He held her close, cradling her head in his big hand and holding her against his chest with the other. “Oh, I’m counting on that, thisavrós. Because no matter how mighty a warrior you may be, you’ll be taking a piece of my heart with you wherever you go.”
She closed her eyes and clung to him, just as she had when she’d been a child. Before she’d known about soul mates and destinies and how the evils of the world tried to destroy everything good and pure and decent in a person.
All the things she’d learned from him.
Her eyes burned again, only this time the tears weren’t from heartache. They were from love. And knowing that love would never die, no matter where she went. “And you’ll always be my hero. Just as you always have been.”
He chuckled against her ear. “It’s entirely selfish of me, but I’ll take that title. I’ll take whatever I can get.”
This isn’t real. She’s not real. She can’t be real…
Zagreus stared at the image of Talisa crossing the blackened ground, heading right toward him. She wore a silky white robe, her long dark hair flowed behind her like a river of black silk, and she smiled the way she had that last night. When she’d surprised him in the lookout with the candles and bed and her. Then rocked his world out from under him with the depth of her ability to love.
But this wasn’t the lookout. This wasn’t the romantic scene she’d set up. This was the Underworld.
Fire and brimstone burned behind her, the soot making his eyes water, the black smoke causing him to cough. He stood immobile as she drew near, unable to warn her, unable to call out to her. He couldn’t even drop the dagger in his hand or lower his arm where it stood out like a tree limb at his front.
The dagger she was walking straight toward, as if she didn’t even see the blade.
No. Holy hell, no…
A scream rose in his ears. One that came from him but hadn’t left his mouth.
Frantic, he told himself again that she wasn’t real, that she couldn’t be in the Underworld, that she was safe in Argolea. Then the wind changed direction, and he caught a whiff of her perfume. That heady combination of orange and vanilla and cinnamon he’d know anywhere. The scent that was utterly her.
“Shh, My Prince,” she whispered, drawing even closer. “I’m here. I’m here now.”
No, no, no… This can’t be real…
Her eyes were hypnotic amethysts he couldn’t look away from. And her scent made his knees go weak, but he didn’t fall. And then she reached the blade, and he watched in horror as the tip pierced her chest.
Talisa, no!
Blood seeped from the wound. She cried out.
Panic and shock and terror engulfed every part of him. He struggled, tried to fight, but nothing he did caused the blade to retract.
Her eyes shot open, focused on his. Everything inside him stilled as she held his gaze with a blistering intensity he felt in the center of his soul.
“You did this,” she whispered. Wrapping her bloody fingers around his hand at the hilt of the blade, she growled, “You killed me. Again. Because of you, I’ll now suffer for all eternity. Because. Of. You…”
She jerked hard, pulling him forward.
This time he did move. His whole body shot toward her.
The force plunged the blade in his hand deep into her chest.
Her blood-curdling scream tore through the land. The ground shook. Lava exploded from mountains behind her. Rivers of red, molten rock rushed down the hillsides, headed right toward them, but all he could see was the blood. So much blood, gushing everywhere. Over her. Over him. Over the ground. Rising like a tidal wave in every direction.
And everywhere, echoing all around him, the sounds of her torture and pain and death.
Darkness circled in. A darkness he’d fought every day since he’d been in the Underworld… Too many days to count. But this darkness was too powerful. Too formidable. And the agony in the center of his soul was too excruciating to overcome.
He felt himself sliding into that familiar state of violence and hatred and rage where he’d been so many times before. Every time he’d lost her. And he wanted it to claim him, wanted to give in to the shadows and darkness where he’d no longer feel anything.
Where he was the monster and everything made sense.
“I’m not the hero you want me to be, Talisa. I’m the villain. I’ve always been the villain. I’m—”
“—Mine. You’re mine, Zagreus. That’s all you ever have to be. Just mine.”
Her voice, her candlelit face, her words from their last night together all echoed in his memory, shining like a single point of light in the swirling darkness dragging him down. A light he couldn’t ignore. A light that filled him with purpose. With hope. With love.
A light he would not let go of ever again, even if it meant suffering this torment for all eternity.
He clawed his way back toward that light. Toward the pain that told him he was alive. Toward the torture he knew she didn’t feel because she was safe. At home in Argolea. With her family. With the people who deserved her.
The darkness receded. It was like climbing out of a bottomless pit, with hands of ghosts and spirits and ghouls yanking on his limbs, trying to drag him back into the abyss.
Clearing the edge, he dropped to his back on the blackened ground, gasped in a breath of sulfur-laden air, and stared up at the red, swirling sky.
His chest rose and fell with his heavy breaths. There was no more blood, no more lava, no more Talisa. That whole scene had been Hades’s latest form of torture, just as he’d tried to tell himself before he’d nearly lost it to the darkness.
Tomorrow there would be a new, more gruesome torment. Of that, he was sure.
He closed his eyes, breathed deep, and told himself he could survive this. He could survive anything for Talisa. Because his warrior princess would do the same for him.
The air changed. The scent of sulfur faded. The ground grew soft beneath him, and all around, something rustled. Something that almost sounded like… leaves.
His eyes drifted open. No, not leaves. Wheat. Grey wheat rising from the ground in every direction.
He quickly sat up, blinked in the dull light, and discovered he was no longer on the blackened plains of Tartarus. He was sitting in an undulating grey wheat field, which ran in all directions, stopping at the base of black, jagged mountains.
An ethereal spirit floated by. It didn’t stop, didn’t speak, just cast a desolate look his way and kept going.
He twisted only to realize there were spirits everywhere. Filled with melancholy and woe, just floating above the stalks.
The Fields of Asphodel. Where lost souls lived endless lifetimes awaiting judgment.
His heart beat hard and fast as he tried to make sense of this new development. He’d certainly never been here before. Was this Hades’s latest form of torment? To get his hopes up then crush them with some new violent torture?
“Not Hades,” a voice said at his back. A female voice. “And not for torture.”
He whipped around and stared at the female in the long black gown. The one he knew on site but whom he’d barely spoken to in the last three thousand years.
Slowly, he pushed to his feet, thankful his legs now worked, and stared at his mother.
Persephone was as beautiful as he remembered—porcelain skin, jet-black hair that fell to the center of her back, gleaming onyx eyes, and ruby red lips. Being an Olympian, she was nearly as tall as his seven feet, slim and curvy, and more powerful than him.