Tempted by Darkness

by Lillian Sable

  “The stories always get bits and pieces of it wrong, things are lost in translation or misunderstood by the few humans who survive their encounters with the gods,” he said with a heavy sigh, shaking his head. He adjusted his position on the throne and leaned forward, but made no move to rise. “There were never multiple girls who shared my throne. I only ever needed one.”

  Nervous premonition shivered up my spine. “I don’t understand why you think I’d care. This is ridiculous, and you have to send me back.” Remembering the words from my play as I glared at him, I took a deep breath. “I am my own—”

  “Wait,” he commanded, his voice washing over me with the force of a strong wind, blowing my unspoken words away. Hades looked past me to the two men at my back, the men who had helped me on this journey without asking for anything in return. “Would you like to tell her, or shall I?”

  I turned back to look at them. Cerberus stood with his arms crossed over his chest, sheathed sword hanging at his hip. As I watched, his form morphed from that of a man into a three-headed dog. He stared at me with soulful eyes that almost looked heavy with remorse.

  Ryn continued to stare at me with incredible intensity as his lips tightened, but I didn’t understand the emotion that I saw in his gaze.

  Guilt.

  My hands squeezed into tight fists. “Tell me what?”

  But neither of them said a word.

  “Can you really say honestly that you don’t feel it? Whatever draws you to me cannot be denied. You’ve dreamed of me every night since we were first apart.” Hades’s voice was stern, barely contained rage in his eyes. Coming to his feet, Hades stormed to a nearby table covered in crystal orbs. He picked them up and threw them hard enough at the wall that they smashed to pieces, one after the other, to punctuate his words. “I’ve shown you so much, and still, you cannot see. I had thought that being reunited with them would do the trick—the court jester who befriended you then led me on a merry chase so I could not thwart your escape and the guardian of my castle gates who allowed you to escape into the human world after you magicked away your memories of me.”

  That last bit seemed to set him off completely. With a groan of rage, he upended the table, so all the orbs went flying, most crashing to the floor where they cracked and shattered. The deliberate destruction seemed to bring him a measure of calm, and he turned to me with eyes lit by cold fire, voice almost plaintive.

  “Why won’t you remember?”

  “This is fucking crazy.” The stone walls of the throne room felt like they were closing in on me as my vision swam. Nothing that had happened in the last thirteen hours came close to what I would call reality, but this was on a whole different level. “I don’t belong here.”

  “You do, even though it pains me to admit it. I convinced myself that my love would sustain you through the worst of it. It’s clear that my love wasn’t enough.” Straightening, Hades returned to his throne and collapsed into it. His hands pressed against the sharpened bones, and I realized as I stared into his eyes that they hurt him and always had. “If I had known how desperate you had become, then I might have changed things. Before, I kept you all to myself, but it’s better that you have found companions. They will make what I must do to you easier to bear if you decide to stay.”

  The book dropped from my numb fingers, falling open on one of the dozens of hand-drawn pictures through the text. It shouldn’t have surprised me that the girl in the long dress kneeling at Hades’s feet wore my face. “This is a trick.”

  “The gods cannot lie,” he replied simply. “You have no choice but to believe me when I say that you are the Goddess of Persephone, daughter of Demeter and almighty Zeus, damn him to the abyss. You are the other half of my tortured soul.”

  His words resonated like a pain so deep that I felt it in my bones. “This doesn’t make sense. I have a life and human parents. I remember my childhood, even the terrible parts.”

  “The magic you used to be reborn in the human world is beyond my understanding, but somehow you managed it.” Hades closed his eyes, seeming pained. “You accomplished much in your quest to escape us.”

  “Us?”

  “The moment I named you queen, your power became a part of the Underworld. Without you, the entire realm suffers. Souls cannot be reborn into the world without a place to rest. Eventually, the very circle of life will be broken.”

  I turned back to Ryn and Cerberus. “Including you?”

  Ryn’s lips trembled as Cerberus bowed all three of his heads.

  “You should not blame them. They had no idea who you were when I first set them on your path.” Hades held up the lariat so that the colored stones caught in the light. “And they did not understand until much too late that you hold the key to our very survival.”

