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He looks appropriately chastised.
“And I am a god,” he says, assuming my next words.
“And should know fucking better,” I say, pulling myself up to my full seated height. I’m still not as tall as him, but I do my best to try to look down at him imperiously while he tops me by several inches. A wry smile twists his lips, and he reaches out, patting my socked foot.
“Wise beyond your years,” he comments.
“And happy to point it out to you.” I nod my head toward the door. “So if it’s not story-time tonight, I want to actually sleep.” His eyes glimmer as he watches me, unmoving, and I shift, feeling uncomfortable under his gaze. “I’m going to pretend you weren’t watching me sleep earlier. It’s creepy.”
“Duly noted, and never again,” he promises, and stands up, running a hand through his hair. It’s shaggy and loose, side-swept across his forehead. He gazes at me, and for a moment he looks like he’s going to say something, the heat of the look he gives me...
It makes me want to burrow under the covers, hide, because if I touch that fire that’s burning in his golden eyes, I know I’m going to go up in smoke.
But he says nothing. Instead he leaves, closing the door behind him, his footsteps fading away into darkness. I’m left alone with my thoughts, and they are cold, cold comfort.
17
Hadrion
The night feels so tight, wrapped around me and suffocating. The city is alive, teeming with mortals, the scent of their blood, and their sweat, and their sex, all of it calling to me, but it’s not enough.
Not nearly enough.
It’s been ten long years since I walked my lands, watched over my people. Since landing here in Detroit, in Uptown, where the mortals live in their houses and apartments and condos, their businesses, their little lives... I’ve learned some things about myself.
Mainly, now, I know now that I am no better than them.
Katy’s anger is well deserved, and her words are cutting, reminding me of the foolish child that I once was, when I was newly created from ash and stardust.
She is right to be angry. I have been a child.
“How can a god be a child?” My voice is low, the words spoken out loud, as if saying them will give them life, will make themtrue. I should have been honest with her from the beginning, instead of giving her only pieces of the information. In telling her only part of the story, her story because she’s involved, I set all of us up to fail. It’s clear she’s not a selfish woman, the opposite, in fact, and she probably would have tried to give me the pendant if I had just asked for it outright.
And then what would have happened? It would have blown you clear across the room, and possibly killed her in the process.
Things happened the way they did, for a reason.
“What are you doing?” Shay’s voice pulls me back from my reverie. When I turn to look at her, she’s standing in the doorway to my bedroom, dressed in black. Her pale hair shining silver under the skylights, her eyes are blue, and glowing. I know if I was close to her, I would see the flurries in them, eddying glittering specks of ice. At least the Underworld is warm, and endless summer. Shay always makes me feel like I could get trapped in a forever-winter. The thought is a cold one. “Punishing yourself for following your baser instincts? What have you done since you were dethroned?” She asks gently. She might be as deadly as an icy blizzard, but she has a great capacity for kindness.
She has been a good friend to have. I am hoping she will be able to continue being just that, friend and ally, as we solve the riddle of the pendant and why I cannot just take it when it’s offered to me.
“I’ve been a fool.”
“You’ve been a follower of your instincts,” she corrects, walking into the bedroom, crossing the floor and looking out the window. “You have built a small empire, consolidated your power, andwaited for opportunities to arise. Would anyone blame you for chasing down the first glimmer of hope you’ve had at regaining your kingdom?”
“Ten years is a blink to us,” I remind her, and she laughs, giving me a side-long look that tells me she’s laughing at me, not with me.
“Really? I feel every season, Hades,” she replies, “every summer burns me, makes me feel as if I am dying. The melt in spring has me grieving. The autumn turning of the leaves--“ Her eyes widen, her pupils flaring as she looks out over the city, and her breath frosts the air. I try not to shiver, to show her how terrifying she is, the embodiment of all that is cold and cruel in the world. “It reminds me that it is almost time for me to come back to life.”
For her, death and dormancy are life. In a way, we are somewhat the same. But there is something feral about her, where I have always been ordered, controlled.
She clears her throat, straightening her shoulders, and turns to me, a sarcastic smile on her face.
“I live and die every year, and yet it never feels the same,” she says with a shrug. “You cannot die, have never known that pain, the feeling of your soul curdling inside of you. Do not lie to me and tell me the last decade has been nothing to you, because the endless season of the Underworld is nothing in comparison to this.”
She is not wrong.
“Do you ever... have regrets?” I ask, and she shakes her head.
