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Chapter 11
Elyse
Icouldn’t sleep. Usually, I had no problem crashing once my head hit the pillow, given how hard I trained, and I looked forward to the relief of relaxing, especially considering how much happened in my life.
Tonight, I couldn’t switch off my brain. My thoughts swirled around Hades. Poseidon was the second deity to tell me Hades wasn’t to blame for X’s actions. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t completely involved when X was meant to be a part of him. What was I missing? Or had my initial suspicions that X had broken free come true? But if that was the case, why wasn’t Hades bringing his rage down on him?
A big part of me wanted him to be a good guy. But now both Poseidon and Persephone had told me Hades had been innocent through it all, I struggled to wrap my mind around everything we’d been through.
I’d hoped he wasn’t the villain here.
Everyone had misunderstood Hades. Everyone thought he was the personification of the devil, the Greek version of the person who presided over hell itself. But they were wrong. Hades was just another god, and the Underworld happened to be his turf.
To some, it was like saying being an executioner was just a job. It didn’t make sense to everyone.
Hades wasn’t the devil in my book. I saw him differently. But I still grappled to understand how he’d turned his back on X and pretended his actions were fine. I fought my entire life to protect the innocent, to not sit back, because it was too hard or whatever his excuse was, so that was where we differed.
How did that make him a good guy?
I climbed out of bed, since it was clear I wouldn’t fall asleep anytime soon, and I sauntered across my dark room to the window. Pulling open the curtain, I stood there and stared out over the sleeping city, shrouded in dark and tried to find more darkness. X threw off an oppressive feeling as if it was a living, breathing thing, not merely the absence of light. And where there was darkness so thick you could barely breathe, there had to be Death.
And this time, Catina would be there, too. Though I couldn’t understand why X was hiding. Why take my friend and vanish? Why not confront me and fight already? The fucking ass probably enjoyed torturing me, and his hatred went beyond just finishing me off. Destroying me was a personal vendetta, or some fucked-up shit only a monster like X could comprehend.
But no matter how hard I reached out with my newfound power, the energy humming down my arms, I couldn’t sense X. So how the hell was I meant to find Catina? It’d been a long time since X had killed, and I should have been happy about that. But I wasn’t. I hated that everything had changed, that yet again, X had the upper hand. And I was completely in the dark about his intentions, leaving me so high-strung I couldn’t function or sleep. Frustration hammered through me, twisting in my chest so tightly, I was ready to explode. My eyes prickled at how helpless I felt, and I curled my fists, my fingers digging into the fleshy part of my palm until it hurt. Anything to stop the guilt gnawing on my insides.
Fighting I could do but sitting around waiting killed me.
Every time I became stronger, X did something else to stay one step ahead.
I wanted this to end. I needed my friend back.
Maybe the best way to deal with this was to talk to Hades myself. I hadn’t spoken with him in a long time, and I hadn’t ever asked him directly what this was all about. It was time I stopped listening to others and confronted him.
When I walked back to the bed and found my phone on the nightstand, it showed two in the morning. It was even later than I had thought, as I’d been up half the night.
The itch to know what was going on intensified. I had to speak to Hades or I’d stir and pace around all night. And I was sure he’d make time to see me even though it was late.
I tried not to think too hard about what it would look like if I arrived at his house at this hour. This wasn’t a booty call, after all. And I wouldn’t let him think it was.
I got dressed in jeans, a tee, and my boots, climbed in my car, and drove to the bad area of town where he was holed up. Two burned-out cars lined the street and junk filled a house I passed, while two other homes were boarded up and graffitied. The single overhead streetlight flickered, threatening to go out. Shadows crowded this place, the homes shrouded in darkness. I stretched out my energy to search for X but found nothing.
Hades said he lived out here so people would leave him alone.
But his actions were more than enough to make that happen, anyway. He wasn’t exactly an approachable guy. Yet the irony wasn’t lost on me how I kept finding myself drawn to him, and I somehow suspected Hades received godly visitors anyway—even living out here.
I parked a few houses down from his rundown home, its lawn overgrown, and the trees standing over the property like sentinels. I was cloaked by the night. I got out of the car and quietly closed the door, feeling like I was an intruder.
Before I reached his house, the front door opened and I froze, stepping to the side out of instinct. I stood hidden against thick shrubs, my form melting into the shadows, and I watched.
Persephone emerged from Hades’s house. He followed her. His face was grim, and she didn’t turn to kiss him. But my heart beat in my throat, and my skin grew hot underneath the layers of clothes I’d put on.
Jealous. I was jealous Persephone had been with Hades at this time of night. And pissed off. Who knew what they’d been doing in there? They had so much history, and he loved her once, he’d said. Maybe he still did?
I squeezed my eyes shut and ground my teeth. She was here because the Underworld was falling apart. And she was the Queen of Darkness, wasn’t she? She had a right to talk to him, anyway. It wasn’t as if I had some kind of claim on him. Not only were we not together in any way, but I wasn’t exclusive with any of the men in my life. I could hardly expect them to be exclusive to me.
God, what was I even saying? I was talking about exclusivity when I didn’t even know if what happened between Hades and me had ever been more than just sex.
As I watched Persephone, she disappeared. The gods tended to do that. It wasn’t as weird as it used to be. Hades took a deep breath, his chest rising and falling with the sigh, and he started to walk back into the house when he froze mid-stride.
