The Death King

by Jovee Winters

  “Hades,” I said, voice shaking. “Don’t… don’t do this.”

  “No, Thalassa. In this, I will not obey you because you must hear me. You say none of us remember, but I do. So if you wish worship, then let me worship you. If you need adoration, then let it be my mouth that adores you always. And should you desire love, then let mine be enough. I have felt the worship of others, so I know its allure, its intoxicating appeal. But there is something in that praise and adulation that you never expect to find, and that is emptiness. Praise from those who do not know you, truly know you, or love you soon becomes little more than words, empty and meaningless. They mean nothing at all.”

  He took my hand in his and pressed our fists to the spot where his heart should have been. “But all my worship would come straight from the very depths of my darkest heart. You are in me, all the way in me, Thalassa. You always have been and you always will be. In our old life, we never needed others to find our fulfillment, for we’d become one whole together. I know that it can be the same in this life, but you must trust me. You must believe in me, in us, again.”

  He held his breath, and I could see him shaking, so tense was he as he waited to hear my response to his impassioned words.

  On my tongue rested a plethora of responses, some fiery and fierce, full of my own arrogant anger, fueled by the fury that I was just beginning to understand had been flamed by a great loss I’d never fully comprehended until recently. And others… well, others were quite the opposite.

  I slipped my hand out of his, and his eyes widened, filling with such a welling of pain that I felt it cut through me like a dagger to my chest. He was already imagining my rejection, and in that one subconscious action of his, I finally understood what it was I’d really been seeking all along.

  I shook my head. “I came to you to find my heart.”

  He swallowed and nodded slowly, but I could feel him withdrawing from me, feel him pulling up the armor he’d use to keep me at arm’s length, to try in any way to protect that part of him that had just been open and honest with me and that he now felt had been flayed wide.

  I palmed his whisker-roughened cheek, gently scrapping my fingers against his coarse, dark hairs. He gasped, clutching tight to my wrist, as though both to toss my hand off him and draw me closer.

  “But I didn't realize until just now that I already had.”

  He blinked. “What? What are you saying, Thalassa. You must spell it out for me, female, in exacting detail.” His voice was a sharp, tight growl that pulled at things down low in me as I remembered just what that silky tongue of his had done to me mere hours ago.

  I rolled my eyes, but grinned broadly. “You are a pain in my ass,” I murmured tenderly, finally feeling free to open myself to him fully. Completely.

  He snorted. “I’m pretty sure those should be my words to you. You always were a giant pain in my arse, female. The biggest. And I love you for it.”

  I didn’t think there would ever come a day where I would get tired of hearing him say so. But even still, even though I knew and believed he was speaking from his heart, I had to hear him say it again. The arm I held Poseidon with was slowly lowering, the anger that’d burned through me was dying out, and it didn’t matter.

  That was how I knew how much he meant to me. He meant more to me than destruction, than fury and rage. He meant literally everything to me.

  “You do?”

  “Gods, Thalassa, do you not yet comprehend the depths of my devotion to you? I pursued you to get you back, and maybe at first, I thought I had to regain your old self, but I wouldn’t have cared if you’d come back to me as beast, man, or woman. You will always be the keeper of my heart and my soul. You are the only thing that truly brings me joy, you and the family we built together. Our children. Our friends. But you are my truest and only love. I would follow you to the ends of the earth, into hell itself and even into death a thousand times over if it meant keeping you with me always. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you. Nothing.”

  I clenched my jaw, and looked at the pathetic excuse for a god still trapped in waters he’d once believed to be his to command. And even close to death as he was, I could read the hatred in his eyes as he boldly returned my stare.

  Then I turned and looked at the darkly handsome face of the only male I would ever want and asked softly, “Would you kill him for me?”

  At first his eyes widened with shock, and all the color leeched from his face. It wasn’t that Hades feared death—he was the ruler of it after all. Of course, he didn’t fear death, but I’d learned one truth about him during my time trekking through the wilds with him. For the god of death he had a great respect for life.

