by C. R. Jane
When Darkness Calls
Hades Redemption Book 1
C.R. Jane
Contents
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Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Author’s Note
First Impressions
Prologue
Chapter 1
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When Darkness Calls by C. R. Jane
Copyright © 2021 by C. R. Jane
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
For all the girls who dared to be happy.
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When Darkness Calls
Hades and Persephone.
Everyone knows the story.
How he met her and immediately fell in love.
How because of that tiny pomegranate seed, she spent half of the seasons in the Underworld and the rest here on Earth.
No one mentions the part of the story where she left him.
No one mentions that she shattered his heart.
And no one ever mentions that Hades was cursed after that.
I’ve just found out that I’m the next girl to be offered to him in an effort to break the curse.
The goal is supposed to be simple.
Fall in love with Hades.
The Fates just never considered he might not love me back.
We grow accustomed to the Dark —
When Light is put away —
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye —
A Moment — We Uncertain step
For newness of the night —
Then — fit our Vision to the Dark —
And meet the Road — erect —
And so of larger — Darknesses —
Those Evenings of the Brain —
When not a Moon disclose a sign —
Or Star — come out - within —
The Bravest — grope a little —
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead —
But as they learn to see —
Either the Darkness alters —
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight —
And Life steps almost straight.
-Emily Dickenson, “We grow accustomed to the Dark”
Prologue
“No more,” he whispered to the velvet black sky as he peered out into the heavens, searching for answers that would never be found. There were no stars visible to him. Any light had long since disappeared. She’d taken them with her.
He was tired. The kind of tired that sat heavy in his bones and made him long for the sort of sleep that lasted forever. At one point, such a sleep had seemed impossible. But he’d become so numb that now it felt close.
It was almost time. Another girl. Another disappointment.
Because none of them would be her.
He’d lost count of the centuries that had passed since it began. What did it matter when each tribute failed to pass the test?
The future he’d been promised was a myth.
“We’ve found her.” The voice came suddenly, slithering through his mind, a sound that filled his nightmares…when he was actually able to sleep. The voice of the Fates, the ones who had given him this fate in the first place.
“No more,” he called out into the darkness, knowing he wouldn’t receive an answer back from them.
The next girl would come, like it or not. He wouldn’t have a choice.
1
Elena
The breeze drifted around me, softly stroking the curls that escaped from my haphazardly put together bun. I didn’t bother trying to tame them, I’d learned long ago they were uncontrollable.
I sighed, turning the page of my faded paperback. The pages were weathered and worn, filled with highlighted sections of the passages that lit up my soul. It was one of my favorites, which was good since my family’s lack of money meant I didn’t own many others. I was at my usual spot, my favorite tree by the river that ran through the forest behind our house. It was old and moss covered and somehow felt as comfortable as if I were leaning against a couch cushion. Plus, it had an amazing view of the river and the sound of the water rushing across the rocks helped me relax, even when my books couldn’t. It was the perfect spot, and one that I had been coming to since I was a little girl. Now at nineteen, it served as a source of comfort, like only something that had seen you grow up could.
“Elena,” came a voice from across the river. Unlike the tree which calmed me, this voice made my heartbeat start to race and my breath begin to quicken. Dallin always had that effect on me. I had been in love with him since he moved to our town two years ago, not that I would ever tell him that. I was firmly in the friend zone as far as Dallin was concerned. The girls in this town fell all over him the second he appeared, and he had enjoyed the offerings to the fullest. The fact that we lived in a small town didn’t seem to matter, as Dallin had the rare gift of remaining friends with all the girls he slept with.
Friendly exes or not, I had never been comfortable with the fact that practically every girl we saw had slept with or dated Dallin. It was far safer for us to stay best friends.
“There you are,” he said with a grin, his blond hair waving in the breeze. His teeth flashed a brilliant white against his tanned skin, the lingering color the product of mowing lawns all summer, much to the delight of the town’s admiring housewives. Of course, he’d mowed shirtless.
“Hi,” I said lamely, admiring him as he picked up a pebble from the riverbank and skipped it across the river.
