The Iron Queen (Daughters of Zeus) (12 page)

Melissa shook him off. “I’m not afraid of them. I’m not the one who needs worship to live.”

“Demeter!” Tearing my gaze from Hades wasn’t easy. Something was wrong, very, very wrong. Gods didn’t bleed. They just didn’t. But I’d sworn to protect Melissa, so Hades would just have to wait. If Demeter tried to hurt Melissa there wasn’t a whole lot I could do but get in the way. I gulped. I really didn’t want to do that.

But Demeter didn’t seem bothered by Melissa’s outburst at all. She regarded Melissa with a look of exasperated patience. Melissa stared at her for a moment, waiting for some reaction, then she gave a dramatic sigh, flipped her hair, and stormed out of the room. Adonis took a quick look around and followed her.

“Not a word.” Demeter held up one finger and regarded me with icy cold eyes. “I’m not interested in your opinion. But you—” she turned to Hades “—I’m surprised you could resist commenting on that little displa—”

She broke off with a surprised gasp. I followed her gaze and felt my stomach twist in fear. This didn’t happen. It just didn’t happen. Hades lay unconscious in a crumpled heap on the wooden floor in a pool of blood.

Chapter XXIV

Hades

Persephone’s breath was hot in my ear. Her nails dug into my back. My hands ran down her body…

“Oh, Hades,” she moaned.

“Um… Wow.” The voice came from across the room.

I pivoted, changing the dreamscape around me. By the time I faced the door, I was standing in my library fully clothed, facing Persephone, the real non-dream version. She stood in the doorway, slack jawed.

“Persephone!” Crossing the room in an instant, I gathered her in my arms, joy and relief rushing through me in equal parts. “Gods!” Her body, whole and solid, fit against mine in a way dreams could never get right. I’d been so worried I’d never hold her again, never see her again. “Are you okay? Where are you?” When I pulled away, I kept my arms wrapped around her waist because I couldn’t bring myself to let go. “Physically, I mean,” I added, when she looked confused. Dreamwalking got complex whenever a distinction had to be made between the mind and the body.

She didn’t answer. I looked her up and down, gaze snagging on her necklace.

A small green spiky plant hung in a metal basket, the red bud of a flower just beginning to blossom. The glass-blown pomegranate seed that hung from the basket was a token of my realm. It was a perfect conduit, representative of her lineage and marriage with a piece of each realm in one neat package. But that wasn’t why she wore it here.

It meant something to her because
I
gave it to her. I meant something to her.

Even after everything that had happened to her because of me, she still went through the trouble of replicating that necklace in her dreams. Clearing my throat, I jerked my gaze away from the necklace. No apparent injuries, but there was no telling if that was reflective of reality or how she saw herself at the moment.

Something was wrong. In my relief I hadn’t noticed she failed to return my embrace, but now I saw how rigid she held herself in my arms. There was a look I didn’t recognize in her eyes.

Persephone was an open book. I never had to guess how she felt or what she was thinking. It was all right there. But now her expression was guarded. And there was something else in it. Fear.

Of me?

Was I
really
dreaming again? Would she fall to pieces like in that horrible nightmare? No. She was real, she was here, I could feel it. “Persephone?” I reached out to caress her cheek.

She flinched. “Don’t.” Her green eyes searched my face. “I should be able to tell.” Her voice broke. Persephone tried to pull back, but I held her fast.

My arms dropped, and I stepped away for good measure. There was no telling what she had gone through, so if she needed space, I was happy to oblige. “Tell what?” I wanted to reach out to her, to demand to know what Zeus had done and how I could fix it, but I didn’t dare. “Persephone.” It was a fight to keep my voice calm. “Tell me where to find you.”

She looked away and I jerked toward her, almost unable to restrain myself from reaching for her. Persephone flinched.

“Hey, it’s okay. Wherever you are, I’m going to find you and bring you home, okay? But I need you to point me in the right direction.”

