It was an island off the coast of Attica. Once, long ago, it had been attached to the mainland, but earthquakes had separated the landmass and now it stood apart in the Mediterranean Sea. The island itself was not Hades’s ultimate destination. It was one of three volcanic islands off its coast. They were each relatively small, made of layers of volcanic rock, visible from all sides of the island. Despite its rocky foundation, a sheet of green grass made the island look emerald next to the sapphire ocean, and in the fading twilight, it was beautiful.
The islands were connected by a wood rope bridge, both to the mainland and to each other. Hades started toward the one at the center, Lea, named after Briareus’s wife, Cymopolea, Poseidon’s daughter and Hades’s niece.
The thought made each step heavier, yet he kept going, and when he made it to the island, he followed a path of round stones to a small cottage, nestled between two hills. The windows were full of warm and inviting light, and a plume of white smoke rose from a chimney atop its thatched roof.
Hades hesitated a step, his insides twisting mercilessly. It had been a long time since he had reaped a soul, an innocent one at least. Doing so never got easier, and this one was somehow made worse by the fact that Briareus was merely a victim of a war between gods.
Still, he continued to the door and knocked.
He would give Briareus dignity, especially in his own home.
Hades was surprised when Briareus answered the door cloaked in glamour. He had taken on the guise of a middle-aged man with graying hair, face worn into happy lines, a mark of how content he had lived his life since ancient times. Still, Hades could see beneath his glamour, to the giant who towered above him, to his many heads and hands.
“My Lord Hades,” Briareus said. His smile was so wide, deepening the lines around his mouth and making his cheekbones stick out sharply. The giant bowed.
“Briareus,” Hades replied quietly with a nod. He could not raise his voice to match his enthusiasm, given his morose reasons for his visit.
There was a moment of silence, then Briareus’s jovial expression faded. “It’s time, isn’t it?”
Those were cruel words given how Hades had come to be at this door. Still, he lied.
“It is.”
The giant nodded and looked at his feet. Hades hated it, to see the peace leak from his eyes as he processed his impending death. “I could feel it, you know? In my bones.”
Hades said nothing, but there was a part of him that wished Briareus would cease speaking, because each word was another knife to his heart.
After a moment, Briareus collected himself and took a breath, an ounce of his previously joyful demeanor returning.
“I was just finishing up a meal,” he said. “Care to join?”
Hades had no expectations when he had come to the giant’s door. He had not known if Briareus would be distraught or angry, beg for his life or beg for it to end quickly.
But he had not at all expected to be invited to dinner.
“Sure, Briareus,” Hades said at last. There was something morbid about accepting his hospitality, but Hades did not want to take away these last wished-for moments.
The giant smiled once more and stepped aside to hold the door open, allowing Hades entrance.
As soon as he entered the cottage, he was in the kitchen. It smelled of salt and fish and spices, though not unpleasant. There was a round, wooden table at the center of the room, and on it sat a small, clear vase with a handful of wildflowers.
Briareus returned to the stove and pulled on a white apron. As he tied it off, he offered, “Anything to drink, my lord?”
“Whatever you have, Briareus. It would be an honor to drink with you.”
The giant chuckled. “You honor me, my lord.”
“Hardly,” Hades replied. “I am here to take your life.”
“You are,” Briareus agreed. “Not Lord Thanatos, nor another with ill intent. I am pleased.”
Hades stared as the giant turned to his work, pouring Hades a glass of wine.
“It’s sherry,” he said. “I’ll serve you something different with the lamb.”
“Thank you, Briareus.”
Hades accepted the glass and walked to the window. The view from his cottage was beautiful, mostly green hills, but the city of Euboea peeked through, still warmed by the golden light of the fading sun.
“You have lived here a long time,” he said.
“Yes. I have not been beyond the bridge in some time. I imagine I would not even know the world now.”
“It is very different,” Hades said.
