The same bitter resentment he’d held for thousands of years rushed through him, heated his blood, and burned his eyes. He’d wanted the human realm, had deserved it. But the Fates had fucked him there, hadn’t they? According to them, the human realm was subject to free will. No god could rule it. No god, that is, except the one who possessed the Orb of Krónos, the magical medallion that held the four chthonic elements—earth, air, water, and fire—and granted the owner powers never seen before, not by any god.
He’d waited long years to find the Orb. Had come so close to controlling the human realm when he’d held it in his hands, thanks to his power-hungry wife. The irony that the daemon hybrid Orpheus had been the one to find the Orb in the realm of the blessed heroes wasn’t lost on him. Orpheus was more than anyone knew. More than a daemon, more than a witch, more even than the Argonaut he’d recently been branded. Only one being truly knew what he was. One Fate he couldn’t wait to destroy when he finally had that Orb in his hands for good.
The air stirred at his back and without looking he knew his wife stood behind him, waiting for his attention.
“I take it you’ve returned with news.”
“Yes, my lord,” she said in a sickeningly sweet tone. A tone he knew was meant to placate and deceive. “You were right. She went after the Argonaut in Tartarus.”
He turned Persephone’s way. She stood five feet from him, her fall of silky black hair framing her powerful shoulders to hit near her narrow waist. As a god herself, she was near his height at close to seven feet, and her flawless skin and ruby red lips drew his attention as they always did. The daughter of Demeter, the goddess of fertility, Persephone was every god’s—and human’s—wet dream. His included. Even after all these long thousands of years, she was still the only female he desired day after long, miserable day. Not that he didn’t occasionally want—or take—others, but when it came down to it, she was his. In every sense of the word.
He narrowed his eyes on her smiling face, knew, as he always did, that she was scheming to get the Orb and rule the human realm herself.
Getting his hands on the Orb was turning into a clusterfuck of missed opportunities, but that’s what made this whole thing fun. And he’d gotten so bored with the torturing-souls thing. He was enjoying the chase as much as he would enjoy the moment he had the Orb and all four elements and could say fuck you to the Fates and every other god—including his two brothers. Every other god except his beloved wife. The wife who was as devoted to him as he was to her, and who would never stop scheming for a way to take charge as his master.
A wicked smile curled one side of his mouth as his gaze roamed her luscious body from head to toe. He had to love a woman who could match him in wickedness. Clasping his hands against his spine, he took a step down the three marble stairs. “So she’s found the Argonaut Gryphon within Tartarus. What does she plan to do with him?”
Persephone turned as he walked by her toward a window that looked out on his realm. Lava boiled and popped, jagged black mountains rose in the distance. And like a breath of air, the moaning of souls being tortured in the most horrendous ways floated like a song on the breeze. “She’s taken him to Sin City.”
With his enhanced eyesight, he could see a soul far across the valley, in the center of a circle of rabid dogs, about to be devoured whole. Hades’s energy thrived on each soul he obtained, and his powers grew every time a soul was tortured within his realm. In this case, the man had enjoyed great wealth from the underground dog-fighting ring he’d run in the human realm. It didn’t bother Hades in the least to know that reliving those fights, with the human as the victim, again and again and again was a just and fair punishment for the man. In all likelihood, it was probably better than he deserved.
“Sin City, you say?” His gaze scanned this level of the Underworld. A good distance from Tartarus, where Atalanta was now scheming with the fallen Argonaut. He had no doubt she’d make the Argonaut Gryphon her bitch in every sense of the word. He knew all too well how she fucked not only with a male’s body, but his mind. While the sex had been hot enough, the aftermath with his wife, when she’d learned he’d lost the Orb, had been less than stellar. The question was, what did Atalanta plan to do with the Argonaut? She hadn’t been sentenced to the Underworld herself. She’d simply been trapped in the Fields of Asphodel by her son and his witchcraft. But it was clear she planned to use the Argonaut to her advantage. Somehow.
“Yes,” Persephone answered. “She was granted access to Sin City, and word is she’s meeting with Krónos soon.”
Hades had no doubt his father would relish a go at Atalanta. The bitch was hot. But she was also unpredictable. And Hades didn’t put it past her to use her feminine charms on Krónos to get what she wanted. Which was undoubtedly to find a way back to the human realm and to get her hands on that Orb.
Unfortunately, the area Krónos and his Titan goons had set up in Tartarus was the one and only part of the Underworld Hades couldn’t see into. Which meant he didn’t know what they did in their depraved corner of hell. Knowing his good ol’ dad, though, it was as immoral and degenerate as it could get, not that Hades cared. So long as the bastard stayed locked down there, things were fine. It was the wild card Atalanta and what she might promise Krónos that left Hades with a bitter taste in his mouth. “We have someone on the inside?”
“Tantalus is there.”
Tantalus. The human who’d cut up his son Pelops, boiled him into a soup, and served it to the Olympians when he’d been invited to join them for a meal. One corner of Hades’s mouth curled at the image of that banquet. Tantalus had been condemned to Tartarus by Zeus himself, but Hades had granted the soul special privileges other inhabitants didn’t have, simply because he loved the fact Tantalus had had the balls to pull that one over on Zeus and the other egomaniac Olympians.
“Tantalus is perfect. I want to know exactly what she has planned.”
“Yes, my lord,” Persephone said.
Hades turned back to his wife, moved close to her. She didn’t cower from him, and he liked that. Every other female cowered because they knew what to expect. Persephone loved his perversion.
She braced her hands on his forearms as he slid his arms around her waist and dragged her close, as he sank his teeth into her neck and drew the sweetest taste of her blood. Blood and pain and desire swelled in his mouth to heighten his need for her.
“There is one other thing,” Persephone said, tipping her head to grant him more access.
“Mm?” He ran his tongue over the bite mark, healing it with his powers, then taking another bite from her flesh in a more delectable spot.
“This part you might not like.”
He lifted his head, stared down into her emerald eyes. “Tell me.”
She never once looked away, but he saw the quick flash of fear before she masked it with steel resolve. Something else he admired about her. Even when she knew she was going to piss him off, she didn’t back down. She’d meet his fury head-on even when it left her battered and bruised.
“Orpheus has found Maelea.”
The slow, red rage he always felt when the bastard child’s name was mentioned slid through his veins and pummeled his chest. He’d banished her to the human realm, couldn’t kill her because those fucking Fates had meddled where they shouldn’t be meddling. But he wished only for that stain to die. While he didn’t have a problem with his wife screwing around on the side, the reminder that his brother Zeus had succeeded in seducing his wife right here in his realm and had created a child with her was a humiliation not even Hades could forget.