With a cry, I rushed from his arms, losing myself in the deep, far, far away from him and his paralyzing, magical touch.
“I just need a moment to compose myself. Just a minute.”
But as I knelt there shivering, I knew those words were little more than a big, fat lie.
Chapter 9
Hades
She left me.
And I stumbled backward onto the bed, rocked by the intensity of my own emotions.
The seas burbled with life, glowing with the colors of creatures familiar and bizarre as they buzzed through the waters searching out their queen. Fins brushed by me, an array of fish swirling like glinting steel.
I wasn’t bothered by the crush of them. Not even by the long-tailed serpents that slithered between my legs.
These animals had been born the moment she’d shattered in my arms. I’d never experienced something so…profound in all my life. And the taste of her, it was magic.
Looking at the door, I could tell she’d dropped the enchantment. I was free to move unmolested through her halls, but I found I had no desire to leave this room.
The halls of my temple were always full to bursting with the dead seeking me out, needing my ear to settle matters. I’d not known a moment’s peace in all my days.
Wetting my lips, I imagined what I would do, where I would go if I were her. Something had passed between us this night, something neither of us had been prepared for.
She’d created life under my touch.
I’d been with goddesses and mortals, and sex was always just sex. I’d felt my own powers manifest with my first taste of her, felt the fires of death rage through my blood, fill my eyes. If she’d been a human, she’d have been consumed, her lifeline cut short. But Calypso had taken all I’d had to give and turned my curse into a blessing.
I stared without seeing at the door for what must have been an hour, trying to make sense of what my life had now become. But answers eluded me. The animals were long gone.
Standing, feeling the need to pace, I walked back and forth for a moment until a strange blue glow attracted me to the window.
It was her.
Nothing now but a towering, watery pillar of femininity, she walked with the casual grace of the newly dead. What I’d assumed to be a gown made of diamonds covering her from her neck to her toes was actually a small school of silvery fish.
Green hair undulated behind her in the gentle waves. Wherever she stepped, green sea moss grew, carpeting the sands beneath her feet. Swimming idly behind her was a massive great white shark.
She reminded me of a ghost, of the newly dead who came to my halls, moving as though with the grace of life still kissing their souls, untouchable and unbearably beautiful to behold.
I palmed my chest over the spot of my furiously beating heart, telling myself that this was nothing. What we had was idle play, what all Olympians did when needing to satisfy the lusts of the flesh. None of us truly cared for each other. Not in the way I saw my dead care.
The dead had always appealed to me. They were more real than the petty, selfish, creatures I called “family.” Humans had a way of truly understanding and appreciating the value of another. There was a lot of ugliness in their world, but there was also more laughter, more verve, and more truth among them.
Calypso, having not lived among any of us, was her own being. She did not understand our politics, nor did she care to learn them. She’d offered to take me in because she’d wanted me. Selfish, possibly, but also honest.
She wanted nothing more from me than what I wasn’t already willing to give. In many ways she was like my dead, the very best parts of them.
“Thalassa,” I whispered.
And even though we were separated by thick walls of coral and rock, she stopped walking. Her spine went straight and stiff, and her head turned just slightly to the side, giving me her profile.
“I know what happened to her,” I said. “They will find me guilty.”
Her fingers twitched by her side.
My heart was heavy, my stomach sick with nerves. I wouldn’t die from the tortures, but it would be far from pleasant.
Did you kill her?
Her words filled my head, and I shook it. “No. I did not. But I know where she is now.”
I thought she would ask me where, but she didn’t.
Tell me no more, Hades.
I frowned.
As though sensing my confusion, she shook her head. The waters are not ours alone tonight. I sense Poseidon’s cronies listening in.
Clenching my jaw, I went to move back to my bed, but she turned and locked eyes with me.
They glowed just like the rest of her. Goddess, she was breathtaking. I’d not noticed the bright-pink sea rose she’d tucked into her hair, but now that I did, I couldn’t help but smile.
So ancient, and yet so youthful in so many ways.
Take your rest now. I will keep you safe.
Only with her did that statement not feel ridiculous. Unspoken were the words that soon I’d be convicted and would know no peace for a millennia. But I was far from tired. My mind could not stop working.
Hades?
“Yes?”
She didn’t fidget, but I could sense her reticence.
Would you like to come to work with me tomorrow?
“You work?” I couldn’t quite hide my shock. Looking her up and down, dressed as the regal goddess she truly was, I suddenly recalled the tantalizing Janita in her servant’s clothes.
Her laughter bubbled through my dark soul.
I find I rather have a knack for it.
More curious than I had a right to be, I nodded. “I would be honored.”
Her lips pressed down tight, and she looked so innocent. I knew the vixen she was, but now I was getting to see an entirely different side to her.
“‘A many-faceted temptress,’” I murmured, “‘her depths unknowable, her passions tempestuous, and with one kiss, a man’s ruin…’”
Many poems had been written about the sea. That had always been one of my favorites, and the words now seemed truer than ever.
Lifting her chin high, she gave me a regal curtsy, then turned and slowly walked away.
Calypso
* * *
Why in Tartarus had I offered to take him with me this morning?
