The Mad King (The Dark Kings #1)(29)

My lips clamped shut as the enormity of his words hit me like a sledgehammer to my chest. Not simply death, but a complete obliteration of self. I blinked. Three days wasn’t enough time. Not for something like this.

“I need more time,” I pleaded. “Three days isn’t enough, it’s not—”

He shook his head, dark eyes flashing fire. “Three days is all you get. And it is a sight more than I’ve ever granted another. You are not the first despondent come to me, begging me to return a loved one. You are, however, the only one I’ve ever invited in. Take it or leave it.”

I swallowed hard, a greasy knot of fear and desperation slicking my gut. “Her soul and mine are joined. If I perish, will she also?”

His nostrils flared, but he answered without the growl of anger behind it. “No. I’ve granted her safe haven in my realm, Alice will remain forever with me. And you should know, I rather enjoy her company.”

An immediate surge of jealousy whipped through my veins. I’d never really been a jealous man. I’d known of Other Alice’s many paramours and had always turned my head and shrugged it off. But the thought of anyone, even a god of death, knowing my Alice made me feel homicidal and full of rage.

Hades’s lips twitched, and a flash of humor washed across his stern features lightning fast—there one second, gone the next, as if the Lord of the Underworld did not know how to laugh.

“I’ve never understood love, or the sappy sentiment that comes along with it, though I’ve witnessed it aplenty among my spirits and marveled at the depth of such powerful emotions us gods seem completely incapable of even mimicking. But I think perhaps I am beginning to.”

Did he love Alice? And on the tail end of that terrible thought came another. Did she love him? My eyes widened and my chest ached.

Hades shook his head, and the humor was long vanished from him. “It is not your Alice to whom I refer. Only know this: she has come to mean a great deal to me. If I believe for even a moment that you mean her harm, I will toss you from Elysium, and she will be lost to you forever. Have I made myself clear?”

Wetting my lips, I shook my head. “I would never harm her. She is the other half of me. You must know this; otherwise, you wouldn’t have come here. Would you?”

I knew my suspicions were correct by the all too brief and sudden lowering of his eyes, as if he gave me a silent yes.

“Then follow me, boy.” He turned, and suddenly where he’d stood was now a space of vast and endless darkness so all-consuming that light seemed completely incapable of entering in. Hades stood to the side, waiting on me with a look in his eyes that said he tested me even now.

What would I do?

Fear hammered away at my chest. Could I really do this? Could I make her remember me in just three days’ time? We had a lifetime of memories and a life built together over the centuries—it seemed an impossible task. I was crushed by failure already.

Small fingers suddenly clamped onto my wrists like a vise, and when I glanced up, I was shocked to note that at some point Danika had walked over to me. She’d been silent as death the past week, moving very little, if at all.

But there was a fire glowing from inside her now, and when she spoke, she did so with authority and conviction of heart.

“Three days. It’s all you had before. And it was enough. I will not abandon you, Hatter. Should you need me, all you have to do is call my name and I will hear you.”

“No.” Hades shook his head hard. “Neither you nor anyone else may enter my realm. If he is to win her back, he must do it alone. Those are my terms.”

Danika clenched her fingers together tight, looking at Hades with a silent plea burning in her eyes. But the god of death was unyielding in his decree and only stared at her with haughty disdain.

Sighing and with voice trembling, Danika looked back to me and said, “Then go to her, Hatter. Go to her and bring her back. Bring our darling girl back.”

And though my feet felt full of lead, I nodded at her, turned, and stepped into the all-consuming darkness of death’s door.

I fell. For what seemed an eternity. But there was no light. No sounds. Nothing. And as I continued to fall, I wondered if I’d made a terrible choice. What if Hades had lied? What if Alice wasn’t wherever it was that he was taking me to? Or was he even taking me anywhere at all?

And with those thoughts came the return of that madness, and words spewed out of my throat as I tried in vain to calm myself.

“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, / Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”

And with those final words, I fell painfully hard into land. Shoulder and arm jarred so forcefully that I couldn’t help the grunt that passed my lips. Dazed, confused, I blinked several times, wondering if the wailing winds of winter and the dreary grayness of sky was real or if I had died after all and hadn’t been obliterated into nothingness as Hades had vowed.

But then an awareness, a... a feeling so all-consuming and desperate raced across my skin that I shoved up on my arms, ignoring the immediate burst of pain that movement brought with it. And as I looked straight ahead, my soul suddenly trembled.

Jumping to my feet, I stood mute and in awe.

There she was. My heart. My compass.

The very breath and heartbeat of me.

She looked worn. Weary. Exhausted.