Summer Queen

by Amelia Wilde

  Then the moment is ended with a yank from the officers and Zeus walks with them, no resistance, head held high. He’s still the consummate host of the party. It takes a long time—too long—to focus back on Hades. He draws nearer and nearer and finally he blocks out the light from the ceiling.

  He crouches down in front of me, if you can call it that. It’s as elegant a movement as I’ve ever seen a person make. There’s almost no blue left in his eyes. He looks so strange and different here. Too powerful for the room around him. Too lethal. Over his shoulder I watch three separate officers change their minds about coming to talk to me.

  Hades puts a huge hand on my knee. I feel like I’ve reached out and grabbed the only solid thing in a storm. The high winds stop tearing through the room, leaving it still. A dangerous energy arcs between us, as tangible as electricity. Whatever has happened here tilted the world on its axis. I just don’t know how much yet. Maybe I’ll never know.

  “Did he touch you?”

  The question drops from Hades lips like he’s asking about the weather, or if I prefer chocolate or vanilla. The hairs on the back of my neck pull straight. I’m an ancient emperor at the coliseum, giving out a death sentence. Or a life sentence. The lie is so tempting. If I tell it now, then Hades will kill Zeus, never mind the police and the other people. I can see it in his eyes. There would be consequences to that, though—consequences I can’t see, no matter how long I look. I don’t know how the board is set. I don’t even know all the pieces of the game. I don’t know anything. When Zeus called me little Persephone he was right.

  “No.”

  Hades shoulders relax a fraction of an inch. He does not let relief show in his face. Maybe he doesn’t feel it. Maybe there’s no relief to be had when you’re in a war. And he is, isn’t he? Zeus has started one. Or—or—they’ve been locked in battle for years. I didn’t know. I just didn’t know.

  It’s the police who circle now, held at bay by Hades. He hasn’t said a word to any of them, and he doesn’t now as he bends down to pick me up in his arms. He’s solid rock, untouched by the wind, and I can’t help myself. I put my arms around his neck and hold tight. He says nothing but his heart beats hard and fast.

  9

  Hades

  The eyes of Zeus’s private security never leave me. I can feel them burning into my skin on the way out of his whorehouse. It’s surprisingly nice, given what an obnoxious fool he is. Not to my taste, of course, but not altogether disgusting. This is a mistake. He was so casual when he said it. Smiling. That motherfucker. He only has himself to blame for what I’ve done tonight.

  I’m surprised they don’t shoot me. It would be easy enough to do it now, when half the city’s police force is in here arresting prostitutes and clients. Easy enough to blame one of the trigger-happy cops. But they don’t. They’re likely in shock. What I’ve done is shocking, if only to our fucked-up little family.

  There are certain lines we don’t cross. The most important one is that we do not interfere with each other’s business. Zeus only skims off Demeter’s products in the agreed-upon amount. I keep his company on my payroll, a fiction of numbers and spreadsheets. And Demeter makes the things we need and sells the rest.

  All of that is rubble now. It must be. Unless I can get Demeter to understand, which is unlikely. Her fields still burn, the smoke rising in thick curls to the sky. She has to stop or she’ll kill us all.

  It’s also possible that I’ve killed us all.

  For love? I don’t know if I’d call it that. It’s baser than that. More animal. Persephone belongs to me, and Zeus took her.

  Light batters my eyes on the way out of Zeus’s building.

  “Where are we going?” Persephone whispers against my neck.

  “Home.”

  She relaxes. Where else did she think we’d go? I’m going to close the doors to the mountain and bar them for good. I’ll send a courier to meet Demeter. I’ll figure it all out later, when my heart stops racing like a runaway horse.

  The upset I’ve caused in Zeus’s place has spilled out onto the sidewalk. Some of his whores cry and argue with the police. A few of them are walking away as fast as they can in high heels. I don’t care. Persephone—her warm, alive, untouched body—is the only thing that matters to me right now.

