Heart (23 page)

Crete pulled back just in time. The ax cut
through the fabric, but Crete was safe.

The Centaur didn’t retreat back to his place
this time. Instead, he stood at the edge of the path, watching
Crete with the kind of greed and insatiable hunger Hades watched me
with.

Interesting.

Was it possible that Crete had to stay on
this path too? Was the Underworld as dangerous to him as it was to
anyone else?

I turned to look at the crowd of nightmarish
creatures, a sight I had been terrified of until a second ago. They
watched the fight with open-mouthed voracity. Their dull eyes
danced with something like hope.

I hadn’t been able to look at them, too
afraid that thirst was for me or for Ryder.

But now I saw it for what it was. They wanted
Hades. They wanted to rip him apart and drink his blood.

They wanted to end their suffering as badly
as anyone would in their situation.

Ryder realized this too. His attack became
more thoughtful as he stopped trying to kill Crete. Instead, he
tried to push him over the line.

It would only take a second. One second of
his feet falling over the path’s edge for something to grab
him.

If I had my voice I could compel him to step
over the line, but the Underworld had taken it from me as if it had
anticipated that.

It probably had.

Ryder lunged forward and put his hands on
Crete, wrapping them around his throat. Crete didn’t hesitate to do
the same to Ryder. They stumbled and fell against each other, both
desperate to end the other.

Ryder’s foot came down and slammed onto
Crete’s knee. Crete buckled beneath him and let out an agonized
shout. It only took him a second to recover though.

Crete was bigger than Ryder. He was bigger
than the human version of himself I had come to recognize. Crete
had personified himself as the god he was and his larger body and
bulking muscle dwarfed Ryder.

Hades grew as I watched him. His eyes
darkened into black holes of depravity. His teeth lengthened until
they looked like fangs dripping from his mouth. His skin cracked
and split and his fingers became crushing boulders held against
Ryder’s throat.

Ryder looked like a doll in Crete’s hands.
Hades shook him like a boneless puppet, strangling the life from
him. Ryder’s face reddened with the effort to breath and I stopped
breathing with him.

I pounded against my force field. Electricity
zapped my skin and jarred my bones, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t
stop the tears from streaming down my cheeks as I watched the life
drain from Ryder’s face.

His eyes fluttered as he struggled to keep
them open. His arms lost their hold on Crete’s bulging neck and
hung limply at his side. He fought to look at me and I blinked
quickly so I could see him through my curtain of tears.

He mouthed something that I couldn’t
understand in my grief. Then his eyes fluttered closed and he
collapsed against Crete’s body.

Hades stood up straight, still holding
Ryder’s body in his crushing grip. He looked at the body in his
hands and a slow smile slid over his mouth. His soulless eyes
danced with victory and something like the evil-version of joy
wrapped around his entire body.

“You sent
him
to stop me?” he bellowed
at me. “This human? This weak, pathetic
human
?” Crete tossed
his head back and barked out laughter. “You are mine now, Siren.
Mine
. And this,” he threw out one of his large hands, “is
your new home.”

With horror like I had never known, I watched
Crete toss Ryder’s body toward the salivating crowd waiting for
flesh.

An agonized sound ripped from my throat,
burning and cutting as it fell from my lips. I wanted to turn away,
but I couldn’t. I had to watch this until the last moment. Until I
joined Ryder on the other side and we both succumbed to the
mindless emptiness that would destroy us.

Ryder’s back arched as he crossed over the
invisible line that separated the Underworld from the path. His
fingers reached out and grabbed Crete’s wrist at the very last
moment.

Hades hadn’t been expecting Ryder to still be
alive, let alone capable of any kind of strength. I watched
confusion contort Crete’s features. Absolute fear gripped the god
of the Underworld as Ryder’s surprising strength pulled Hades with
him over the line.

The Centaur was there waiting for Ryder. The
entire crowd had moved forward, hungry for him. But the moment
Crete’s body crossed the line with flailing arms and screaming
lips, Ryder was forgotten.

