Neon Gods (Dark Olympus #1)(19)

I slip my hands into my pockets and strive for a neutral tone. “It’s time we spoke about what comes next.”

“Actually, I was thinking the same thing.” Persephone carefully dismantles her blanket armor and gives me a long look. It’s all the warning I get before she smashes through the wall of my good intentions. “I believe we can help each other.”





Chapter 6


Persephone

A night sleeping in a stranger’s bathtub has a way of bringing perspective to a situation. I have nowhere to go. No resources. No friends who won’t bow to my mother’s will. A winter didn’t seem like that long when I was still moving through my normal life. Now? Three months might as well be an eternity for all I can breach it.

My sisters would help me—Callisto would drain her trust fund to ensure I get out of Olympus unscathed—but I can’t let them get that involved. I might be leaving this city, but they aren’t and it would be cowardly in the extreme to accept their help and then whirl away, leaving them to deal with the consequences.

No, there really isn’t another option.

I have to throw myself on Hades’s mercy and convince him that we can help each other.

It doesn’t help that the soft morning light does nothing to make him look less forbidding. I’m getting a feeling like this man walks around with a little bit of midnight in his pocket. He’s certainly dressed the part in a black-on-black suit. Expensive and tasteful and very, very atmospheric when combined with the perfectly groomed beard and long hair. And those eyes. Gods, the man looks like some kind of crossroads demon designed specifically to tempt me. Considering the deal I’m about to offer, maybe that’s not a bad thing.

“Persephone.” A single eyebrow arches. “You think we can help each other.” A reminder that I’d let my voice trail off immediately after throwing that into the air between us.

I smooth back my hair, trying not to let his presence fluster me. I’ve spent the last few years rubbing elbows with powerful people, but this feels different. He feels different. “You hate Zeus.”

“I would think that’s glaringly clear.”

I ignore that. “And for some reason, Zeus is hesitant to move against you.”

Hades crosses his arms over his chest. “Zeus can pretend the rules don’t exist for him, but even he can’t stand against the entirety of the Thirteen. We have a very carefully constructed treaty. A small selection of people can cross back and forth from the upper to the lower city without consequence, but he can’t. And neither can I.”

I blink. This is all news to me. “What happens if you do?”

“War.” He shrugs as if it’s of no concern. Maybe it isn’t for him. “You crossed of your own free will, and he can’t take you back without risking a conflict that will embroil all of Olympus.” His lips quirk. “Your fiancé never does anything that might endanger his power and position, so he’ll let me do whatever I want to you to avoid that fight.”

He’s trying to scare me. Little does he realize that he’s actually reassuring me that this haphazard plan has a chance of working. “Why does everyone believe you’re a myth?”

“I stay in the lower city. It’s not my problem the upper city likes to tell tales that have nothing to do with reality.”

That’s not even close to a complete answer, but I suppose I don’t need that information right now. I can see the framework well enough without all the details. Treaty or no, Zeus has a vested interest in keeping Hades a myth. Without the third legacy role in place, the power balance lands firmly in Zeus’s favor. It was always strange to me that he effectively ignored half of Olympus, but now that I know Hades is real, it makes more sense.

I straighten my spine, holding his gaze. “Regardless, that doesn’t explain the way you spoke to his men last night. You hate him.”

Hades doesn’t blink. “He killed my parents when I was very young. Hate is too gentle a word.”

Shock nearly steals my breath. I’m not surprised to hear Zeus accused of another set of murders, exactly, but Hades speaks of his parents’ death so neutrally, as if it happened to someone else. I swallow hard. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. People always say that.”

I’m losing him. I can see it in the way his gaze tracks around the room as if debating how quickly he can bundle me up and send me on my way. I take a deep breath and press forward. No matter what he told those men last night, it couldn’t be clearer that he has no intention of keeping me around. I can’t allow that. “Use me.”

Hades refocuses on me. “What?”

“It’s not the same thing, not even on the same level, but he claimed me and now you have me.”

Surprise colors his features. “I didn’t realize you’d resigned yourself so fully to playing the pawn in a chess match between men.”

Humiliation heats my cheeks, but I ignore it. He’s trying to provoke a reaction, and I won’t give it to him. “A pawn between you or a pawn to be used by my mother—it all amounts to the same.” I smile brightly, enjoying the way he flinches as if I’ve struck him. “I can’t go back, you see.”

“I’m not keeping you.”

No reason for that to sting. I don’t know this man, and I have no intention of being kept. It still irks that he’s so ready to dismiss me out of hand. I keep my smile firmly in place and my tone bright. “Not forever, of course. I have somewhere to be in three months’ time, but until I turn twenty-five, I can’t access my trust fund to get there.”