“Stop.” She took a deep, shuddering breath, sliding her air plant pendant back and forth on the chain of her necklace. “I should be able to tell him from you. If you’re not him, if you’ve taken that from me, if you’ve broken us that badly…” Iron glinted in her eyes, hard and unfeeling. “Then you won’t have to find me. I haven’t come into my powers yet, but I will. I’d be afraid of that day if I were you.”

Comprehension bubbled up within me like bile. I was going to
make
a way to kill him. Then I’d drag him down to hell and spend the rest of eternity making him suffer.

It wouldn’t be enough. It would never be enough. Zeus looked like me. The bastard had looked like me when he’d hurt her. “It’s me.”

She didn’t look convinced, and I didn’t blame her. I didn’t sound like myself. There was no getting past this. Even if I found a way to get her back, even if everything worked out, she would look at me now and see him.

“Everyone is ‘me.’” Persephone put the word in air quotes. “Be more specific.”

The hardness in her voice was so foreign to me that I hesitated. Her eyes narrowed, and she shot out her hands, shoving me backward. “Get the fuck out of my head, you sick bastard.”

That snapped me out of my reverie. I grabbed her hands. “I’m not in your dream. You’re in mine. I promise, I’m Hades. You?” I didn’t know. She was acting so different.

“I’m Persephone. Oh gods, Hades!” She half-fell, half-threw herself into my arms. “I’m so sorry, I couldn’t tell. I thought it was you, but I couldn’t tell.”

I shushed her, savoring the feel of her warm body pressed against mine. “It’s fine.” Gods, it felt good to hold her. “Are you okay?” I’d been knocked out by the force of whatever happened to her. And I was
a lot
stronger than she was.

She shook her head. “I’m not okay, Hades.”

My arms tightened around her. “I know. But you will be, when this is all over you’re going to be fine. You have to hang on to that, hear me?” I stared into her eyes. “You’re not okay, but you will be. We will fix this, I promise. Now, where are you?”

“I escaped Zeus, I think.” Her voice was muffled from talking into my shoulder. “I jumped out of his weird cloud castle thing. It’s in this hemisphere. It was still daylight when I jumped.”

My mouth dropped open. “You jumped?” Zeus’ fortress wouldn’t be close to the ground. The pain I’d felt had been her shattering upon impact.

She sniffled. “I couldn’t…” Her breath hitched. “I thought if I jumped I could teleport, but even if I couldn’t, anything would be better than what he was doing to me.”

Her shoulders shook, and I tightened my embrace. Zeus wasn’t dumb enough to leave his offspring with teleportation rights. I had my doubts she’d actually managed to escape him, but we’d cross that bridge when she woke up. “Do you know where you landed?”

The look on her face told me this wasn’t going to be good news. “The middle of the ocean.”

Poseidon’s realm. Shit. I took a deep breath. “Did you swear fealty to Zeus?”

She shook her head. “I tried. Hades, I’m so sorry, I tried, but I made this promise I wouldn’t hurt you. So I couldn’t do it.”

Relief rushed through me, and I immediately felt guilty for it. She couldn’t swear fealty. My realm was safe. But what had that cost her?

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

My voice hardened when I asked the next question. “What did he do to you?”

“What did he do to
us
?” she asked, ducking my question. “I can’t feel you anymore. I don’t know what you’re thinking. Did the lightning sever our connection somehow?”

“Impossible.” I tilted her head up, lips brushing against hers with tentative patience. I’d let her set the pace. She surged forward, pushing up on her tiptoes and looping an arm around my neck to yank me to her level as her lips crushed against mine with a desperate urgency. Power surged between us, ripping through our connection. It felt like something broken within me had been restored. We were whole again.

Gods!
Her whispered thought echoed in my mind.
I was so afraid I’d never feel this again.
Persephone’s fingers dug into my back as she clung to me with all her strength and joy, and unbelievably enough, love. She loved
me.
How could she possibly have it in her to feel
happiness
after what she’d been through, much less joy? She was so strong.

No, I’m not,
she objected.
I would have sworn to him if I could have, I wanted to give in.

Anyone would have. There’s more to it than that.
You
didn’t break.

Persephone didn’t get it, but that wasn’t surprising. She was young. I’d been around long enough to see the way pain could twist and bend people. How they could buckle under the misery until they had nothing left to them but the horror of what they’d gone through.

