“We were in the noble castle,” he explains. “Getting in a quick rest.”
I join my smile with his despite the tiny pang in my heart. My expression is right out of Gramps’s book. How I wish I could see him right now. And Kell and Jaden…even my mother. “That place is actually real?”
“Can you believe it?” he returns. “No meadow, river, or seven walls, though. But Charon and Minos, with a few embellishments, are pretty much written to truth.”
My jaw drops. “Oh, come on. You’re just saying all this to keep me gasping.”
He playfully kisses my nose. “Little demon, I have better ways of doing that.”
His expression, so adoring and passionate, has me mesmerized for a long moment before his words fully hit me.
“Wait. You said we were in the noble castle. We…who?”
“What’s shaking, little ladybug?”
Once again, I’m motionless except for some stunned blinks up at my lover, who’s still wearing a mischievous grin. That’s because he knows that no other voice in the world could have me scrambling out of his arms only to launch myself into others. As I do, to sob out with sheer elation. To hug in tight until it hurts. To endure, with so much joy, the breath-stealing clinch I’m given in return.
“Gramps.” For a long second, I’m afraid to vocalize anything else. I don’t want to ruin the dream. But I’m not so successful with tamping my tears. As they gallop out of me, he starts rubbing my back as if to simply soothe me through a bad case of the hiccups.
“One, two, buckle my shoe,” he murmurs into my hair, and I burst with a snotty laugh.
“Three, four, lock the door.” It’s been at least fifteen years since I last uttered the rhyme back at him. It feels amazing now, especially as Gramps joins his light laugh to my watery one. “You’re the one who got Maximus here?”
“Bah. Only the Vestibule and a couple of shady neighborhoods,” he says with a humble shrug. “Your grandmother was the real hero, getting us the rest of the way.”
Charlena appears behind him, but she isn’t having any of the shrugging. Her posture is taut. “Duty is duty,” I offer, letting her save a little more face. No doubt duty has been the key to her rise in stature here. The backbone that’s pulled her out of the dreary mire that Hades showed me in the distance when I first got here. Was that only a day ago? A few days? It feels like an entire year sewn together by hopelessness and fear.
The same sensations that overtake me now, as the energy on the air gains palpable ferocity. Suddenly Charlena’s sense of duty, not as my grandmother standing beside my beloved gramps but as a soldier of Hades, becomes frighteningly clear. That can only mean one thing. I push the conclusion to my lips while spinning back around to Maximus.
“Hades. He’s on his way here. I feel it.”
I curse myself for not expecting it sooner. I think about begging Gramps and Maximus to take cover or attempt an escape on their own, but neither of them look ready to do that. Gramps has already lifted his shoulders and planted his feet. Maximus’s profile is painfully perfect, with his forehead set and the proud blade of his nose leading down to the firm line of his mouth. His jaw is clenched with such finality, I can visually trace its line through his dirty beard. From there, I can’t help but view the tattered hole in his shirt, now torn even farther so the edge of his shoulder shows. But even there he’s coiled and proud and prepared.
Outwardly, I shake my head. Inwardly, I’m screaming.
They’re both ready to face another monster, just to save my life.
But this time, not just any beast.
The creature who calls himself the ruler of this realm. The god who’s already seen inside Maximus. Now, it seems, more than once.
How many weaknesses can Hades exploit now? And what will happen to my own soul if I have to stand here and watch the deaths of the two men I love most in this universe?
I can’t. I won’t. So I back up and shut my eyes, unwilling to watch even the start of this play out. Refusing to give Hades even a glance as he sweeps into the library, flanked by what sounds like his whole captains’ contingent.
For some reason, that’s what makes me stand taller and open my eyes again. I’m a weak third in our war party, but at least three against eight—perhaps nine—sounds better than the odds Maximus and Gramps were originally facing.
“Gentlemen. Greetings. Glad to know you both made it here in one piece.”
His salutation is such a boom, a lot of the torn books take flight and shed more of their pages. It’s a good match for his new uniform, which looks like his tailor took fashion notes from train and orchestra conductors and then dipped the whole thing in sinners’ blood.
“I didn’t come all the way here for friendly banter,” Maximus snarls. “So are we all good to just move on?”
Already, several captains bristle his way. Hades stands them down, his hands relaxed in the air. “If that is truly how you wish to play this out, then yes.”
“Perhaps we can all agree to be civil,” Gramps interjects. “After all, we wanted none of this.”
The assertion earns him a curious but sinister look from Hades. “Says the fugitive who’s been playing with my mercy for over far too long?”
Hades switches his view, flashing an accusing glance in Charlena’s direction. “Ah, there you are. It’s not like you to ignore a call of the captains.”
She stiffens to tighter attention. “I already knew what you wanted. I figured I would stay a step ahead and find them first.”
He smirks. “Clever. Always so clever. I was ready to deliver Kara to one of the others’ districts—”
Her composure breaks. “You promised her to me!”
“I promised her to the captain who brought me Maximus Kane, which you’d know if you bothered to attend my meeting,” he spews back. “And we both know I’ll cast her to the ice below the loggia if that’s what I want. Don’t speak to me as if you can change that, Charlena, or like you deserve anything more than unending agony. Further”—he wheels back around, narrowing his eyes on Gramps—“you must have known how tenuous things were if you went rogue to find me not one but two lost souls. What a massive surprise this is, indeed. Giovani, a divine pleasure to see you again.”
To my growing dread, Gramps rebuts that with an equally brazen regard. “Pleasure, eh? There you hell creatures go again, speaking of earthly mechanisms that you claim not to care about.”
Hades’s laugh is another wall-rocking burst. “Perhaps you temporals would be wiser to value those constructs more—most especially when standing before the god who can make sure you never have to be troubled with them again.”
Gramps, clearly already expecting something like that, jogs his head higher. I have no idea what he’s about to verbally add to that, but I do feel all the outrage that’s going to drive it. Anger that won’t be taken well at all by our host.
But my plan to cut his mistake short—by silently beseeching Maximus to step in—has struck a roadblock of its own. As soon as I turn to my breathtaking hero, he steals the air from me in new ways: with several gut punches of his own emotions. Frustration, impatience, and even murderous intentions are boiling near the surface of his composure.