  I wanted to be angry with them, castigate their lies of omission. But if I chose to believe all this was true, then it only made sense that they would do whatever it took to fix it. And neither of them had sabotaged me, I never would have reached the castle in time without their help.

  Which meant that now I had the choice.

  Pulling away from Ryn, I bent and picked up the book, its leather cover too warm against my skin. “In the story, those girls all died. Is that what happened to me?”

  “Over and over again. The devastating power of reincarnation was bestowed upon you by birthright and twisted to dark purpose when you were exiled here. This is a place of death, after all,” Hades admitted, his gaze never leaving my face. “Persephone is the goddess of spring, a time of rejuvenation and renewal. Your suffering feeds the magic that sustains this realm, and your eventual death is always inevitable. Until you are reborn, and we play the same game all over again.”

  It sounded terrible, a fate literally worse than death. “Why?”

  “An unbreakable curse, punishment for falling in love without consideration for the consequences.” The sadness on his face made it clear that there was significantly more to the story than that, but he only sighed and gestured around him. “It no longer matters when the entirety of the Underworld is at stake. Some creatures will still survive here, but time is running out.”

  My gaze was drawn to the lariat that still dangled from his fingers. “And what will happen if I go back to my human life, if I just leave?”

  He only shook his head, expression bleak. “Without your sacrifice, souls cannot be reborn in the human world. Eventually, this place will be overrun with souls and will break apart, casting us all into the darkness of the universe. We will all simply…cease to be.”

  As crazy as it sounded, and I was used to a lot of crazy, his words were like a puzzle piece, finally falling into place after years of searching. For so long, I’d been unable to understand why I never felt like I belonged in the world, why I saw things so differently than everyone else did. The hallucinations that the doctors tried so hard to medicate away were never psychosis at all. All the art and writing that clawed at my head until I got them out weren’t evidence I had gone crazy. The vivid dreams that haunted me were so much more than just my fevered imagination.

  Because they weren’t dreams, but memories. Memories of a past that I had somehow compelled myself to forget.

  I couldn’t have known that the missing part of me would only be filled with more darkness.

  “Why did I leave before?’

  “You were trapped here, just as I was. Eventually, it became too much.”

  “He tortured you,” Ryn spat, expression pained when I turned to look at him. “Every creature in this realm witnessed the terrible things he did to you. It was only after you were gone that I understood it was necessary.” He pointed an accusing finger at Hades, voice severe. “But make no mistake. He enjoyed all of it to your dying breath. Every time, he killed you with a smile on his face.”

  Hades didn’t even try to deny it. “I am the master of this realm, and it was created with my darkest urges in mind. I won’t deny that hurting you fulfills a need in me.”

&n
bsp; Anger had fled completely, leaving me bereft and confused. I no longer knew what I was supposed to feel. “You’re disgusting.”

  He inclined his head in acknowledgment, but excruciating emotion colored his voice when he spoke again.

  “Persephone, I loved you before the birth of the oldest stars, an eternity of desperate obsession and exquisite suffering. You give, and I take, that is the way that it has always been, for reasons beyond all of our comprehension.” A shiver of anticipation made him clench his hands into fists, even as he stared me down. “Make no mistake. If you choose to save us, you will suffer for it.”

  If you choose to save us.

  Despite how looking at his face pulled at my soul, I felt no love for Hades. Only a few minutes ago, I would have happily watched him be burned alive. But he wasn’t the only thing that made their home here. I couldn’t know how many souls would suffer oblivion, rather than rebirth.

  Because of me.

  I could stay here and make it right, but lose everything I’d built for myself in the process. It wasn’t as if my life was much to celebrate, but I couldn’t help but recall the fog-induced dream. Having a cozy home with a picket fence and children playing in the yard, married to a devoted man who loved me without the need to hurt, that was the future I wanted. A man like Adonis, who I could almost convince myself felt the same way.

  As if reading my mind, Hades produced an unblemished crystal orb and spun it on the tips of his fingers. For a moment, I saw Adonis’s face flash in its surface before the image was gone.