I wanted to follow her example. Escape the horror of the situation though a kiss. But I had to know.

May I?

She hesitated, then I felt her tentative agreement. Her thoughts flooded mine, and I saw all the things Zeus had put her through. The memory of his voice slithered into my thoughts.

“Maybe I should tell you about some of the things he’s done. Better yet
—
” a curved blade appeared in Zeus’ hand “
—
how about I just show you?
”

The images of what came next, the shallow slashes separating each layer of skin as she cried out for the torment to end, for me to help her, assaulted my mind like blows. My hands tightened around her, and I broke off our kiss. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“It wasn’t you.” Her soft lips whispered against mine. Teasing me with their proximity.

I took the bait. I’m only a god after all. Even guilt couldn’t stop me from enjoying the way the kiss deepened, or the feel of her body tight against mine. No. I’d sooner slit my throat than hurt her. But I’d given Zeus ideas, methods to use to torture her. That was almost as bad.

Teeth grazing my bottom lip, Persephone teased images of her mom, Melissa, and the other priestesses from my mind. Her relief coursed through me with the realization that her people were safe.

When Persephone came up for air, she tilted her head. “Where is everything?”

The dreamscape had gone blank. My face heated. I’d been so wrapped up in her, so focused, that for a moment nothing else existed. Drawing on a modicum of power, I formed an image of our library in my mind. Just a general impression of warm colors, rich browns, and earthy reds with bookshelves and big comfortable furniture. I never put much detail into my dreamscapes. Why waste the power? Still, I was careful not to leave out the touches of her influence that were scattered throughout the library. Bright splashes of colors, flowers in vases on the wooden tables.

Persephone smiled. Moving to one of the small wooden tables that lined the walls between shelves, she touched one of the flowers, a bright yellow daffodil. Suddenly, that flower was the brightest, crispest thing in the room. “What’s a sympathetic bond?”

I led her to one of the indistinct chairs in the library. “I always thought sympathetic bonds were a myth. Apparently, upon reaching equilibrium, we can feel what the other feels.”

Her thoughts flashed to…what was that, a pearl? “So if you hurt one of us you hurt both of us?”

“To a diminished degree. I doubt I would have been walking around these last few weeks if I’d felt the full extent of what you experienced.”

She considered that. “If I die, what happens to you?”

My heart seized in my chest, not from fear of my own death, but hers. “I’m not going to let that happen.”

“But if it did?” she persisted. “If something Zeus does can kill me because I haven’t come into my powers, or if my powers burn through me…?”

I shook my head. “It won’t kill me.” Her mind flashed back to that pearl again. “Persephone, what is this about?”

“Could we maybe talk about that later?” She looked up, green eyes pleading. “I’ll explain, I promise, but I just don’t want to dwell on any of this right now. I won’t ask about your plan or whatever that—” she waved in the direction of the bedroom and I coughed “—was.”

“That was you.”

She turned pink. “I’m not that flexible. Look, I really don’t want to spend this time rehashing everything that’s happened to me. I know that’s probably not wise, but can we just—”

I kissed her. She was right. We didn’t know how much time we had left. She needed time to regroup. To brace herself for whatever was next to come. And me, I just needed to hold her.

A while later I felt her fading beneath my touch.

I’m waking up!
Fear saturated her thoughts.

I’ll find you.

Chapter XXV

Persephone

I think it was my ribs breaking that woke me up. Gasping, my eyes flew open as a sharp pain ripped through my chest.
Hades!

I’m here.
His thoughts felt distracted, and I got the distinct impression he was talking to someone. My vision blurred then focused on a kid’s face hovering right above mine. He lifted his head and put his hands to my chest.

Suddenly I had Hades’ full attention. His presence flooded my mind so fast I got mental whiplash. I had the strange knowledge he was seeing, hearing, and feeling everything I was.

Weirdness. I pushed Hades’ mental presence away so I had room to think and shoved the kid off me. Or tried to. Instead I coughed, water spewed from my lips, and the kid helped me roll to my side.