  But then I saw his jaw set and watched in awe as the rising swell of his power gathered around his body like a dark and dangerous storm cloud. It crackled with lightning and rolled with thunder. His eyes began to change colors as he slowly lifted his hand toward his own brother, and I had my answer.

  Hades lived under the shadow of his own powers. His command of death made him reviled by his peers, an outcast amongst the glittering throng. They did not understand him, and therefore turned him into an object of hate and ridicule. I had the sense that he’d always wanted to be seen as more.

  Maybe because they’d rejected him, tossing him into the darkness of the Underworld, they had caused him to be so very different from those who lived on Olympus. He was more thoughtful and kind, the very opposite of what one might imagine Death should or would be.

  His hand glowed the dark of ebony, and I felt the air tense with the tight coiling of his power. He would shoot that bolt into his brother, and the gods only knew the war that would be unleashed upon us all for it.

  Now, finally, the foolish water god had the good sense to look terrified. And though I knew he deserved no better, I also knew I could never allow this sin to weigh upon my lover’s soul.

  “Stop,” I said softly over the din of chaos and grabbed his hand, the hand that sparked with death and the end of all things.

  But the burn of that power only made me love him more because, though I was twenty times more powerful than him, I finally understood that, in all ways, Hades wasn’t just my equal, he was truly the better part of me. He was my absolute better half and always would be.

  He swallowed hard, shaking powerfully as he turned to look at me. I read the anguish in his eyes. He’d have done that terrible deed for me alone, but in the end, I think he’d have hated me for it.

  Leaning up on tiptoe, I gently kissed his mouth. No tongue. No heated caresses. Just a tender touch of lips on lips, and as he exhaled, I took his breath into my lungs. Now, he was truly a part of me.

  “Forgive me, my darkness,” I begged of him softly.

  “Forgiven,” he said simply, and I knew he meant it.

  I smiled. “I never wish to give you cause to hate me. I can deal with the hatred and contempt of all others, so long as you never cease to look at me as you do now.”

  “Oh, my heart,” he whispered for my ears only. “I am your slave in every way.”

  “And I am yours, my dark king.”

  And to show him just how much I meant what I said, I snapped my fingers, releasing Poseidon from his prison.

  He gasped, sinking into the waters and looking at me through different eyes.

  I shook my head. “I spared your miserable life today because my lover wished me to. Though why he should care for a worthless bastard like you, I’ll never know. But hear me well, god of nothing. If I ever catch you skulking about in my domain again, I will end you. And I will smile as I do it. Now, be gone from my sight.”

  And with a flick of my wrist, I sent him back to Olympus, making sure that the trip would be most unpleasant, filling any and all orifices with several gallons worth of sand.

  Leaving Hades and I alone.

  I felt almost shy when I looked back up at him. But I didn’t mind it anymore. There was strength in feeling, great strength. It would have been all too ea
sy to kill Poseidon. The hard thing had been letting him live, and I’d only managed to do that because, for some unknown reason, Hades believed that I was a far better creature than I actually was.

  A creature that I hoped someday would truly be worthy of him.

  “Did you mean all of that?” he asked gruffly.

  Biting the inside of my cheek because being open and honest with my feelings toward another was foreign territory for me, I nodded slowly.

  “Yes, Hades. All of it.”

  “Your heart?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve learned to live without one already, and I’m not sure I relish any more of this long, arduous journey. I just wish to be with you alone, my king. I wish to know you again, know all of you. And learn about our family. Our life together. I do not need a heart to know that I do need you.”

  He traced my cheek with his finger, and I leaned into his touch like a woman starved and desperate, practically purring at the callused feel of his strong touch.

  Hades was a man. I was a woman. His woman.

  My body warmed to think it. I belonged with him, and I was pretty sure that I always had. No matter how much I’d wanted to give into my darkness, I knew that with him by my side, I could overcome anything.

