King of Shadows

by Amelia Wilde

  There’s another way out of this situation, and it’s to become someone else. Someone who is not me. Someone who does not worry about what’s going to happen every moment of every day. Someone who has nothing left to lose.

  I want it so badly it makes me cry.

  All he needs to do is finish the job, that’s all. He’s taken me this far and to hold back from pushing me off the precipice is more than cruel. It will be the death of me. And some small part of me thinks that Hades, for all his talk, wants me to be alive. What use would I be to him dead? No use. No use at all.

  My legs start to tremble, to shake, and I lower myself down onto my heels. He huffs a laugh, and all of the bravado I’ve built up in the heat of the moment dissolves. I’m on the other side of that doorway. His face has shifted back into the beautiful cruelty he always wears. The cruelty that would allow him to let Decker dangle from his hands. The cruelty that let him push his fingers inside of me in front of everyone on his factory floor. Something about him scared my mother enough that she spent my entire life warning me off of him.

  This is it. This look, on his face, right now. Like I’m prey. Like he could dangle me from his hands and watch the life slowly leave me, unblinking, uncaring. But something shifts at the last moment. He wouldn’t kill me. He might hurt me. But that’s as far as he’ll go.

  And then he moves.

  The way he moves is nothing short of astounding, even in shirtsleeves and his custom slacks. He moves through the world as though he knows every inch of it as intimately as he’d know a lover. As if he’s spent hours running his hands over every available surface, memorizing it. A graceful killer.

  My body responds while my mind tries frantically to convince me that this is fine, this is what I asked for, this is what I wanted. The tears come first, totally unbidden. Hades stops at the edge of the bed, takes my face roughly in his hand, and pulls me toward him. He licks the salt from the side of my face and leans in close to scrape his teeth across my bottom lip, stinging.

  His eyes rake across my face, studying, devouring. Not even Decker has looked at me like this—not once. I mistook the way Decker used to look at me for a hunger that could never be satisfied. Now I’m not sure if anyone but Hades could be that ravenous.

  Hades slams a hand down on the table. Does he even hit the switch? I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter—the light goes off, plunging us into darkness. My eyes adjust while I gasp for air. Moonlight. It streams through the windows on the opposite side of the room, bathing us in white and leaching all the color from the room. It doesn’t matter. He’s just as menacing, and just as breathtaking, without it.

  “You’re ruined.”

  I am.

  22

  Persephone

  I’m not expecting tenderness of any kind.

  In fact, I don’t want it.

  It still takes me by surprise when Hades drags me off the bed and stands my feet on the floor. He kicks them apart and shoves me down over the bed, bent over, exposed. My breath comes fast and hard and hot. He catches one wrist in his hand, then the other. I don’t know where the tie comes from, but I feel the slip and slide of it over my wrists. Hades tugs at them, the movement dispassionate.

  “Move your wrists.”

  I can do it, if only a little. Tenderness. Maybe this is just because he doesn’t want to cut off circulation in my hands, but the fact that he doesn’t want that—it means he feels something. Anything at all. Not that it’s part of the deal. His emotions are not on the table. They have never been on the table.

  He stands up behind me and caresses my ass with one wide palm. I’ve almost let myself relax into the sensation when he spanks me, once, sharply. I lurch up from the bed, crying out, and he pushes me back down like I’m nothing. Spanks me again.

  “I could do this all night.”

  He could—I believe him. I don’t know what I’m being punished for but it could be any number of things. Falling asleep. Keeping him waiting. Sneaking away to meet Decker. He could know about all of that. I’d deserve it. But the more he spanks me, the more I want it. A stinging heat spreads across my backside. Ten or fifteen later—I’ve lost count in the haze—he shoves his fingers between my legs.

  “What did I do?” I’ve been crying again, without knowing it. And I know I didn’t do anything. I know this is punishment for the sake of punishment. I also know that my questions wind him up. Coil him tight. I keep my feet firmly planted on the floor even as my thighs tremble. “Why are you doing this?”

