The Mad King (The Dark Kings #1)(37)

“You will not die. At least not for another two days. But already I can see the life being leached from you. How can you bear this? Why would you want to?”

I frowned, sensing he did not mock me so much as marvel at what he surely thought was my folly. I pitied the god just then.

“Have you never known love at all, Hades?”

He snorted. “Me? Know love? I think you’ve mistaken me for my niece. We gods do not care for the sentiment.”

I shook my head, wondering if I’d ever feel warm again. “I don’t believe that.”

“And you would know how?”

The answer was so obvious I was surprised he couldn’t see it for himself. “Because you’re here. You were watching her before you even let me step through your gates. And you still watch her. You’re curious, Hades, admit it.”

He chuckled, causing the snow-dusted plains beneath my bottom to grumble and groan. So powerful and yet so na?ve. I shook my head, looking away.

“No. You never will. Because you’re a god and you think you already know everything, don’t you?”

Fire licked through his eyes, casting a glow upon the pristine snow around me.

“If you weren’t already going to die in two days, I’d kill you now for your impertinence.”

I snorted. “Your threats mean nothing to me, Lord of Death. Without her, I have nothing anyway.”

“So you would build your whole life and who you are upon the expectation of another? Pitiful.” He sneered.

I shrugged. I didn’t know how to explain what Alice and I had in any way that made any kind of sense.

“I existed before her, Hades. But I was a shell. In that life and in this one. I couldn’t begin to explain what Alice did for me. Her gentleness. Her love. Her fire. It lit an undying flame inside my heart, made me see myself as she did. I was tired, but she gave me purpose and hope. I need Alice like I need my next breath. She is not just my love or my lover, she is my very soul. And unless you’ve ever felt that, you could never possibly understand the depths I’d be willing to walk in order to save her. Even if she doesn’t choose me again, as long as I know she’s happy, I could die feeling as though I’d accomplished something worthwhile in this life.”

He laughed. But he stared at me. Like I confused him. Like he wanted to understand, but he just couldn’t.

He shook his head. “That sounds dreadful.”

My lips twitched as the cold sank deeper and deeper within my bones. Feeling a weariness of soul, I rested my cheek upon my knees and murmured, “If you say so.”

Then, closing my eyes, I told myself I only needed to rest a bit so as to regain my strength. But I knew when I woke in the morning, I would not feel better.

Somehow, someway, I had to keep fighting. It was the only way to save Alice.

*

Hades

I watched the madman sink into the fog of delirium. I had not lied when I’d told him how taxing it would be for a living to walk among the dead.

Already he was dying. And coming from Kingdom as he did, I knew the male had never even known the sting of illness before.

Hatter might not even have a day left to him. I shook my head and stood.

Immediately I sensed the presence of another. It wasn’t difficult to figure out it was her, though not in human form. She’d transformed again. Into a field mouse, hidden in the twigs back by a copse of trees.

Aphrodite had been right; the two souls were inexorably linked. I’d known the moment I’d seen Alice dip her fingers into the water that she would eventually succumb to its lure and drink.

She was wrong. It wasn’t the water that’d wiped her memory of all traces of Hatter. It’d been me. I’d replaced memories of reality with small snatches of fantasy, namely her drinking from Lethe. A fact that never actually occurred.

And I’d done it for a very simple reason.

What Lethe wrought could never be undone. But if the male and Alice were truly a fated pair, then I would lift the curse. I was not accustomed to giving up my dead, but I had my reasons.

Clenching down on my back teeth, I muttered a curse beneath my breath and did something I hadn’t done in over a thousand years. I left my underworld for the golden clouds of Olympus.

The sunlight stung my eyes and made me hiss.

Firebirds screamed as they raced through the air, trying to outmaneuver Apollo’s burning chariot across the sky.

Standing on a hill overlooking the palace of the three Fates, I glowered at the stone building. I had my doubts that Aphrodite had spoken with them. But I was equally as sure that she believed the rest of her story.

Frolicking nymphs and satyrs dashed through flowering bushes as they chased and ran away. I curled my lip in disgust at their obvious show of foreplay. I’d never much cared for the games of lust.

“Come to savor the wares?” a masculine but high-pitched voice asked just over my left shoulder.

I didn’t turn, knowing to whom I spoke. “Hermes. Checking up on me? My brother sent you, has he?”

The messenger god chuckled, and finally I turned, staring at the man who would forever look a boy of sixteen. He was youthful and spry; constant running around tended to do that to a body. He had blond hair the color of Apollo’s burnished sun and eyes as blue as the skies he called home. Dressed in the casual clothes of the modern world, a jacket and formfitting jeans with his ever-present winged shoes on his feet, he grinned cheekily.