“I’ve been looking for you all day.” He gave me another heartbreaking grin, and I momentarily lost my breath.
“I thought you had football practice?” I asked as I raised an eyebrow.
“I meant after that,” he answered.
Dallin was a receiver on the junior college’s football team. He was doing so well this year, everyone thought that he would be picked up by a major college next year. I already missed him.
“So will you go?’ Dallin was saying, and I realized he had been talking the whole time I had been off in la la land.
“Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “Where are we goi
ng?” He looked annoyed for half a second, which was out of character for him, but he quickly hid the look when he saw me watching him. “Some of the guys on the team are having a few people over at one of their apartments tomorrow. I thought maybe you would go with me.”
I grimaced internally at the thought of being surrounded by strangers. Knowing him, what he was describing was probably a lot closer to a party than it was the small intimate gathering he was trying to sell. I hated parties. I was much more of a bookworm at nineteen than a normal teenager. Plus, parties with Dallin in the past had meant watching him flirt with other girls while I stood in the corner sipping punch. I began to think of an excuse.
“We haven’t been spending a lot of time together,” he said before I could come up with anything. “This would mean a lot to me.”
He looked so earnest standing in front of me with his baby blue eyes that I couldn’t help but give in.
“What time does it start?” I asked, and his answering grin told me that I had made the right decision.
“Pick you up at seven,” he said, walking backwards away from me with a smirk on his pretty face.
Only when he was out of sight did I allow myself to squeal a bit. I was pretty sure I had just moved out of the friend zone. A trickle of doubt ran over me, making me question if I was making a mistake or not, considering everything I knew about Dallin. I pushed it away and ran home giddy, like I was ten instead of nineteen.
The next day, I was a bundle of nerves. I had hung out with Dallin hundreds of times but my stomach was so fluttery that it may as well have been a first date. I spent the entire day agonizing over what to wear. All of my clothes were from the secondhand shop, and even though I was proud of my creativity, I really wished I could have gotten a new outfit for the occasion.
Mom came up the stairs a few hours before Dallin was set to arrive. She came in quietly and sat on my bed, holding what looked like a letter in her hand. She looked like she had just gotten bad news. Her pretty face looked drawn and even more exhausted than normal.
“Everything all right?” I asked hesitantly, putting down my hairbrush and staring at her questioningly. One thing about my mother, Rosie Carmichael was always in a good mood. Despite the fact that she was a single mom, despite the fact she had to work two jobs to put food on the table for my brother and I growing up…she always seemed to see the glass as half full. Seeing her look so dejected was troubling.
She looked up at me as if she was seeing me for the first time, even though she was sitting on the bed in my bedroom. Mother had always looked younger than her age. But right now, she looked like she’d aged ten years just since I had seen her downstairs an hour ago. There were lines around her eyes and on her forehead that I could have sworn didn’t used to be there, and there was a pinched expression around her mouth that I had never seen before.
“Mom?” I asked hesitantly, all thoughts of my date that night disappearing from my head at the look on her face. She seemed to mentally shake herself from her dark thoughts and glanced up at me with a fake grin. “Yes, baby?”
“Is everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine. I just received some news this morning. It’s nothing. What are you getting ready for?” she asked, the distress on her face clearing away and leaving behind a carefully blank mask.
I studied her for a moment, wondering why my mother was lying to me for the first time that I could remember. She kept her face blank, letting me know she didn’t want to discuss whatever was bothering her. I decided to let it go and talk to her about it later. If I needed to know, she would tell me. Right?
“Dallin invited me to a party tonight,” I told her with an excited grin. She knew that I had liked Dallin since he moved here and had often teased me about it. This time however, there was no teasing. Instead, a flash of pain crossed her face at my pronouncement, worrying me further.
She quickly covered up her strange look and put another fake smile on. “That boy has finally come to his senses,” she said with a laugh. “I knew it would happen sooner or later.”
We spent the next hour with her helping me get ready and all thoughts of the mysterious letter and her strange attitude fluttered out of my mind.
Dallin was twenty minutes late. It shouldn’t have bothered me, but considering this was what I thought was our first date, I thought he would be on time.
