She struggled out of his grip. “I want to talk to him.”
“Talk to a monster such as him?” Minos’s arm tightened, his lips suddenly upon her ear. “A true beast of old?”
An uncomfortable shiver coursed down her spine. “He’s just a man. He saved my life.”
“And now you feel indebted to him?”
Her brow furrowed. “No. I—”
“You’re a young, youthful creature, swimming in waters that are not your own. Look at him closely. See him for what he truly is.”
She tried again to break free from Minos’s hold; her strength was no match against his. His continued humming soothed but also addled her mind. She didn’t like it. At all. But her body gave in to it, betraying her. Her struggles ceased.
Cyane stared fixedly at the warrior below her who did not intervene to help her.
The stairway pulsated, inhaling, as if alive. There was nothing but her and the warrior.
“Won’t you help me?” she asked him without hearing her words in the air between them.Help me.Her thoughts echoed fervently, dreamily, in the back of her mind.
He didn’t respond, didn’t move. He acted as if her request hadn’t been made at all. The only indication that he was even there, more than a statue, was his glittering red eyes with specks of silver that she could now see. They resembled faraway stars.
Except they moved.
The longer she gazed at them, the bigger they became. Air whipped past her ears, but there was no wind. She gasped in a breath. The stars grew and grew until they blotted out all else.
Somewhere, far off now, she heard Minos’s humming.
Then she saw them. His eyes. All of them.
There were more eyes looking back at her, more than she could count, each forming heads that danced and slithered in and out of her vision. So many serpents with forked tongues that licked the air. Dozens of canine jowls with white teeth that had black tips. Tips like the top of the castle.
It wasn’t real, it couldn’t be real!
The warrior that had tugged her from the depths was still there, but he was only a hazy outline.
And as she continued to stare, she realized those horrid head-like shapes came from the man himself, formed from the shadows that clung to him, gathering directly behind him. Hundreds of mouths snapped shut then slowly parted. Stringy saliva strung like spider webs across their open gapes.
“Look away,” they said in the warrior’s voice, a hundred times over. Thousands of razor-sharp teeth warped outward in her direction. Their black tips glistening.
Cyane’s mouth dried up.
Her throat constricted.
He was no man at all!
She screamed until nothing existed but the shrill sounds tearing from her throat.
Hades
Cerberus stalkedthe periphery of the ballroom with the mortal’s screams still ringing in his ears. His canine companions did the same. Their shadowy forms and quiet steps meant they were better at concealing themselves from the crowd than he’d ever been. They were his eyes, his ears, himself. Once attached to him, but no more.
He missed their company sometimes.
They searched the faces of the undying, listened to their conversations, and reported back to him with their findings.
One of the servants offered him a cup of nectar. He shook his head.
With a breach in Tartarus, everyone was suspect until they weren’t. It wasn’t wholly unusual for a god to try mischief, but to bring in a mortal woman just to throw her to Styx’s waters?
