A touch of grief mirroring her own. Mirroring mine as well.
Could she really be… No. No, she couldn't be her. She fucking couldn't be.
"I'm—"
"Hades!" Medusa's voice made me turn around, seeing her frantic eyes and her heaving chest. "Step away from her!" But I couldn't. Didn't she know I couldn't? "Do not fucking touch her!"she screamed, running toward us, and before I could step away from her, the silver-eyed Goddess stepped away from me, taking away the warmth, the energy, I craved.
Her rain-soaked clothes clung to her like a second skin, yet I didn't miss the tears colliding with the raindrops on her face. I didn't miss the quiver of her bottom lip or the way she shuddered the closer Medusa came, and against every instinct, against every rational thought, I stepped in front of her, blocking Medusa's path.
My mind knew Medusa wasn't the enemy. She was a friend, one of the rare ones who still cared about me and my miserable life, but right now she was causing her distress. Right now she was the reason for those tears, and something in me snapped.
The dark, dangerous fury I kept inside the carefully crafted box, terrified if I let it slip that nothing would be left intact. Nothing at all.
"Elandra, stop!" A new voice joined us, and as I looked over Medusa, I could see Alyana running after her. "You need to stop."
"If she touches him?—"
"Elandra!"
My hands rose, the shadows dancing over the tips of my fingertips, mixing with the cracks of green shot through them. The voices intensified, screaming around us, cackling, crying, calling for a viciousness I knew they would have.
"He's calling the Keres!" Alyana screamed before she tackled Elandra down, covering her with her own body. "He's going to kill you."
"He could die!"
The movement behind me made me turn around, only to see the silver-eyed woman staring at me with awe. Not fear, not the need to run, but awe. The first time Persephone saw what I could do, she couldn't look at me for five days, but this one… She didn'ttremble in fear. She didn't step back even after hearing them, and as the dark figures appeared around us, she didn't try to escape them.
Her lips lifted into a tiny smile, her eyes shining with something other than tears and as her mood changed, the rain stopped and the clouds swirling around us cleared, showering us in sunrays, passing through the Keres.
"You're the God of the Dead," she said, her voice barely above whisper, looking at the creatures summoned around us. Creatures of a nightmare, with their disfigured faces and the rotting corpses barely holding them up. The violent spirits that still came no matter how many times I called. The spirits who would never know rest. Never know the fields of Elysium. "You're Hades," she murmured, her eyes connecting with mine.
Her hand lifted, hanging in the air between us. "I am?—"
"Don't touch him, Kaira!" Alyana bellowed, her voice tearing through the bubble we'd been a part of. The eyebrows of the enigmatic woman scrunched, her arm dropping, and my mind tried remembering where I'd heard that name before. "You could kill him!"
"Kaira," I murmured, tasting her name on my lips, rolling it on my tongue. "Kaira." Her eyes lifted to mine, the fear that was not there before evident in them now. And like a flash of lightning the memory slammed into my mind, remembering the promise I made. Remembering the man who had the eyes of the same color. The eyes that begged me to help them almost thirty years ago. "Kaira," I said again, taking a step back from her, finally realizing what Medusa and Alyana were trying to tell me.
"Yes," she said. "That's my name. Kaira Vale."
So, it was true then. The prophecy was true.
The daughter of Thanatos and Daniela Vale was here, in front of me, back on an island that cursed her long before she was born.
The heiress of Death.
The end of all things.
The darkness no one could stop.
Then why does she feel like my Persephone?
15
KAIRA
The tipsof my fingers tingled as we sat around the table that was potentially older than some countries around the world, waiting for the tea Elandra had promised to make. The tea she seemed to think would fix the tumultuous afternoon we'd just had.
My aunt sat on my right, stopping me from being able to get out of here even if I wanted to. Buthe—Hayden, Hades, the green-eyed nightmare I kept seeing every single night, sat opposite of me on one of the chairs, his eyes never leaving me. Even when I ignored him, or at least tried to, he kept staring, dragging the darkness he carried over my skin, caressing me without touch, while those shadows I saw around him only intensified, reminding me of all those times I could barely see him in my dreams.
