Cerberus released her with a hiss. He sheathed his sword, and the darkness that seemed to be part of him flared, swallowing Cerberus and Cyane in pitch blackness before vanishing in the low light that came from Styx.
She started, and her hands came up to rub her throat. Her eyes flickered over her new surroundings, half expecting to be back in the ballroom where everyone could laugh at her while she was executed. It wasn’t the ballroom though.
We’re back in the gatehouse.
The endless hallway and its thousands of candles were gone. She dropped her hands to her chest and peered, disoriented, out over the dark waters around Hades’s castle. She saw thousands of naked bodies swimming towards the castle right below the surface.
Cyane jerked away from the edge, holding back a scream.
Cerberus crowded her. “You dare ask me why? When you have shown up here unexpectedly, fought against the laws of nature, and contribute to a plot of one of the most powerful gods?” He leaned in close, stealing her air. “The last time Hades brought someone here against their will—”
“Persephone?” she whispered.
“—the world as we know it changed. First, the rape,” Cerberus continued, his voice lowering. “Then came Demeter’s agony and winter was born, a genocide of all life on Gaia, and finally, the prospect of war between Olympus and Tartarus. Do you know what happens when gods war, little mortal?”
She could only imagine.
He leaned in even closer, and what Cyane could glimpse of his face filled her vision.
“The realms unravel,” he whispered dark and low. “Do you feel it?”
At first, she didn’t know what he meant, how could she separate one feeling from all the forces that entrapped her. He was so close, so intimidating, and unlike any man she’d encountered.
The ground trembled.
“What is that?” she breathed. Her feet parted for balance.
“Typhon, the God of Destruction, my father.”
The trembles stopped.
“And he is not alone,” Cerberus said.
Only something enormous could make the world shake like that. Not just a world, but the afterlife. What kind of primordial beast was below her feet? If it could make hell shake, would what it do to Earth?
The gravity of it frightened her.
At least she understood why he’d been watching her. She’d done nothing wrong and had been forced to this place against her will—but to him, she could be a catalyst, a bad omen.
Nah. She was none of that.I’m going to get out of here, forget any of this ever happened, and find my parents. Happy thoughts, happy family. Happy trails to this nightmare.Cyane held in an insane giggle. Those were just dreams. Not long ago, she’d been forced to dance, had envied the sight of Melinoe with Cerberus, and had cared about her appearance. All of it was done without actually considering what the effect of her presence had on everything around her.
She had nowhere else to look but at Cerberus and ingest what he was telling her.
“I never asked for any of this,” she whispered once her shivers stopped. She wanted him to believe it, needed him to believe it.I’m innocent.
“Would you swear on it?”
For the first time since getting on the sailboat, a flicker of hope returned.
“I don’t want to start a war,” she said. “Yes.”
His eyes narrowed, and she caught sight of the edge of his eyebrow.
So human.For having seen only Cerberus’s eyes and his armored physique, it was beginning to alarm her that she didn’t know what he truly looked like. She was beginning to suspect he was handsome, but what if he wasn’t? What if he were ancient and diseased? A skeleton?
An illusion?
“A war will not happen. Not if I can help it,” Cerberus said.
