I swallowed hard and dropped my chin to my chest, feeling the movement of water that was my body expanding and flexing through the deepest canyons and ravines, scraping against rock, and rolling with the swirling tides. I might have no one for me down here, but at least I was free. At least I was still me.
“Thalassa, if you are there, please come out. It is Hades, and I wish to speak with you.”
I’d have recognized the deep, shivery timbre of his voice even without his formal introduction, and I debated what to do. My pulse stirred, causing the waters to roll harder and swifter, creating rushing currents that moved me every which way.
Why had he come for me? Hadn’t he understood that my intentions were not simply to run away, but to get away from him permanently?
No, no. I would not go to him. Whatever he’d been doing to me up there, it had to end now. I could not bear for him to pluck any more emotion out of me. It made me feel sick and desperate and filled my bones with longing so fierce that I thought I might even die from it.
I shuddered and squeezed my eyes shut. “Go away, Death,” I whispered, voice raw and broken.
My words rolled through the tides, but I knew he’d heard them because I heard his deep and sonorous sigh. Despite my earlier protestations, I found myself fighting an internal war.
I desperately wanted to rise up to the surface and go to him. Despite all my internal warnings not to be, I was drawn to the darkly handsome god, even now, even knowing just how dangerous being with him was to my equilibrium and piece of mind.
I felt his warmth pulse through the waters. He’d reached his hand inside of me just as he had the previous night, and I gasped, experiencing that same fiery sensation of touch and wonder and desire curl like flame all the way through me.
I shuddered and bit down on my tongue,
“Why do you hide from me? I would never hurt you.”
I snorted. That was what everyone said until, of course, they hurt you. I might be reborn, but I wasn’t stupid.
After several long minutes during which neither of us said a word, he finally spoke. “Okay, Thalassa. I suppose that if you’re going to stay here for an eternity, then I must settle in, too, because I’m not going anywhere.”
Glowering, I felt the rise in my water’s internal temperatures, causing the surface of it to bubble and steam.
His responding low chuckle, full of humor, set me off, and without stopping to think through what I was doing, I shot to the surface with the swiftness of a mako shark. I solidified into something resembling a mortal and planted my fists on my hips.
“Leave,” I said, voice low and deep, unflinching in my desires that he should do as I bid.
He was sitting on the edge of the canyon, one knee lifted before him. He was no longer dressed in the black, stifling armor he’d forced himself to wear on our initial trek through the forests. Now he wore a pale dove-gray shirt that opened at the neck, exposing the olive complexion of his firm skin and his clearly defined chest
I’d known that he was a big man, but seeing him now, wearing nothing but a loose shirt and dark trousers with no shoes on at all, he looked somehow… more. Bigger. Stronger. More handsome.
I swallowed hard, temporarily stunned by the sheer masculinity oozing from off him. Without the severe steel encasing his body, he seemed infinitely more approachable and yet, oddly enough, far more daunting and sinister.
He wore an easy grin, and his dark-blue eyes glittered with starlight. “I’m not going anywhere, Thalassa.”
I gritted my teeth and my nostrils flared as I tried to regroup, get my edge back, find that anger again.
But all I felt right now was a quivering in my stomach and a strange fluttering that traveled all the way through me and even made my toes tingle.
“You’re a bastard, Hades, and I no longer wish to play this game with you,” I said, voice far more tremulous than I’d intended it to be. I wanted to lash out at him and hurt him as badly as I now felt that hurt, but instead, I was weak and stupid, and I needed him to go away. “Please.” I squeezed the one word out just as I slammed my eyes shut, not wanting him to witness whatever it was that was happening to me.
I was so mortified by these feelings coursing through me.
Pain.
Anger.
But mostly, I felt so bloody alone all the time. Except when I was with him. However, one thing had become very clear to me. I might be with him, but he was with her.
