with him.
He seemed to hesitate before setting me fully on the ground, but perhaps that was my imagination.
Had to be.
He strode forward. “Come. We are running out of time. We must enter before night falls.”
I followed him, hurrying to keep up as we approached the massive columns. There was no official entrance that I could see—the columns were spaced equally, with openness between them. Within the temple, the ground was the same dusty gravel that I walked on. In fact, the columns seemed to rise straight out of the earth itself, born there of magic rather than the manipulations of man.
“How did this place get here?” I asked.
“Born of the darkness, as I.”
“Hmm.” I didn’t like that answer.
Hades paused before entering the temple. I joined him and felt why. A barrier, invisible to the eye but not to the body, stopped us. It pulsed with electric energy, a protective shield that would never let us cross.
“It requires an offering,” Hades said. “There is always a price.”
“Blood?”
“No. Magic.” He held out his hand, hesitating briefly before beginning to remove his thin black leather glove.
I blinked, my heart lodged in my throat.
I hadn’t seen his hands before, and watching him strip the black leather from the broad swath of his palm and the length of his fingers was like watching him undress.
I’d almost expected them to be made of metal and wires.
Instead, they were smooth skin, muscle, tendon, and bone. Veins roped the back, so different from my own. He turned his palm upright, and heat flushed through me.
He’d always been swathed entirely in black armor, and it was insanely intimate to see this. To see the callouses that marked him a warrior, the pale skin.
He’d done terrible things with those hands, yet the sight of them riveted me.
His magic surged, and a faint dark mist wafted up from his palm.
“You, too,” he said.
I nodded and raised my arm, grateful for the distraction. Careful to mimic his movements exactly, I turned my palm up to the sky. Energy sparked against my fingertips, which nearly touched the barrier.
“Call upon your magic,” he murmured. “Offer it to the temple.”
I drew in a deep breath and imagined my power flowing to the surface. Nothing happened.
“Like this.” His hand came to rest beneath mine, dwarfing it.
The touch burned, sending a frisson of awareness up my arm.
I stifled a gasp and tried to focus on the magic within my soul. With his help, it rose deep from within me, shooting down my arm to form at the palm of my hand. A faint white glow formed there. Rising into the air, it twisted around the dark smoke of Hades’ magic.
Something sparked inside me, a connection with him that was impossible to deny. It seemed to pull my soul toward his.
I stiffened, fighting it as I watched my magic twist around his, a spiral of light and dark.
It disappeared into the temple, and the bond faded. He released my hand, and I stepped away from him, shaking slightly.
He drew in a ragged breath and looked down at me, his now-dark gaze meeting my own. Once again, his pupils had expanded, turning his eyes to liquid onyx.
“Can we go in?” I asked.
He nodded. Turning abruptly from me, he stepped into the temple. I followed, my skin chilling as we walked toward the center.
The sky had reached peak fiery brilliance and was now fading to dark, the night turning inky. All around us, ancient magic thrummed.
“Have you been here before?” I asked.
“No.” He spun in a circle, taking it all in. “I required you to come here.”
“And yet you’ve been alive how long?”
“Forever.” If there was a weariness to his voice, I couldn’t hear it. Or maybe I didn’t want to hear it.
I didn’t want to humanize this man who was starting to affect me. He was Hades, for fates’ sake. I’d seen the things he’d done. The evidence of the horror he was capable of.
He was distinctly not human.
“What next?” If I’d had a watch, I would have checked it. “I want to finish this quickly and get back to my friends.”
“That is wishful thinking.” He looked toward the sky. “But we won’t be here long. The night is clear, and we are fortunate.”
“What are we waiting for, exactly?”
“The stars to align. When they do, they will reveal your role in what is to come. Only fate knows how things will happen, and this is the only way to see into the heart of fate.”
I shivered at the enormity