Page 73 of Curse the Flame

The air changes. The man I love remains beside me, but something ancient unfolds through him, filling the cavern until the stone itself seems to bow beneath the weight of its king.

When Hades speaks, the sound rattles through my bones.

“Ages ago, my brother banished you to Tartarus. However you escaped, know that you will never do so as long as I remain Lord of the Underworld.”

The Kronos without a hole in his chest would’ve scoffed and mocked Hades for such a pronouncement. I know he would. But the Kronos with a hole in his chest… this one finds the ability to smile again.

And that’s when, thanks to Hades’s power and control over his realm, the pits of Tartarus open behind him.

The entrance to Tartarus is on the far end of the Underworld, at the mouth of the Phlegethon. But Tartarus itself? It’s so vast, the immortal prison extends deep under the palace of Hades and every inch of the Underworld beyond.

And its master is calling for it.

There is no slow crack in the stone or warning tremor beneath our feet. One moment, the ground is solid. The next? There’s nothing but an endless chasm, red and orange hellfire churning far below, and shapes moving inside it that I have no desire to look at too closely.

Black chains erupt from the darkness.

They wrap around Kronos’s wrists first, then his ankles, his waist, his throat. He snarls when they wrap around his human form, but despite his earlier amusement, Aiden’s bullet has weakened him too much. His power flickers around him in violent bursts, bending the air, changing the stone beneath his hands into water and then glass and then something that looks disturbingly like flesh.

Chaos.

That is what Kronos is.

Not merely a Titan or a tyrant, but chaos given a face and insanity in a pair of fractured eyes.

Aiden closes one hand into a fist.

The chains tighten.

Kronos slides toward the edge.

He doesn’t plead. I didn’t expect him to. Instead, that infuriating smile slowly returns to his face as his body begins to slowly tip over the chasm, feet first.

“This changes nothing,” he says.

Aiden’s expression doesn’t move. “It changes where you’re spendin’ eternity. Back to Tartarus with you. Back to hell, Teddy, where a monster like you belongs.”

He laughs. “I’ll only be in Tartarus as long as this realm exists. With no Olympus and no mortal world, there’ll be no Tartarus. Chaos will reign supreme when it’s all that exists, and I’m not done with you yet, Hades.”

Aiden flicks his fingers. “Maybe not. But I’m done with you.”

With that gesture, Kronos disappears into the pit, his nasty laughter following him all the way down.

The sound grows fainter and fainter until the roar of the flames swallows it entirely. The chains lash after him, vanishing into the dark, and the stone begins to close over the opening with a deep, grinding rumble.

His prison isn’t sealed, though. Not yet.

Aiden explained the difference to me shortly after the first time Daphne tried to get us onboard the “kill Kronos bus”. Hades can condemn a titan to Tartarus and hold the gate, but Zeus has to close it completely. Once the king of the gods seals that entrance, Kronos won’t be able to claw his way out again unless he eventually finds another way to escape again.

For now, though, he’s trapped, Aiden has some closure from his mortal life, and Daphne won’t have to worry about the worlds ending anymore. For a reborn nymph with a human’s dose of anxiety, that was too much weight on her shoulders, and I’m so happy that the two people I love most in this world might have found some peace today.

A strange laugh catches in my throat. It comes out halfway between relief and hysteria, but I don’t care. The moment the pit closes, I cross the distance between us and throw my arms around my husband.

Aiden catches me automatically.

The old Colt is still in one hand, held safely away from my body, while the other locks around my waist and drags me against him. His face presses into the curve of my neck. I can feel the heat of his breath against my skin, too quick despite the calm he showed when he faced Kronos.

“You did it,” I whisper.