I was so lost to the anguish in my head that I’d not heard him near until his hand was framing my jaw. I sucked in a sharp breath, and my teeth turned to fangs that wanted nothing more than to tear into his flesh and make him feel just a tenth of the agony that I did.
“Don’t you want your heart back?”
I gulped, hating that I loved his touch as I did, hating that it made my body burn with desperate feelings, shameful ones for a virgin goddess. I suddenly understood my previous self more than I cared to admit. I knew why she’d turned as she had, why she’d forsaken all that she was for this man alone.
He’d placed a spell on me then, and he was trying his hardest to place one on me now. I clenched my jaw, nostrils flaring as my fingers curled and unfurled, nails turned to deadly curved claws that could eviscerate a man just for staring at me wrong if I wished to.
I was one part agony and one part loathing. But I didn’t know if it was him that I hated or myself. I shook, fighting that stupid lump in my throat. “A goddess does not cry. She does not feel. She is cold. She is—”
“Oh, my dark queen,” he murmured tenderly.
I jerked, spasming in his clutch, loathe to admit just what his words did to me, how they tortured me and made me want and burn and need with a recklessness that stole my breath.
“Leave me, Hades,” I pleaded one last time, voice little more than a reed of sound, thin and fragile. I was exposing myself to a man I barely knew. But that was a lie because from the moment that he’d come back into my world, everything had been upended, and the memories that’d meant so little to me before were now pounding away at me like one of Cyclops’s massive fists. I shook.
“Look at me, woman,” he said in that deeply accented voice of his that never failed to turn my knees weak.
So I did because he was the enchanter, and somehow, this lesser being, this lesser god, had a hold over me that was inexplicable and very, very dangerous.
His eyes were dark, looking almost like a twilight blue, and filled with the starlight from the heavens. His gaze was piercing, looking not just at me, but through to my soul.
I trembled almost violently in his grasp. “What have you done to me?” I whispered.
I told you who he was to me… to us. That ghostly voice of my past was almost smug in her arrogant triumph over me.
All my plans, all my desires from just a few days ago were burning away to dust every second that I spent in this lesser male’s company, and I hated him for it. Hated. Him.
With a swiftness of rage that I’d never seen coming, I shoved those claws of mine through the sides of his stomach, making him heave and gasp and seize up as he stared at me with a look that was at once betrayed but also knowing.
It was not a killing blow. I’d never intended it to be. But I was angry, and I didn’t know why.
The tears were flowing down my face, and I was screaming words I’d had no intention of saying.
“I am dead inside. Dead! In constant torture and agony. I’m all alone in those dark waters, and I hate it! I hate you. I hate you. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you! I hate you all!”
My words ended on a pitiful wail as his darkly handsome face was blurred from my vision. I felt his hands gently wrap themselves around my wrists. I could have fought him, could have clawed my way in even deeper. But the anger was giving way to something else, and instead, I found myself yanking my hands out and dropping to my knees.
Covering my face with hands that smelled of his dark essence still, I murmured, “I am so very wrong, Hades
. So very wrong. Something has happened to me, something I cannot explain. I… I can’t… I can’t be this anymore.”
I’d had no intention of laying myself open to him in this way, had no intention of saying these mortifying, truthful words that made me burn with shame. But out they’d come anyway, and I fully expected him to leave me then.
It was probably why I’d stabbed him, to make him feel my darkness, to make him see how terribly bad and wrong I was for him. Whatever he’d hoped to find in me, it wasn’t there anymore. That woman he’d once loved wasn’t me. Maybe she’d been better, but I was not. I was a monster.
“I’m not a good person,” I murmured weakly, shoulders heaving violently from my tears, which were turning these woods from a forest into a sprawling lake bed full of glimmering blue-green waters.
But he did not abandon me as I’d expected him to. As I’d almost hoped he would.
Instead, his hands were on my face. “Look at me, female, and so help me, if you stab me again, I will do terrible, violent things to you. So play nice, Thalassa.”