  A car waits at the curb. As a rule, I don’t drive. These were special circumstances. I pass by five additional officers running into the building, open the passenger door, and drop her inside. Persephone rests her head against the window. Pressure mounts at the back of my neck. We need to get the fuck out of here before Zeus’s people get themselves together.

  The steering wheel feels unfamiliar in my hands and the streetlights are knives boring into my brain. No time to dwell on it. I yank the seatbelt over Persephone and click it into place, then head for the train platform.

  It’s making an extra stop tonight. Fuck getting on with anyone else.

  We abandon the car at my private platform. On the way to the train—it’s coming, I can hear it—Persephone blinks and stirs against me.

  The scent of her, hidden underneath a perfumed soap that’s wrong, so fucking wrong, has set my heart back into rhythm. And it’s a dangerous one. It knows no boundaries. It’s wild with life and pain and anger, things I spend my life trying to keep at bay and fucking failing.

  The train rolls to a stop, hissing, clanking. The moment we’re inside it jerks back into motion.

  Thank fuck. The lights in here are ones I can tolerate. It’s too late by now to ease the worst of the pain but I don’t fucking care. I put Persephone on the sofa and her head lolls back. But then she blinks, seeming to wake, her huge gaze focusing on me. He’s dressed her up like one of his whores—dark lipstick, smoky eyes, all the things meant to attract the kind of men Zeus wants favors from. I’ve ruined his plan.

  “He put something in my drink,” she whispers. That confused, lost look should soften me. It has the opposite effect.

  I thread my fingers through her hair—someone’s changed it, straightened it—and pull her head back. If Zeus has done anything, it’ll be on the slim line of her throat. One glance tells me there’s nothing. It’s her eyes I’m concerned with.

  And yes, Zeus has put something into her drink. Persephone’s pupils are wide and black, almost like mine. I shouldn’t touch her. I should tuck her into bed and let her sleep it off.

  No fucking way.

  Her pulse beats at the side of her neck, breaths shallow from between parted lips. She’s already arched her back for me. As far as I can see, she’s all right.

  It’s not enough.

  I stand her up, brace her hands on my shoulders, and rip the dress away from her. My skin is on fire. My heart’s not beating, or it’s beating so hard I can’t contain it. I need to fucking know. I am not a man who needs. Who gives in to desires. For her, I am. This is a mistake, Zeus said. It wasn’t a fucking mistake. It was an escalation.

  A killing rage blends with animal desire in a mix so potent it almost carries off the driving pain in my head. My father tried to stamp these things out of me. I tried to follow his lead. I didn’t try hard enough. These feelings take the form of Persephone, a living woman, here in my car.

  She’s wearing lace underthings I’ve never seen and the hot spike of jealousy that roars through me at the sight of them touching her skin is enough to melt the train to the tracks. Persephone gasps when the panties come apart in my hands, then the bra—shredded, nothing. And then I put my hand around her neck where it belongs.

  Need overwhelms. Overruns. I tip her head back and inspect her. Jaw. Neck. Breasts. Her nipples peak, hard and wanting. If there’s so much as a scratch on her I will turn this train around, find Zeus in his jail cell, and crush the life out of him. My hands ache. She smells so fucking pure, so innocent, and she is not. I have fucked her, I have made her mine, and another man tried to take that from me.

  It’s searing hatred and equally searing relief that drives me on. I haul her off
her feet, pull her to the desk, force her open. I need to see every inch of her. I need to feel it, too. I shove three fingers inside of her, my hand still around her neck, and find her wet. Wanting. I stretch her, punish her, look into those big, black eyes and let her see me.

  “You signed a contract,” I growl into her mouth. “That contract does not include wandering off in the middle of the night.” I pull my fingers out and deliver a sharp twist to each of her nipples. She whimpers, cries. I can feel the vibration through the palm of my hand. It’s mine now, that sound.

  I open her wider, lean her back, expose her. Humiliate her. It’s too wide, there’s no way she can hold this position, but she will. For this, I need the light. It’s a rare fucking occasion. She sucks in a breath. One silvery tear falls to the desk. Yes. Fuck. Yes.

