The Death King

by Jovee Winters

  “What?” I frowned. “You’re primordials, you can’t die.”

  She scoffed. “Is that what Caly told you?” Rolling her eyes, she hugged her arms to her chest. “We don’t need the worship of others to exist, Aphrodite, it’s true. But we absolutely can fade.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I don’t believe you.”

  She laughed, and the sound was full of bitterness. “Believe what you want. It doesn’t alter facts. We have to want to be here. We have to want to stay.”

  My lips felt numb as I heard myself ask, “And if you don’t?”

  “You’re smart. I think you know.” She waved. “I’m tired, Aphrodite. Tired of all this nonsense. Fix it or don’t. I’m not even sure it matters anymore. Not to me.”

  “Hey.” I took another step forward, forcing her eyes to mine. “Don't you speak that way. I will fix this. Hades and I will fix this. Caly will come back to us, and together, they will help create order again.”

  She snorted. “Ah, the innocence of youth. Believe as you will.”

  Knowing I should never touch a primordial who didn’t wish to be touched, I did it anyway. I squeezed her arm in my hand.

  She tensed and held her hands up. Her eyes flashed with flame, and for just a breathless second, I imagined I’d be burned to ashes where I stood. But she didn’t make another move. Simply stared at me.

  “Don’t give up yet, Fiera. Hold on. Hang in there. Believe in the impossible. I do.”

  “You speak of Hephaestus,” she murmured, and my skin shivered.

  “How do you know of him?”

  “I might live in a world of fire, but I’m not blind or stupid or dumb. I hear things. I know more. I may not remember my previous life as fully as you, but I remember enough to be curious, to follow the lives of those who I suspect once meant a great deal to me. My sister is water. Her husband a brooding death god who doesn’t stir from his throne of skulls. The world you’ve adopted is in chaos and disarray. Do you really believe any of this can be fixed?”

  Her words were a sharp bark, full of anger and righteous fury. But beneath the obvious, I heard a fainter bit of emotion. It was fragile, but definitely there.

  Moving my other hand to her other bicep, I squeezed her tight.

  “Yes, Fiera. I do. Come hell or high water, I will make him remember. And once he does, Calypso won’t know what hit her.”

  She trembled and her eyes slid shut. “Then know this—I have studied my sister at great length. There is a darkness in her now. A battle. The same battle that rages in me and Aria and Tiera. What took lifetimes to create in us, consciousness and the ability to empathize, is almost gone from us now. I remember dregs, small bits of it here and there. I cannot even connect to my imps,” she said softly and looked down at Pea Brain.

  His head was hung to his chest, and he was sniffing loudly. My heart squeezed. He loved her as his mother, but his mother was admitting that she could not love him back.

  “When a primordial’s consciousness is broken, it can be almost impossible to rebuild, and we cannot connect to memories the way others can. There is no magic cure for us,” she said bitterly. “We have no choice but to build new memories to replace the old ones. But deep down, there are elements that still remain, feelings that linger on. Things we cannot put a name on, only that it matters deeply to us still. That is what Hades will need to tap into with Caly. Tell him not to try making her remember. It will be useless. She will hear the stories, same as I do, but they will mean nothing.”

  “Can he even reach her, then? Is she so beyond us now?”

  She shrugged. “You tell me, goddess of love. Do you still have hope for us?”

  Her laughter rang with cynicism.

  “If I have to believe enough for all of us, then that’s what I’ll do. But I won’t give up. I’ve never been any good at that.”

  She snorted. “Then you’re a fool, Aphrodite, and I wish you well. But now you must go, for I am weary of this talk.”

  She snapped her fingers, and I was gone from the land of fire, instantly back in the land of the dead, frowning as I gazed at Hades lounging in his throne.

  He looked at me in startled surprise. “How did you—”

  Cutting my hand through the air, I shut him up. He’d cast me out a couple of weeks ago and told me never again to disturb him or return. I honestly didn’t have time to fight with the arrogant lunk any further. My time with Fiera had nearly drained any bit of hope inside of me.

