I should've known better.
"I'm sorry, Hades," she murmured, her bright eyes swallowing the darkness coiling in my gut every time I remembered that night. "I cannot imagine how hard it must have been living all these years without the second half of you." She had no idea she'd been feeling it too.
She had no idea that each lifetime, each reincarnation left her soul marred with the black tar connecting to mine. Becausethe soulmate bond, even incomplete, could not be erased. Even death couldn't keep us apart, but it could keep destroying us.
Lifetime after lifetime, sucking out the life from both of us.
"When a soulmate dies, Kaira," I murmured, needing to tell her at least a part of the truth. "The second one does as well."
She breathed in quickly, the lines around her eyes deepening, as did her confusion. "But?—"
"I didn't die," I added. "I didn't die physically, but my soul, my heart… They are not what they used to be. And I wouldn't wish this decay to anyone. Not even to my greatest enemy." My eyes closed, remembering that sunset, when the skies above these cliffs still allowed for the sun to break through and life didn't seem so harsh.
I remembered the pain, the destruction, even before it happened, and the whispers of the damned urging me to find her. To save her. And I was too late.
Her hand pressed against my cheek out of nowhere, slowly slipping down toward the mark. And before I could stop her, before I could even open my eyes, she pressed against the rune on my neck, connecting her soul once more to mine. And as my eyes flew open, as I looked down at her, I knew it was the biggest mistake right now.
Because Kaira was no longer here with me. Her eyes turned white, her lips parted, and those dark vines I'd been fighting for so long spread from my neck through her hand, reaching her neck, until they spanned over her face, contrasting against her porcelain skin.
"No, no, no," I cursed, trying to separate her. Trying to stop this from happening.
She wasn't ready. She couldn't be ready.
I saw what happened when that other vision slammed into her. I saw how she reacted, how confused she was, and now… Now she would see the truth. Now she would see who shetruly was because there was no way of closing the doors in my mind. I could already feel her slipping through, calling forth my memories, merging them with the memories her soul remembered.
Her shadows, her power, coiled around my arm, removing it from hers where I'd tried to separate us, and when a cacophony of voices exploded in my mind, I knew this time she wasn't the only one seeing the past.
I was too.
24
KAIRA
Pain.
One singular word with so many meanings, yet as it spread from the center of my body, through the rest of my limbs, I couldn't remember who I was above the devastation it was leaving in its wake. Because I knew this was the end.
Zeus stood not far from me, his head tilted and that golden hair I once thought was perfect dancing with the wind. The eyes I always assumed were kind now showed the viper hiding beneath the skin of a lamb, revealing who he truly was.
A manipulator.
A liar.
A dictator, ready to destroy everyone who stood in his path.
He was a God hungry for power. Hungry for more than he needed to have, disregarding the balance that needed to exist, because he simply thought he deserved to have more than anyone else. Just because he was the firstborn. Just because he lived in the skies, hiding behind the clouds while the rest of his family worked to make the world a slightly less terrible place. And I was a foolish little girl, thinking I could come here and talk to him like an adult, explaining that Hades and I would never try to take over.
That we didn't want his power. We didn't want Olympus.
We were happy with our dark little corner, far away from the rest of them and their fucked-up games.
My Gods—Hades. I lied to him.
I lied to the man I loved, telling him I was going for a walk, sneaking out of the Underworld to come to this island between the realms, hoping I could stop the inevitable war brewing on the horizon.
"It's such a shame, really," Zeus said, his hands clasped behind his back. "I always knew you were a foolish little girl, but I hoped you would see the reason. I hoped you'd be able to push past that ridiculous bond you have with my brother and join my ranks."
"Never!" I thundered, ignoring the poison slowly spreading through my bloodstream from where he stabbed me. "I would've never joined you, you filthy, sniveling?—"
