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He mirrors my expression. Not quite anger on his face, but a clear warning. “You took her to Minos’s party without running it by me first. Did you think I’d let that decision slide without addressing it?”
“She’s an adult.”
“Funny. That’s the argument she keeps giving my wife. I think you’ll understand why both of us are…overprotective of her.”
I get it. I even respect it. That doesn’t mean I want the man who’s part boss, part elder brother butting his head into my business. “I’ll grant that Minos’s party ended up more dangerous than expected, but Eurydice was with me. I kept her safe.” I never would have let her be hurt. Andreas may have proved himself too ruthless to completely trust, but he trained me well. I didn’t let my guard down once at that fucking party, not when the cost might be harm to Eurydice.
Knowing what we do now, she was never one of the targets. Minos wanted to set up his foster sons as members of the Thirteen, by virtue of the assassination clause. Only one out of two of them were successful, but that was one too many.
Hades barely blinks. “And last night?”
I try not to feel insulted that we’re even having this conversation. Hades sees things clearly in every aspect of his life…except family. He went without it for too long, and part of him can’t help overcompensating now that he has a wife and three sisters-in-law.I highly doubt he extends that overprotectiveness to Demeter. She can take care of herself.
But it’s a reminder that even if I see him as something of a brother, the same isn’t necessarily true for him. “Last night was none of your business,” I say firmly. “Eurydice was there because she wanted to be, and the second she stops wanting to be, she’s more than free to end things.”
Hades stares at me for a beat and then chuckles. “Lie to yourself if you must. Don’t lie to me. I’ve seen the way you look at her when you think no one else is watching. You’re not letting her go without a fight.”
He’s right, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to admit as much aloud. The truth is exactly what I told Eurydice the other night: if she doesn’t want me, then I’ll go back to being her safe friend.
I don’t know if that’s possible after knowing how good her pussy tastes, how overwhelming the feeling of her coming on my cock is, but better that every moment with her be the sweet agony of knowing I’ll never touch her again than to be cut out of her life entirely.
I don’t know where Orpheus fits into that picture yet, but we’ll come to some arrangement that suits everyone.
Ideally, without Hades and Persephone meddling.
“I respectfully request that you and your lovely wife stay out of it and let us figure things out like the adults we are.”
“I make no promises.” He chuckles again. “Godsspeed, Charon. You’ll need all the luck and stubbornness you can come up with.”
There’s a part of me that mourns that it won’t be a simple linear journey from meeting to friendship to love the way my parents’ storywas, but then their story ended in tragedy. There’s a reason Andreas was the one to raise me.
I want to desire simplicity, but it’s not actually what I crave. I knew things wouldn’t be simple or easy with Eurydice. It doesn’t matter. I want her. Ineedher.
But if I try to keep her confined to me, I’ll lose her. I know that much. I don’t know what the fuck is happening with Orpheus, but I don’t need to know. Eurydice chose me. She’ll keep choosing me as long as I don’tforceher to choose. At least I fucking hope she’ll keep choosing me.
I glance at my phone as I leave Hades’s office. There are no updates from Medusa, but that’s a good thing. No news is good news in this line of work. Instead of checking in and micromanaging, I call Minthe. I barely wait for her to pick up to start talking. “We need to go over the security footage again.”
She curses. “I already spent hours doing it. They dodged our cameras.”
“The ones closest to the greenhouse, yes, but we need to widen the search.” There’s a feeling in my gut, an instinct demanding I follow it. I’ll do as Hades asked and check our people again. It’s smart to button up all avenues of investigation. I just don’t think we’ll find anything there. “They’re not local. I’d bet good money that they’re not even staying on this side of the river.” It’s risky. But they’re not coming over the bridges, or we’d know about it. Even so, I can’t afford to ignore any possibilities at this point. “No matter how good they are at dodging cameras, there’s evidence of themsomewhere.”
She’s silent for a beat. “What makes you so certain they’re not local?”
A guess. An instinct. When I answer her, I speak slowly, feeling my way. “Remember that report we got from Hades two weeks ago? The one that came from Poseidon?”
“The one about Minos’s missing shipping containers?”
“The containers weren’t missing. Their contents, on the other hand, were.” Contents that Poseidon claims he doesn’t have any record of. I don’t know if I believe him, but Hades does, and he would know more than I would. He interacts with the Thirteen directly. I only have secondhand information. “Someone unloaded them before Poseidon could act on the information we got.”
“You think Triton had something to do with that?”
I hadn’t really thought it through. Like so many other things that come from Hades’s many meetings with his peers, it’s a problem for the upper city. So much of that shit never crosses the river to bother us, so I only focus in on the information I need to keep our people safe.
I’m only now starting to realize what a mistake that assumption is. Just because no one has tried to kill Hades in an attempt to take his title—an impossible task since the legacy titles among the Thirteen are familial and therefore exempt from that clause—doesn’t mean we are free from enemies in the lower city. Or enemies who will sneak across the river to sow fear.
That’s what the attack on the greenhouse feels like. The action of an enemy.
“I think we can’t take anything for granted,” I finally say. “Search the cameras again, with a wider net this time. If they’re not locals, someone has seen something. They’re entering the lower city somewhere, if not by the bridges. They’re moving around on the streets.”
