The Iron Queen (Daughters of Zeus) (2 page)

Before I could answer, he vanished.

Plucking the necklace out of a puddle, I shook water off the small green plant that sat anchored in a wire basket and dried the pomegranate charm on my shirt. Oh yeah. Hades was definitely going to kill me when he came to.

I’d run, but it wasn’t like I had a choice. Zeus created me with an extra special tweak. I was loyal to family. Loyal to the point of obedience if they outranked me enough. That was why I was almost glad I was still “useful” to him; I had a feeling the minute he didn’t need me anymore, he’d ask me to swear fealty and give him all my power. Suicide by devotion. And I’d have no choice but to oblige.

If I swore over everything to him, would he release my soul to the Underworld? Would I finally be free? Or would he keep me, my thoughts and memories, and everything about me that
was
me locked in his head in case he ever found it useful?

I sat beside Hades and pulled my knees to my chest. Hollow. I felt hollow inside, like Zeus had carved out everything that mattered, everything I cared about, and left me empty. Hopeless. The rain dripped down my face, mimicking the tears I didn’t dare cry.

Chapter III

Persephone

Getting struck by lightning hurts. A lot. Most people die long before they fully process the pain of a storm’s worth of voltage passing through their body in the blink of an eye. I don’t have that luxury. Instead, I discovered something that hurt far worse than becoming a sadistic deity’s living electrical conduit. Healing from a lightning strike at godspeed.

When I came to, my body felt like it was pulsing molten lava through my veins with each heartbeat.
Gods!
An inhuman moan tore from my throat.
What happened?
It wasn’t until the bed shifted that I realized I wasn’t alone.

Hades
. I let myself relax. Relief calmed me enough for unconsciousness to threaten to pull me back under, so I forced myself to take steady breaths. It was too soon to open my eyes. I knew how to stay conscious through horrific pain. Thanatos taught me that.

I breathed in too deeply, and a bolt of pain lanced through me. When I shifted positions to get comfortable, a low moan worked its way up my throat. There was no comfortable. The lightning had seared every single nerve ending in my body. Healing from this didn’t feel good at all.

His hand brushed the hair out of my face.

“Hades?” I croaked, struggling to open my eyes.

He shushed me, stroking my arm. I leaned into his touch as the memories rushed back—Hades finding out about Thanatos and killing him, destroying his soul, planning to trap Zeus, waiting at the park for Aphrodite, and realizing Joel was there. What happened to Joel?

The voice shushed me again, and the hand on my shoulder didn’t feel comforting anymore. His touch felt…wrong. My eyes flew open, and I bolted upright.

With a horrible certainty I turned to see who sat next to me on the bed.

Chapter IV

Hades

The words on the page of the book I read swirled into an indecipherable vortex of black ink. It was obvious I was dreaming and not just because the brain is incapable of processing the written language in its sleep. I dislike dreaming. With a frustrated sigh, I set down the book, careful not to wake Persephone sleeping beside me even though I knew she wasn’t actually here.

My whole body hurt enough that the novelty of feeling physical pain was lost on me. The pain and the dream meant something important, something bad. A deep sleep like this meant I’d lost consciousness somehow. What could hurt
me
?

Beside me, Persephone sighed and moved closer. Yeah, something was wrong. However ambivalent I tried to be in the waking world, the scenarios that played out in my head when I pictured us in bed never featured Persephone sleeping or me reading. In dreams at least, I deserved more action.

I studied her sleeping form, struck by how still she was. Awake, Persephone was in constant motion, so full of life she almost glowed. Beautiful, but sometimes that never ending motion made it hard to just
look
at her. Brushing a strand of hair from her face, I wished I could feel happy, at peace, or what not. Shouldn’t I? We were together after all, with all our secrets and hang-ups out in the open at last. Instead, all I felt was dread and fear and pain.

Something was horribly wrong.

She opened her brilliant green eyes and smiled. “Hades.”