  It’s a plaintive question and my voice sounds small, even to me.

  “So it’s easier to fuck you.” He adds a few more for good measure and I gasp every time. “This is your favorite thing, you twisted little slut.”

  “Only for you—only when you—”

  “I’ve done things to you that made you so fucking wet you could hardly stand up straight. But I’ll give you this one, Persephone. You waited quite a while to beg me to fuck you. You’re an angel.”

  Angel sounds worse than slut. Angel sounds like a woman who wears only white and sleeps with her hands above the covers, never getting pleasure out of anything. Angel sounds like the endgame. You can’t be an angel and be anything else. I want him to take my wings.

  “Now shut your mouth.”

  He spanks me to remind me, until my ass burns. It must be red. He can’t see how red it is, not in the moonlight, and that’s one saving grace. Hades rubs at my sore flesh absently. Out of the corner of my eye I can see him watching me.

  “Those tears.” He sucks in a breath. “Those, more than anything, make me want to keep you just how you are.”

  He said to shut my mouth but I can’t help myself. “Then you’re going to keep me?”

  Hades pushes thick fingers into me, as deep as he can, before he answers. “You’d rather die than belong to me.”

  “No.” One shuddering breath, then another. “I’m alive.”

  He curls his fingers, and I am ended.

  I don’t know what he’s touched or where, but he does it again and brings down all the lightning the world has ever seen in one massive bolt at the deep center of me. I can feel myself clenching on the fingers, tighter and tighter. He does it again. Again. Again. I lose count of how many times I jerk and come because of him. They blur together, one ending, another beginning, peaking constantly until the tears on my cheeks are from being completely overloaded by his hands. By his fingers.

  “There’s more than one way to punish a woman,” he says. Or at least I think he says it. It could be my own brain finally losing its grip on reality. “More than this, Persephone.”

  I brace for another spanking, but instead I hear a sound I can’t immediately place.

  Clothes, hitting the floor.

  I’m not wearing any more clothes.

  I’m bent over the edge of the bed, panting and quaking and only upright by the grace of Hades himself.

  Those have to be his clothes.

  I’ve had too much to turn my head, though I want to see him.

  I want to see him, but I don’t need to see him. All I need to do is feel him. He touches me, making the first contact. The air around us ignites. He slides his palms down my back, traces a path down my spine. Then he braces them against my hips.

  “I’m going to hold you still while I take you.” Like he’s commenting on the weather. “You weren’t hoping for someone to kiss you and wipe away your tears, were you?”

  I shake my head no. I wish he would just do it. I wish he would take us to the other side of whatever this is. Maybe that’s crazy. Maybe it’s not something I should ever want, and it makes me just as bad as he is. But I’ve never killed anyone. I’ve only begged a killer to do depraved things to my body. I don’t know what that makes me, and right now I don’t care.

  “Good.”

  Hades shifts behind me, and I can’t for the life of me figure out what he’s going to do. It doesn’t feel like being fucked, which I’m assuming has something to do
with a dick, not—

  Not a tongue.

  Not a tongue pressing possessively against me.

  Licking. Long, broad strokes. My flesh is already swollen and wanting and his tongue on it sets me on fire as much as his hands do, spreading me even wider. I didn’t think it was possible.

  It’s possible.

  He licks and nips in endless strokes that push wave after wave of pleasure over me. Pleasure so intense it aches and stings. A pleasure to meet the pain of his hand on my ass before. I hate him for it. I need him for it. Hate and need hold each other with a tight grip. They show no signs of letting go.

  How can he be the one to do this to me? How can I want it so much? The questions loop around and around until they finally drown themselves in pleasure. In pleasure, there are no questions. There are only answers. And the answer is an earth-shattering orgasm that has me bucking against the tie around my wrist. I would be rocking into the side of the bed, only Hades’ hands on my waist pin me in place. Just like he promised.

