in with all the others. The weight of it balls in my chest until it collides with my heart. Agony floods me. I’m weak. I’m broken. I’m terrified.
And that’s when I know…
This is the moment…
At first, there’s nothing but a whisper of sound. A feather across my frontal lobe, making my head jolt up. It’s such a contrast to the barrage of grief, I’m disoriented—for about two seconds. It takes only that long for a new sound to dominate the air.
Maximus’s bellow.
“Hades!”
There’s a third sound, visceral and violent, as if the structure around us might shatter and crumble. The lights flicker then pop. Paintings fall off the shivering walls.
I’m not crying anymore. I’m too scared.
Especially as the veneers crack on all of the room’s morbid statues.
“What…in all of…” But my voice hitches as the alabaster confines continue breaking open and fall away, allowing larger, living creatures to emerge from their shattered shells. I never thought my eyes could flare this wide, but they do. I watch, stupefied, as a rearing ram statue becomes a living, moving, red-eyed ram. Next to that, a large owl emerges, wings tipped with flames, before taking flight. The next gives birth to a massive hound that splits apart at the neck so its three heads can emerge.
Taking form next to the hound, as if the flickering hologram show is working in reverse, is a man.
No. Not a man. The comprehension runs me through at once, a blade that twists my guts and sears my soul.
“No!” I cry out, which does nothing to slow the intruder’s strides toward me. He’s slender and groomed, urbane and smooth. He has an easygoing stride, like a guy simply strolling to work in the financial district.
No. Not a guy. Not even a man.
Not. A. Man!
I order myself to keep remembering it. But I also can’t stop staring at him, my senses plunging beyond bafflement. Why is he so…normal? He should be taller. Filthier. Darker. Shouldn’t the ruler of the underworld have three vicious faces with a bat-spawning beard? Shouldn’t he be garbed in black instead of a deep-red suit that accentuates his brutally chiseled features?
“Kara. We meet at last.”
As his summons permeates my thoughts, I recognize my observations of his physical presence for the stupid assumptions that they are—lame attempts to alter this nightmare by fixating on things that make sense. Like nearly everything else in my life, nothing about this makes sense. Until three weeks ago, I just accepted the fact with grim certainty, never hoping for anything different—until everything was different. Until I touched a demigod and my heart woke up.
But now, sleep beckons again, pulling at me from the lips of the demon who comes nearer. His every step sends up clouds of silver smoke, though his strides splinter the floor as if he’s walking on a frozen lake.
“Look at me, love.”
I whimper, tortured by his compelling command. Still, I lift my head. I have no choice. I’m forced to subject my gaze to the fathomless red furnaces of his.
The connection diminishes Maximus’s bellow to nothing but a whisper. Slowly, the god’s clasp replaces Rerek’s around me. It’s gentler but just as confining. Hades hushes more of my tortured sobs, even as the ongoing invasion of his insidious voice compounds my anguish.
There’s nowhere to move, outside or in, as the king I’ve defied becomes the dictator of my future. My muscles are dying coals. My blood is an ice floe.
Only in the deepest core of my heart can I cling to any warmth, from a flame I protect like a prisoner in an Antarctic dungeon.
It’s the light of love. The blaze of my beautiful demigod. The fire not even Hades can take from me—nor, I swear, will ever see. It’s evident he doesn’t even now, as he clamps a hand to my temple and stalks his way into more of my mind. I fight him with all the psychological force I can muster, but he’s here now. Stomping through my mind. Gouging my senses before consuming them with his captivated murmur.
“My word. You really are fascinating.”
The sound is strange and surreal, vibrating only in the confines of my head—just like my unending scream, as he carries me off to a fate I know nothing and everything about.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Maximus
“He’s taken her.”
Jaden’s revelation is a brutal husk, reflecting my own agony. But hearing it in spoken form doesn’t ease one soul-eating shred of it.
Desperate to rewind, rewrite, and reclaim the harrowing moments, I reset my mind to the moments