Greyson
TO SHATTER LOVE is to ruin thyself.
Years of memories don’t flash before my eyes—neither happy nor sad to get me through this torment—though if they had, I would welcome their comfort and embrace the strength they’d lend me, because memories and love hold power and energy.
As I feel the bullet pierce my chest and the pain radiates outwards, the only thing that death grants me is life in slow motion and numbness that spreads through my body.
Hurt, pain, and complete decimation of my soul occurs as I watch my love, my mate, gaze at me with dispassion as I fall to the cold desert sand and embrace my death. Her lips move, but I don’t know what she says. However, I feel her love rip away from me.
She was the only happiness I knew in the last five years, and before her, my brothers-in-arms. Yet even those memories don’t grant me the peace I so desire. I try to conjure their images, to pull them forth from my soul, but something else takes over. Peace.
I don’t need those memories. I don’t need the reprieve of their ghostly caress against the tarnished edges of my mind. Peace occurs only in death, and as my soul pulls away from this world, so too does the bond that left me tortured and broken for so long.
Perhaps it’s my body falling away from my ethereal form or the bond with Persephone that releases its clutches on me. All I know, all I feel in that moment, is peace.
Sadness tries to wiggle its toxic nature into me as my soul rushes away from the desert, away from my mate and away from the men that feel closer to me than any other. Just as quickly as the sadness grows claws, it retracts, leaving me breathless.
That’s if I could breathe.
I know my destination. I know what awaits me. The Underworld called to me long before I ever stepped foot on hissoil.
Him.
If Earth, Gaia, is the ultimate mother, I wonder if the Underworld is the ultimate father—Tartarus. Both sleep far below the surface, full of foliage and fauna, where consciousness no longer exists.
My thoughts scatter into a thousand shards of glass until I feel them reform, one by one. The Fates carefully weave the elegant design of the human form back together piece by piece. A tingle races up my legs, from the tips of my toes to the longest hair on my head, until I feel my body.
Sight forms last, and when I blink open my eyes, I stare at a vast expanse of desert again. I’m no longer on Earth though. I damn well know this to be true if the two suns are anything to go by. One is so close, I feel like I could reach out and touch the glowing sphere.
Pristine freckled skin forms as I watch, stealing my awareness. No scars exist. Not here. The freckles I knew by memory materialize before my eyes, ones I memorized by heart as I stared at myself in the mirror during each day of my brief life. Something more occurs, however, a feeling of euphoria that I could clearly get used to in this new life.
“You killed me!” a voice yells, shattering the peace of death and catapulting me into the realm of the undead.
Startled, I look to the side to see a man I know better than any other in this world. He keeps pace with me, the man Granger and I buried who I did indeed kill for a second time, one who followed me to the Underworld.
Persephone allowed that minor detail to sink into my mind as she killed him for real. Except as I look at him right now, with his red hair and freckles looking so much like mine, I feel nothing. Not even an ounce of empathy for the man who raised me rises within me, for
the man who taught us to ride a bike and who always went behind Mom’s back to let us play in the mud. Nothing but contempt slithers up my spine.
“I wish I could recall your death in more detail,” I tell him as I step forward. Boots I wore before my death crunch along the sand, the white shirt on my back clings to me like a second skin, and the fatigues I wear feel like they’ll get hot before long, because here, I still feel the heat of the sun on my scalp, back, and face.
Coming to a halt, I tilt my head back and close my eyes. My lungs fill with a long, slow inhale as I measure each breath of air and commit it to memory.
A new dawn, a new day, a new life in a new world. I just need to get to Charon. Reaching into my pocket, I finger the gold coins my crew remembered to place on my eyes after my death.
Drawing my hand from my pocket, I stand with my eyes still closed and bask in the heat of the sun as it shines down on me.
“You reached into my chest and pulled out my heart, boy.” My father’s gruff voice once again disturbs the peace that I’ve desired for so fucking long.
