Page 170 of Hades

Hades will come.

Zander’s grip tightened another fraction. “You matter more than I thought.”

The words made no sense. “What?”

He studied me with a strange softness, like I was a puzzle piece he’d finally figured out. “She talked about you for years, you know. Carol. Violet this, Violet that. Always complaining. Always needing. I thought you were a leech.”

My stomach dropped.

“But you’re not.” His gaze shifted past me, toward the crowded street where I could no longer see my booth. “You’re leverage.”

Cold flooded through me. I yanked back hard. He was faster. One hand clamped over my mouth, the other arm locked around me, and the calm vanished beneath practiced strength. I twisted, slammed my heel down, and tried to scream against his palm. The sound died hot and useless against his skin. Brock. The name tore through me without sound.

Zander dragged me backward between a trailer and a row of stacked crates. My shoulder hit metal. Pain flashed white. I fought harder, but my body felt half disconnected, shock turning my limbs strange and slow. I thought of Brock’s voice. Breathe, baby. I tried. Air scraped through my nose. I forced myself to stop wasting strength on panic and reached for the small pocket sewn inside my skirt.

Zander caught my wrist before I got there. He smiled against my ear. “Smart girl.”

Terror opened beneath me. Not because of the words. Because he’d expected it. Because somewhere in that quiet, watching mind, he’d already decided I wasn’t harmless.

I drove my elbow back. He grunted, and for one second, his hand slipped from my mouth.

“HADES!”

The scream tore out of me, raw and broken. His hand slammed back over my mouth. Too late, maybe. Please, God, let it be too late. The festival noise surged, then swallowed everything.

Zander shoved me through a narrow gap behind the last vendor trailer. A vehicle waited there, half hidden behind a delivery van and a line of portable toilets. I barely saw it. Dark paint. Open door. Empty seat. Something on the floor. My mind refused to make sense of the details because making sense meant admitting what was happening.

“No,” I tried to say. It came out as nothing.

Zander’s face was calm again. That calm frightened me more than rage would have.

“I really am sorry,” he said. “But they took something from me too.”

I didn’t know who they were. I didn’t know what he meant. I only knew his hand was on me, the booth was gone, Brock was gone, and the sky above the service lane was too blue for what was happening beneath it. He forced me inside. The door closed. The sound was soft. Final.

For one suspended second, all I could hear was my own breathing. Fast. Broken. Not enough. My palms pressed against the seat beneath me. My skirt twisted around my legs. My wrist burned where he’d grabbed me. I gripped the handle, but nothing happened.

Then Zander slid behind the wheel. I stared at the back of his head. The man from every festival. The man who bought lavender. The man my mother had come alive for. The man I hadn’t feared until fear no longer mattered.

He looked at me in the rearview mirror. “Don’t worry, Violet,” he said gently. “He’ll follow.”

Brock. He means Brock. The thought should have comforted me. Instead, it told me exactly what I’d become. Not a daughter. Not a sister. Not a woman with three names and no ground beneath any of them. Bait.

The vehicle moved. My body went numb. Somewhere behind us, the festival kept going. Somewhere behind us, Brock would turn and find me gone. I closed my eyes and held on to the only thing that still felt real. His hand at the back of my neck. His voice in the dark. Need me. I can handle it. I needed him now. More than breath. More than names. More than the truth. And as the sound of the festival faded, I prayed he could handle what came next.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Hades

I heard my name. Not Brock. Not baby. Not a sound I could convince myself belonged to anybody else.

“HADES!”

Lettie’s scream ripped through the festival and took every sane thought I had with it. I turned. She was gone. For one second, the world narrowed to the empty space where she’d been. My hand reached back and found nothing. No warm fingers. No trembling wrist. No soft body close enough to protect. Just air. Then everything in me broke loose.

“Lettie!” The crowd moved wrong. People turned toward the sound, not away from it. Bodies shifted. Someone shouted. A woman screamed when I shoved past her too hard, but I didn’t stop. I hit the edge of the booth and drove through the gap between the quilt tent and the honey stand, following the last place her voice had come from.

Ares was behind me. Hermes too. Zeus barked orders that snapped through the chaos like gunfire. “Lock the street down. Nobody leaves. Find cameras. Find vehicles. Now.”