A Touch of Darkness (Hades x Persephone #1)(46)

“I have to see if I can get ahead of this.” Persephone reappeared, hobbling on one foot to buckle her sandals.

“Ahead of what?”

“The article. Hades can’t see it.”

Lexa’s laugh escaped before she could control it. “Persephone, I hate to break it to you, but Hades has already seen the article. He has people who look for this kind of stuff.”

Persephone met Lexa’s gaze.

“Whoa,” she said.

“What?” Persephone felt hysteria rise inside her.

“You’re eyes...they’re...freaky.”

Persephone looked away quickly. Her emotions were all over the place. She avoided Lexa’s gaze as she reached for her purse.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said quickly. “I’ll be back later.”

Persephone left her room and slammed the door to her apartment closed as Lexa called her name.

The bus wouldn’t run for anther fifteen minutes, so she decided she’d go on foot. She dug her compact out of her purse and applied more magic as she walked. Her eyes had lost all of their glamour and glowed bottle-green. No wonder Lexa had been freaked out. Her hair was brighter, her face sharper. She looked more Divine than she ever had in public.

By the time Persephone arrived at the Acropolis, her mortal appearance was restored. When she walked off the elevator, Valerie stood.

“Persephone,” she said nervously. “I didn’t think you were in today.”

“Hey, Valerie,” she said, trying to remain cheerful and act like nothing was out of the ordinary—that Adonis hadn’t stolen her article and that Lexa hadn’t woken her up to shove the angry article in her face. “Just coming in to take care of a few things.”

“Oh, well, you have several messages. I, uh, transferred them to your voicemail.”

“Thanks.”

But Persephone wasn’t interested in her voicemails. She was here for Adonis. She dropped her purse at her desk and stalked across the workroom. Adonis sat with his earbuds in, focused intently on his computer. At first, she thought he was working on something—probably editing one he stole, she thought angrily, but as she came up behind him, she discovered he was watching some sort of television show—Titans After Dark.

She rolled her eyes. It was a popular soap opera about how the Olympians had defeated the Titians. Though she’d only watched parts of it, she’d started to imagine most of the gods as they were portrayed on the show.

Hades was all wrong—a pale, lithe creature with a hollow face. If Hades were going to seek revenge for anything, it should be how they depicted him on that show.

She tapped his shoulder and the mortal jumped.

“Persephone,” he said, taking out an earbud. “Congr—”

“You stole my article,” she cut him off.

“Stealing is a harsh term for what I did, Persephone,” he said, pushing away from his desk. “I gave you all the credit.”

“You think that matters?” she seethed. “It was my article, Adonis. Not only did you take it from me, but you added to it. Why? I told you I would send it to you once I finished.”

In all honesty, she wasn't sure what she expected him to say, but it wasn't the answer he gave. He looked away from her. “I thought you would change your mind.”

She stared at him a moment. “I told you I wanted to write about Hades.”

“Not about that,” he said. “I thought he might convince you he was justified in his contracts with mortals.”

“Let me get this straight. You decided that I couldn't think for myself so you stole my work, altered it, and published it?”

“It's not like that. Hades is a god, Persephone—”

I'm a goddess, she wanted to yell.

“Hades is a god, and for that very reason, you didn't want to write about him. You feared him, Adonis. Not me.”

He cringed. “I didn't mean—”

“What you meant doesn't matter,” she snapped.

“Persephone?” Demetri called from his office. She and Adonis looked in the direction of their supervisor’s office. “A moment?”

Her gaze slid back to Adonis, and she pinned him with a final glare before heading into Demetri’s office.

“Yes, Demetri?” She stood in the doorway. He was sitting behind his desk, a fresh edition of the paper in hand.

“Take a seat,” he said.

She did—on the edge, because she wasn’t sure what Demetri would think of the article—she had a hard time calling it hers. Would his next words be ‘you’re fired?’ It was one thing to say you wanted the truth, another to actually publish it.

She considered what she would do when she lost her internship. She now had less than six months until graduation. It was unlikely another paper would hire the girl who dared call the God of the Underworld the worst god. She knew many people shared Adonis’s fear of Tartarus.

Just as Demetri started to speak, Persephone said, “I can explain.”

“What is there to explain?” he asked. “It’s clear by your article what you were trying to do here.”

“I was angry,” she explained.

“You wanted to expose an injustice,” he said.

“Yes, but there’s more. It’s not the whole story,” she said. She’d really only shown Hades in one light—and that was really in no light at all, just darkness.