Grumpy, I knotted the sash of my servant’s apron around my trim tail.
Linx snuffled.
“What?” I snapped.
You know what.
“No, Linx,” I looked at her cross-eyed, “I’m sure that I don’t.”
I know she knew what I was feeling; we were two halves of the same whole, after all. But I refused to acknowledge that I was a foul, temperamental hagfish this morning. That currently the seas were rocking violently and that pirates and sailors alike were eyeing the horizon with wary, fearful eyes. I was at the point that if I even broke a nail, I’d probably pitch a fit and sink at least ten vessels, just for the hell of it.
Huffing, feeling her censure like a heavy brand, I flicked my tail, causing the ground beneath to rumble and the fault lines to groan.
“Fine. You want to know what my problem is, I’ll tell you. My problem is the fact that when I’m not with Hades, my mind is clear, focused. I know what I must do. Have sex. Have fun. And then send him on his merry way once I’m through.”
But then I thought about his eyes last night, so haunted, so open to me, and my traitorous heart had trembled at the sight of it. I’d wanted to hold him. To rock him to my breast. And not for sex at all. But to hold him.
Hold him!
I tapped my breast. “I am a goddess. I am not to be chained down. I am not to feel these trivial, sentimental, mawkish—”
Calypso, she warned, you’re doing it again.
“What?” I frowned, and then realized in an instant that the furniture in the room was shaking violently from a swift, rolling current.
Blowing out a heavy breath, I pinched the bridge of my no
se. If I didn’t watch it, I’d kill all my children. The only things precious to me in this world were them, and some (I thought of Nim) more than others.
“Bloody poop, I’m in a foul mood.”
Linx wrinkled her nose.
Why did you offer to take him with you to the castle today, then?
Plopping my fishy butt down on the clam-shell bed, I planted my chin on my fist and stared broodily at my sister.
She was so pretty. Why couldn’t I have been born her instead of me? Instead of this volatile, emotive crazy woman who could hardly make sense of her own emotions half the time.
“I wish I were you,” I murmured. “Do you not suffer from loneliness ever, my Linx?”
Shaking her equine head, she delicately nibbled on a mound of crab apples.
I have you. I need nothing else. But you were never like me, Caly, and that is okay. You are you, and I adore you for who you are.
I curled my lip. “I am a scatterbrained nitwit. I offered to take Hades with me last night because I missed him. Can you imagine? He’d just given me pleasure, and I was satisfied. Why was that not enough? Suddenly I miss him and want to be where he is and wonder what clothes he wears today and whether I can taste his cock as he tasted my pearl and—”
Linx’s laughter flitted through my head like sea bells. Seems to me you’ve developed quite an attachment to him.
“Yes, but I didn’t want to!” I knew I was acting petulant, but I neither cared nor desired to act adult at the moment. There were some days when being a grown-up sucked. Today was one of them.
My heart ached. Literally ached in my chest. And how was that possible? Why had sleeping with him made me feel all these violent, maudlin emotions?
Hades was a horrible man. He’d schemed to keep Persephone by tricking her with his pomegranates, and he’d basically admitted to me to having done something nefarious to her. He was known to be rude, dismissive, cold, and calculating.
Of course, the last few qualities I found rather charming, as I, too, had my moments.
Stupid, perfidious heart. I couldn’t even list his flaws without wanting to defend them, even if only to myself.
Gnashing my teeth, I glowered at my sister. “I like him.”
The words were ripped from me.
Yes, I know, love, it’s quite obvious. She slurped down an apple that’d tried to wiggle away. I frowned. Apples didn’t wiggle, and then I realized a couple of hermit crabs had hidden themselves in with the batch of apples.
I had to swallow my gag. Linx and I were both vegetarians. I found the thought of eating my own a little on the cannibalistic side. If she knew what she’d done, she would vomit, and I would have a major mess on my hands. Hippocampus vom was far from pleasant; it smelled a little like horse dung and looked like putrid soup. But…as she hadn’t seemed to notice, I wouldn’t tell her.
Getting up, I pretended to swim toward my vanity but instead accidentally on purpose flicked my tail at her bowl, causing the other hermits to scatter out and disappear.
Linx blew out an agitated breath. She knew I’d done it on purpose. She didn’t know why.
Caly.
“Linxy.” I rolled my eyes and patted my silvery hair back into place. I looked so sexy this morning. There was a flush to my cheeks, and my thick hair was caught up in a plait that danged like a horse’s tail across my bare shoulder.
I’d worn one of my prettier outfits, really just strategically placed pearls of differing lengths wrapped around me, so that each time I moved it highlighted my sensual curves.
While I didn’t exactly look ready to go cook and clean, I was beautiful. And that counted for far more.
My stomach dived. “I fear I have developed an infatuation with the beast, my darling.”
Infatuations end, Calypso. Linx spoke as she nudged the last apple back into her bowl with the tip of her nose. Ride this out, and I’m sure you’ll be back to your old self in no time. Have sex. Make babies. Have fun. And for the love of Rhea, stop overthinking everything so much.
“It’s not exactly overthinking. Do you know he killed Persephone?”