  He pushes his tongue inside me, farther than I thought it could go, then pulls back. I howl against the bedding. It’s awful, it’s awful. He’s awful for stopping. I wanted more, and he could have given it to me.

  But he was only preparing me for what’s to come.

  Which is the thickness of him pressing harshly against my opening. Which is his hands, pressing tight against my hips, tight enough to bruise. Which is say goodbye, sweetheart. I don’t get the words to wish the old me farewell before he takes me with one single, relentless thrust.

  It tears through me, pain screaming between my legs—or maybe that’s me screaming. He’s torn something, he’s hurt something, and I know that intellectually that’s what’s supposed to happen, that’s what I asked him to do, but I didn’t know it would feel like this. I didn’t know he would feel so huge. There’s not enough room. He can’t fit, but he makes himself fit. He’s stretching me too far. I’ll never be able to take it all.

  But I don’t have a choice.

  I don’t want a choice.

  He pulls out and drives back inside, inch by inch, and I feel everything. Every ridge, every iron millimeter. My body convulses around him in something like an orgasm, only wretched and tear-filled and bad. It’s bad, to have this happen to me.

  And it’s so, so good.

  I don’t know that at first—all I feel is the pain. Hades doesn’t stop for an instant. He doesn’t let up for a single moment. He fucks me hard, like he has always owned me. Like this isn’t special—it’s just something he does. It’s not special. It’s the end of the world.

  Thank god, it’s the end of the world.

  Blood and pleasure mix around him and slowly, gradually, I become aware that it doesn’t feel quite so sharp and cutting anymore. He might fit. He does fit. It’s a near thing. He takes all the available space, he fills me to the hilt, but I’m handling it. I’m managing it.

  I’m more than managing it.

  I discover that I’m murmuring pleas instead of crying, rocking back against his hands since I can’t move enough to get more of him into me. I’m moving with him. There is no other way to move. He sets the rhythm, he chooses the thrust, he is in control of everything.

  It sets me free.

  He’s a vicious lover, never seeming to care what I need. Or maybe he did care, and I got what I was going to get at the beginning. Or maybe he knows me better than I know myself. Because the more he fucks me the tighter the pleasure winds until finally he’s driving into me so hard I can’t catch my breath, holding me hard enough to bruise, and I come harder than I ever thought possible.

  It shouldn’t be possible. It’s blinding, heart-stopping, unearthly. Who’s screaming? Me, or someone else? It doesn’t matter. The spiral twists and releases again. I’m dimly aware of him working harder. Faster. And there’s a deep, final thrust, a noise from somewhere in the back of his throat, and something hot spilling into me.

  Opening my eyes seems out of the question.

  After a long time, or maybe only a few minutes, Hades works himself out of me. I’m left knock-kneed and panting on the bed. I still don’t open my eyes. I’m not going to open them. The tie slides off my wrists, and he moves on to the bed and rolls one wrist, then the other, making sure move them. At some point he picks me up. Water runs in the bathroom, steam kissing my face. I discover for the first time that there’s a ledge in the shower wide enough for a man to sit on with a woman in his lap.

  Soap on a washcloth. His hair, wet in the shower. Blue eyes carved from the sky tracing every available path along by body, wiping away the sweat and the blood and all the evidence that nothing is the same now. His hands in my hair, working in the shampoo and working it back out again. The sweet scent of conditioner.

  A towel so soft I could cry, rubbed in gentle circles over every aching inch of me. He wraps another towel around my hair, leaving it on long enough to draw out most of the moisture.

  Gathers me into his lap.

  Runs a comb through the tangles.

  It’s a process, with hair like mine, but he sees it through.

  I keep my eyes closed.

  If I open them, he’ll disappear—I know it. Or I will discover that all of this has brought me back where I started. And I don’t want to go back there. I never want to go back. There’s nothing there for me now—now that I have this.