“I suppose in some ways it is fitting you are here,” Briareus said. “I cannot imagine continuing to exist as the gods do, indefinitely.”
There was a long pause, and when Hades looked at Briareus, he found the giant staring back.
“Are you not tired, my lord?”
“I am,” Hades replied.
But he had been tired since the beginning. He just chose what to live for each day, and recently that happened to be Persephone.
The giant served a meal of lamb and roasted carrots. He held to his promise of serving fresh wine, choosing a red blend for dinner, and while Briareus had served Hades a healthy portion of food, it remained untouched.
“Are my brothers next?” Briareus asked.
“No.”
“So I am the first.”
Hades said nothing, guilt weighing heavily on him. He wished he had something to say, something to contribute to this conversation, but he rarely had anything to say and even less when he faced a person he liked and had to kill.
After a moment, Hades cleared his throat. “Your wife,” he said, but before he could continue, Briareus spoke.
“Cymopolea spends most of her time in the ocean with her sisters. She visits now and then.” He hesitated. “It’s likely…she will find me.”
“I won’t let that happen,” Hades promised.
“There is no one else,” the giant replied.
Once more, Hades said nothing, but he did take a drink of the wine and tried not to grimace at the taste. They did not speak until Briareus finished eating. Hades wished he could be better company, but there was a thickness growing in his throat and a pressure building behind his eyes.
He did not want to do this.
Briareus sat back, his hands on his thighs, and spoke. “I’m not upset, you know? I understand.”
You don’t, Hades thought, and his jaw tightened. He wanted to explain that he had tried to think of ways out of this, that he had delayed it for as long as possible.
There were a few more beats of silence.
“How shall we proceed?” Briareus asked. “Do you want a knife?”
Hades should have winced, but he remained expressionless as he answered. “No.”
He held out his hand, and Briareus took it. After a moment, shadows began to move beneath the creature’s skin, breaking the surface like vines to wrap around Hades’s own arm. It was the tendrils of the giant’s soul coming out of his body.
He met Hades’s gaze. “You’re a good man, Hades,” he said. “A great god.”
The shadows disappeared into Hades’s skin. If he were to drop his glamour, the giant would see a myriad of fine, black lines marring his body—a tale of the many bargains he’d made with the Fates, among them Briareus himself.
Briareus sat back in his chair and took a breath.
He was dead.
Hades remained for a few moments before he stood, turned, and punched straight through the wall. With his aggression spent, he drained what remained of the wine and left the cottage, only to come face-to-face with Hera.
The goddess looked triumphant, a smile curving her cold face.
“Well done, Hades,” she said. “Your next trial will not have the luxury of time.”
Hades’s anger felt like a storm inside his body.
“Then stop wasting mine,” he said.
Her smile widened. “Await my summons, Lord Hades, and don’t forget what’s at stake.”
Chapter XIV
An Uncertain Future
In the immediate aftermath of Briareus’s death, a dull ache formed at the front of Hades’s head. It was only a matter of time before it turned into something far worse. He had known he would not be able to sleep, but all possibilities of rest were now out of the question.
So he headed to Iniquity.
He had only managed to take care of one task, though now that the first of Hera’s labors was complete, a second would soon come. In the meantime, he had to figure out who had kidnapped the Graeae. There was the possibility that Dionysus was lying and he was still in possession of the gray sisters, but Hades doubted it. The God of the Vine had been too stunned, too affronted.
Hades wondered if the abductors of the gray sisters wanted the eye or just Medusa? What hope did they have in using her as a weapon? Who were their targets? There was a horrible dread that came with the unknown, and he hated it.
Once in his office, he found himself pulling the small black box from the inside of his jacket pocket and setting it on the desk in front of him. He stared at it for a long moment, wavering on whether he should use it. When he opened the box, he felt even less confident.
The eye stared back at him as if it knew his intentions.
He did not know exactly how the eye worked. Did it work like a crystal ball? Could he ask it to show him something? Was it sentient?
