The Mad King

by Jovee Winters

  I bit my bottom lip. I knew it was reaching to think that maybe some part of him remembered his previous world. His happy ending.

  But I was desperate. If maybe, just maybe, a tiny part of the real Hades was buried down deep inside him, there might be a way to reach him. To make him do the impossible.

  I just needed to gently remind him that there was more to life than death, than pain, than torture, than suffering.

  “I know you do not know me well, great Lord of the Underworld,” I began, clutching my fingers tight before me as though in prayerful supplication, “but I would have you know that I would be your truest and greatest ally if you would only let me.”

  His face instantly transformed from cold displeasure to scornful fury. “You mock me!” he hissed.

  I frowned. “Of course not.”

  Terrible laughter echoed through the great hall. “Do you believe me a fool, Aphrodite? Spoiled daughter of Zeus.” His nose curled with disgust. “Think to come and make sport of me? To bed me, perhaps? Always a game to you, is it not?”

  The heat of his eyes as he raked them boldly down my form made me want to cry. My throat clogged with tears.

  Just who did he think I was?

  But no sooner had I asked myself that question than I knew the answer. My stories were mostly true. My seductions. Bed sports. My vanity was legendary. But for the past many centuries, I’d worked hard at changing my selfishness. I’d become someone others trusted. Loved even.

  Maybe in this world, Aphrodite was still all those things to be hated and reviled. But I knew who I’d once been, and I would stop at nothing until the rest of the world saw me for who I really was.

  True.

  Yes, I loved sex. Love. And romance. But I was so much more than that.

  Shaking my head, I glared at him. “Think what you want, Uncle. But know this, my words are true. And so is my heart. The underworld is melancholy, and I feel the tremors, the cold sting of death, even in my palace above the clouds. I wish to help you, but only if you let me.”

  His nostrils flared as his fingers dug into his armrest. The silver-clawed gloves he wore carved grooves into the heads. “Why?”

  I swallowed hard. The question had been demanding, but not so much angry as confused.

  “Why do you care how I suffer? You never have before.”

  I closed my eyes. Dear Zeus, if he only knew the truth. I’d grown to love Hades deeply. Cared for his welfare even above my own. But apparently the Aphrodite of this world cared naught for the plight of others.

  Knowing I couldn’t tell him the truth just yet, I opted to give him an abridged version of it. “Let’s just say I understand you.”

  He snorted. “Understand me. You, with all your fripperies and finery? Your bevy of nude males adorning your bed while your pathetic mate hammers away at his forge day and night, turning a blind eye to your thousands of—”

  “Stop it,” I cried with a strangled gasp. “Just stop it. You know nothing of me, Hades. You never have.”

  He turned his face to the side, and I watched as a thick muscle twitched in his jaw several times. The silence stretching between us to the point that it grew tense and uncomfortable.

  I shouldn’t have come.

  But what else was I to do?

  Hades had once told me that the journey of a thousand miles began with the first step. He’d been so right.

  A deep thinker, he was.

  It was why he’d never grown attached to any of us in Olympus. He’d always been so much better than us.

  I blinked. Was it possible that the anger he wore now was still only a shield? Was it possible that maybe, buried beneath the spiny prickles, was the same soulful, caring man?

  “You did not deserve my words,” he murmured thickly, pulling me away from my newfound epiphany. “It was wrong of me.” He didn’t look at me.

  Yes! He was still in there. Hope bloomed like a sunburst inside me. Breath hitching a little, I nodded. “You’re right. I didn’t. Open your eyes, Uncle. Can you not see how very similar you and I are?”

  Finally he did turn to look at me, confusion etched tight upon his brow and bracketing small lines around his mouth.

  “How can you say so? I sit alone in this palace. Never visited. Never known. Missed by none. All the worlds worship you.”

  I shook my head. “Who cares?”

  “What?” He sounded genuinely confused.

  I shrugged. “I don’t care a whit for the worship of others. All I want, all I know, is that it is far greater to have a few know and love me, and me them, than to have the idle worship of billions who know me not at all.”

  “Who are you? You are not the Aphrodite I know.”

  I grinned, then sniffed delicately and gave a slight shake of my head. “Just a woman who wants to make things right.”

  “What things?” He leaned forward, the hand that’d been caressing the sword on his lap stilling as though he listened to me with every single molecule of his being.