  She can’t hide from me. With her legs like this, pinned, I see everything.

  Everything.

  Persephone squirms in my grasp. She must realize it too. But she doesn’t try to cover herself. She knows better than that. I bite back the urge to praise her for it.

  This time, when I lick her, she lets out a wail that’s pure embarrassment, mortification. I do it again, and again. She tries to stop me using only the force of her muscles. It’s laughably impossible. I will never let her close herself to me. I won’t fucking do it. I will lick her in this place until she has no choice but to submit to the fact that I own her.

  “Not there,” she begs. “Not there, please, you can’t—”

  I lift my head from her, an act of supreme self-control, and put two fingers where she doesn’t want me to go. Persephone writhes, trying to get away, and it is the sweetest torture I’ve ever known. She’s still begging when I push those fingers inside.

  She’s tight, here. So unbelievably tight. Her begging cuts off into a series of small, pained gasps that have me straining against my own pants. I’ll die if I don’t fuck her soon.

  “Wander off again, and there will be worse punishments than this.”

  Persephone tenses, mouth open, shadows falling around her face. “Your fingers are too big.”

  “You’ll take them. You deserve them.” Something cracks inside of me and anguish pours out, acrid and cold. “Do you know what you did to me?” I pull my fingers out, bend over her, and kiss her. It’s savage enough to draw blood. More pain, deeper pain. I need her to feel it too. She will, and she’ll finally fucking understand. “Do you know?”

  She couldn’t possibly know the depth of what she’s done. She couldn’t, because there’s no way for me to tell her. There’s no fucking way to describe the sensation of having your heart ripped out by two small, delicate hands. Admitting it is an arrow between my ribs and a knife in the back. There is nothing more terrible and wounding, but I can’t be wounded. I will never allow myself to be wounded.

  Except here. Except now.

  “Yes,” she sobs, her tears glittering in the dim light. “Yes—”

  I undo my pants with one hand and shove inside her. I’m half-gone. Merciless. Animal. Whether it’s punishment or pleasure makes no difference. Those distinctions are for people, and I am nothing but a raw nerve. She’s so fucking perfect, panting and arching and crying. Persephone grips the sides of the desk, trying to stay on. The world narrows until the only thing remaining is her, and the way I’m fucking her, vicious and hard. Like she’s property. Like she belongs to me. Because she does. I’m the only man in the world who gets to fuck her until she cries. And I’ve never loved anything so much in my life.

  10

  Persephone

  For most of my life, I thought that knowledge would make me feel better. Safer. I tried to get it wherever I could, which wasn’t easy. My mother didn’t want me to have it. And now I know why.

  I don’t feel safer.

  The world seems enormous, sprawling, dangerous. It seems sharp as it goes by outside the train window and Hades works at his desk. There’s so much I didn’t know, and everywhere I turn another web is waiting to catch me. In all my plans for escape, I didn’t factor in new facts about my mother. Are they even real? They must be. Why would Zeus lie about that? He said those things like they were true. Like he hadn’t even considered lying.

  I’m parched for more information, the way I’ve been dying to go and stand by those lions for as long as I’ve known they existed. It comes with a cost, though, doesn’t it? Going to that library isn’t free. Knowing things isn’t free.

  Secrets glitter in the shadows all around us, never quite showing themselves. They’ve been there all along. Of course they have. It’s only now that the curtain’s been ripped away.

  I was so naive.

  Hades didn’t appear from nowhere as a full-grown man with cruelty in his hands and pain in his eyes. There was a life. A life. A family. He had one, too. It made him who he is, but I’ve been imagining him as a dark gash in the middle of the world, independent of everything else. I’ve been imagining him as the one-dimensional evil that my mother whispered into my ear. She was a liar, too.

  My mind struggles to untangle all those lies—all those omissions—all the way back to the mountain. All the way through the soaring rotunda. All the way back to Hades’ private wing. I pad along next to him, barefoot and wrapped in a thick blanket from his train car. At the door to the guest suite I turn without thinking.

  His hand comes down hard on my shoulder. “No.”