Hades turned the box on its side and let the eye roll out onto the desk. It was sticky, but it landed pupil up and seemed to glare back at him.
Definitely sentient, he thought. Fuck.
“I’m looking for your…owners,” Hades said. “Can you show me where they are?”
He felt really stupid all of a sudden.
Idiot, he imagined Hecate saying.
He picked up the eye and was deposited onto a crowded street in the pleasure district. There was loud music and wicked laughter as people danced around him in a parade of colorful costumes. He recognized his surroundings, particularly the columns that decorated this square. They were gold, and even from here, he could make out the carnal scenes carved into their surface.
Dionysus was here.
Hades could not yet see him for the crowd, but he could feel his magic rising. It was slightly floral but acidic at the same time and possessed a heaviness unlike anything he had ever felt. To others, he imagined it must feel pleasant, but to Hades, it was cloying. Following the spike in power, those who had been dancing around him began to fuck.
The air was thick with carnality, and those present bent to the weight of it, tangled in passionate revelry, and as they fell, Hades saw Dionysus, sitting in his gold throne before those gold pillars. But it was not the sight of him that made his body go cold and fill with an unnerving heaviness. It was the sight of Persephone perched comfortably on his lap, dressed in matching white, the glamour she seemed so keen to hold on to around him gone.
Sitting there with her elegant white horns on display, her eyes as bright as the spring sky, she looked confident and queenly, and he raged at the heat in her gaze—a passion that should be reserved only for him.
What the actual fuck.
The vision flashed and faded away, and Hades was once again in his office at Iniquity, the eye of the Graeae clutched in his palm. He uncurled his clenched fingers, and the eye fell onto the table, bloodshot.
“What the fuck did you show me?” he demanded.
The eye sat silent, of course, but still seemed to be glaring.
“If there is an ounce of truth to that vision, I will crush you to a pulp,” he threatened.
He had almost done so in the midst of the vision. He could still feel the stickiness of the eye on his palm.
He rolled the eye into its box.
“Useless,” he muttered as he sat back in his chair. Obviously the eye would not help him locate the Graeae. And if it would not help him, it was likely it would not cooperate with Hecate either if the goddess attempted a location spell. With the eye’s power, it was possible it would manipulate the spell anyway and send them on a useless hunt.
The fact was, the eye did not trust them.
Normally, he would make himself the target by feeding information into the market that he was in possession of the eye, to lure whoever had kidnapped the Graeae, but he had no doubt some bold idiot would attempt to hold Persephone for ransom as a result, and he wasn’t willing to take the risk.
He had one other option, and the thought quite literally made him want to vomit. Not to mention he would probably be less helpful than the eye, and he required far too much coddling for a Titan.
Hades let out an aggravated growl and slumped farther into his chair.
“Fucking Helios.”
Approaching the God of the Sun would take some planning, however, given that their last encounter had ended poorly. Hades had stolen every single one of his prized cows and refused to return them, though at least now he had a bargaining chip.
While Hades did not think it was likely that Helios would refuse the return of a cow, he couldn’t be certain. The god was difficult, more of an asshole than Apollo. Hades would have to think of something else to hold over his head.
His thoughts were interrupted, though, by a call from Ilias.
“Yes?” Hades answered, dread already twisting through his body.
“I’ve got news for you, though you will not be happy.”
“Am I ever happy to hear your news?”
“Do you want me to answer that question?”
“The answer is no,” Hades replied. “If you want it to change, perhaps you should bring me better news.”
“Then offer me a different job.”
“And what would I offer? Flower picking for Hecate?”
“That is perhaps more dangerous than your workload,” Ilias replied.
Hades managed a smirk.
“We’ve been tracking Dionysus’s movements as you instructed. He has a few connections in the black market, but he is not trying to build a list of contacts like we thought. He is a contact.”
“Any word on the kind of jobs he’s running?”
