Page 83 of Curse the Flame

“You have it, Aiden, baby. You have all of me.”

He ducks his head, pressing his lips to the side of my throat as he thrusts softly against me. “And I’d burn both worlds down before I’d lose you, Blossom. Flames and ash and brimstone everywhere just to keep that fiery crown on top of your pretty, pretty head.”

Gods help me, but I almost cream myself right there.

Aiden Murphy might have been a killer once. Made that way by his government or the man he called “boss”, it doesn’t matter. He knows what it costs to take a life, and after all of the souls pledged to him during this battle… Hades might get a boost of power from the influx of dead to the Underworld, but something about proving himself and saving me again has really turned my husband on.

Not that I’m complaining or anything.

Reaching behind me, I give his ass a squeeze. Then, turning inside of his embrace until I’m standing in front of him, I go up on my tiptoes and fist my hands inside of his silky black shirt.

And then I say the three little words that I know will drive my husband mad more than any other:

“Take me home.”

To the Underworld.

To Sir, who reluctantly stayed behind to guard the gate while we ran to the above to help fight Ares and the titans.

To the pomegranate tree, and the megaron, and our bedroom.

Home.

Where I belong with him, and he belongs with me…

Take me home, husband, murmurs Persephone.

And that’s exactly what he does.

EPILOGUE

ZEUS

Of all the places I’ve visited, of all the properties I’ve gathered over the long centuries, of everywhere I’ve ever stayed while making my temporary home in the mortal realm, who would have thought that the most meaningful place would be a small condominium on the second floor in a complex in New Jersey?

It’s not the condo itself that means anything to me. In fact, I didn’t buy out the building until two years ago when there was a vacancy I wanted to fill, and a crooked corporation that was willing to sell me the entire building because I was willing to put more than enough cash down to call myself a landlord.

They thought I was going to “modernize” and “gentrify” and jack up the rent for those who weren’t leasing their space from the bank. That I’d do something just as sneaky as they would, boot the residents, and bring in young professionals who liked being so close to New York without having to live in Manhattan.

If I was reborn into a twisted soul, I might have. Zeus was more for pleasure and power than fairness in the old days, but I was born in the last 18th century in Ottoman Greece, to a wealthy merchant and his doting wife. I was educated post-Diafotismos, the period of Modern Greek Enlightenment, and I watched both the islands and the world change all before I ever knew I was Zeus.

My name was once Konstantinos Karas, though there isn’t a soul existing who remembers the son of the merchant. For a time, I believed that the old ways would die out, that Kronos would win, and there would be none that spoke of Zeus, either.

And then, after nearly a century of searching, I found her. Elisabeth. My Hera. My álokhos.

My wife.

She was the first of the Twelve to be reborn in my lifetime; at least, that Zeus led me to. It was as though Gaea herself knew I needed Hera at my side to defeat mother earth’s chaotic titan son. And I had to. Though I was what was needed for Elisabeth to play her role and feed the magic with her powerful goddess, my story began the moment that Kronos broke free of his prison in Tartarus.

The legends say that Zeus defeated Kronos once. After the titan swallowed all of his children but one, Zeus grew up to save his brothers and sisters, beat his father, and throw him—and the other titans—into the deepest, darkest depths of the Underworld. The moment he escaped three centuries ago, the balance that kept the mortal world and the realm of legends… the Other… in check was thrown into complete disarray. Kronos brought his chaos to the humans, and only one of us was born to save both realms.

That man was me, and the god I carried with me for forty years before he came to life inside of me and told me of my destiny.

I don’t know how he did it. The old ways were dying even then, but with one last burst of magic in the mortal realm, Zeus woke up inside of me without my ever needing to go to the Other. That wasn’t the case for every other one of us who followed. I think it’s because I needed to stop Kronos from destroying both worlds—the realm we call the Other and the mortal world where Ancient Greece once existed. That was my story. My journey.

And it’s finally over.

Oh, I’m not naive in my advanced age. I’ve existed long enough—and have seen so many of Zeus’s lives in the previous millennia—to expect that our most recent defeat of Kronos would be the final one.