Beautiful, horsy eyes widened. He did? I thought you said it wasn’t—
I flicked my wrist. “Well, I’m not sure he killed her, but he knows what happened to her. They’ll come for him, no doubt. They’ll take him from me.”
You sound displeased by that.
There were no words for me to say to that. But they stayed with me throughout the rest of the day.
Chapter 10
Hades
I’d been to Zeus’s temple, the palace in the clouds, the crown jewel of all of Olympus. A shining, majestic place crafted of the finest white marble, nestled upon a fluffy bank of clouds thicker than a marshmallow topping, where sunlight never faded and wine flowed freely.
My own Elysian fields were another wonder, a verdant Eden of blooms and greenery, where the faithful frolicked and reveled throughout all eternity.
Demeter’s vast fields of wheat.
Dite’s love temple dripping with the sensuous fragrances of myrrh and nubile, ripe women who lived only to worship their mistress.
All of them beautiful, but none of them quite as enchanting to me as the sea garden Nimue—King Consort— and Calypso took me too.
It was an underwater oasis, rolling green hills surrounded by jeweled strands of blue and green kelp that grew up from the ocean floor, where tiny and colorful fish swam through. A waterfall cascaded from the cliff face of a massive mountain range several yards before us.
Bird fish flew through the azure, tropical waters, singing as they dived for their own meals.
I rested my weight against an alabaster rock poking up from the ground, simply watching them.
Nimue was pale with dark hair and eyes. She was ripe with child, her figure lush and enticing. But she paled in comparison to the maiden fussing beside her.
My enchantress was yet again in Janita form, though today she’d broadened her hips just slightly, making an already delectable rear positively mouthwatering. Her breasts had likewise grown in mass, so that if I palmed them, I could not cup them entirely.
Calypso had failed to introduce me to Nimue, so the Consort had had to do it on her own. But I could tell many things from studying them now.
The first was that Nimue was of far greater significance to Calypso than she’d initially let on. The second was that though Calypso disguised herself, Nimue knew who she really was, though the goddess herself seemed completely unaware of that fact.
“Tut tut, ye sit here, now, out of the burning sun,” Caly murmured tenderly, pointing at a spot on the blanket she’d tucked beneath a large overhang of rock so that, indeed, Nimue would be out of the noonday sun that wasn’t really sun at all.
“Janita, honestly, I’m fin—”
“Sit.” Calypso brooked no argument, pushing the Consort down with a firm shove.
The consort dropped, casting me a grumpy frown that soon turned into an exasperated sort of forbearance.
“As you wish, Janita. Though I really do wish you’d stop fussing over me. I’m a woman.”
“Ye’re naught but a child.” Janita fluffed up the consort’s skirts. Then, with a final gentle pat to her knee, she turned and headed toward the basket of foods she’d left packed in the carriage some yards back.
“Come here,” Nimue commanded to me when Janita had moved off.
Grinning at being commanded so, I decided to oblige her. The woman was precious to Calypso, so I could do no less.
Taking a seat on the opposite corner, I nocked a knee and inclined my head. “Consort, how may I serve?”
Her eyes were wise, intelligent. This was a woman who missed nothing. Tapping her temple, she shot out a brief thought.
You can hear me, can’t you?
My lips curled at the edges. Yes.
Good. Then tell me, who are you really? I know you are her sex partner, but you are no mere legger.
Lifting a brow, I debated
whether to answer. I had no need to answer her. She was no authority to me. But I rather liked the pretty little human. I hardly knew her, but she intrigued me nonetheless, so I decided to be honest with her.
I am Hades.
She blinked twice, swallowed, and then patted her chest. As in the—
Yes.
Shock flitted through her gaze as she glanced back at the carriage and then darted her eyes back to me. Goddess, Calypso sure knows how to pick ’em.
My lips twitched, and I dipped my head, taking it as a compliment, whether it was intended to be or not.
Well, I was going to threaten to cut your balls off if you hurt her, but I rather think that would be impossible with you.
Chuckling beneath my breath, I could see where Calypso had adopted her strange idioms. There is no need to worry about me, Consort. I leave in a matter of days.
Where are you going? Her fingers toyed with the petals of a baby sea bell, causing gold dust to scatter through the waters.
Hell, more likely.
Bow-shaped lips pursed. Hades, are you to bring war to my mate’s kingdom? Tell me now.
Touching a fist to my heart, I shook my head. I vow to do no such. I am here only temporarily and only on the queen’s mercy.
Do you like her?
It seemed to me there was a wealth of meaning hidden behind the simple words.
I shrugged. We hardly know one another.
She shook her head and then cleared her throat.
The next moment, I spied Calypso, with an armful of goods, bending over, giving me a tantalizing glimpse of her round posterior, and I couldn’t help but snort. The woman was maddening even when she didn’t try to be.
Humming softly beneath her breath, she set her baskets down, lifted the lid, and began pulling out bottles of wine, roasts of fowl, bowls of creamy cheeses, nuts, olives, loaves of bread, and on and on and on it went, food for as far as the eye could see.
“Oh damn,” she frowned, “I forgot the caviar, and I know how fond of that ye are, Consort.”
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