"Don't be afraid, Kore," he said, his melodic voice wrapping itself around my soul, finding its home right there in the middle. "I'm not here to harm you."
"I know," I said without thinking, standing up from the flowers and sizing him up just like he was doing to me. The long, dark hair fell almost to his shoulders, framing his face in a way that should've made him look feminine, but if anything it only sharpened his features, creating the contrast with his bright eyes. "I'm Persephone," I introduced myself first, wanting him to know my name. Needing him to hear it from me. "I don't think I have ever met you before."
"You haven't," he confirmed, coming closer and closer, until he stood right in front of me, peering down into my eyes. "I'm Hades," he mumbled, looking at me as if he expected some sort of a reaction. "Are you afraid now?"
"No," I said. "Not even a bit."
Voices.
All I could hear were muffled voices as the scene in front of my eyes disappeared, leaving me with the view of emerald green eyes flashing with concern. My fingers twitched, still wrapped around his throat, but the anger I felt was gone. The fury brimming in my body mere seconds ago had died down, leaving me with a hollow space where something else was supposed to be.
Where the vision came from, and no matter how much I tried to grasp it, to remember it fully, I fucking couldn't. As if my mind was slowly erasing it from my memory, leaving me only with the ache spreading from my heart, through my limbs, and all the way to my eyes where fresh tears I couldn't stop had started gathering. The wetness touched my cheek at the same moment as his finger, chasing a stray tear while his eyes never left mine.
I was vaguely aware of my body pressed against his. Of every muscle, every twitch, every little movement. The scent of fresh rain and the forest registered somewhere in the back of my mind, replacing the stench of decay from mere moments ago.
I was standing far too close to the man I didn't really know, but I couldn't move. My body refused to cooperate and any thought of moving or escaping the fog clouding my mind was met with more resistance somewhere from within me, and I stopped trying.
His lips were moving, those emerald eyes frantically running over my face, but I couldn't hear a thing. The buzzing in my ears only kept increasing with every passing second, feeding the headache starting at the back of my neck, slowly spreading through my head, and all the way to my face. My eyes felt impossibly heavy, ready to shut down, to stop seeing, but I couldn't stop myself from looking at him. I couldn't stop myself from trying to grasp the vision I had and the fact that with each passing second, this stranger I was pressed against felt anything but strange.
His nostrils flared as his hand wrapped around my wrist, slowly lowering my hand away from his neck. The fingers of his other hand dug into my shoulder, slowly shaking me, saying something, but nothing registered. Not a single word.
The chest I was pressed against shook from the force of his shuddering breath and before I could even realize what was happening, I was airborne, snug in his arms, and then we weremoving. Turning my face toward his neck, I pressed my nose to his pulse point, inhaling that intoxicating scent, letting the calmness wash over me for the first time since I came to this island.
Funny, wasn't it? I was here less than a day and within the span of just a couple of hours my entire life got tilted on its axis. I thought the knowledge that my dad wasn't really my biological dad would be the one big secret I needed to understand, but I guess I was wrong.
Hades's arms tightened around me as I wrapped my arms around his neck, hiding my face from the rest of the world. I had no doubt my aunt and Elandra kept following him, but I couldn't care less where we went right now. I was tired. So, so tired, and I didn't want to deal with any of this anymore.
I didn't want to know anymore. I thought I did, but as he moved through Elandra's house, opening various doors in front of us, I realized he was right when he said I was just running when things got too difficult. I hated him for saying it out loud, not because he was taunting me, but because it was the truth.
It was a bitter truth I wasn't ready to face, so for now, I would hide. I would hide in the arms of a man that felt like home, no matter how fucking crazy that sounded. I would hide because I wasn't ready to face my reality.
And I wanted to run. I wanted to leave this place and never look back, but the mere thought of never seeing Hades again made my stomach turn. So I tightened my arms around him and closed my eyes, pretending that maybe, just maybe, this could all be a dream.
16
KAIRA
My eyes adjustedto the light spilling through the windows into the room, trying to shake the cobwebs of sleep from my mind. The blanket rode all the way up to my nose, covering almost half of my face, but I didn't try to move it.
I couldn't.
A thousand pounds of sorrow laid heavy on my chest, pressing me into the mattress underneath, and all I wanted was to disappear. To let it crush me into oblivion, if only that would allow me to forget everything that had happened.
The stinging in my nose made me press my lips tighter, refusing to spill the tears that were now attacking the backs of my eyes. Crying wouldn't solve anything, but I needed just a few minutes of ignorance where I could pretend none of this was real.
But pretending was not in the cards this morning, it would seem, and as the sound of someone clearing their throat came from the opposite side of the room, I had no choice but to look there and fight against the heaviness sitting on top of me.
Elandra stood at the entrance to the room I was occupying, her arms crossed over her chest and a blank expression on herface. With her lips set in a thin line, I didn't think she was here to check in on me or cuddle me, but I was too raw to deal with her.
I was too raw to deal with any of them.
The echoes of last night reverberated in the back of my mind, reminding me of both my actions and reactions. I couldn't shake Hades's scent from my mind, but more than that, I couldn't shake off the memory of me attacking him.
I attacked him. I fucking attacked a Greek God, somehow thinking that would be a good idea, and I still couldn't understand why I was alive.
Then all those things they said, about me being dangerous, about me being born to become a killer… None of them made sense, yet, somewhere deep inside me, I knew he was telling the truth. I knew he wasn't trying to hurt me.
And I wasn't listening.