I deserve a happy afterlife, and this asshole will not ruin it. I won’t let him.
Ignoring the man who gave me his seed, I walk toward the horizon. Though the desert of the Underworld stretches endlessly before me, I know that I’ll eventually get home.
Home to Vanessa.
“I’m talking to you!” my father yells at me, and for the first time since arriving in the Underworld, my peace vanishes and irritation replaces it.
I tilt my head to the side, giving my father a fraction of my attention. Disgust rises within me, even if I don’t completely understand why. “You’re dead,” I state and bite my tongue, the irony resting there like a sour grape.
“So are you,” he seethes. His ruddy cheeks bloom with irritation, and his nostrils flare as though he smells something rotten.
Odd, considering the Underworld smells like home to me. Ready to go on my merry way, I chuckle. The sound spills from my lips with
a sense of euphoria and relief. It’s the first laugh of my existence that sounds truly genuine. It’s free of all strings and negative emotions, and fuck, it feels good.
I feel wonderful.
“Yep.” I continue on my way toward Vanessa. My Vanessa. My little dragon.
“You do not know what you’ve done.” My father picks up his pace, marching steadily beside me.
“Answer something for me,” I reply, not willing to give him the chance to speak.
“No.”
I ask my question anyway, uncaring if he gives me the answer, because, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter anymore. “Mom?”
His laughter isn’t an answer, not really, but the malice that rolls off his tongue says all I need to know. Sorrow fills me as my childhood rises in my memories, along with flashes full of laughter and happiness.
The human mind is weird like that, rewriting memories so they don’t hurt as much as they did in that moment, blurring the lines between reality and mental emotion. Anxiety suffered at the time doesn’t spring forth with a heinous memory or a devious thought because the human brain won’t allow that emotion to step forward and take command.
In death, however, those emotions fade and memories become crystal clear, and I realize here and now just how fucked up my childhood was.
What I thought was love was nothing more than a façade, overwritten by the acts they committed. Speculation rises inside of me. I know my parents loved me, I felt that, but even a serial killer has a mother who loves their homicidal child with all their heart, no matter the heinous acts they committed.
Even though I suspect they were no better than corrupt politicians, my parents loved us in their own way.
I should have known.
I should have seen this.
Love is blind.
“Your mother was a CIA agent.” My father laughs, his guffaw spilling across the cooling daylight of the Underworld.
I nod because it’s not a surprise. Not now, not after the life I chose. Not after I pushed myself until there was nothing left but a remnant of who I could have been. “All right,” I tell my father.
“Silas.” My father steps before me, halting my advance toward the River Styx, toward Charon.
“Rick,” I mock, wondering if that is even his real name. Again, it doesn’t matter, and for that, I’m glad. If I were alive, his words would hurt. Dead? No fucks are given. Deep inside of me, I know he’s an evil, dangerous, deadly man. He lived a life full of corruption that I now see in full color granted by death.
It’s odd, considering he never told me that. He never hinted at it nor gave me any reason to suspect him. Maybe it’s a sixth sense or knowledge gleaned at death.
Feeling confident, I step to the side. I could skip through hell and whistle a merry tune. Persephone may lurk on the outskirts of the Underworld, but it doesn’t bother me anymore.
She can’t hurt me here. She can never hurt me again.
“We knew Granger is a changeling,” my father says with the best villain voice he can muster.
Once more, my progress gets the disruption he desires, and I glance at my father. I look down on Rick Miller, who’s smaller than me by at least four inches. I glare down on this man who once felt like he would always be ten feet tall and on top of the world. He used to smile and laugh and kiss my mother on the temple when she wasn’t looking.
Those words shattered what remained of the illusion.
Granger was my brother, the one I grew up with, though we knew he wasn’t human or even my biological sibling. We knew from a young age that he was something so much more. I never felt as though he wasn’t my actual brother. However, somewhere in the universe, my biological brother exists.
