“Don’t you dare give up. Maximus, please!” I cry.
Though the first escort doubles back and helps his partner with shoving me to my knees, I refuse to give up. With desperate abandon, I stretch out my fingers again. They brush a sworl of Maximus’s wet hair. Another. A sob bursts from me. I can’t hear it, but I feel it. All of it. The joy of finding him. The completion of touching him. The fullness of his love.
Then, as soon as it’s all there…the desolation of his departure. Like the mists that formed my vision to begin with, he has evaporated once more. Vanished back into the realms of my fantasies.
“Nooo!”
It’s my own keen on the air, but I barely acknowledge it past the gash in my soul. Oozing from that aperture is a toxic energy I’ve never encountered before. A psychic bomb has been set off in my spirit.
Though tears still gush from my eyes, I order them to pry open. I stare at my hands, still coated with Hades’s silver-infused oil, planted but quivering against the bridge’s icy stones. There’s nothing I can do because my mind is still on a wild hunt for my sanity.
“Kara!”
I recognize the voice as Charlena’s, infused with surprising alarm. Still reeling from my vision, I jerk my head all the way up. And then gasp in new terror.
My grandmother hasn’t returned by herself. Hades glides closer, his eyes dark and pinned on me.
“It’s working, Kara,” he suddenly exclaims. “It’s working!”
“It’s…what?”
“The silver.” He reaches out, and all my nerve endings order me to flinch away, but I can’t. I’m helpless and motionless as he runs the tip of a finger along the back of my left hand.
I blink, confused.
“It’s increasing your psychic sensitivity and energy,” he goes on, barely missing a beat, “but also lulling your conscious, so you’re more receptive for this.”
“More receptive for…”
I lurch away at last and curl both hands against my chest. What I really want to do is peel every inch of my skin away from my bones, now that his “gift” is revealed for its true purpose. But I also have to look at the whole picture. Was I able to see Maximus more clearly because of the silver infusion in my senses?
“You can feel it, can’t you?” He scoots close again.
“I can feel…what?”
I demand it of him but shoot my desperate look to Charlena. She remains steadfast several paces behind him. Even through the dark veils, I pick up the ripples of her concern. It’s as confusing as the mix of Hades’s hopeful words with his eyes’ predatory eagerness. I can’t figure any of it out. Not fully. My heart pounds like a rabbit’s, and my instincts scream a command to run, but there’s a vast disconnect across the switchboard of my brain. I’m moving but not fast enough. I’m panicked but not wild enough. All I can do is whimper as he completes his approach and reaches for me again.
But not for either of my hands.
This time, he grips my head by both temples.
A scream, primal and petrified, rips up from my belly. I scramble backward, pumping my feet to hasten the escape. I only stop when the back of my head collides with a bridge balustrade and it looks like Hades won’t be taking up pursuit. Every muscle and nerve ending of my body remains on high alert, trying to stay ready for him again.
Ready for…that.
What. Was. That?
I can’t begin to work out an answer. My mind is still razed. My senses are still numb. Every inch of my skin is ready for another bath. This time, scalding hot. Or in acid. If only Hades’s unblinking stare didn’t feel like exactly the same thing.
“Kara, please. Don’t fight this.”
When he accents his mystified sigh by leaning toward me, I scrape up a few pebbles and hurl them. “Stay away from me!”
He pushes back on his heels with a chuckle. If I could magically manifest a dagger and hurl it through his chest… But talk about wasted dreams. Whoever Hades was before inheriting hell, he certainly didn’t have a heart in that existence either.
“You’re rattled. That’s understandable.”
“Rattled?” I normally use the word for missing an A on an exam by one point. Or tumbling into a sanity-shattering crush on my literature professor. Not this.
“I mean, just look at you,” he goes on. “All that rosy life in your cheeks. All that captivating breath on your lips.”
What he fails to highlight is all the fury and loathing roiling through me. It’s dark, humiliating…devastating. Up until now, I’ve clung to composure by threads thinner than strands of the corner cobwebs, all of them spun from a sanity called Maximus. Gone now. All of them, gone. I might as well be stripped naked.
Another thought, though silent now, that I yearn to snatch back. So much further back. But the corners of Hades’s lips curl up as if his mental hooks are still invading my head. Detecting every thought, big and small, that I have.
“Kara. What is it? Talk to me. What has you so out of sorts?”
Besides the fact that you’re driving me out of my mind?
Instead I frantically mutter, “I’m fine.” I cross my arms again, gripping at the robe’s collars like they’re life ropes. Maybe they are. Nothing else feels balanced. Nothing feels like reality.
“Shall I take you back to your room now?” he asks with what sounds like forced politeness.
I don’t even care. Nothing matters but finding silence to recover from his tap of chaos.
“Yes, please.”
Hades dismisses Charlena and the guards, personally walking me back through the dismal palace. Thankfully, he keeps his distance and his silence during the journey.
Once inside my chamber again, I sweep a fast gaze around. It’s not the opulence I’m seeing now. It’s the chance to transform any or all of the decor into a possible weapon against my captor. I’ve never fantasized about murder with more desire in my life. I’ve never been more certain that I’d carry through on the temptation.
But how does one kill a god? Certainly not with an implement so simple as the hot poker glowing in the fireplace.
Again, as if I’ve accidentally blurted my thoughts and not known it, Hades tucks his hands into his front pockets and regards me with maddening calm. “Kara. Don’t be foolish. I know you’re upset, but you risk upsetting me, as well. You must know that is far worse.” He widens his stance in response to my ongoing glower. “I am doing my best to ease you into this, but I would not test my patience if I were you.” As he hauls in a deep breath, his posture relaxes but his scrutiny hardens. His stare is the texture of twin onyxes. “You should rest now. When I return and we try again—”
“Again?”
My recoil is met by matching degrees of his raised chin.
“Again, Kara. I have already told you: I will open you. Whether that happens next time, or a thousand times from next time, is solely up to you.”
He means it. I know it. Beyond any doubt, down to every petrified nucleus in every horrified cell of my body, I know it.
For long moments, none of those cells are able to move. Not even to budge the small strands of my sanity. Not that Hades notices or cares. He’s already gone, punctuating his decree with a decisive pivot and a direct exit out the chamber’s arched portal.