Captured (Shadow Guild Hades & Persephone #3) - Linsey Hall Page 0,36

hide the crown?” I asked. “I had no idea they knew about it.” Hell, I hadn’t known about it until yesterday.

“They fought over it too fiercely. In fact, it was one of the reasons they were confined to Tartarus. It is the reason that Chronos seeks it, I am sure. The gods do not want any of the Titans to wear the crown. When we tell the Astra Planeta of our intention to stop Chronos, they will help us.”

Would they help us if they knew he sought the crown? I wanted to ask but decided to save it for later.

“Why didn’t you go to them to start with?” I asked.

“You and I are prophesied to stop Chronos. Together. They would not tell me if I were alone.”

That made sense.

“Can we help you with the Astra Planeta?” Eve asked.

Hades shook his head. “Where we go, only gods can travel.”

“Well, that counts us out.” Mac grinned. “We’ll keep looking for Chronos. You might be surprised at what we’re capable of.”

“But hurry,” Eve said. “The Earth is more than fifty percent frozen, and our forces are barely holding it back.”

Hades nodded, then stood. The rest of us joined him, and I met his gaze. “I’m going to walk them back to the library.”

“I will send a messenger to the Astra Planeta, alerting them of our arrival.” He inclined his head in farewell at my friends, then swept through the door.

The three of them looked at me.

“Whew. He is quite the presence,” Mac said.

“Do you think he’s evil?” I didn’t think so, not entirely. But what kind of impression did he give?

“Um.” Mac pursed her lips, clearly debating.

“I don’t think he’s evil,” Beatrix said. “When he caught me breaking into his realm to visit you, all he did was banish me. He could have snapped my neck. I was just a raven.”

“I don’t think he’s evil either,” Eve said. “I think he’s capable of it. But I see the light in him, too.”

“I guess I’m with them,” Mac said. “But I’m still skeptical.”

I hoped they were. Because if Hades was evil, I didn’t know what I was going to do.

13

Seraphia

An hour later, I returned to the castle. Echo kept me company on the walk back, but he deviated when I entered the castle, flying off toward the back, possibly to visit Alia, the apothecary.

As I entered the main foyer, I caught sight of Lucifer walking toward me. I raised an eyebrow at him. “Did Hades sic you on me?”

“No, as a matter of fact, he did not.” Lucifer grinned, cocky as ever. He wore dark trousers and a thin dark sweater, and the bruise around his eye was very out of place. How did the devil himself get a black eye? Before I could ask, he kept talking. “He trusts you, you know.”

“Trusts me not to leave, at least.”

“Trusts you full stop, Seraphia.” Lucifer’s gaze turned serious. “You took the Tartarus curse from him. You saved him.”

“I didn’t know what I was doing when I did it.”

“You wanted to save him, though,” he said. “Didn’t you?”

“I did.” Desperately. I still did, in fact.

“So would you do it again?”

“No, I—” I stopped. Would I do it again if I knew? I’d save him, yes. But would I take the Tartarus curse for my own to spare him? In the heat of the moment, when I’d been trying to save him, I’d thought only of ending the suffering and isolation, the utter aloneness, that had hardened him.

“Maybe I would.” Oddly enough, I meant it. The thought of his terrible loneliness, unbroken but for bouts of torture in Tartarus, was too much to bear. Maybe I wasn’t thinking straight, but I meant it.

Lucifer nodded. “As I thought.”

“What, that I’m an idiot?”

He chuckled. “Maybe you are, but not about this. He began fracturing as soon as he met you. But when you protected him, when you took the curse for your own…I think that sealed the deal for him.”

“What deal?”

“The you deal. All his motivations have changed. All his goals. Now he’s obsessed more with saving you than he is with the crown.”

“How do you know this?”

“Please, I’ve been with him for centuries. It’s child’s play to determine this.”

I drew in an unsteady breath. “Surely there’s another way to save me.”

“That, I do not know. Hades has always been a clever bastard about these things. If he thinks it’s the way, then it probably is.”

“It’s not. There will be another way to defeat Chronos and break the curse