His dark realm held no sunlight, no blue sky. But I had stopped craving the sun when all I wanted was him, when I learned the darkness was not an absence but his presence.
I missed the blood moon hanging in the endless twilight above our gothic palace. The blue-golden ocean crashing against the purple sand shores, its waves singing songs of the dead. The desert glowing like embers at midnight, beautiful and terrible at once. A stunning, stark landscape no other realm could match—not even the city of the gods with all its golden, hollow perfection.
A sudden, deep ache to go home seized me. I inched closer to Nero in the firelight, watching him, unable to look away.
He slept now, his breathing deep and even despite the pain he must still feel. Bandages wrapped his back, already spotted with seeping blood.
He was beautiful in a harsh, powerful way, all sharp angles and hard muscle, with broad shoulders made to carry kingdoms.His hands, strong enough to kill or create with equal skill. Even in sleep, his face was devastatingly handsome, a strong jaw shadowed with stubble, high cheekbones, lips that could be cruel or tender.
He was as gorgeous as when I had first seen him in that garden an eon ago. But the hint of boyish light beneath the brooding exterior was gone. Time and loss had stripped it away, leaving only scars and hardness and ice. Every soft edge had been sharpened by millennia of grief.
He hid his profound brokenness under layers of rage and shadow, but I could see it. I had always seen it, even when I was too young to understand.
I was coming back to him. Aware of it now, in this lifetime. Aware of who I was and who we had been.
What kind of man had he become in all these ages? They called him brutal. A savage monster wearing a dark angel’s face. But they did not know him as I did. They had never seen him tender, full of passion.
Did I still know him as I believed I did? For millennia, we had never truly been together—only stolen moments before death claimed me and reset everything.
I swallowed hard, letting the memories settle?—
The Underworld, the place I had finally called home after ages of fighting him, denying him, burning his palace and breaking his heart.
He’d wronged me, and I’d wronged him in return. And now here we were.
I brushed his damp hair back from his forehead. His eyelashes fluttered but did not open.
What did the God of Death dream about?
“I’m not a good man. Never was,” he murmured suddenly, still asleep. His voice was rough, full of pain. “But I can’t let yougo. Even though I doomed you. Even though you died because of me. You’re all I want, my light, my love, my forever...”
My heart cracked open.
I was his queen.
I was Persephone.
The absolute truth settled into my bones, in my soul.
My mate did not know I finally remembered, and he couldn’t know.
I would keep him in the dark about my awakening. Keep all of them—Stardust, Sebastian, the gods, and whoever else watched and waited—in the dark while I gathered my strength, my awakening power.
While I planned my endgame.
Chapter
Ten
Bloom
Deception as Second Skin
Aweek slipped by in a haze.
Nights belonged to Nero. Sometimes I lay awake, tracing the lines of his sleeping contours in the faint glow. Other times, I was the one being studied, pinned beneath his wakeful gaze. He was waiting, always waiting, for me to remember. To piece together a past I was carefully pretending to forget.
The lie was a slow poison in my veins.