Ryder’s back hit the dirt ground and nobody
spared him a second glance. They were all too busy pulling Hades
over the last of the barrier.

Ryder’s chest heaved with the effort to
breathe on that side of the line. I could hear Crete’s ungodly
screams echoing around the cavern, but I only had eyes for
Ryder.

The light immediately dimmed from his eyes
and his skin paled in seconds. This place was already sucking the
life out of him and he had only been dead for a minute.

My heart split in two as I watched him lie
there. He struggled to come to terms with where he was and what had
happened. His fingers clutched at the dirt beneath him in an effort
to hold onto something real and tangible.

His terrified eyes met mine and stared at me
with horror. The force field around me slowly disappeared, taking
my heart with it. I hated that he’d locked me away so I couldn’t
help him, but I would have done anything to have it there again. I
would have done anything to have Ryder back again.

A silent, choked sob ripped from my chest. I
pressed the back of my hand to my mouth and tried to breathe. It
was getting harder and harder. I couldn’t get oxygen into my lungs.
I couldn’t do anything but suffocate from this pain.

I tried to hold his gaze. I tried to silently
beg him to stay with me, to hold on to everything that we were and
everything that we could have been.

Don’t leave me
, I begged him with my
eyes.
Please, don’t leave me like this!

The sound of flesh being ripped from bone and
agonized screams echoed in the background, but nothing could
penetrate my sorrow. I had lost Ryder.

On a stupid whim to save my mother, I had
lost Ryder.

Oh, god.
What had I done?

Something interrupted my view of Ryder and it
took a few seconds for me to figure out what it was. A body had
stepped in front of me so I couldn’t see him anymore. She stood
right at the edge of the path, the only thing separating us was the
border between the living and the dead.

The veil. I recognized it now for what it
was. The veil between life and death. Between the real world and
the Underworld.

I strained to peer around her before I
realized she wanted me to look at her. I didn’t know how I knew
this, but I did.

Slowly I settled my desperation and lifted my
eyes to meet Persephone’s crazed eyes. Her cracked, bloodied lips
were tipped in a smile. Her wild hair frizzed around her face and
fell into her black eyes. A giggle of deranged laughter bubbled out
of her. It sounded like nails scraping on a chalkboard.

“You have delivered us,” she rasped. Medusa
stood just behind her, but I held Persephone’s gaze, knowing that
if I looked at Medusa I would die.

I could smell her rotting breath from here
and nearly gagged. “Not me,” I managed to mouth.

She looked over her shoulder contemplatively.
Ryder’s shoulders had relaxed into the dirt. I wondered if he would
lie there for the rest of eternity.

Would he know to stand up again? Would the
creatures move onto him after they were finished with Hades?

“You love him?” she asked. There was
something in her tone that made me hesitant to answer.

But I couldn’t deny the truth. I wanted to
scream at her that I did. I wanted to shout that I loved him with
everything that I was and that I would do anything to trade places
with him. He didn’t deserve this. But without a voice, all I could
do was nod. It felt so inadequate; it felt like a lie because the
gesture couldn’t begin to explain the depth of my feelings for
him.

Her dead eyes returned to mine. “I, too,
loved once.” Fury radiated from her and her hair lifted from her
shoulders as if she had been hit with a gust of wind. “But he took
it from me!” she screamed. Her mangled finger pointed to Hades. “He
took everything from me to make me his queen! And this is the
kingdom I rule? This is the life he gave me after he destroyed the
one man I loved?”

More tears streaked my cheeks, but this time
I shared my grief with Persephone. I could relate.

In so many ways.

“You have given me justice,” she said in a
more level tone. “Justice I never expected to have. For that I
shall give you a gift.” With a wave of her hand, she lifted Ryder
off the ground and floated him over to the edge of the path.

My breath caught in my throat and I clenched
my hands into fists to keep from reaching for him. I tore my
hopeful gaze from his still body and showed my gratitude to
Persephone through my watery eyes.

“Only once will I do this for you,” she
warned. “If you wander into my kingdom again, I will not be so
gracious.”

