and fury boiled up my throat like hot acid that ate my insides and left venom in its wake. A chill ran through my body as though ice was clicking together over my skin. My balled fists felt heavy under the anger. I latched onto the sadistic librarian with a glare I hoped would turn her pathetic soul to dust. She caught my gaze but ignored me. "My pleasure, Your Highness."

"Send me back to the pit," I snarled when Lamia exited. Rage and incredulity had twisted in a barbed tango within me, cutting through the fear and exhaustion. "I am not sleeping on that."

Hades said nothing for a moment. Instead, she scanned me with eyes that consumed me from the inside out. She spoke in a flat tone. "Which would you prefer, Wolfe? I can command you to do it, or I can try corporal punishment. Either way, you will do whatever I tell you to."

Cold spread through me as I relived my century of torture. The ghosts of fingers and the rough sensation of rope scraped over my skin, and I was certain I'd have goosebumps if I were alive. The bullets I had consumed, the blades that had cut me to pieces, they all left an omnipresent agony, waiting behind the veil in my mind. It was an all-consuming terror that held me in a vise grip. I took a step away, and the fear in my eyes must have satisfied Hades, because her shoulders relaxed.

"I'm going to give you some time to get your attitude under control. Really consider how you want to play this game of ours."

She was gone before I thought up a response, leaving me with only the crushing weight of my choices. I stumbled into the bathroom situated through an inconspicuous door behind her imposing bed frame. A layer of grime coated my flesh that I needed to shred from my skin before it consumed me.

The bathroom was the same strange blend of urban and gothic as the rest of the castle. A long vanity with a white marble top and black doors consumed the space. An ornate gold mirror hung above it, carved with the same morbid scenes as the rest of the castle. I fumbled for it, gripping the edge of the vanity but keeping my head down.

Despite the imposing dread, I needed to know what a century of torture had done to my soul. It was best to rip the Band-Aid off, that way I could begin the arduous process of stitching myself together. If that were even possible. I sucked in a deep breath and lifted my head.

What I saw made me freeze. I had expected exhaustion and age. Maybe bags under my vacant eye sockets. What I didn't expect was an icy blue glow emanating from those voids. A blue crystal had fused to the base of my throat, illuminated with a writhing, glowing light. A frosted cloud left my lips in a sigh. What I thought had come from the castle's chill had been coming from me.

I tried to retreat from the sight, only to find chunks of ice holding my palms to the marble. A horrified shout ripped from my throat, and I tore away my hands in a shower of glittering icy diamonds. My breath left me in desperate, ragged pants. I held my palms in front of me, my gaze glued to the frost clinging to my flesh. It was already regrowing, and that sent a bolt of true terror through me. It would soon consume me.

My knees crumpled without my telling them to. My body was still in Hades’s bathroom, but my mind had run elsewhere. Around me was the dark red clay of that accursed cavern. The fury was peeling my flesh off inch by agonizing inch until my screams of agony blended with her raspy cackles of delight. Somewhere in my peripheral consciousness, I was aware of the light aqua bathing my surroundings and the sheet of icy lace decorating my skin, but that didn't matter. I'd rather allow myself to be consumed by this frostbitten sarcophagus than return to that hellhole.

CHAPTER 7

WOLFE

Time passed in a cyclic blur, until finally the soft click of heels cut through my panic attack. My terror had settled into the low rumble of rage. Rage at Hades for breaking me so thoroughly, and disgust at myself for allowing it to happen. I had been the deadliest assassin in Zone 8. Wherever I went, terror and bloodshed followed. I could not succumb to a sniveling mess in the afterlife. Maybe hatred wasn't healthy, but it would keep me upright.

A shadow cast over my frozen casket. The ice encrusting me warmed until rivulets of snowmelt trickled over my numbed flesh and stuck my shirt to my chest in transparent sheets. A small hole formed in my cocoon, revealing Hades on the other side. She had her eyebrow raised and her lips pursed, but I didn't care if she was unimpressed by my panic attack.

I keeled over and crawled out of the ice. Blue crystalline structures still imprinted my skin, merging at the jagged cuffs fused to my wrists. I spoke in a low tone laced with exhaustion as I scrambled to my feet. "What did you do to me, Hades?"

Her warmth spread over the frostbitten room, melting the remaining evidence of my weakness until it was nothing but dampness that glittered on the floor. "I hope you didn't bust my pipes," she grumbled.

"You cursed me," I snarled.

Her attention turned to me, and she loosed a melancholy laugh. Though she lowered the flames pooling in her palms, the heat that radiated off her continued to melt the ice encircling us. I kept my attention on her fire, painfully aware of its presence despite my best attempts to ignore it.