“You arranged it?” I look into his blue eyes that match mine, taking in his round, full face and the pockmarks that scar his skin. I
used to think they gave him character, and they never bothered me before, but now I wonder why they exist.
Disease or a hard life?
So much for not giving a shit.
“Granger was a part of a contract.” Thinking he’s got me, he stands tall, his shoulders rolling back and his spine ramrod straight.
I shake my head and keep walking. “If you want to talk, then you can walk and talk. I have somewhere to be.”
“Charon.” My father laughs. “My son, with no coins, you won’t be able to pay the ferryman. They strand us here until Hades hunts us down and determines what to do with us, and by then, we won’t even know who we are anymore.”
The coins feel heavy in my pocket, weighted from my father’s words, not from their source material. I resist the urge to pat my pocket and decide ignorance is bliss. “Vanessa will find me.”
Now his laughter turns cruel, mocking. “Son, tell me, can you feel her? Her bond?”
I swallow as a denial forms on my tongue, except the words don’t come.
I can’t feel her. Not like I used to. “It’s expected.”
“Maybe,” he taunts.
I don’t recall him ever being this cruel. “Tell me about the contract with Granger,” I demand.
“You don’t want to know about your mother?” He snorts with disbelief…or is that disappointment? Growing up, he was always so kind. I don’t know this man before me, and maybe that makes all of this so much easier. “Or me, for that matter? You don’t want to know what I’ve been up to since my death? Because I assure you, it wasn’t for shits and giggles.”
“No, I don’t.” The truth in my words shocks not only my father, but also me. The only people I give a fuck about, aside from Vanessa and the guys, are my brother Granger and my friend Liam. If I can help Granger with this bit of information, I will.
“What about your contract?”
Although death stole my breath not even an hour before, my father’s words now stop my entire existence. “No,” I mutter, making
a mistake and giving him a fraction of despair—an emotion that I shouldn’t feel, and yet here we are with my reality rising before me.
He knows about the contract with Persephone.
“Got your attention, didn’t I?” Again, the man I once loved steps in front of me, a sneer on his face as his eyes bore through me. I’m nothing more than energy right now, and yet I feel as though the look he gives me destroys my very soul. “Long before we conceived you, you were nothing but a means to an end.”
“What end?” I glance between his eyes, watching his pupils flex as his hooks sink into my soul.
“Ah, ah, ah.” He waves a chubby finger at me. “Can’t have you running around hell with all my secrets, now can I?”
“Rick, your secrets are worthless here,” I lie. I know Hades, and I know he will want every secret my father can get out of him.
“Priceless,” he whispers, his rancid breath gusting over me.
“I don’t know why, but I hate you.” I shake my head, ready to give him the confrontation he’s itching for. Isn’t that what this is all about? Facing a man who should have hugged me when he saw me in that building standing up for myself? As my memory of that moment clarifies, however, I realize it wasn’t love I saw in his eyes, but excitement—just not for me.
For Persephone.
“You were an assignment,” he tells me. “Your brother was a peace treaty.” His smile stretches across his yellow teeth, saliva stringing between the enamel as his mouth parts. “Your mother was just working on an assignment.”
In death, there is peace. How many times do I need to repeat that before it feels true? This man keeps shattering everything I know, everything I knew. “My biological brother?”
“Gone.” He cackles. “Though he isn’t your brother. Well, a halfsibling.”
No such thing. A sibling is a sibling no matter who sired them or brought them into the world. A sibling can share the same DNA in whole or in part—hell, they may not even share any—but they are a sibling, no halves.
I say none of this to my father though. Doing so would give him a piece of me.
“How many years have you been watching me?” I ask, already knowing the truth—a truth he confirms with his grimy smile. Nodding at him, I step to the side. My no longer beating heart turns heavy, and I’ve had enough of this conversation. Enough of him.
I had the perfect childhood. I know my mother loved me. She tucked me in at night, sang me songs to ease my fears, and kissed all the scratches and bumps and bruises I earned over the years.