I almost chuckled to hear him threaten me in that way because “terrible” and “violent” were two words that thrilled me to my soul.
Pulling together whatever dregs of humanity I still had left to me, I looked up at him. His jaw was clenched tight, and his dark eyes, with which I found myself becoming more and more obsessed, were narrowed into slits of barely leashed rage. They sparked with flames of blue, and if I hadn’t already been kneeling, I knew my legs would have given out from under me.
I pressed a fist to my stomach, wanting so badly to apologize to him for what I’d done, feeling suddenly and very terribly ashamed of my actions. I still wished to destroy all of the glittering, golden ones, and yet Hades was no longer one of them in my mind. He was outside that realm of debauched and debased lesser gods, and that was absolutely chilling to me.
I knew that history was about to repeat itself for me, and unless I left immediately, I would be absolutely lost to his dark spell again. I would lose myself all over again. I would become weak. I would become that other creature once more. I wasn’t sure I wanted that, but a part of me wasn’t sure I didn’t, either.
My jaw trembled, and he growled, making my blood sing, making my soul feel as though it would soar. For the first time, I began to feel the breadth and movement of life begin to sparkle within my waters.
I gasped, blinking, staring at him and wondering what in the devil he’d done to me to turn my magick as he had. Whatever life I’d managed to create before had been dark and deadly. But what I felt being birthed now was light and beauty, creatures with fins of glittering jewels and gold. My waters were pulsing, breathing, and I was so stunned that I could only stare at him.
“Who are you?” I heard myself asking, feeling outside of myself somehow.
At that, he finally spoke. “I never lied to you.”
I shook my head. “It’s not possible.”
“Dammit all, Thalassa!” He snatched up my wrists in his impossibly powerful grip, and I trembled, but not from pain.
I’d called him my lesser, but it wasn’t true, and I knew it. I was more physically powerful. That was fact. But Hades was pulling a spell over me, just as he had before, and I knew that if I gave in again, I would be lost for good.
“When will you realize that I am not your enemy? You say you are alone, but you never were. Always I’ve kept my eye on you, waiting for you to grow stronger, waiting for you to become form again, waiting. Always waiting, but always watching. Always making certain that you were safe, that you were sane and as well as could be expected. Yes, you’ve suffered a trauma, but bloody hell, woman, so have I!” he snapped, and I shook, awed by his fury.
He was like a regal male lion, majestic, powerful, and so bloody dangerous to my sanity and my health. I wet my lips, completely awed by the male before me.
His skin was sparking, turning that golden shade the rest of his pantheon’s did when the god power rode them hard. But his body was rolling and curling with snapping blue flame that made me hiss as it licked at my flesh and made me undulate—not away from—but deeper into him. I moaned as that beautiful and deadly fire spread from his hands to mine.
But he was not done yet.
His face was a mask of fury, and my soul flowed through me in wonder to watch his divinity take him so.
“You think you were the only one who suffered? Blast you! I’ve been dead inside, dead!” He slapped powerfully at his chest, causing the very earth around us to boom and roll with his own fury.
I gasped, delighted and hypnotized by the deadly grace of the male before me.
If he had been dead before, he certainly wasn’t now. I wasn’t the only one creating. He was too. Jagged outcroppings were ripping up from the earth’s crust, but these weren’t just any rocks. They were raw gems of sapphire, rubies, and amethysts. And they were covered in the golden shells of my creatures. We were building a city of water and rock, and it was all so beautiful that I couldn’t stop looking at what we were doing together.
I’d not been able to do this before, make something this beautiful, this… perfect.
He continued pounding on his chest, bringing my tear-filled eyes back to his. “I am not right without you. Whoever you are, whatever you are, it is only for you that my soul yearns. I cannot be without you, Thalassa. Don’t you understand that yet? Don’t you get that? You think I lie. You think I trick you. Well, damn you to the bloodiest pits of Tartarus for it! I’ve never wanted a thing in my life, not in my entire life, save one. One thing.” He stuck his finger in my face, his own contorted into a mask of righteous fury that stole the very breath from my lungs and made me burn, made me sizzle. “You. You and your harridan tongue. Gods above, I’ve never wanted anything more than you. And since you never seem to believe a bloody word I say, then here. Here is your proof!”
