Page 27 of Curse the Flame

All along, I thought I was the main girl in the story. The heroine. The one who stumbled into a new world and discovered something wonderful waiting for her.

But stories aren’t safe just because they’re stories, and that’s especially true when I think of all the Greek mythology I read when I was in my middle school mythology phase.

Women are cursed in them. Stolen. Turned into trees. Sacrificed to monsters. Trapped in towers until a man decides they’ve waited long enough to be rescued.

And sometimes the man who finds them isn’t the hero.

Sometimes he’s the reason they need rescuing.

I sure do. Because the soldier doesn’t just drag me to his camp. He maneuvers me around his fire, pausing only long enough to grab something from his pile of supplies. Next thing I know, my back is shoved against the trunk of a tree. Bark cuts the backs of my arm for a moment before little white flowers blossom, cushioning my skin.

He’s quick. Before I can break free, he has my wrists in his grasp again. That thing he grabbed? It was a length of rope. With my arms wrenched behind me, he ties them together, effectively trapping me to the tree.

When he’s finished, he steps back.

I swallow hard, forcing myself not to cry.

He says something. Slow and deliberate. I hear uxor again, then a whole bunch of Latin that means nothing to me. When I don’t react, he huffs, but the disappointment only lasts a second. His lips part and his eyes go wide before he gestures for me to stay put—as if I can go anywhere—before he disappears into the woods.

Yeah. If I can escape, I’m so going to get out of here before he comes back.

Too bad that I can’t.

I strain against the rope. It doesn’t give an inch. The marks around my wrists burn. My shoulders ache from the way he twisted them, and every time I pull, the rope tightens.

And that’s not even the worst part.

For the first time since I fell into the Other, I think I might be in over my head.

CHAPTER 7

RETURN

AIDEN

I’m arguing with myself again.

This has become an increasingly common occurrence over the last eighty years, though I’m not really sure anyone else would consider it an argument versus the god in my head driving me mad while I try to drown him out. ‘Cause, see, in my opinion, calling it an argument implies that both sides have an equal chance of winning.

I haven’t got a prayer.

Hades… he’s patient.

Aiden stopped knowing how to be the moment he was promised escape once he paid the price to a magic it took him seasons after seasons to admit existed.

Hades understands that eternity is not measured in years, decades, or even centuries. He has governed the dead since long before I carried his soul, and he knows better than anyone that everything comes to the Underworld eventually. However long it takes, the soul of his missing queen will be born and returned to him, to be his bride no matter what, for forever—or until our latest reincarnations fade or die or give up on that eternity to start the cycle again and again.

Over the millennia, Hades has been reborn more times than he can remember. No matter what, his myths… his legend… his story ends with him claiming his Persephone, and nothing else matters but a single goddess and the cacophony of the dead.

Eighty years ago, I was promised a soulmate. I couldn’t have Veronica while I was still mortal. As an immortal—as the latest incarnation of Hades—I was promised my own Persephone, and as the years have passed, I no longer can find it in me to be patient.

Not because I expect her to save me. The opposite. For a man like me… I would only ruin her. I don’t deserve a Fate’s-given bride, no matter what Hades says.

She will be yours and mine. You just need to go to her.

“I can’t have her,” I mutter. He can hear my thoughts the same way that his voice echoes throughout me whenever he rises up and scolds me for losing faith. I know that. That still doesn’t stop me from speaking to him as if he wasn’t a part of me. “And I can’t search for her. You know that.”

You will, he insists. You must. Persephone is the only light in the Underworld’s darkness. She will save us both. From your twisted madness and my eternal loneliness, she will be worth all we’ve waited for and more. Especially now.