  “I would bring him here for you if you wished it. I would provide you with any inducement to save this world. He is the only reason you came here, after all.” There was the smallest hint of resentment in his voice. “There would be irony in you trapping him here in the way that you have been trapped.”

  Could I do that? Rip Adonis away from everything and everyone he had ever known to live in a dream with me. A dream that I couldn’t guarantee wouldn’t turn into a nightmare.

  He was my friend, but did I really feel that way about him or was it just an infatuation.

  Regardless, he deserved more than that.

  The hot jealousy in Hades’s eyes took me aback. God, I hoped that sex dream only happened in my head. But judging from the way he was looking at me, I wondered if maybe I hadn’t been the only dreamer.

  “You promise that they’ve both returned home?” I stared into his icy gaze as dread rose up to almost choke me. “Adonis and Cleo have to be safe.”

  “I give you my word.” He held the lariat so the upper portion formed a circle in his hands, ready to place it around my neck. “I would give you the universe if only to watch your face as I tear it away from you again.”

  There was a warning there. He had not forgiven me for leaving him, even if I didn’t remember doing it, and he warred with the impulse to make me suffer.

  If I chose to stay, there would be no going back.

  I looked at Ryn’s stricken face, the war within him written in the drawn lines around his mouth. He couldn’t decide if he should beg me to stay or force me to run as far away as possible. Cerberus stood only a foot away, tongue lolling from three identical heads and eyes just as expressive as they had been when he was in a human form.

  Without me, they would fade into stardust and be lost to the universe.

  “Fine,” I snapped as I glared at Hades. “But not for you. I’ll stay for them.”

  His lips thinned in barely restrained anger, even as triumph bloomed in his gaze. He approached me slowly, with the lariat still held in his hands. “You must speak my name. And the right words.”

  “Hades, god of the dead and king of the Underworld…” The words caught in my throat as I spoke his full name out loud for the first time. Power beat against my skin, like the wings of some great bird of prey moments before it snatched me up in its talons. What I was about to say was so close to a lie that I could barely form the words. But I had made my choice.

  “I belong to you.”

  Hades released his breath in a great sigh as if he had been holding it for years. Twenty-four of them, to be exact. “I’ve waited so long for this.”

  “Just get it over with,” I snapped, just as he closed the distance between us.

  When the lariat fell around my neck, it felt like a noose weighted down with heavy rocks dragging me toward the floor. His hands followed its path as the string of stones fell and settled in the cleft of my chest. The moment that his fingers touched my skin, even just the gentle brush against my shoulder, all of my strength fled. The strain and stress of my journey through the Underworld seemed to catch up with me all at once. I felt as if I had been walking for the past thirteen hours straight as my eyes rolled up toward the ceiling.

  When my knees collapsed, Hades swooped me easily up into his arms, as if I weighed next to nothing at all. The arms that tightened around my body felt like a cage or a trap, but I lacked the strength to resist him.

  There was no will left to fight.

  I had made my choice.

  Hades and Persephone’s story will continue in Teased by Darkness.

  Also by Lillian Sable

  OMEGAS OF PANDORA

  Ianthe and Legion

  Omega’s Deception

  Omega’s Capture

  Omega’s Binding

  Aura and Castor

  Alpha’s Temptation

  Alpha’s Corruption

  Alpha’s Redemption

  FERAL ALPHAS

  Hunted by the Feral Alpha

  BLOOD AND DIAMONDS

  Beautiful Dirty Rich

  Gorgeous Nasty Luxe

  Seductive Wicked Royal

  MAFIA DUET

  Their Mafia Bride

  DARKEST SOULS

  Fiendish Magic

  About the Author

  Lillian Sable writes erotic romances with ultra-Alpha heroes. She is a former office-worker who spent more time fantasizing and daydreaming than doing her actual job. She started writing her fantasies down and turned her dreams into reality. Lillian lives in Indiana with her husband.

  Visit my website: www.lilliansable.com

  Follow me on Facebook: @lilliansableauthor