“No.” Hades leans away, holding my gaze captive. “I’m saying that if you use that phrase to define your family, then you shouldn’t be surprised if sometimes they try to pull you under.” He says this next part slowly, as if he’s considering each word. As if he’s trying not to poke at a sore spot. “But you can find a family and make them yours. A family that lifts you up, helps you float. One not made of blood.”
I swallow and stare at him. It’s possible if I win. If he takes away that curse. “Are Charon and Cerberus your family?”
“More than my brothers.” He shrugs.
“And Persephone?” I don’t know why I asked. I expect him to do what he always does when her name is brought up… Shut down.
Instead, he glances away—I think maybe toward the heart monitor, which has slowed down, I realize. My heartbeat is steady now.
“Yes. And Persephone,” he says. Slowly again. Not reluctantly, though. He’s deliberating what to tell me, I think. “But not the way mortals believe. Not even the way most of the gods believe.”
Like Charon said. “Does it hurt to talk about her?”
The sadness that darkens his eyes to a flat, gunmetal gray is unmistakable. So is the stab of jealousy in the region of my heart. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. What if I don’t like the answer?
64
See Beyond The Masks We All Wear
“Yes,” Hades says. “It hurts to talk about Persephone.”
I was right. I don’t like that answer.
“She was amusing and sweet.” He’s still talking. “Goddess of spring. How could she be anything but?”
That sounds like love to me.
“I didn’t fall in love with her, though.”
I blink, and he chuckles. “I can read your face like you’re speaking your thoughts out loud, my star.”
That’s a big problem. One for later. I reach over and unplug the heart monitor.
“I loved Persephone,” he says, taking the cord from me and draping it across the top of the machine, “but like a sister. Like a daughter, even. Hers is the softest, most caring heart I’ve run across in all my years as King of the Underworld. Losing her devastated us all.”
The more he talks, the more I can see it now. The difference in the sadness coming from him. She was precious to him in her own right. Not as a wife or a queen or a lover but as herself. I wonder what it’s like to love someone that way.
“I’m sorry she’s gone,” I whisper. “Is she why you’re participating in the Crucible this time?”
Hades doesn’t look away, but something in his face shifts. “I need to become King of the Gods. It will give me a certain added power.”
“To do what? Take revenge? Unleash the hells?” I don’t think he would, but I need to know that much.
“To set certain things right, but no. No unleashing.”
“I believe you.”
“You believe me.” He echoes my words with a hint of displeasure in his voice. Hades leans into me, eye to eye, his sinful scent winding in and around me. “You trust too easily, Lyra.”
“Maybe,” I agree. “But you definitely avoid your feelings too much.”
I’m starting to learn this about him. That cold veneer he presents to the world is exactly that. A front. It’s not that he doesn’t care—he just doesn’t want that caring to be used against him.
Something I understand all too well.
Now he’s glowering again, but I’m not frightened. Not of him. Maybe of me. Of the way I feel, sure, but of him? Not even a little.
“She was your friend,” I say. “Like a daughter. Would she want you to hurt like this?”
Hades’ glower falls away, and his gaze meets mine. “You don’t want me to hurt?” The words come out as a guttural whisper. His voice is sandpaper and bass, rubbing at my own emotions until I feel raw.
“No.” Maybe I shouldn’t be this honest. “I don’t want you to hurt.”
“Why?”
“Because…” I say slowly. Then sigh. “This is how I’m a friend.”
“A…friend.” He says the words slowly, like he’s tasting them.
“Yes.” Charon said Hades needs one. “And a friend would say that underneath all the intense, godly bluster and the need to be in control all the time, and despite making me compete in the Crucible like an asshole, I still see who you are, and…” I shrug. “I like you.”
His eyes turn molten, swirling with a hundred shades of silver and gray and even black. “Who do you think you see, my star?”
Forget sandpaper. His voice is raw silk again, and my belly turns squishy at the sound.
I smile. “I see the same person you saw in Persephone. A soft heart that cares too much. More than the world sees, because you make sure of it. Because the world should never know, or they’ll take advantage of you.”
