I shake my head. “She didn’t mean for things to turn out so bad.” I saw how she’d cried herself puffy over Dae’s grandmother. Those emotions were real.
“Hmmm… And prince charming?” His gaze turns sharp, curious—not in an idle way. “Seems like you have a few options.”
No use denying it. “One is a ghost who doesn’t love me more than a friend. And one is a god. Doesn’t seem like either prospect has much of a future.”
“Not to mention the ally,” Charon says.
“Also just a friend.” While these games are played, at least.
What I don’t tell him is that Hades was the rock I held on to through all of it. Boone’s visit helped ease my guilt, helped give me a goal to work toward and something to live for. But Hades?
He was my peace. He was my strength. He was my haven.
Definitely didn’t see that coming. Though I probably should’ve.
“I’ve never seen Hades…distraught before,” Charon admits. Not like this.”
For a minute, I worry that I spoke my thoughts out loud or that he could read them. But then his actual words sink in, and heat flushes through my face. I try and fail miserably to be casual. “Was he?”
He searches my expression. “Enough that it scared me.”
I stop tracing a pattern on the blanket to look at him more closely. “Scared?”
Charon shrugs. “He’s king down here, but I couldn’t make him leave you. For days. This is the first time he’s been out of this room since he brought you here, and I still had to force his hand. If he loses it…” Another shrug.
But I get the idea.
The heart monitor beats a little faster, the sound of it pinging and obvious. I really hate those machines. With a flick, I remove the gadget from my finger.
It flatlines, and Charon turns it off with a not-so-secret smile. “You don’t think you have a future with him? Why? Because he’s a god and you’re mortal?”
I really don’t want to have this conversation, so I say nothing.
He doesn’t let it go, though. “You don’t seem the type to let details get in your way.”
“What are you saying?”
“What has he told you about Persephone?”
I press back into my pillow. Where did that come from? “He told me she was like a sister to him. How losing her devastated him.”
He glances away. “There’s that, at least.”
“What does that mean?”
He shakes his head. “It means he’s being up-front with you.” He pins me with a pointed look. “Hades only shares information for two reasons—either you’re in his very small circle, or he’s using it to get something from you.”
“Which am I?”
He runs a hand around the back of his neck. “I’m hoping the former.”
“‘Hoping’ doesn’t sound promising.”
Charon huffs an unamused laugh, and yet he seems to want me to give Hades some kind of chance.
Mine.
Hades’ claim, his word, bounces around inside me.
But the way he takes care of me feels like more than possessiveness over his champion.
I try to push up in the bed, and Charon grabs a pillow and stuffs it behind my back gently. Just getting situated takes all the fight out of me, and I close my eyes for a second. I don’t want to go back under. I’ve had enough of that.
When I make my eyes open again, he’s still here. Charon asks, “Did he tell you—”
At the click of the door, I look directly into mercury-gray eyes.
The second Hades sees me sitting up, it’s like all the tension drains from him. And a memory strikes. A real one, I think. I stare at him as I recollect.
A moment in the middle of the night when I swam to the top of consciousness, after the Styx fix, and Hades’ face blurred into view.
“You can leave me, you know,” I remember slurring. “I’m not going to die now.”
“That’s debatable.” Then he frowned. “Or do you want Boone again instead?”
Both irritation and a genuine offer laced his words.
I tried to shake my head, but my body just wasn’t cooperating. “No. You.”