A shiver went through me at the sound of my name passing through her lips. She sat up, the thin sleeve of her blue nightgown slipping down her left shoulder as she moved. I pushed it up her arm, fingers trailing over her smooth skin.

Her breath caught, a pained sound. I frowned. A deep purple bruise spread from beneath my fingertips, staining her sun-kissed skin.

“How could you?” she whispered.

I glanced up to her in confusion and drew in a sharp breath. My gaze darted from her face, puffy and criss-crossed with lacerations, to her nightgown, torn and bloodied, to her arm hanging limp at her side, the bones poking through the skin at odd angles. “Persephone! What—”

“You didn’t stop him.” She cried out in pain and hunched forward. I caught her, cradling her bruised and battered body in my arms while blood soaked into the mattress. When I tried to heal her, nothing happened.

Powerless. She was dying in my arms and for the first time in my entire
existence
I was powerless against death. My chest felt tight against my racing heart. “Persephone?” Clutching her to me, I jerked my gaze around the room in an irrational quest to find something, anything that could help her. I
knew
I was dreaming, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the limp, bleeding girl in my arms.

Her bright green eyes were fixed on me in accusation. They flickered then dimmed as her last words echoed around the room.

“How could you?”

Chapter V

Aphrodite

Hades groaned and shifted positions. I shook his shoulder.

“Hades?”

His eyes snapped open. He bolted up and glanced around the park, gaze falling on a nearby patch of scorched earth. A myriad of emotions flickered over his face, too fast for me to identify. Looking at me, his gaze hardened in rage. “Where is she?”

My voice shook as I held out the necklace. “Zeus will take the Underworld in exchange for—”

I found myself on the ground, Hades’ hands wrapped around my throat. Agony spread from his fingertips as they dug into the sensitive skin around my neck, crushing my windpipe. Power pulsed from his hands, setting my entire body ablaze with pain. Beneath me the ground crackled and shriveled. Leaves turned dark with decay.

I screamed, or tried to, but all that came out was a strangled yelp.

“Let’s try that again. Where. Is. She?” His voice was dark and dangerous, and there was murder in his eyes.

“With Zeus,” I squeaked. I couldn’t breathe. I pried at his hands, scratching against his iron fingers so hard my nails bent and broke. Hades didn’t budge.

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”
Oh gods,
it hurt.

“But you can contact him?” He loosened his grip on my neck a fraction.

“Can’t—” Coughing, I cleared my throat. My neck burned, and my voice sounded hoarse and scratchy. Pushing away from him to make space to breathe only farther entrenched my body in the damp dirt. Wet leaves clung to my legs, unbothered by my pathetic attempts to kick free. O
h, what’s the point?
I went still beneath him when I realized there was no reason to struggle against someone
so
much stronger than me. As a goddess, I wasn’t weak. But that didn’t make me a match for Hades. “Sorry, I can’t help you find her.”

“You’re
sorry
?” His jaw clenched so hard, I was surprised I didn’t hear his teeth shatter against the pressure. “When did he come to you? How long have you known Joel was Zeus, and
why
didn’t you warn her?”

I shuddered at the memory of the day I met Joel. I’d thought he was human. Then he’d smiled at me, eyes flashing an unearthly blue I’d only ever seen once before—when I was created then abandoned to Poseidon’s realm. That was the day I’d learned I had to obey Zeus no matter what. The cruelty in those eyes forged my worst nightmares.

“I didn’t know—”

“Didn’t know
what?
That he would take her or hurt her, or that he was pretending to be Joel?
What
didn’t you know?” Hades drew back, electric blue eyes so full of rage I was blinded to everything else. In that moment, there was no difference between him and Zeus because their eyes were the same. “We warned you Zeus was dangerous. She fought to take you in after everyone else told her not to trust you. And after
everything
Persephone did for you, you pushed her toward him! Why?”

“He’s our father!” My voice broke.