I refuse to believe his nonsense. He’s trying to hurt me, even in death. “No,” I state firmly, refusing to give this man an ounce more of emotion. I don’t want the answers to the questions my human thoughts spawn.
“Your mom is alive, you know.” He laughs when I give him nothing, trying a different tactic. “Persephone wasn’t supposed to kill me.”
Persephone does whatever Persephone wants.
I hum in answer, feeling a shadow move over us, swooping low as the suns set. A thought tickles the back of my mind that something isn’t quite right. I don’t think the suns setting is a good thing.
True night, when the suns both set and cast the Underworld in complete darkness.
“We need to find shelter,” I tell my father, looking around for a place to hide until dawn.
“Son, we are in the Underworld. We are already dead,” he scoffs, kicking at the red sand beneath his feet.
“Rick.” I call him by his given name because he’s not really a father to my brother or me, so he doesn’t deserve the title. “There are creatures in this world that can kill a shade.” That includes Vanessa, but I don’t tell him that.
“Is that what we are?” he grumbles to himself, placing his hands on his thick hips and glancing down at his very corporeal body.
“Do you not know anything about the Underworld?” In the distance, I spy a cave protruding out of the ground. Usually, I might find shelter in a cave, but here in the Underworld?
There is no telling what dwells there.
However, the trees that rise beside it may provide some kind of shelter. My feet move before my brain tells them to as dust puffs around me like a cloud and memories of danger flash in my mind of the night we spent in Asphodel, when true night chased away the light. Each puff of dust announces my location to every waking predator with each step I take.
Some things can’t be helped.
“Silas!” my father yells, heaving as he reaches me. “We are dead.” He reaches out and shakes me.
My coins jangle, and I try to cover the noise by reminding him of who I am. “My name is Greyson.”
“Silas,” he continues, “what’s in your pocket?”
Dead or alive, I can outrun him. He remembers being unhealthily slow. I remember running until I no longer puked. The army will do that to you.
Thankful for my training, I take off. My feet hit the dirt as I chase the horizon and the trees that rise in the distance. My father’s laughter licks up my spine, smacking every single creep factor that exists.
The trees rise, and with it, my father leaning against the bark of a trunk, and I skid to a stop. He stands with one foot kicked over the other and his arms crossed. The business suit he wears is the same as the gray one he wore in death.
Horror dawns on me as I realize just how much I underestimated this man.
I barely catch myself before he tackles me to the ground.
“I told you, boy, we are dead.” He presses his forearm against my throat, his weight a heavy pressure on my larynx. “Seems you haven’t caught on yet. The mind will do that to you, my boy.” He leans down as I gasp from the loss of breath. “It plays tricks on you. You’ll get used to it.” The last he says in a whisper.
The jangle of coins sends a spear of fear up and down my body.
No. I can’t speak, not even as my father releases me and the pressure of his body lifts off mine. I watch as he fades from my sight, turning to nothing more than a mist and then to nothing.
Frantically, I run my hands along my body to my pocket, where the coins should rest. Only they aren’t there anymore.
My fists slam into the ground, the pain jarring my body as I curl onto my side. I’m free for the first time in my life and hope lingers on the horizon, but now hopelessness swells inside of me as I cough into the sand. The chill of the air reminds me that I’m in danger as the suns set and darkness swells.
I push to sit up, realizing he was right I feel the peace of death, but my body still feels the weight of life. My lungs dislodge what feels like real sand, and I cough into the crook of my elbow.
A howl splits the air.
I’m no longer safe, and the suns have almost set.
Remembering the warning Hades gave all those weeks ago about true night, I scramble up the tree, climbing as high as I can and perching in the crook of a branch. My arms wrap around the tree as I send a silent prayer up to my mate.
“Find me, Vanessa,” I whisper to the night, even though I no longer feel her presence inside me. I clamp my eyes shut, not ready to face the horrors of the Underworld far beyond the River Styx, but I know I have no choice in the matter. If I can just survive the night, I can determine how to get my coins back in the morning.