  I held up the key as I said, “This is it, Hades. Your fail-safe. You might not remember this, but you sent me to find it.”

  He shook his head, frowning hard as he stared at the key between my fingers. “I never—”

  “Yes, you did. You did all of this before the curse, set the chessboard in play. I’ve done my part, and now the rest is up to you. Take the key, unlock your heart, and fix this mess.”

  Walking up to him, I handed him the key.

  He looked stunned, still staring at the thing like it was a serpent ready to strike. When I handed it to him, I half expected him to shove me back or banish me as he’d done before. Instead, he opened his palm for it, the move like an automatic reflex.

  The key looked so small in his hand, and I shook my head, tired and weary to my very core.

  I’d lost everything because of this search to fix him and Caly—my home, my family, any chance I might have had with Hephy. “You’d better be worth this,” I hissed, angry now but not sure why. However, it was better than giving in to the tears that, once started, might never stop again.

  “What is this?” he asked, voice full of grit as he finally stared at me with his star-speckled eyes.

  I shook my head. “Don’t you recognize it?”

  “No,” he said, but I heard a question, a note of doubt in his response. He did know, somewhere deep down.

  Frustrated and tired, I snatched the key from his palm, and without thinking, I shoved it through his chest.

  “It’s a soul key, Hades. Now wake up, damn you. Wake up!”

  He roared as a dark and unholy light flared through the cavernous chambers of his throne room.

  Hades

  * * *

  Once she’d finally left, I looked up. The key had ripped through me like a blade, but it hadn’t pierced only me. It had rocketed through all of the Underworld, setting off a dangerously high tectonic-plate reaction. The earthquake had sounded like a roar ripping through the lands itself.

  My throne room was in shambles. My servants were cleaning up the mess as quickly as they could. In fact, all of the Underworld would need to be seen to.

  I clutched my chest, rubbing at it furiously, feeling the agony of the blade that had sliced through me.

  If I closed my eyes, I could conjure up the memory of its fire burning right through me, bringing with it memories I’d hidden away in the key. For weeks now, I’d felt a lethargy, a lack of feelings and emotions. I was literally a dead man walking. My hand moved over my heart—or rather, where my heart should be.

  But there was nothing but silence inside me, echoing deep and bottomless. I had no heart, in the very literal sense, and I now knew why.

  Wiping at my mouth with the back of my hand, I made my way to my shaky feet.

  Calypso.

  Agony pierced through me so sharply and keenly that I felt as though I would collapse again. I’d forgotten her. Completely, absolutely forgotten her.

  My head was pounding. My soul was screaming at me to seek her out. Find her now. Right now!

  Only with her, could I get my heart back, figuratively and literally.

  One of my servants came over to me, holding out his hand to steady me. I guessed I was swaying without realizing it. But I jerked away from him before he could grab on. A look of shock scrawled over his pinched features before quickly smoothing out into one of acquiescence.

  “I’m… I’m.” I frowned tightly. “I apologize, Hermanias.”

  Holding his hands together, he dipped his he
ad. “It is I that should apologize to you, Master. I should never have dared to touch you.”

  Rubbing the back of my aching skull, I shook my head. What kind of a bastard had I become since this curse that my servant could sound so distressed for attempting to help his master?

  Reaching out to him, I grasped his elbow and he gasped. “Master?”

  “One, do not call me master anymore. I loathe that name. Henceforth, I am Hades. Sir, if you must, but never Master. And two, it is I that should ask your forgiveness. Starting today, Hermanias, change has come to the Underworld.”

  He gasped. “Master”—I glared at him—“Sir.” He coughed. “That you would ask me for forgiveness—it is not done. You should never—”

  I cut him off with a swipe of my hand. “I don’t know who I was to you then, but no more. This reign of darkness ends. But if I could be so bold?”

  “Anything, sir. Anything at all.” He bowed deep, and again I felt the prick of shame for how I’d been behaving.