I nodded. I understood. But she had to
understand that
nothing
would bring me back here again.
Not anything.

“Thank you, Siren. You are free from my realm
today.” With a flick of her hand Ryder collapsed on the path in
front of me.

Chapter Nineteen

I forced myself to acknowledge Persephone for
a second longer before I rushed to Ryder’s side. Instinct screamed
that I should show the Queen of the Underworld respect now that she
had assumed complete control, especially while she appeared beyond
insane from the trauma of her imprisonment in the Underworld.

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave Ryder
untouched for a moment longer. I had watched my world, my entire
existence, implode and shatter into a million unfixable fragments
when he fell over the veil. I had lost everything I had tried to
protect and given up everything I was trying to accomplish.

I had died with him.

Now he was back. We had been given a second
chance and I refused to be separated from him for a moment
longer.

At my feet, he curled into a ball and coughed
up blood. His body trembled violently, unable to recover from his
brief encounter with the land of the dead. His lungs gasped for
breath while his hands tore at his exposed skin and throat.

My heart squeezed and panic flooded me. I
didn’t know what to do or how to help Ryder.

I felt Persephone’s absence as she threw
herself on Hades. Medusa was at her side a moment later. The two
females let out battle cries of revenge and attacked whatever was
left of the god of the Underworld.

I didn’t let myself look. I couldn’t handle
this place for another second.

With whatever strength I had left, I pulled
at Ryder. Small bits of clarity reached his addled mind and he
struggled to help me drag his limp body the rest of the way to
freedom. By the time we reached the mouth of the tunnel, we both
had to crawl on the ground, escaping inch by slow inch.

As soon as fresh air covered our bodies, I
threw myself on him. I wrapped my arms around his neck and sobbed
into his chest. His arms enclosed me weakly as his body adjusted to
life, to
being alive
again.

We lay like that for a very long time. Gravel
and sharp rocks dug into our backs and exposed skin; our cuts and
bruises stung and pulsed with pain. But neither of us noticed. It
was more important to let our hearts press against each other and
beat in tandem than worry about our physical needs or whatever else
this mountain had in store for us.

Stars blinked down at us while we held each
other in front of death’s door. The crazed adrenaline that fueled
me through that ordeal drained away and exhaustion took over. My
heavy eyelids slipped closed and with Ryder’s steady breathing
lifting his chest, I gave into the heaviness that pressed down on
me.

I didn’t move again until the sun peaked over
the mountain and light danced on my face. I blinked awake slowly at
first, realizing how cold and sore I was. When realization of where
we were reached my hazy mind, I jerked awake completely.

We hadn’t moved the entire night. Our bodies
had stayed tangled together while we slept off our too-close
call.

I lifted my head and rubbed my eyes until
Ryder came into focus. He stirred, stretching at first, and then
groaning as the sharp, painful reminders of our struggle twisted in
his muscles and bones.

“We survived?” His eyes bulged wide and his
voice croaked from underuse.

My voice was just as dry and throaty.
“Apparently.” I looked around at the jagged cliffs rising on either
side of us and then back at the dark cave we had barely survived.
We were still in the heart of the mountain. Our path had yet to end
and there was no way we would go back the way we came if it meant
wandering through the Underworld for a second time. A shiver snaked
down my spine and I pointed out the obvious, “This was probably the
worst place to spend the night.”

I slowly sat up and rubbed at my sore neck.
My arms, heavy with lack of good blood flow, moved sluggishly while
I waited for feeling to return.

“Or the best,” Ryder mumbled. He sat up too,
wincing with the effort. “Seriously, who would look for us
here?”

I craned my neck back to peer at the sky,
squeezed between two spiky overhangs. Ryder had a point. With Nix
inhabiting Olympus, I couldn’t trust Hermes to keep me safe. There
was nothing to keep me protected from Nix now that he found me.

Not that last night had been easy, and
truthfully we nearly hadn’t survived, but it had been Nix free. So
bonus points to the Underworld.