Hades’ lips curled upward in cold amusement. “You would’ve done better not to come at all.”
“But I came, and you’re going to listen to my bargain.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you’re never getting Macaria back, and I’d bet good money dead or alive Persephone will divorce your ass.”
The hellfire surrounding them flared up higher, chasing away the cold. Sweat trickled down the back of Patrick’s neck from the heat.
“You know nothing of what I have done to protect my daughter,” Hades hissed.
“I don’t care,” Patrick shot back. “You let her languish in my sister’s body and soul. You let Hannah essentially die beneath the weight of carrying a godhead she shouldn’t have because you didn’t have the fucking balls to confront Ethan.”
“He tied himself to your sister. Killing him would have killed them both.”
“So instead you let them suffer all these years while Ethan worked to become a god and did nothing to stop him. That’s a negative number on the parenting scale. But you’re in luck—I’m here to save your marriage. You get this—” Patrick held up the iron box. “—and me, and Eloise goes free.”
“And if I keep you both?”
Patrick jerked his thumb in Persephone’s direction. “She won’t let you because I’m in her debt. This exchange is the only way you get the piece of the Morrígan’s staff. This is the only way you getme. Take it or leave it.”
There was still a chance Hades wouldn’t give up Eloise, that he’d stick to whatever plan Ethan had drawn up. But he’d pulled Eloise from wherever she had been and come alone. Ethan’s control of Hades began and ended with Macaria. Patrick was banking on Hades’ desire to see his daughter alive winning out over seeing Patrick dead.
When Hades’ gaze flicked briefly to Persephone, longing in his eyes not even a war could kill, Patrick knew he’d get his way.
And it just might kill him in the end.
“Your presence and the Morrígan’s staff made whole for a woman who you barely know. Some bargain,” Hades said before he flung Eloise forward.
Patrick dived for her, feet slipping in the wet grass, but he managed to get his arms around Eloise’s frail body and keep her upright. She didn’t seem coherent, magic thick around her, and he only hoped whatever lingering spellwork she was tied to would be severed when she went through the veil.
“I’ll take her,” Hermes said, suddenly there and drawing Eloise out of his arms.
“Take her to Jono,” Patrick said. “Tell him—”
A hand came down on his shoulder—heavy and cold, freezing him down to his bones. He flinched with his entire body, remembering the feel of Hades’ magic when the god had burned out the anchor wards on his bones back in August.
“You’d throw away your last chance to win this fight with him, Seph?” Hades asked as he tightened his hold on Patrick.
Persephone looked at her husband with as much hate in her eyes as love, the rawness of both in her voice. “I’m doing it to save us, my love. If you can’t see that, then perhaps we were never meant to be in this world, the same way we would never be in the one you’re helping Ethan build.”
Hades’ fingers bit into Patrick’s shoulder hard enough to bruise. “What would you have me do?”
She closed the distance between them, bringing with her the scent of spring that replaced the acrid stench of hellfire in Patrick’s nose. He held his breath as Persephone set her hands on Hades’ chest and rose up on her tiptoes to brush her lips over his in an anguished kiss that made the god shake so hard even Patrick could feel it.
“Let Patrick pay his soul debt,” Persephone murmured before pulling away. “Prove your love and do this one thing for me.”
Persephone turned her back on them, following Hermes and Eloise through the veil, leaving Patrick behind. And even though that had been the plan, Patrick couldn’t help the fear that curled up and made a home in the center of his chest.
A suicidal idea indeed.
Hades pried the iron box out of Patrick’s hand and thumbed it open. The carved raven nestled inside seemed to glimmer beneath the lightning that flashed above them.
“You made a mistake coming here, no matter what my wife believes,” Hades said after a moment.
Patrick thought of Jono and his pack, of everyone he’d left behind in New York to face the horror clawing its way through the veil. “I’d sell my soul over and over again for the people I care about, but you wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“I did everything for my daughter.”