  The skeleton key had restored my sense of self, but there was still something missing, and I knew exactly what it was—my heart. And I did not mean the beating organ that was mostly useless to us gods, but the woman who’d become my soul, my life’s blood, my heartbeat, and everything else good. I needed my female back again.

  “A looking glass into another realm.”

  He dipped his head. “Yes, sir,” he whispered with reverence and then winked out of existence.

  All my servants were spirits of the dead. Apart from Calypso in the previous life, I’d not had many living visitors to my lands.

  Hermanias returned seconds later, holding onto a glowing silver disk. “Thank you, my friend.”

  “My… sir,” he gasped, looking startled and delighted all at once. “Anything for you.” Then he was gone, no doubt supervising the clean up of the Underworld.

  With trembling hands, I raised the glass before me and whispered her name. My voice had dropped several octaves and was little more than a reed-thin, husky drawl.

  “Calypso.”

  A light burned through the disk before revealing the object I wished to see. Joy, fire, and passion burned through me. But what I saw made it all wither and evaporate.

  Calypso was no longer in a female form. She’d returned to that of her primordial nature. A sea as endless and bottomless as the joy she’d once gave me spread as far as my eye could see, and all I sensed as I prodded at her consciousness was the feebleminded thoughts of nascent sentience.

  I remembered our talk right before the curse had taken us. She warned me that she would be as she’d once been, forced to become the element that gave all the worlds life.

  Panic stole my breath and raged through my body. I shook my head, refusing to accept this fate for her. For us. But even as I poked at prodded at a mind as nebulous as the air around me, I knew. Deep in my dark heart, I knew.

  Calypso, the woman I lived and breathed for, the woman to whom I’d given my heart and soul, was no more.

  She was no more.

  “Oh, Caly.” My voice cracked as heat filled my eyes. “Oh, my priestess. My love, what has been done to you?”

  5

  Hades

  Several months later

  * * *

  “Don’t lie to me. Not me. Not after all we’ve been through.” Aphrodite, with heavy purple bags under her eyes, her golden hair pinned up high on her head and looking unwashed for days, gave me a frosty glare.

  It was obvious to me that my one-time friend wasn’t faring well either. She appeared to suffer as surely and as keenly as I did.

  I’d tried to keep the truth of Calypso’s condition from her as best I could, not wanting to crush the goddess’s fragile spirit. Aphrodite had suffered so keenly in the last few months from the loss of Hephaestus and Calypso’s continued refusal to entertain her one-time best friend. Caly had tried to drown Dite the last time she’d dared to visit my bride’s home.

  I barely had the energy to deal with my own crisis, let alone hers, so I’d done the one thing I knew I shouldn’t have. I’d pretended not to know Aphrodite either. Pretended the key hadn’t unlocked my memories at all. I had hoped, in my own convoluted way, to spare her all the pain. But my keeping Aphrodite at arm’s length didn’t appear to be working at all. In fact, she seemed worse than ever.

  Knowing I’d placed myself between a rock and a hard place, I didn’t know what to do—continue on with this farce I’d concocted or finally open up to her and tell her the truth that I was sure would shatter the fragile goddess’s last bits of hope completely.

  “Hades!” she screamed, stomping her foot and causing the sealed flower buds imbedded in the cave wall behind me up to burst in bloom, belching a thick screen of black pollen before withering and dying on the vine, crumbling to dust all around me.

  Aphrodite wasn’t well, not at all, and in my fear, I lashed out at her as I seemed wont to do to everyone around me lately.

  “Damn it to all the unholy waters of the River Styx, will you leave be, Goddess of Love!” I thundered and crashed my fist on the armrest of my skull-and-crossbones throne. The chamber rumbled beneath our feet, and a sharp, cold wind howled through the massive anteroom.

  She jumped, looking startled as she clutched at her throat, blue eyes going wide in her extraordinarily pale, heart-shaped face.

  Aphrodite was still the beauty of legend, with curves that would make a saint weep for just one taste of her. But she wasn’t the same female as before. She had sharper edges and was more prone to bouts of irritation and sustained rage that no doubt stemmed from anxiety and desperation.

