Page 39 of Curse the Flame

Aiden doesn’t deny it. Instead, he pulls his seat out and lowers himself into it, watching me closely.

The silence is answer enough, but I still need to hear him say it. “You are, aren’t you?”

His gaze stays on mine. He waits until I get the hint and do what he asked before—I grab the chair to his left and quickly plop down into it—and then says softly,“Yes.”

Welp. There you have it.

A strange laugh escapes me before I can stop it. “Okay. Great. That’s—” I wave one hand uselessly toward him. “That is definitely something you should have mentioned before inviting me to dinner.”

Just because I knew… just because Persephone told me… that doesn’t mean I’m about to let my host off the hook that easily.

Aiden—Hades—no, Aiden seems to understand. He leans into his seat, visibly uncomfortable. “I wasn’t sure how.”

Oh?

“I don’t know… you could have started with something like: ‘Hi there, Willow. Welcome to the Underworld. By the way, I’m Hades.’”

He purses his lips for a moment, and, crap, he has no right looking even sexier when he exhales softly like that and admits, “I considered it. But then I thought, if I recognized you as Persephone, you have to know who I am.”

He’s not wrong…

“I’m Willow,” I remind him. “And, I’m sorry, but I… let me just put it out there. I don’t know what you expect from me. I’m not really Persephone.” I can’t be. “And I can’t stay here.” I gesture vaguely around me with one nervous hand, to the dining room around me, to the bedroom somewhere over my head. “I mean, it was nice of you to save me from that Roman guy, but I’ve got to go home. So, please, don’t worry about feeding me. I can’t eat anything from the Underworld, and I think you know why.”

I expect him to refuse. I expect him to say that I must; that he doesn’t is another plus in some imaginary column I’m absently keeping in the back of my head, let me tell you that. Instead, all he does is nod, though I do notice his jaw tightens a little.

“Don’t be sorry,” he rumbles. “I might have waited as long as I have for you, but it’s the magic that brought you to me. Believe me, Blossom. I will never try to keep you with me against your will.”

I feel a lot better about that, especially when I sense instinctively that—whoever he is—he’s not the lying type.

Still. That doesn’t mean I’m going to just let what he said pass me by like that with jumping at the opportunity to figure out what the heck is going on here—even if I let slip the whole “Blossom” thing for a moment.

“You said the magic brought me to you,” I say. “What do you mean?”

His eyes lower briefly to the covered dish before returning to my face. “Persephone always comes back to Hades. Here… the magic ensures it.”

The certainty in his voice sends a chill over my skin. “Always?”

Aiden straightens up from his lean, as though he can hear the nerves in my voice—hear them and respond to them.

“Not in the way you’re thinking of. You aren’t some copy of her, and you aren’t trapped inside someone else’s life, Persephone or any of her other reincarnates. The Other chooses souls capable of carrying the old stories and helping them be retold. Sometimes those souls resemble the first. Most times they don’t.” His fingers curl against the arm of his chair, the only sign that this conversation is costing him anything despite how conversational he keeps his tone. “But the bond remains. Hades and Persephone. The Underworld and its queen.”

Soulmates, whispers Persephone.

I swallow. “Soulmates. Are you… is this, like, a soulmates thing? Is that what you’re telling me?”

Please say no⁠—

“Yes.”

Darn it.

I suck in a nervous breath, and because I’m Willow Ackerly (and definitely not Persephone), I freaking choke.

Not delicately, either. One second I’m trying to breathe, and the next I’m coughing hard enough to make my eyes water. Aiden is out of his chair before I can wave him off, one hand hovering near my back while the other reaches for a silver pitcher I didn’t notice before and that I’m pretty sure wasn’t there.

“Here.”

He pours something into a goblet that also suddenly appears before offering it to me.