  “I love you. But the journey ended here anyway.”

  I frowned. “What?”

  He laughed. “My beautiful, Thalassa. Your heart was never that far.”

  I blinked, wondering what madness he was getting at. “Then what was this silly journey you took us on? And where is it? I do not sense it.”

  “The journey was to force you to get to know me again. It was an excuse, my reason for being and staying with you. But your beautiful golden heart has always been just under your nose.” He pressed his palm to the flat of his stomach, and my brain seemed suddenly incapable of working.

  I stared at his muscular abdominals and shook my head. “Are you saying that you—”

  “I swallowed them,” he said.

  I laughed, then wrinkled my nose, and then laughed some more. “Oh, that’s terrifyingly diabolical. What would induce you to do such a thing, and… why?”

  He chuckled, twining a rope of my tentacle hair behind my ear. “Did you honestly think I could ever do without with any part of you? Put it out in the great wide world and hope and pray that some idiot didn’t cross paths with it? I would never endanger your life in that way.”

  I pressed my hand to the flat of his stomach and realized that what I’d felt after our lovemaking had indeed been a beating heart. It was that same strange dual beating I’d felt when I’d laid my head on his stomach earlier, but I’d just attributed it to some quirk of the Olympians. A slow smile rolled over my lips.

  “That is both disturbing and brilliant and a whole plethora of other adjectives,” I murmured. “Hades, is this why I like being near you? Is it my heart that makes me so soft toward you?”

  The twinkle in his eyes dimmed, and the smile slowly slipped. “I suppose there is only one way to find out.”

  His hand filled with a curl of that pearly black smoke that was his power, and he grunted only a little as he slid his hand inside of himself and tugged. In an instant, the glittering golden organs were freed—his much larger one and mine, completely fused together, and beating in tandem.

  Heat gathered in my eyes, and a lump formed in my throat as I looked at the beauty that was us. My heart could never have twined so seamlessly, so perfectly, with his if we hadn’t been one whole to begin with.

  With a deft flick of his wrists, he turned the one back into two and handed me my smaller heart.

  I looked into his eyes as he looked into mine. In his, I read eternity and hope and fear. Fear that I would get my heart back and leave him forever.

  I swallowed hard and took my heart from his hand. When it came to me, I felt flooded with warmth, but not just my own. It was his. His joy. His happiness. His love and tenderness.

  Our hearts had been as one for so long that a part of himself had forever imprinted on mine. I turned my hand and shoved the organ deep into my chest and gasped as I felt the warmth of life, of verve, and true indescribable joy flood through me like a roaring wave. And it was a wave, the wave that had been gently pounding away at me all along. I let it flood through me, merging as one with it. Healing. Becoming whole again.

  My lashes fluttered as I drowned in the sensation of memories that I’d always had in me but could find no enjoyment in, memories of home and hearth and love, indescribable, bountiful love that was overflowing and never-ending.

  Through my tears, I looked at my beloved’s face, and realized that the other version of me hadn’t been weak at all. She’d known love. She’d changed completely because of it, and not because Hades had stripped her of autonomy, but because he’d given me the freedom to be wholly and fully myself, loving me exactly for who I was. When the wave was done with me, I felt like a different woman entirely. I was me. I was her. I was something else altogether.

  “Bubble butt,” I whispered, and he gasped, almost dropping to his knees for a second.

  I had to place my arms under his to keep him upright, And I wasn’t the only one crying. His tears were thick and silvery, and he was shaking his head.

  “Who… who are you?” he whispered brokenly.

  I smiled. “I don’t know. But I do remember. And I don’t know how. Only that I love you so much. You never gave up on me, Death Boy. You never gave up on us.” My words came out a reed-thin whisper. “But I’m not the same Calypso that I was. I am her, but I am Thalassa still too. I don’t know how you did it, made us both love you, but somehow, against the very will of nature, I am still dual.” I gasped, smiling through my tears, so confused and yet excited all at the same.

