eyes widened in shock. He released her like she was a hot ember from a fire, and Kore wondered if he hadn’t realized he was tugging her close. “No one has worried about him until you,” he corrected. “And that is interesting indeed.”
As he strode away, Kore wondered just how interesting he thought her to be.
Curiosity pushed her forward, but really it was Hades calling her like a siren to follow in his footsteps. She hungered for a moment where she was close to him once again.
Chapter 21
Hades told himself not to push her too fast. She was still new here. Kore was experiencing the Underworld for the first time, and he’d revealed that she killed countless men because she didn’t know enough about Artemis.
Insensitive. That’s what he was. He needed to respect that time away from her family was going to be difficult. She didn’t need someone hanging off her like a lovesick puppy.
She’d shown so much kindness to the one person in the Underworld everyone forgot about, though. Even Hades had a hard time remembering Charon needed to be treated a little more gently than the others. He was the first person souls saw when they entered this dark place and rarely were they nice.
But she saw Charon for what he was. Another person who deserved to be thought of as a person, not just a job.
Then, when he’d teased her, she had turned around with fire in her eyes. She was so damned beautiful it made him ache all the way to the roots of his teeth. He’d wanted to take a bite out of her shoulder, or maybe kiss her. Hades didn’t know which.
So he’d pulled her closer to his chest. Nearly growled with the desire that raged through him until he realized what she was doing.
He opened and closed his hands, flexing his fingers because he could still feel the soft give of her waist when he’d gripped her. Gods, he was losing his mind. He shouldn’t be showing her around the Underworld when all he wanted to do was drag her back to the castle. To his room. To...
Hades speared his fingers through his hair. No. He needed to stop these thoughts.
“Hades?” Her voice made things even worse. He wanted to yank her back to him, cover her mouth with his and see if he could make her lose all words.
“Yes?” he asked, his voice little more than a croak.
“Where do the souls go after this?”
Right, he was supposed to be showing her the Underworld so she could fall in love with it. So she wouldn’t ever want to leave, and he could trust that her mother wouldn’t steal her away.
He cleared his throat. “Right. Once the souls are here, they enter the gates.”
At least this was something familiar. He knew how to tell her all the things he loved about this place. And this was one of the greatest. Hades turned around, stealing himself for her blinding beauty.
And the moment he locked eyes with her, he felt everything all over again. She was so beautiful it made his entire soul sing.
She wasn’t some gilded goddess who was untouchable and crafted from the imagination of the finest artists. She was real and vivid. Like a flower he could find in any field, perfectly created, velvety to the touch, and easily crushed.
No, not easily crushed. He’d seen what her powers could do, and bringing back animals from the dead wasn’t easy.
But Hades wanted to figure out how she did that. He needed time to understand her magic.
Kore’s beautiful face scrunched up in confusion. “The gates? I thought the gates exited the Underworld. Is that not true?”
“There are many ways to enter the Underworld, but there is only one gate to get into the afterlife.” He shrugged. “The mortals are the ones who make the names. I agree, it’s confusing.”
Her face split open with a bright smile that rivaled the sun. “The mortals name everything?”
His cheeks burned in embarrassment. “I prefer it if the mortals are comfortable here. If that means calling the places by whatever names they thought up, then so be it.”
She reached forward, the first time she’d ever grabbed his hand on her own. And when she tangled their fingers together, he felt as though she was entwining their souls. “I think that’s very sweet.”
“Sweet,” he scoffed. “No one has ever called me sweet before.”
Her soft squeeze of his fingers was all the answer he needed. Maybe no one had ever called her