There’s no way my father made it to Charon before the suns set.
A heavy weight settles around my shoulders, and scales ripple against my neck, and with it, hope swells within me.
If Elliot can find me, so can Vanessa.
THREE MONTHS Later
Vanessa
“IMPOSSIBLE. ” Frustration gnaws at me, chewing away at my insides until I want to hit something or set something on fire. “He should have made it over the river. I don’t understand why he isn’t here.” Tears burn my vision, and my chest aches with the loss of Greyson. My Greyson. My human. Mine.
“Vanessa,” Hades calls, his voice soft with a dash of worry. My hair pours over my shoulders as I turn to him. He stands across from me, his desk sitting between us, and his dark obsidian eyes soften with compassion that spears me. “He is here,” Hades assures me, just as he always does when he finds me in here—the library, which has become my safe haven.
“That’s just it, Hades.” I want to crumple the map between us. The thick parchment lies on his desk with golden lines that rise with the mountains and lower with the valleys. It’s failing me. My knowledge and connection to the Underworld fails me. “Either you or I should have a connection to him.”
“You’re right, Vanessa.” Hades leans over the map until we are at eye level. As the God of Souls, he should know where Greyson is, but something blocks that knowledge—a fact he’s reminded me of many times these past months. “We can no longer sit here and stay static, my love. Nor can we spend precious time scouring the maps.
The wards are failing, the Underworld divides more and more every day, and its true heir, you, sit behind its walls, aching for a shade.”
I roll my eyes to the never-ending shelves of books that surround us. Thick tomes rise as far as the eye can see. I want to ignore Hades’ words, except they embrace me then suffocate me.
He’s been kind and patient. Hades isn’t wrong, and he’s at his breaking point. I can see it in the wrinkles that deepen at the corners of his eyes.
When we left Earth and heeded the call to come home to the Underworld, I expected everything to fall into place. I expected the world to right itself. Greyson was no longer connected to Persephone, and the military base holding my mother’s eggs no longer existed, blown to hell. We annihilated all earthly enemies, leaving just one—Persephone.
The self-proclaimed Queen of the Underworld remains quiet. After Cerberus and the guys cast a ward over Hades’ golden castle and I neglected to kill her, she ran. But I’m no fool. While we spent time on Earth licking our wounds, she licked hers here, all of us strengthening.
Hades is correct—the Underworld remains divided, and although new allies show up on our doorstep every day, I have yet to show my face. The guys also can’t pinpoint Greyson’s location, and a revolution arose in the Underworld.
Now, it’s Persephone versus me.
Not many sit on the line between us, because everyone took a side. Many chose Persephone out of fear. Somehow, she keeps her location blocked from me, but there are areas of the Underworld I was never privy to see—areas belonging to Tartarus and him alone.
Not to mention my new advisor, my father, has been eerily helpful.
“You’re right.” I drop my head, feeling shame burn my cheeks. “No more vacations.”
“I wouldn’t call helping a friend a vacation,” he teases, pushing off the desk to walk around and grab my hands in his. The warmth of his skin eases my anxiety over Greyson. “Sabina means the world to you, halfling.” He leans in and presses a kiss on my forehead.
He’s right. He’s often right. Hades spent time observing me and learning my patterns and thoughts. They all have. It’s one of the reasons I begged to help Sabina with the lion issue. It was nothing major, just Artemis manipulating fate to bend to her will. Again. She let a grieving Nemean lion loose on Lunar Pack grounds, and then she hid his scent.
I chuckle. “Artemis is an intriguing goddess.”
Hades doesn’t answer. Instead, he hums while running his hands up and down my arms. Desire flickers in my gut for the first time in months, yet when I close my eyes, I’m plagued with the vision of Greyson falling to the ground as the life flees from his eyes.
“You still see his death.” Understanding and oh so patient, Hades steps away from me, taking his warmth and comfort with him.