  Blue eyes more brilliantly colored than a polished sapphire thinned to narrowed slits. the fear that’d temporarily made her look like a frightened doe transformed into something colder. Planting her hands on her curvy hips, she began to roil with powers of her own.

  The blood-red gown she wore, which showed off the shape and curves of her body, began to billow like a haze of smoke around her trim ankles. The bun she’d placed her hair unraveled and began to undulate in an invisible breeze like charmed serpents. Her skin, which had been so pale a second ago, burned like golden fire.

  Against my will, I felt my body stir, felt myself grow hard and thick as lust sliced through me violently, like a heated blade. I hissed, sucking air sharply between my teeth and curling my fingers deep into the emptied sockets of the long deceased. Around me, my own powers gathered and curled into a tight ball of bitter, arctic air.

  Aphrodite eyed me with barely concealed fury. “I know you remember. You say that you don’t, but you do. I’ve seen you watch her. Seen your face. How you act. You remember, damn you!” she spat. “At least stop lying to me about it. Just tell me the bloody truth for once!”

  My upper lip curled back, and I shook my head furiously, damming myself ten ways a fool because I shouldn’t tell her, shouldn’t feed her impossible hope. I leaned forward in my chair, bristling and barely checking my power. “And what if I do? What I do or do not feel is no concern of your—”

  “Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare say that to me, you hateful, spiteful man!” She stomped her foot, and though her body still burned like red smoke and gold flame, beneath her dainty foot, a bed of sharply pointed diamonds and rubies began to burst forth like saplings from the rocky soil. As beautiful as they were, not even they could hold a candle to the devastating and wrecking beauty that was Aphrodite in a passionate rage of temper. “I gave up everything for you both! Everything!”

  “We never asked you to!” I stood, thundering so loudly that the rafters trembled. My servants cried out as they scattered from the falling projectiles above us.

  I glared openly at her, knowing that it wasn’t her at whom I was angry. It was myself. I was mad at myself, and she was just the unfortunate who got to bear the brunt of my wrath.

  I glanced down at my feet, grinding my molars from side to side, expecting her to roar back at me. Aphrodite might be beautiful, but she was as hot-tem
pered as the rest of us when provoked. I should apologize, but I wasn’t sure how to do that either.

  So instead, I waited for her to rightly rip me a new one. Except that as the seconds turned to a minute and still nothing was said, I finally found my nerve to look up. When I did, I saw the last thing I expected.

  She was standing just as she’d been, but fat crystalline tears were coursing down her cheeks. And it wasn’t misery that I read scrawled on her face, but joy. Fierce joy. Through her tears and large smile, she whispered one word. “We?”

  My nostrils flared, and my stomach quivered, realizing my error. “I… umm, erm.” I sighed. “Bloody hell, goddess.”

  And with those words, I felt completely depleted of my energies. I all but collapsed back onto my throne, weary to my very core.

  “How long?” she asked softly, approaching my dais with slow, measured steps, as one would approach a dangerous creature that had been cornered.

  I might have chuckled to see it except that I couldn’t find a shred of humor in me. I was exhausted and had been for many months.

  I shook my head. “Dite, don’t.”

  She covered her hands with her mouth, gasping and trembling prettily. “You said my name. My real name. Our name.” She smiled tremulously at me, and against my will, I found myself returning one back to her.

  It had always been impossible to hate her. She’d been one of the few gods I’d actually tolerated in the other time, and in this one, too, if I was being honest. My brothers and sisters were still giant pricks, and their mates were no better.

  Resting my chin heavily on my fist, I shook my head at her again, wishing she’d just leave off and leave me be.

  “Hades.” Her voice was as enchanting as her form. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve been called that by either you or Caly? In this place, all I’ve been called is Aphrodite, and each time, it’s been said with such hate and loathing I’d begun to hate the very sound of it, and I feared I’d never again know the kindness of one of my peers.” Her long, golden-feathered lashes flicked shut, and a serene smile wreathed her face. “Thank you.”