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Later, she asked, “How many people did I kill?”
He’d hoped she would wait longer to ask.
“What do you remember?”
“Hades—”
“Will it help to know?”
It would haunt her, but if she insisted, he would tell her.
“Think on it. I say this as a god who knows the answer.”
He took her down to the beach where they walked along the shore. He watched her run from the waves and laugh when the water rushed over her feet. Her ease made him happy. Hadn’t she wished for a vacation? A weekend spent away from the Underworld with him? He supposed he’d granted her wish, even if it had been out of his own need for distance—a need to regain some kind of control. He thought coming here would give him a sense of peace, but he had yet to feel it. The reality was, outside this isolated island, a bitter snowstorm still raged, the ophiotaurus was still unaccounted for, and Tyche was dead.
The world was in shambles, and it felt as though he and Persephone were at the very center, each on different sides of a chasm that would tear them apart.
“How long has it been since you have visited the ocean?”
“For fun?” He felt the need to clarify because there had been plenty of visits for very unsavory reasons, no thanks to his brother. “I hardly know.”
“Then we will make this memorable.”
He wanted to say that this was already memorable, but she wrapped her arms around his neck and jumped to secure her legs around his waist.
“I love you,” she said, and Hades kissed her until all thoughts of the outside world were gone and the onlything he could focus on was the way she felt against him and how badly he wanted to be inside her again.
“I want to show you something,” he said as he pulled away.
“Is it your cock?”
Her directness made him chuckle.
“Don’t worry, my darling. I’ll give you what you want but not here.”
He set her on her feet and took her hand, guiding her into the surrounding flora to a grotto where the water gleamed beneath a stream of sunlight.
He watched Persephone to gauge her reaction.
“Do you like it?”
“It is beautiful.”
He grinned and undressed, diving into the pool. When he surfaced, Persephone still stood on the bank, watching him.
“Will you join me?”
She didn’t hesitate, which made him think she’d waited so he could watch her undress—and he did so, gladly. As she entered the water, he pulled her to him and kissed her again.
“I will build temples in honor of our love,” he said, lips brushing along her jaw, down her neck, along her shoulder. “I will worship you until the end of the world. There is nothing I wouldn’t sacrifice for you. Do you understand that?”
“Yes,” she answered, holding his gaze, but there was a part of him that knew she could not even guess the lengths he would go to for her, and yet she made her own promise.
“I will give you everything you ever wanted, even things you thought you would live without.”
She was the only thing he’d ever thought he would live without, and yet she was here.
He claimed her lips in a deep kiss, holding her tightly to him until he was ready to pull her from the water, and when he did, he backed her into the wall roughly. Her eyes did not waver from his, did not communicate a hint of fear or unease.