“I do.” I heave out a sigh, because it’s all I see anymore.
My visions have dried up, leaving me with nothing more than the sight of Greyson dying on repeat. I sleep very little, and my body remains on the edge of fight-or-flight, adrenaline constantly spiking through me.
“We will find him, but, Vanessa, we must address the larger issues regarding the castle.” Hades drops my hands, sympathy pouring off him in waves. “With or without Greyson.”
I nod, knowing he is right but unable to speak the words. Hades stands before me in his pristine black suit, his white shirt open at the collar, where olive skin taunts me. He’s handsome beyond words, powerful, and patient. He’s also wholly mine, now and for all eternity.
“Do you have a plan?” I ask him, stepping away from the interactive map. I glance down once more, scanning the surface and hoping the magic that powers the map will show me where Greyson is.
“Truly?” he questions with suspicion. Oh, how I’ve neglected my mates. “Truly, Hades. Walk with me?” I don’t give him a choice as I slip my elbow in his and guide him out of the library, leaving behind the comforting scent of leather and ancient tomes, as well as the only link I hold to Greyson.
I rejectedhim. As I close my eyes, my own words haunt me over and over. I did what I had to do to keep him safe, to give him a life without Persephone, but that life meant death. I put all my faith in him showing up in the Underworld where I could find him, mate him, and give him the power that comes with mating me.
Swallowing my tears and pain, I push those thoughts away and focus on Hades, who hopefully has a plan of action—one that will allow us to take control of the Underworld and end this revolution Persephone has staged.
Some will see us as villains, while some will see us as heroes. I only hope I can show all those who call the Underworld home that I am genuine and truthful, that I will rise as their queen and restore the Underworld not just to what it once was, but to a safe haven for shades and monsters alike.
They deserve that. All immortals deserve peace, and I want to provide that for them.
“It won’t work.” Apollo steps from around a corner wearing nothing more than ripped jeans and well, nothing else. He looks every bit the delectable morsel. His bronze skin glistens, though we are in a castle hallway surrounded by cold stone and little light, and he’s taller than most men, towering over all but Pim and Acon. His shaggy dirty blond hair hangs to his shoulders, and his blue eyes gleam with his usual knowing quality. He also has a dirty habit of reading my mind far before I even know what I’m about to say or think, and I adore him for it.
“What won’t work?” I raise a brow, ready to challenge my allknowing sun god mate.
“Your thoughts, Cupcake.” His pouty lips tick up into a crooked smile as his eyes travel up and down my body, igniting a fire that fizzles out all too fast as I understand what he’s saying.
“I can’t provide them peace?” My claws lengthen and dip into the skin of Hades’ arm. He doesn’t move, and he doesn’t flinch. Instead, he opts to pat my hand in comfort.
“Vanessa, immortals don’t die often enough.” Hades glances down at me. “This is normal.”
“I refuse to allow you to give that bitch an excuse.” I dig my heels in and face my mates with my hands on my hips and my foot tapping out a staccato beat that lives solely in my head.
“Cupcake, it isn’t an excuse. It is a fact.” Apollo punctuates each word, and each syllable sends irritation traveling up my spine. “Immortals live too long. Their minds sour, and they must die. It is a natural progression.”
I grind my teeth. “No.”
“Vanessa, let’s table this discussion for now.” Hades is speaking to me, but he stares down Apollo.
Rolling his blue eyes, Apollo turns to me. “Let’s get something through your pretty little stubborn dragon brain. Having too many immortals, who never die, creates an imbalance in all worlds. Can you imagine if no one hunted vampires? They would overthrow Earth.”
“I’m not talking about vampires, Apollo. I’m talking about the creatures who live here.” I resist the urge to stomp my foot, even though I want to. “The ogres, cyclopes, and Chimera would still be alive. The lions.”
“I get it, Vanessa, I do, but they cannot live out their days. Immortals are meant to fight.” Apollo raises his brow in challenge. “And fuck.”
