“You’re a curse.”
“The longer you stay beside me, the worse it will become, sweet Cerberus. Tell me, tell me, and I’m gone. Tell me now, and Cyane’s deal is broken. The longer I’m near her, the worse it will get. The more she encounters me, the more her thoughts will melt. She’s not a god, she’s mortal, and she’s susceptible to me. I’ve already stroked her mind on several occasions. She won’t be able to recover what sanity she’s lost. Mortals are weak, and I can’t stop it. Tell me, and I will never go near her again.”
Fury unlike never before filled him, fury laced with mania. He jerked Melinoe up then threw her to the ground. She scurried back with a laugh. “I’m hungry too, sweet Cerberus. Grab my neck again and take me like you took her!”
“You’ll never go near her again?” he snarled, kneeling over the goddess. He didn’t eat living beings, detested blood, but he’d make an exception.
“Never. I promise. I swear an oath on Styx. I will never go near Cyane again.”
His mouth burned. “You’re not Hades’s daughter. You’re the product of rape. Zeus, Persephone’s own father, raped her after giving her to Hades. He stole Hades’s heir. Your mother can’t look at you without pain, and Hades knows you are the curse of Persephone’s pain. You, Melinoe, exist as punishment, and not even Olympus wants the darkness that follows you.”
The goddess was never supposed to know, and now she did.
He’d betrayed Hades again.
Cerberus was beginning to realize he’d do anything for Cyane.Lovingly.The word was too close to love. His kind didn’t love…did they? He was the last one left of his breed.
The goddess’s eyes widened. She sank back into the dark grass, and her eyes closed with a shuddering breath. Cerberus rose up, but not before he dipped his hand into the pond to get the feel of Melinoe off of him.
“Thank you,” she said at last without her usual despair. “Thank you, sweet Cerberus.”
A genuine smile teased Melinoe’s lips. The first he’d ever seen her have.
She drew in the darkness and vanished, keeping her end of the bargain.
He searched the area, but no longer sensed her. Melinoe was gone. None of his hounds had her scent anymore. Pressure lifted from his chest.
His head cleared some, but not enough. It would never be enough. Not anymore, not after everything that had happened.
He stepped back into the forest and watched Cyane and Hades from the shadows. She sat in Persephone’s spot, perhaps a little further back, and a little to the right. She was in his Queen’s seat, where no one had ever sat besides Leuce, a nymph that his lord had also stolen from above. Persephone turned Leuce into a white poplar tree upon her discovery of their affair.
Just because one thorn in his side was gone, didn’t mean his promise to protect Cyane became any easier.
‘Cyane is not yours, she is mine.’
‘I belong to you.’Cyane’s voice eclipsed Hades’s.
Hades’s love for nymphs wasn’t a secret, but it had been rarely entertained, incredibly so. Cerberus studied as his lord’s gaze lingered on the writhing maenads across the glade.
Cyane is a mortal, not a nymph.Hades had neither touched nor wooed her, where the women of his past—if they didn’t come willingly—were taken against their will.
If Persephone saw Cyane sitting there, would she know that?
The Day of Deviance was nearly over. He tore his eyes off of Cyane and drew the darkness to him, hating himself for leaving her in such a place alone. Dozens of his hounds moved to stand guard around the dais. If something should happen, he would know. He would return.
Cerberus stood in the gatehouse room once more, alone for the first time since Cyane’s arrival in his haven. Loneliness from those previous days returned quickly. He glanced at the bed for a split-second, picturing her there. She faded away. He was turning towards the terrace when something caught his eye.
A white scrap of cloth?
No, a piece of paper.
It didn’t belong. He knew everything that was in this room. Not one thing in this space had been placed there by anyone but himself...or Cyane.
Cerberus reached out and touched it. The note smelled of Cyane, even more so than the bed. It smelled like power and history, endless travel and tears.
There was nothing like it here in Tartarus. It was a thing from above. The only items Cyane had with her were her clothes, and those had been promptly destroyed.
He picked the paper up and flipped it over.