Hades guessed he was sending his maenads on assassination missions, but assassins were also good spies.
“He seems to be interested in obtaining information on any and everyone,” Ilias replied.
Not surprising. There was no greater power than knowledge.
“Has he tried locating the Graeae or Medusa?”
He wondered if the god might try to circumvent using the Graeae, since it seemed that the gorgon was his target.
“He has sent the maenads to investigate various channels in the market but has had no luck yet, though it seems many knew he was in possession of the sisters. The bounty’s increased on Medusa’s head. She’s caused quite a stir among hunters. They’re ravenous to find her.”
It was concerning to Hades that no one in the market had yet to snitch. Usually, it didn’t take much. People in the underground were there because they liked to make deals that benefited them. There were no loyalties, only a good bargain.
Which made Hades think that perhaps the Graeae had moved beyond the market.
“I did ask Euryale as you instructed. She does not know Medusa.”
Strange, Hades thought. He’d expected otherwise, given that they were both gorgons. Perhaps Medusa had not always been a gorgon. Perhaps she had come under some divine curse.
“See what my brother is up to,” Hades instructed.
“Which one?”
“The wet one.”
Poseidon was always scheming, and he was likely working with Hera on her plan to overthrow Zeus. It would not surprise Hades if the god was trying to gather his own advantages and allies.
“Very well,” Ilias said. “Are you ready for the unhappy news?”
“That wasn’t unhappy enough?”
“We’ve detained a man,” Ilias said. “We expected you would want to…interrogate him.”
“And why would I want to do that, Ilias?” Hades spoke carefully, but his irritation had spiked.
“He threw a glass bottle at Persephone.”
Hades waited, and when the satyr didn’t continue, he demanded, “Did he hit her, Ilias?”
“No, of course not,” Ilias replied. “I would have told you far sooner.”
The rush of fury that had erupted inside Hades quieted, replaced mostly by horror. He wondered what had spurred the attack. Had it been Persephone’s article about Apollo or her relationship with him? Perhaps both. Nevertheless, he’d see that the man paid for his actions.
“Where is he being held?”
“Your office,” Ilias said.
Hades needed no more information, and he teleported to Nevernight, to his office, where he found a man bound and gagged.
He was unremarkable—a pale man with a mop of dirty brown hair and dull eyes that widened at the sight of Hades. To his credit, he did not beg, though he did begin to shake, and a wet spot soaked through his khaki trousers.
“I heard you threatened the love of my life,” Hades said, shedding his jacket. He folded it and draped it over the back of the couch. Then he began to unlink his cuffs. “I’m here to discover why. Though, you should know, there is no excuse—no reason you can give that will end your suffering.”
As Hades rolled up his sleeves, the man began to beg, a muffled cry that Hades could decipher as “Please.”
Hades continued fixing his sleeve, and when he was finished, he removed the bind from the man’s mouth.
“Please, please,” he repeated in a shaky voice.
“Please what?” Hades asked.
“Don’t.” The word was a whisper, a plea, laced with fear.
Hades bent, eye level with the man as he spoke. “Don’t worry,” he said. “This is not how you die.”
And as he shoved the gag back into the man’s mouth, he drew on his magic, and shards of black glass shot from the floor and speared the mortal’s feet, anchoring him in place. Blood pooled on the floor, and the mortal’s pained screams brought about a different kind of release, a means through which Hades could channel his anger and grief.
With the torture started, he retrieved a bottle of whiskey and an empty glass and dragged a chair from the bar, positioning it before his victim. He sat opposite the man and poured himself a drink, downed it, and poured another before removing the gag from the mortal’s mouth once more.
He moaned, leaning forward in his chair.
“It may do no good, but I will hear you speak,” Hades said. “Tell me why you threatened my lover.”
The man took a few heavy breaths. “It was stupid. I’m sorry.”
“It was stupid,” Hades agreed. “Unfortunate that you did not realize it sooner.”