“You are mine!” C’adon yelled with enough force that the building shook and stone cracked. Small bits of sand and rock rained down on my head.
I spotted a larger opening ahead, and a cooler breeze hit me in the face when I turned the corner. I stopped short on a stone balcony. A bleak landscape of broken black rock and a frozen lake that glowed blue from beneath its surface lay in the distance. The lake’s glow was a faint light in an otherwise dark landscape.
There was nothing. No hope for escape. No sign of a fury come to rescue me. No magic portal to take me out of this place.
No way out, except…
I crept closer to the unguarded edge and peered down. The ground waited several hundred feet below. It was a drop I wouldn’t survive. I briefly thought of my uncle and wondered if he’d felt as trapped as I felt at that moment. Was that why he’d taken his life?
“Do not—”
I spun around to face C’adon, and my foot slipped on the rock, causing it to slide over the edge. I tilted. My eyes went wide and my gaze locked with C’adon’s. His face lost all color as he lunged for me. I reached for him as I went over the edge.
My mouth opened in a silent scream as I watched the distance between me and the balcony expand. A piercing cry echoed in the air around me. It wasn’t from my lips, though.
Something leapt over the edge above. It wasn’t C’adon. This creature was bigger and more monstrous with curved horns extending from its head of dark hair and its eyes glowing red. It tucked its enormous wings against its back as it dove for me, taloned fingers outstretched.
Terror of falling to my death had me reaching for it in return. Arms wrapped around me, and I grabbed onto the creature’s torso a moment before it snapped its wings open. I silently screamed again at the sudden jerk and tightened my hold.
The creature’s wings whooshed through the air, slowing our descent until we started to climb again. Breathing hard, I clung to it until its hooved feet clacked against the stone.
“You dare defy me?” he said as he pushed me away.
I stumbled back a step and held onto the wall behind me as I stared at the towering monstrosity.
In the torchlight, I could see him clearly. C’adon’s familiar, strong jawline was there, beneath more angularly chiseled cheekbones. His skin had taken on more of a golden glow. Unnaturally so. And power unlike anything I’d ever felt emanated from him.
He snapped his black leathery wings closed and glared at me.
The horns, hooves, talons, and wings receded as if pulled into the man that had created them. But I couldn’t unsee them. I couldn’t stop the image of them from connecting to a memory from years ago. My uncle had managed to obtain a book about the gods who’d created the monsters that tormented us. The gods had been beautiful. Like their children, they could appear very human. And like their children, they had many forms.
In most of those forms, they’d glowed golden with their divine power.
There was a reason I hadn’t been able to figure out what kind of creature C’adon was. He wasn’t one. He was a god.
My throat closed, and I wheezed for my next breath through my panic. How had I not put the pieces together? The way the other creatures feared him. The way he could grab souls like Megan when they went right through me. He had the power to make the building shake with his anger.
C’adon wasn’t just any god.
C’adon was Hades.
“You are mine,” he seethed at me. “Mine. You will not take yourself from me. Ever. Do you understand?”
I gulped and turned away from him to hug the wall while I silently lost my mind.
Hades thought I was his. All his talk about sunlight and wanting my willingness? And him mentioning about seeing my mom again? The pieces clicked into place, and tears started falling.
“No, no, no. She weeps. She weeps! I cannot give her what she wants. Not again.” His hand closed over my shoulder, and he pulled me against his chest, wrapping his arms around me.
“Goddess, forgive me,” he said softly, his hand settling on the back of my head.
Any comfort I’d found with him before was gone. Hades held me. The king of Hell. And he thought I was Persephone, the dead woman on the bed with hair that looked similar to mine.
What would happen when Hades figured out I wasn’t her? What would happen when he found out his apparent obsession was dead?
I was going to die.
I trembled harder.
