They’re comingfromhim.
The air thins, a pressure building before a storm. Seby coils tighter in place, not in the slightest bit disturbed. And then the impossible happens: One slender strand lifts, bending toward me like it has intention. Like it knows I’m watching, it sends a whisper of cold against my skin.
All breath leaves my chest. There’s no denying it anymore. Whatever he’s hiding isn’t just unusual. It’s unnatural.
I stand abruptly, stepping toward him, heart suddenly pounding too loud. He halts mid-step, eyes widening, pulse visibly fluttering at his throat. Every logical part of me screams to run. But the rest of me, the louder part, just wants to know. Without thinking, my hand finds his forearm…soft, cautious, electric.
He freezes, and his shadows still around us.
“You’re trembling,” I whisper, surprised by the rasp in my voice.
“No,” he denies, voice low and strained. “That’s you.”
I notice he’s right. Iamshaking, nerves stretched thin, overwhelmed by the possibility of something larger than my understanding.
He watches me carefully, and I see the exact moment he makes his decision. His defenses drop, eyes raw and open.
“I’m someone people used to leave coins for.” His voice is low, measured, but there’s something sharper there. Like he’s setting down a truth and waiting to see if I’ll pick it up.
“You see them, don’t you?” he asks quietly. “My shadows.”
The question lands like a strike. He knows I noticed. And he knows I can’t explain it away.
I nod.
His jaw clenches and I feel the thrum of his pulse beneath my fingertips.
And then, almost like he’s surrendering a fight he’s been waging alone for far too long, he lifts his gaze to mine. “I’m Hades,” he says, and then softer, “or…I was.”
The name lands between us like it’s been there all along, hiding in plain sight. His voice is quiet, broken, and heavy with something ancient. Something far beyond my grasp.
His shadows answer before I can. They surge at his feet, stretching higher, darker, like the whole room is holding its breath around us. A tendril scrapes across the wall, another curls toward me, and the air grows colder, like it’s being swallowed whole.
I suck in a breath, praying it reaches my lungs, but the world tilts anyway. My knees give, sending me sliding down the wall until I’m braced on the floor.
“Oh.” My body believes his admission first; my brain jogs through the impossible after it. “You’re…serious.”
Hayden moves toward me instantly, panic cracking through his mask. “Levi,” he breathes, crouching in front of me, shadows restless at his back. “I’m sorry. I’ve never told anyone before. I didn’t know…they would react like this.”
He reaches out instinctively but stops himself, hands still trembling, unsure if he’s allowed to touch me now. His eyes search mine.
“I don’t…” My voice shakes, words stumbling out clumsy and thick. “I don’t understand. You’re…Hades? Like, the actual god Hades?” My chest heaves, trying to make sense of the impossible. “That shouldn’t be real. It can’t be…”
Hayden swallows hard, his face filled with uncertainty and anguish. “I was. A very long time ago.”
A shadow coils tentatively near my shoulder like it has intention, and my skin prickles with every breath.
“I canfeelit,” I rasp, the truth dragging itself out of me.
I hear my pulse loudly in my ears. Hades. The god of the underworld. It should be absurd. Laughable. But when I look at him…at Hayden…it isn’t.
Because I’ve seen too much not to believe it. It’s the funeral home he runs, steeped in ritual. The way he moves through town like he’s slightly apart from it, always one step removed. The trivia at Franny’s…Greek volcanoes and molasses floods, things most people don’t have loaded in their heads on a Friday night unless they lived it. The shadows that don’t just follow him, they belong to him. Even his name, Hayden Harlow, a neat suit jacket thrown over a myth.
And then the tarot reader’s voice echoes in my head, sly as she laid down card after card.You still cast quite the shadow.Maybe that’s why he knew about Emily’s bouquet. Why he suggested daisies. At the time, I thought it was intuition, a lucky guess like he’d said.
Suddenly, it all feels achingly clear. Too many pieces aligning, too many impossible things adding up. Not just Hayden. Not just a man. But exactly who he says he is.
And whoever he is…Hayden, Hades, both…I keep landing in the same place.