And without giving me a moment to wonder what it was he was about to do, he slammed his hands to my cheeks, and I felt the godhood flow through me. He was ripping me open and pouring himself into me. It was an invasion of the most intimate kind, and I screamed as I felt it all.
The pain of our separation. His agony. How he’d wailed and gnashed his teeth in the first days, marching down his halls, screaming out for me. Tearing at his body with his large, powerful hands until he bled. Then the rage morphed into something colder, something more sinister.
I watched as that strong and powerful god became a husk, a shell of his former glorious self, sitting on a throne of black-stained skulls, staring straight ahead as ice and snow swirled all around him, lost to the world, looking so alone and so bewildered.
I jerked, shaking my head because I saw it, finally. He understood it completely, the agony of feeling adrift, of feeling abandoned and betrayed, the pain of it all.
And then the impossible and agonizing joy of finding me again only to note that I was no longer the woman I’d once been, the woman he’d kill for, the woman he’d die for.
I watched it all, crying the entire time, confused and scared. Scared because I didn’t know what to make of this or of him. Scared of what I felt now. Confused by what this meant for me, for us, for all my future plans.
When it was over, he was looking down at me and shaking his head. His voice was a throaty, shivery whisper as he asked, “Have I no choice then? Is there no hope at all?”
He was cracking before my very eyes, and I was so bloody sorry. Sorry for hurting him as I had, sorry for wishing him such pain for so long. I was terrified out of my mind, even as I dared to touch him again.
He flinched away for a split second, and I pulled my hands back as though burned. He looked down at my fingers, which were no longer tipped in claws, and he groaned from deep in his belly.
“Oh, my darkness,” he murmured almost tenderly, “if you touch me, let it be with love and only love. Otherwise, leave me be, for I ache all over and do not think I can stand anymore of this agony tonight.”
I blinked, bit
ing down on my lower lip. I wanted so badly to trace my fingers along the perfect smoothness of his sides where I’d just stabbed him not too long ago. He’d healed as I’d known he would, but I was so unforgivably sorry for it and wished I could take it back, wished I’d never harmed him in any way.
I’d done it to try and push him away, my last pathetic attempt to rid myself of the one thing I knew would spell the end of the me I was right now. But it had been a vain and futile gesture because if he’d abandoned me, I’m not sure I would have allowed that either. I was drawn to him just as I’d always been.
I wet my lips, staring at the space where I’d punched my claws through him, watching the shredded edges of his shirt undulate through my waters, mournful and ashamed by my actions. And yet, even still, he wanted my touch, but only if it was done in love, and the truth was that I didn’t know if I loved him.
I was drawn to him, pulled in. But was that love? I did not think so.
I only knew one thing. “I do not hate you, Hades. I’m not sure I ever really did.”
His nostrils flared, and I realized distractedly that he and I were floating. The waters had become so deep that they rivaled the deepest trenches of Seren itself. With a snap of my fingers, I created a massive oyster bed that we could share.
He glanced down, one brow raised sharply as he noted, no doubt, that there was more than enough room for the two of us to rest upon it quite comfortably. He looked at me, and I looked down at my feet.
I owed him an apology, but I was too raw right now, like a wound that’d been picked open one too many times.
I’d felt the depths of his agonized love for the woman he’d once known as Calypso, and it hurt me deeply.
You and I are still the same. You just have to accept that. Accept me…
I felt that same powerful wave I’d felt in the first days after the curse shoving at the walls of my head, wanting in, demanding that I let it in. But I was scared and unsure. If I let that wave in, what would become of me? Would I even still be me? I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything.
The Greek Gods of Romance Collection Page 32