“You honestly think he gives a damn about you?” Hades hauled me to my feet and shoved me down the path of damp packed earth where weak sunlight filtered through the trees, barely breaking through the clouds. “Fine, then let’s trade you for her. How loud do you think you’ll have to scream to get his attention?” Black energy sparked from his fingertips, dancing up his palm like lightning set on fire.

I stumbled away from Hades, holding my hands out as if that would keep him at bay. “I’m not stupid!” I snapped. “If he cared about me at all, he wouldn’t leave me here with
you.”

Fury contorted Hades’ features. His dark hair stuck to his face in the rain, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Then why
?
What did he offer you that would make it worth betraying her?”

“Nothing! He didn’t give me anything. I didn’t want to help him, but I didn’t have a choice. He’s my
father!”

“That doesn’t
mean
anything!”

Normally it didn’t. Gods didn’t really do the whole family thing because we were created, not born, so there were no genetic ties. Good thing, too, given all the incest. Labels like brother, sister, mother, father, didn’t apply to us because that wasn’t how we thought of each other. Persephone was weird. She’d been raised to believe she was human. Demeter and Persephone had the most human-looking mother/daughter relationship of all the gods.

Serious trust issues notwithstanding.

Hades advanced on me, and I edged backward. My heel caught on a branch. and it snapped, twisting my foot out from under me. He darted forward. Screaming, I ducked my head away and thrust my hands toward him.

“Don’t hurt me!”

“Give me one reason I shouldn’t rip you limb from limb, you traitorous bitch.”

I had thousands, but only one that would matter to him. “She wouldn’t want you to.”

Hades stopped. “
She
was the only one of us who gave a damn about you.”

“I know.” With a wary eye on him, I stood, keeping my movements slow and non-threatening. Not that Hades would ever feel threatened by me. He could crush me. And probably would before the day was through.

“Then why did you help him?” Hades grabbed me by the shoulders and gave me a rough shake. “Where is my wife?”

“Shouldn’t you know?” They were married after all. Marriage between gods came with this whole power exchange thing, more mutually beneficial than fealty. They were supposed to be connected. You’d think that would come with a basic idea of each other’s whereabouts.

Desperation danced across his face, and I suddenly understood. “You don’t, do you? Zeus did something to mess with your connection, and that’s how you got knocked out.”

Hades worked a muscle in his jaw, and I knew I was right. No wonder he was freaking out.

“She’s not dead,” I assured him. Technically, a god getting enough worship to exist can’t die, not even in combat, unless they’re fighting their own kids, but that’s a whole other story. Persephone hadn’t come into her powers yet, so she fell into a gray area. “I saw her with Zeus. He must need her, Hades. He won’t let her die. Otherwise, why bother taking her at all?”

He could, of course, maim, torture, and otherwise torment her, but I didn’t think reminding Hades of that would do much good.

“Where is she?” Hades’ voice was as tight as his grip. But he didn’t look like he wanted to kill me anymore, so that was a plus.

“I don’t know. And I
can’t
help you find her. It’s not that I want to help him, I just don’t have a choice.”

He stared at me for a minute, the words seeming to penetrate his rage. “Can’t,” he said finally. “Why not?”

Gods can’t lie. So if a deity says they
can’t
do something, you better pay attention.

“He’s my father.”

I could almost see the pieces click into place in Hades’ head when shock, rage, and disgust flickered across his face in quick succession. It wasn’t directed at me. Zeus made me an abomination by creating me without an ounce of free will. Even the Titans gave their children that much.

Hades let me go and stepped backward. “Can I trust you?”

I shook my head. “But I wish you could.”

He closed his eyes. His entire body looked tense, desperate to be in motion, but something stopped him. After a minute that seemed to stretch out for all eternity, he sighed. “All right. Let’s go tell Demeter.”

“What good will that do?” I demanded, trying not to sound as hopeless as I felt. “He’s long gone from this realm. There’s no stopping him now that he has her. You know she’s going to break, and then he’ll have access to this realm and the Underworld.”

“I’m going to kill him.”

I jerked my head up. He
couldn’t
have just said that. Gods can’t lie but… “That’s not possible.”