I had.
“I see your flaws,” Morrigan continued, tears finally breaking free. “Every brutal, selfish, obsessive one. I see how you destroy everything you touch when you’re in pain. How you push everyone away except her. I see all of it.” Her voice fell to awounded whisper. “And I still stayed. Because I believed that one day you’d see me. That your obsession with her would fade, and you’d finally look at what was standing right in front of you—instead of chasing a ghost.”
Her voice hardened. “Your curse didn’t just consume you. It ate at us as well. The perished ones were lucky. The rest of us? We’ve spent eternity picking up thousands of pieces. Time has worn us down to nothing, Hades. There was no light at the end of the tunnel. Until now.”
Dante looked ill. Orren looked like he wanted to bite Morrigan.
I’d known Morrigan longer than I’d loved Persephone. The siren queen had been in my life before my queen had even been born. And in all that time, while every thought belonged to my mate, I’d never once considered what Morrigan felt.
Maybe that did make me a heartless monster.
But it changed nothing. I had nothing to give to anyone else, except my true queen.
“There’s only ever been one woman for me,” I said, my voice stone. “There always was. There always will be. And that is Persephone. My wife. My queen. My everything.”
“She’s not your queen anymore,” Morrigan whispered. “She’s dead. It’s over. It’s finally over, and you can be free to?—”
My shadows lashed out before she could finish, cutting the air between us.
“I’d have let you live if you’d only betrayed me,” I said. Shadows coiled around my hands, shaping into blades. Into death itself. “I’d have banished you. Because once, long ago, you were my friend.”
A flicker of hope passed over Morrigan’s face.
“But you betrayed my queen,” I continued, my voice promising violence. “For that, there is no forgiveness. No mercy.”
“Betrayal is bitter,” Morrigan said. “So is unrequited love. So is watching the man you love destroy himself for someone who only brings him pain.”
“You don’t fucking know her!” I lunged.
But Morrigan teleported. Siren magic. She’d hidden it from me all along, waiting for the moment she’d need to run.
Dante and Orren exploded into motion. Dante dove for the door. Orren shifted mid-leap, bones cracking.
Where a man had been, Cerberus now stood. Three massive heads, eyes like burning coals, fangs like daggers. Fire dripped from his jaws, scorching the marble.
The true guardian of the Underworld, loyal unto death, was ready to hunt.
“Let her go,” I ordered.
They turned to stare at me.
“Morr—Morrigan—betrayed us all,” Dante said, his voice raw with pain. He and the siren had been the closest. Centuries side by side. “She played us this entire time. We can’t just let her?—”
“We don’t have time,” I cut him off. “Every second we waste on her is a second we’re not looking for Bloom.”
Orren shifted back into human form—a shape he always found confining, too weak, too limited. He wore it for Persephone.
“My mate is not gone. I would have felt her death.” I flexed my fingers. Death and shadow answered, coiling up my arms like serpents returning home. “It would have shattered something fundamental inside me. A part of me would have died with her.”
I looked down at my hands, at the power gathering there.
“I’m still whole,” I said. “Barely. But whole. Which means she’s still alive.”
“Then where is she?” Orren demanded.
“The Fates have her,” I stated flatly.
The room plunged into silence and rage.