“Must you be so crude?” Hades sighs, accepting that this conversation is indeed occurring.
“Yes, because our little mate has spent months licking her wounds while trying to meditate on Greyson’s location.”
“Well, if you would allow me to search for him, then I wouldn’t have to hole up in the library,” I shout at Apollo.
“Pim and Acon are doing their best to find your mate. You were supposed to stay here and assure our allies that they made the right choice by siding with us,” Apollo sneers, agitated that I’ve done nothing more than stare at a map for months. What bothers me the most is the fact that he’s right. “Meanwhile, you are not rising to the challenge of the uprising, and when you finally leave the library, you are intent on giving them peace.” He shudders before he continues
on. “Persephone will already have dug her claws into their souls, and they will no longer see you as their salvation.”
I turn to Hades. “I’m going to kill him.” Hurt rises inside me. Not because he’s wrong, but because he’s right.
“You aren’t.” Hades reaches out, tucks a lock of my hair behind an ear, and then gives it a gentle tug. “He isn’t wrong. But—” Hades holds up a hand, staving off any argument I might have. “I have a theory.”
“Lead with that next time.” I cross my arms and glare at him. The need to find Greyson is nearly suffocating me and warring with the need to do as they claim—be the heir the Underworld chose me to be.
“Walk with me, Vanessa.” Hades loops an elbow in mine and steers me down the corridor where Apollo leans against the wall. Though I’m irritated, Hades remains patient and smiles down at me with such love that it eases my agitation. He looks at me as though he misses the way I used to smile at him, but he won’t say it out loud. Instead, he sticks to business. “I’m the God of Souls.”
“We know who you are, Hades.” Apollo pushes off the wall, his bare feet slapping along the stone. Every move he makes is full of irritation at the fact that we’ve done nothing for months.
“Ah, many see me as the God of the Underworld, and that is only because this is where the souls end up, but there’s a caveat to that.” Hades glances down at me, his expression softening. “I sense their deaths. Thousands upon thousands of deaths. To curb this, reapers exist.”
“Otherwise, Hades would be insane, like the rest of those who should have died,” Apollo remarks over his shoulder. He doesn’t bother to explain his words either.
I imagine spearing him with my barbed tail.
“Focus on me.” Hades squeezes my arm. “I give my focus to the souls who cross the River Styx,” he explains, pausing before the kitchen door, where the sounds of bustling activity and dishes clattering in the sink filter through the door.
“No.” Apollo spins around, his eyes wide. “Impossible.”
“Possible,” Hades counters.
“Explain this to me, guys. Where the fuck is Greyson?” I curse, and though it’s not something I often do, my irritation at what I want to do instead of what I need to do builds inside of me until I feel ready to boil over. If they claim my safety is at risk one more time, I’m going to burn this entire castle to the ground.
“Greyson never crossed the River Styx,” Hades says.
“Why are you only bringing this up now? We wasted months!” I yell at him. I can feel a sneeze tickling my nose. It won’t come out as a sneeze either. I’ll breathe fire.
“My dear Vanessa.” Hades grabs my hands, instantly calming me. “We gave him coins for Charon. All he had to do was cross. So either he crossed the river and doesn’t want to be found…” He trails off.
“Impossible,” I tell him. Even after rejecting Greyson as I did, he’d still find me. I bet my entire love for him on that fact. I refuse to allow doubt to creep in now.
“You did reject him as he died,” Apollo reminds me, bringing up the nightmare that haunts every waking and sleeping hour.
“Exactly. Greyson would come to you no matter what, Vanessa. Something had to have happened.” Hades squeezes my hands in comfort. I don’t feel an ounce of comfort though.
Not once in the last three months did I suspect something terrible happened. I thought positively. Hell, I breathed positivity. I knew Greyson would find me, except now, I’m not so sure.
I press the tips of my fingers to my lips as the horror of leaving Greyson alone for all these months dawns on me. “What have I done?”
