AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She pushes away from the bathroom counter and waves a hand at me. “You’ll need to wear something else.”
I don’t have anything else to wear. All three of us know it. Charon transfers his frown from his phone to me. “I think I have something that might fit.”
That startles a laugh out of me. “There’s no universe wherewe’re the same size.” We’re close enough in height, but he’s built much wider and thicker than I am.
Charon ignores me, turning and heading back into the closet. He reappears a few minutes later with a pair of pants and a button-up shirt. I want to argue, but Eurydice sends me another of those sharp looks. It’s not quite a command, but it might as well be. Which is how I find myself taking a quick shower and putting on Charon’s clothes.
The biggest surprise comes from the fact that…they fit. I don’t know if that means they don’t belong to him, or if at some point he was significantly thinner, but I don’t ask. In fact, I say nothing at all until Eurydice and I are leaving the apartment side by side. I wait two blocks before I ask the question that’s been burning on the back of my tongue. “What are you hiding from him?”
“What makes you think I’m hiding something?”
I smile a little, though it feels bitter. “You forget, Eurydice. I might’ve been a shitty boyfriend, but I’ve known you half of my life. You never answer questions with a question unless you’re trying to hide something.”
She glares. “You always do that. We might’ve gone to school together, but it’s not like we moved in the same circles. You don’t get to act like you’ve known me for that long; you didn’t even notice me when we were teenagers.”
That’s the thing that she’s never understood; she sure as fuck never believed me when I tried to explain it. I always noticed her, from the moment that she and her sisters walked through the front doors of our private school. It was the fall after her mother had become Demeter, and they brought a novelty that legacy kids like me rarely saw. Most of my peers treated them as the enemy, and I won’tpretend I didn’t go along with it at times, but Eurydice fascinated me from the first moment I saw her. Delicate and beautiful and positive in a way that I still don’t understand. When everyone around me was jaded, interacting with her always felt like a breath of fresh air.
It still does if I’m being honest.
Not that I’m interested in having this argument again. She won’t believe me now, just like she never believed me in the past. What I’m more interested in is the fact that she’s still dodging my questions. I could press her on it, but I think I’ll find more answers if I go along with her today like a good little obedient submissive. Maybe I’ll learn something in the process.
The house she leads me to is exactly the sort of home I expect a person who holds the title Hades to own. It doesn’t match the rest of the buildings in the lower city; it’s a sprawling Victorian mansion that takes up almost an entire city block. I have to pause and take a few seconds to process what I’m seeing. It’s beautiful in a creepy, atmospheric kind of way. It also makes me wonder if it was built solely to feed into the myth of Hades. For the last thirty years, his name has functioned as a sort of boogeyman. Something to scare children with. Before that though, the title Hades was not to be fucked with. There’s no other explanation for why Zeus targeted it specifically.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. That Zeus and that Hades are no more. The men who hold the titles now are very different creatures. It’s some small consolation that they seem more intent dealing with Olympus’s enemies than in making enemies of each other.
At least for now.
13
EURYDICE
I probably should have left Orpheus back in Charon’s town house. Today promises to be a challenge even without him at my side, and his presence will make things more difficult. I’m not ready to explain what’s happening between us. To be honest, I’m still not certain myself.
But I gave him a choice and he made it.
I lead the way up the wide stairs to the imposing front door. The first time I saw this building, I was scared out of my mind. Now, it’s a second home. I know these hallways, with the thick carpet and dark color palette. I spent time in the sitting rooms we pass as we move deeper into the house. I even have a bedroom on the second floor that has slowly gained a significant portion of my clothing over the last year. I think most of my stuff is in the lower city now.
I hear the panting and yips before the trio of black dogs come barreling around the corner, Cerberus, Scylla, and Charybdis. Technically, they’re barely more than puppies, but they must havesome massive hunting dog breed mixed in with the rest, because they easily come up to my hip. Cerberus barks when he sees me and picks up his pace.
I can tell the exact moment that they noticed Orpheus. Their happy barks turn to growls and they surge forward, putting themselves between me and him. They press against my legs even as they bark, deep and feral and filled with warning. To his credit, Orpheus doesn’t move.
“What’s going on out here?” My sister steps out of a nearby room—the library—with one hand on her gently curved stomach. She looks good. Healthy. She would argue with me if I said as much, but pregnancy agrees with her. There’s a glow to her skin, and she’s never looked more like our mother than on days when she wears comfortable wrap dresses like the one she has on right now. Her long blond hair is braided back from her face, and her eyes narrow when she realizes who else is standing in her hallway. “What areyoudoing here?”
“Call off the dogs, Persephone.” The dogs like me just fine, but they don’t listen to my commands. They don’t seem to listen to anyone except Hades and Persephone…and Georgie, the cook.
“No, I don’t think I will.” She crosses her arms and glares. “Explain, Eurydice. Now.”
It’s always like this with my siblings, to say nothing of my mother. They like to conveniently forget that I am an adult and have been for years now. Part of it is my fault; I knew they liked taking care of me, and so I allowed them to do so. It was easy and comfortable. I just had no idea I was digging myself into a hole it would be impossible to climb out of.
I cross my arms over my chest, mirroring her body language. “It’s none of your business.”
“You’re my sister, and you’re residing in my city, so I think you’ll find that it is, in fact, my business.” She transfers her glare from Orpheus to me. “Tell me you’re not seeing this piece of shit again. You know what happened last time.”
I haven’t had much cause to regret calling Persephone for help that night, but there are moments like this where I wish I had done literally anything else. Not only because I acted the part of unwitting bait that put both my sister and Hades in danger, but because it’s cemented me in their minds as the baby sister who is always in need of protection. They don’t trust my strength. They sure as fuck don’t trust my instincts.
I might understand their reasoning, but that doesn’t mean I like it. “Call off the dogs, or I’m leaving right now.”
Persephone glares, but while she might be the fearsome queen of the lower city to everyone else, she’s still my big sister. I’ve seen that look before, and I know exactly how far she’s willing to push it. I may not have been the object of her frustration often in our childhood—Callisto and Psyche hold that honor—but I’ve witnessed it enough to know her boundaries by heart. She’s not going let me walk out of here with him, not without answers.