  Clothes—another white dress, a nightgown, slipped over my head. The sway of his body on the way back to the bedroom. He peels back the blankets and deposits me between cool sheets. Tugs up the blankets.

  A kiss whispers against my forehead. That—that’s a bridge too far for Hades. It must be a hallucination.

  Now I do try to open my eyes. I should ask him. I should ask him whether the kiss was real. Whether any of this was real. But I’ve kept them closed too long, and now I’m drifting.

  Is he even here?

  I try to get my lips to form the words, but they won’t cooperate. My only choice is to sink down into the pillow and drift.

  There’s something else I should do. What is it? It seemed so important, all this time. Something about a secret passageway and a plan. A way back to my old life. The details are not forthcoming. They don’t seem to matter much anymore. Not enough to convince me to wake up and shake off the blankets. I consider it for what seems like several years, but in the end, I can’t remember what I was considering in the first place.

  I turn over once, my cheek making contact with the other side of the pillow, and I’m lost to the world.

  23

  Persephone

  I’m walking the length of an open field, weaving between the flowers, the grass tickling my bare feet. My basket hangs from one hand. Its balance is perfect. I’ve arranged the small weights of the flowers so that the basket swings along with every step, catching the breeze. Summer sun. I’ve always loved the summer sun. It’s warm on my face, on my shoulders. The hem of my dress whispers along my ankles, gauzy and clean. No one watches me.

  There’s no rush, is there? There’s never been any rush. I could spend all day crossing this field, if I wanted. I have plans to eat an apple once I get to the other side. A bright red apple, sweet and fresh. A perfect globe. Grown for me. I can see for miles. No fences cut me off from the world, but I don’t need a fence. I’m perfectly content to walk back home when I’m finished with my task.

  A hand tugs at my shoulder.

  “Mmm, no.” I shake it off, turning my head to smile at whoever is there. One of the companions my mother hires from the city when she thinks I’m too lonely, maybe. A girl—a young woman. Always a woman. She’ll walk with me as long as I want. She’ll keep me in sight. It doesn’t bother me. “I’m not finished yet.”

  A drop of water hits the sky and makes the blue ripple all through fluffy white clouds. That shouldn’t be happening, probably. I’ve never seen the sky do that before.

  This time, the hand on my shoulder is rougher. More demanding.

  “Stop.”
I brush it away and spin around to confront whoever is there.

  The field is empty.

  It’s not just empty here, it’s empty as far as I can see. There is no house. There are no trees. There aren’t any flowers.

  They grab my shoulder again and shake.

  “Stop,” I shout, whirling around. They were behind me. There has to be someone there, digging their fingers into my dress and yanking, harder and harder. “What do you want? What do you want?”

  The dream shifts, and then I’m standing in front of the New York Public Library. The lions watch me with judgment on their stone faces. “You don’t belong here,” one of them says. The other nods his agreement.

  The fabric of my dress seems to pull me up toward the sky and beyond, outside the atmosphere and into the blackness of space. My vision shuts down. It’s too dark. I fumble for the covers and pull them up against my shoulder. Pull them tight. I’m tired. I’m too tired to understand what’s happening, one foot firmly planted in this dream world.

  “Persephone. Persephone, it’s time to go.”

  The voice registers one word at a time, all of them distorted at first and finally clear. My eyes are tiny sandbags. I force one open, then the other. Lillian hovers above me, face almost invisible in the dark.

  What is she doing here?

  She shakes me again, as if my open eyes aren’t a sign of being awake. “Persephone, get up. We have to go. He’s waiting.”

  It must be Hades. There can be no other explanation. I’m so exhausted that I don’t open my mouth to ask. No one else would make her worry like this. He hasn’t been in the habit of waking me up at night, but maybe he needs more from me. I need more from him. It beats in me like my own heart, an echoed beat a moment out of time so I can always, always hear it.