“Cupcake, don’t.”
“Don’t you Cupcake me.” I whirl on Apollo. “Who knows what could have happened to him? I don’t even know what creatures live on the outskirts of the city.”
Apollo heaves a sigh, his eyes lingering on the kitchen door before he wrinkles his forehead and speaks over me. “Back to the—”
“Yes,” Hades finishes, whirling us around and back in the direction we came.
“So close,” Apollo mutters.
“Patience, Apollo.” Hades chuckles as he guides me to the library.
A part of me yearns to ask just what lies beyond the kitchen doors and why they are so anxious to get me out of this hallway, but my heart hurts, and waiting here is no longer an option.
“After this…” I lick my lips and hang on to Hades for support. “After this, I’m leaving the castle.”
I can feel them hold their breaths. I clench my muscles as I keep my head high and my gaze on the library door.
“Patience,” Hades says again, only this time, it’s directed at me.
I nod and grind my teeth, my jaw permanently locked.
Once more, the scent of leather and spice tickles my nostrils, easing my anxiety. The map I left on the desk taunts me with its golden hues, but Hades leads us toward a row of globes that rest against one wall.
We pause before them, all lined up and spinning at various speeds and degrees.
“All the worlds, Vanessa.” Hades gestures to the globes, and while I suspected that is what they are, his following words surprise me. “Though I have my reapers, all of these globes give me access to all the souls in the universe.” His hands lightly glide over the globes, not quite touching but still disturbing the clouds lingering over a representation of Earth.
“I didn’t realize.” I peer at the globes with new eyes, with new thoughts, and a curiosity that never ends.
“I’m connected to each in a way that defies universal physics, but it is here, in this little slip of space, where I cannot find Greyson.” He points to the Underworld with its red hues and gray undertones. Our world isn’t like the others. “We reside here.” He points to the side of the globe where the golden castle rests, rising into the sky with its spires. “All around us and the central city reside the villages in which our citizens dwell, as well as the dead who find homes within the safety of Asphodel and the other isles.”
“Yes, now that its wards are back up.” Apollo snorts, and Hades casts him an ungrateful glance. “What? That bitch ruined it for the souls just seeking to live a decent afterlife.”
He isn’t wrong. Hades spent centuries turning the Underworld into a safe haven. Not all the dead would be completely corporeal here either. They can just be seen. With a magical dome infused with Hades’ power, however, he allowed those of Asphodel to live their afterlife as they did on Earth.
Clearing his throat, Hades carries on. “This is the River Styx.” Hades points to the water that surrounds the entire circle.
“What about here?” I question, pointing to a bright green area surrounded by water.
“The Elysian Fields,” Hades answers. “It is outside the River Styx. It is here we must look.” Hades doesn’t spin the globe but crouches before it and points to a rocky terrain that bleeds into the endless desert. “This is where I believe we will find Greyson.”
Hopelessness rises inside of me at the vast space. The golden castle stands in the world before me, giving way to cities and villages and lush mountains to the pits of Tartarus, spattered with rivers and pools of water. All of it has a border that separates us from the endless desert—the River Styx.
“In mythology, the River Styx separates the living from the dead,” Hades says while staring at the globe.
“What is it, Hades? Where is Greyson?” All this time, I never once thought about where Greyson would land upon his death. I thought he’d enter the Underworld and cross the river.
Oh, how wrong I was.
“Purgatory,” Apollo answers with a cold aloofness that I know is a mask of indifference. Inside, this bothers him a lot.
“Greyson is in purgatory?” I shake my head. “Isn’t that a Christian thing?”
Hades frowns and eyes Apollo as though he may swat him. “Lost souls, Vanessa. This is where the lost souls reside.”
“He isn’t—” I begin.
“Lost?” Apollo cuts me off. “Greyson is very much lost. We just never thought of this as a possibility.”
“Okay, let’s go. Let’s go find Greyson and bring him home,” I tell them, determination in my voice.