  It startles me out of the half-dream I’ve been having. It’s very late, or very early, and time seems unstuck from its usual pattern. I blink up at him. “Why?”

  “You’ll never sleep there again. Walk, or I’ll carry you.”

  He clips off the words, his impatience stinging my skin. Bone-tired. This is what bone-tired means. But when he tugs me toward the double doors at the end of the hall the urge to sleep falls away.

  He has never, not once, taken me past those double doors. My teeth chatter gently against one another with the adrenaline rush. I try to tell myself that it’s only a bedroom. I fail because it’s not. It’s not. It’s more important than that. I can’t express why, not exactly, but when he opens the door and goes through, I hesitate.

  I hold my breath.

  Hades has done unspeakable things to me. Things I could never talk about in the light of day. For all he’s made me show him, he’s never shown me anything. And if I see...

  If I see it, there’s no going back.

  I draw the blanket tighter around my shoulders. The truth is that I want him, and I’m not supposed to. If I close my eyes to what he really is, then at least I can pretend I’m not falling for a monster. That part of me isn’t hungry for the cruel things he does. Hungry and wet, even now...

  Hades comes back into the hallway, puts a hand on my elbow, and drags me inside. I hear echoes of my own screams from the first day I was here—I belong to you, I belong to you—and press my lips tight to keep them from coming out all over again.

  He starts to drag me across a sitting room. Of course it’s not just a bedroom, of course—

  A shout from the hallway stops my heart and the door bursts open again behind us. Hades’ grip hardens on my arm and he shoves me behind him. How did they get here? How could they follow us so quickly? I don’t want to go back, please don’t make me go back—

  “I’m sorry,” someone calls, and I get up the courage to look out from behind Hades. The man who apologized holds the doorframe to keep himself steady while he holds Conor’s collar. Conor, who clearly should be sedated in an animal hospital, struggles against the man. Conor, who’s alive. He’s alive. Bandaged, wounded, but alive. I let out a breath. If he’d died trying to save me, I—I don’t know what I would do. “They couldn’t keep him in the clinic when the train arrived. I—” He curses, and Conor breaks free from his hand, his nails clicking on the marble tiles.

  The dog I thought was a vicious killer comes to us as fast as he can and pushes his nose into the palm of Hades’ hand. I tumble to my knees and put my arms around Conor’s ne
ck. His body shakes with every wag of his tail and tears sting the corners of my eyes. He tried to save me. He knew that something was wrong with Decker, and he tried to save me. I’m the only one close enough to see the tentative way Hades touches Conor’s head, stroking so lightly between his ears.

  A heavy silence passes between the two men, so heavy that it gets my attention. The other man is red-haired and stocky with a scar running down most of his face. He sticks his hands into his pockets, the fabric rough like workmen’s clothes, and looks across at Hades with a frankness that surprises me. They know each other. He probably knows Hades better than I do. Is it fear or jealousy that shivers down the back of my neck? I don’t know.

  Conor licks the side of my face and nuzzles into my shoulder. He’s a huge dog—big enough to look normal standing next to Hades—and his affection pushes me off-balance. It gives me something to concentrate on other than the breathless tension in the room and the scar on Oliver’s face.

  “Persephone, this is Oliver Callahan, my head of security. Oliver, this is Persephone.” Somehow, Conor manages to lean into Hades’ leg and my body at the same time.

  Oliver pulls a hand out of his pocket and gives me a small wave. “Pleasure to meet you.”

  ”My—my pleasure, too.” Good. This is going very well.

  “You’ll see him around my rooms,” Hades continues. “If I’m not here, he’ll deliver my messages.”

  Why wouldn’t you be here? “Okay.”

  Hades straightens, shifts, and Oliver is his mirror. “Keep everyone out. You know what to do.”

  “Of course.” Oliver disappears through the double doors at a quick pace. Far in the distance I can hear other doors closing. If this were any other time, I’d be terrified of a man who looked like Oliver. The only reason I’m not is because I’m here with Hades. Right—we were about to go into his private space. There will be no more hiding from the truth of him.