Not just a dog, but a hellish hound. Cerberus’s hounds. They warmed her sides. His one-hundred heads that were no longer apart of his body. Cyane burrowed into the bedding, into the hounds. She wanted them to consume her, hold her, comfort her like the countless times she’d burrowed into a bed in the world above.
But the taste of wine was still in her mouth, and try as she might, she couldn’t forget all that Hades had told her.
Rest and be ready,he’d said, when he’d really meant,Come to terms with your situation or cease to exist.Oh and,Do it outside my presence. She curled up on her side and squeezed her eyes even harder shut.
“Cyane,” Cerberus said her name somewhere beside her. She didn’t want to face him, didn’t want to see his face so soon. She wished she’d engorged on wine all day so she could truly be unconscious right now. Not temporarily put here by an evil god.
I don’t have parents.
Her fingers gripped the blanket beneath her.
I don’t have control.
Her heart thundered.
I’m nothing but a means to an end...
A sad, agonized wail escaped her.
A hand rested softly over her head, then lifted enough to pet her with chilling fingers. She shrunk away from them and cried, heaving into the pillow.
“Please go away,” she begged between aching breaths. “I don’t want to see you.”
“We need to talk,” Cerberus said without remorse, making everything worse. “But I will don my helmet if hiding my face eases your pain.”
His hand left her head, and she heard him move beside her. Everything made her sick—even him. She needed him to just go away, even though at the same time she wanted to crawl into his lap and submit and beg and pray. Not just pray, she realized, but pray to him. Pray for darkness, and offer herself up as a sacrifice, to show her fealty.
Hate, sickness, and love. Was this what loving a god was like?
“This note. I know—”
“Did you know?” she snapped. If Cerberus was going to force her to talk, he was going to deal with her anger. Cyane lifted her head to glare at him, thankful and annoyed she was looking at his helmet instead of his face. “What did you know? Did you know Hades is the reason I exist?”
“No,” he said.
“Did you know I was reincarnated, that I was someone,somethingelse in another life that crossed your god?”
Cerberus started, and she could see the shock in his eyes. It made her feel a little better.
“No,” he said once more.
“Did you know my very existence isn’t my own?” She wanted to scream, but most of all, she wanted to forget. “That every choice I ever made was because of some unseeable god pulling strings from afar? That nothing I’ve ever done or felt means anything?”
Cerberus lowered and knelt beside the bed. “No,” he whispered. The word was soft and low and hollow behind the shield of metal over his mouth. “I knew none of this.”
God, how she wanted to believe him.
“I’m nothing, nothing.Nothing.” Cyane pressed her palms to her eyes and heaved, feeling the air refuse to fill her lungs.Nothing.
Cerberus took her hands and drew them from her face. He sat on the bed and pulled her to his chest, and she cried again, unable to stop. The gentleness of his gesture made it worse, but she pressed herself into him, needing everything he would give her. Needing him.
“You’re not nothing,” he said, his arms banding around her. “You are everything.”
Cyane tried to steel herself and force the pain away. It was easier, horribly easier than facing the truth. Believing her parents hadn’t wanted her, hadn’t kept her, hadn’t given her anything but a damnable note was better than this. She’d thought nothing would be as sickening as being unwanted, forgotten. She’d been wrong. And now she hated Hades so much, hated him to the very core of...what? Whatever she could claim as herself, because fuck, she didn’t even know if her soul was hers anymore.
“What did you know?” She gripped Cerberus’s armor tight, holding onto him like a lifeline. “Tell me.”
His fingers brushed through her hair. “That you were brought here to serve.”