  He trembled furiously as he hugged me tight. “And I never will give up on us. Not ever. You’re mine, Thalassa, Calypso, whoever. You’re all mine.”

  “You may call me Thalassa,” I said softly, “for she is as much me as anything else, and though we have merged, in truth, both are still very much alive in me.” I placed my hands on his shoulders, drawing him closer. “And just so we’re clear, Hades, you are mine, my darkest love. My only love. Forever. For always.”

  He nodded. “Kiss me, Thalassa. Forever. For always. For I know your soul, and that is the greatest treasure any man could ever ask for.”

  So I did kiss him.

  Passionately.

  Ardently.

  Those kisses lead to other, more glorious, more wondrous things. Things that healed me, that reminded me who I’d been, who I still was. It was a week before we finally came up for air again, but when we finally did, he turned to me on that lake bed of glittering waters and murmured, “It is time, my dark jewel.”

  My memories were back, and I knew what he meant.

  So I nodded. “Yes, lover. It is time.”

  Epilogue

  Hades

  Thalassa had her hand on the pillar of water that encased a woman with skin dark as liquid ebony and a face more beautiful than legend. We stood amongst the ruins of a once spectacular castle. I felt another soul hidden in shadow, standing in darkness, watching us. I knew it was Oiwot, the frozen woman’s husband. I had no doubt that, should Thalassa do anything other than heal what she had destroyed in the curse, he would come for her. And if he came for her, it would mean war for us all.

  Oiwot was a native god of his world, and his powers were no small thing. But we’d come in peace, and it was time to fix the mess that was this new world, starting with the woman in glass.

  “Her name is Fable,” I said, my heart squeezing as I looked at her beautiful face. Large eyes so much like her mother’s, skin as dark as the deepest trenches of Thalassa’s waters, and a heart as pure and bright as Apollo’s sun. Seeing her frozen features, I was bombarded by memories of her. Of me. Of us. Remembering how many times I’d held her as a child and rocked her to sleep because she’d been so very precious to me. The millions of books we’d read together, som
e of them more than once because she’d loved them so much. And the times she’d looked me in the eye and had said, in her child-like drawl, “Love you, Papa.”

  I swallowed hard, fingers clutching at my sides. Keeping her trapped as she was had been one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do in my life, but only the person who’d first cursed her could undo the curse. Thalassa hadn’t been in her right mind when she’d done as she’d done. She’d not known anything other than the agony and pain of an elemental’s chaotic memories. And I could see the regret of her actions written all over her.

  Thalassa glanced at me over her shoulder, her dark blue eyes shining with tears. “I know who she is. Who she was. I remember.” She turned back around, tenderly running her fingers over the visage of the woman’s face, forever preserved in a scream. Her voice shivered as she said, “I remember our granddaughter.”

  My heart trembled every time she did that, told me of her memories. All those nights without her now felt like a fading memory, A terrible dream of another time that was no longer ours.

  Without speaking another word, Thalassa whispered one word beneath her breath.

  Release.

  And then she stepped back, clasped her fingers together, and bowed her head. Dressed in a gown of sheer blue, with wave-like curls running down her back, she looked small, fragile, and tortured. But she’d asked me to stand back, and I would honor her wishes.

  My eyes were on Fable alone as the waters that’d perpetually drowned her began to recede, pulled away from her body. Behind us, the shadow stirred, and I heard the sharp inhalation of breath, saw Oiwot began to pull away from the darkness he’d hidden himself in.

  He looked like hell. His eyes were rimmed in red, and his face was haggard and full of a beard that’d never been there before. His matted hair dragged well past his back, almost to his knees. His once-bronze skin was now a pale imitation of that color. I knew the pain of loss only too well and how it turned a man’s pride in on itself, like a cancer, eating away at any sense of shame or humiliation, completely lost to the demon of your mate’s loss.