“You look amazing,” he said when he finally arrived. He flashed me that signature wide-eyed grin, cutting through some of my annoyance. I looked down at my outfit. After too much deliberation, I had finally decided on a jean skirt that I’d cut to make a little bit shorter and a black tank top. Simple, but I thought it looked good. I didn’t want to seem like I was trying too hard. I’d never been the type of girl who looked effortless. With my out of control curls and my eyes that were a bit too big for my face, I felt awkward no matter how much effort I put in. Hopefully, what I was wearing would be fine for this party.
My mom came out with a camera, and my cheeks flushed with embarrassment. You would think that I was sixteen and going to prom instead of nineteen. Dallin graciously took a couple of pictures, and I hurried him out the door, looking backwards once over my shoulder to see my mother looking after me with a wistful expression on her face. It was as if she was trying to memorize the moment.
Instead of going directly to the party, Dallin took me to one of the local seafood places that was super popular with the locals. Shelby’s was the kind of backwoods place you found in small towns like ours. Resembling a log cabin with stuffed fish hanging on the walls and netting hanging from the ceiling, it tried hard.
I had never been there before. We usually couldn’t afford to eat out, and even though I had picked up a job since starting classes, I tried to give my mother as much as possible since I was living at home while I did my two years at the junior college. She had refused to take it at first, wanting me to save up for living on my own, but things were so tight that it wasn’t too hard to eventually wear her down and get her to accept some help.
I was worried what would happen to her when I transferred to a university out of state. My brother moved out three years ago, and she would be all alone once I left.
“I’ve been wanting to do this for a while,” Dallin said, shaking me from my thoughts as he reached across the table to grab my hand.
I looked at him, a little smirk on my face. “Oh really, I would never have guessed that with all the other dates you’ve been on lately.”
He answered my smirk with his own grin. “It almost sounds like you’re jealous,” he said watching me closely. There was something in his gaze that I didn’t recognize, something almost hungry.
I scoffed and then cleared my throat, not used to the full brunt of his flirtation being focused on me. “We know each other well enough that you don’t have to pretend, Dallin,” I finally said.
He looked offended at my statement…and then he looked a little worried. “I never thought you would say yes to a date,” he said pleadingly, as if it were a life or death situation that I believe him. “You’re always so cool and collected around me. You had to have known that I’ve been in love with you since I moved here.”
I looked at him in shock. I tried to think about how I would act if I was in love with someone. Sleeping with every girl I came across didn’t seem like something that resembled love…but maybe I was just naïve.
Except the thought of love being something like that didn’t feel right in my heart.
“I’ve been trying to get over you,” he told me, obviously having read the unease written across my features. “It was stupid. I should have just gone for it, even if you’d shot me down. But I was so sure…”
“What made you change your mind?” I asked hesitantly, my gaze dancing across his beautiful features. Dallin was the kind of guy you just knew was going to be someone, do something. He had greatness practically beaming from every inch of him. It was a far cry from what I saw every morning in the mirror when I was
getting ready.
“The other day, I saw you talking to Brad,” he admitted reluctantly.
“Brad Foster?” I snorted. I’d forgotten what he was referencing even happened. I’d been walking back from the library when Brad, a guy who had been on the baseball team in high school and who had been in Dallin’s popular circle of friends, had stopped and said hello as we passed on the sidewalk. It had literally been a blip in time, nothing sufficient enough to spur Dallin into action, if he had indeed seen it.
Dallin rolled his eyes. “That’s just it—you’re so oblivious. Brad was obsessed with you in high school. Most guys were. And you never even noticed. I thought maybe you had like, a secret college boyfriend or something back then, because it was like guys didn’t exist around you.”
I stared at him, flabbergasted, wondering why he was bothering to say crap like that. I hadn’t been oblivious, I’d been a wallflower. Someone who blended in with the shadows. I’d always been more comfortable there. And everyone I’d gone to school with had been more comfortable with me there.
Dallin took my hand in his, the soft way he stroked my skin sending my heartbeat spiraling out of control.