  I wet my lips. “I have a friend. Two of them really. They’ve been torn apart.”

  “Ah.” His dark eyes lit and he snorted. “Of course. Let me guess. One has died, and you want me to get that soul for you.” Leaning back on his throne, he curled his lip disdainfully. “You tricked me for just a moment, more fool I.”

  Irritated that he’d so quickly think poorly of me, I stomped my foot. “For just one second, get your head of your ass and listen to me, you pompous, arrogant—”

  His lips twitching with dark amusement made me pause. I’d expected an inferno of fury to rage at me, not to see him chuckle.

  “There you are, little goddess. Telling me of being changed...” He laughed. “Do please continue prattling on and telling me how very horrid I am.” He gestured lazily with a flick of his wrist as he leaned heavily back against his throne.

  Clamping my lips shut, I sucked in a sharp breath. I would not lose my head. Not now. I’d been given an audience with him, and I had a suspicion that should I leave now, I’d not be granted this opportunity again.

  “You think you have everyone pegged, Death. But you don’t.”

  He nodded as if in agreement, but his eyes sparkled with arrogance. I pressed on anyway. If I was going to be cast out of his presence, he was going to know why I’d come.

  “I am no whore. I love. Deeply. And there are two I love more than any other in all the worlds, and they’ve been torn apart. Death didn’t separate them, but a curse. A curse neither one remembers. And the worlds tremble from the loss of them. Their children mourn. Ripped apart. Many of them vanished into the ether. One of them drowned eternally if she’d not been frozen in form by a fairy with a kind heart.”

  He snorted. “Sounds wonderful.”

  “You damned ignorant ass. You want to know who my friends are. You. You and Calypso—the greatest love of your life.”

  His eyes widened and he went completely still and for just a second. A second in which I dared to hope. My breath caught and I leaned forward, searching his face for any sliver of remembrance.

  But then his head tipped back, and a giant peal of booming laughter echoed like the ghostly wails of death all around me.

  “Right. You’re hilarious, goddess. Whatever you say.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m telling the truth. And if you want any chance of getting her back, ever, you’ll do as I say right now. There is a spirit from Earth that’s passed away just this morning. Her name is Alice Hu. She is mate to the Hatter of Kingdom.”

  “And I care why? Let her go to the afterlife she’s destined to.”

  Taking a step forward, I shook my fist at him. “You want to save yourself, want to find your own happiness? Then save her.”

  He continued to chuckle. “Whatever you say, little goddess. Thank you for this most entertaining—”

  I shook my head. “The Fates told me this, Hades. You may think me an airhead, and that is your right.”

  Instantly his humor vanished and his shoulde
rs stiffened and a whispered “What?” escaped him.

  “But you know them. Know they do not lie. Save that girl and maybe you might just save your pathetic excuse for a miserable life!”

  I didn’t hang around to witness him mock me again. I vanished, fleeing back to my palace with tears shimmering in my eyes. Fury. Shame. Humiliation. It all warred within me. I’d lied to him. The Fates had told me nothing, but I’d known that if I told him it’d been a fairy from another land who’d sent me to him, he’d never listen to me.

  Collapsing onto my bed of dazzling lights, I stared with unseeing eyes at the golden walls and choked on my tears. I’d blown it.

  My horrible temper had gotten the better of me, and I’d lost my loves forever.

  Chapter 7

  Hades

  I’d tried to go on about my business.

  Which, admittedly, wasn’t much at present.

  All around me raged snow and ice. But I didn’t shiver, because I’d been cold for so long now that I hardly felt it at all.

  I didn’t move from my throne, just stared at the room I’d kept myself shut in for the past century.

  In all that time, no god had come to me. Not Persephone. Demeter. Zeus. No one. And the very last goddess I’d ever expected to come to me here would have been the vain and silly Aphrodite.

  I frowned, tapping my fingers on my armrest in agitation.

  Why had she come?

  But more important than that, why did I now get the distinct impression she’d meant every word she’d said?

  Had I judged her too harshly?

  Just yesterday I would have said no. But today, witnessing the way her shoulders had drooped, the way she’d practically withered before me when I’d told her what I really thought of her... I realized that maybe I’d lost complete touch with reality.

  Surrounded by my dead, but interacting with none. I was alone.

  And I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t been, even when Persephone used to make her presence felt.

  Mulling over those thoughts, my mind inevitably took a turn toward Calypso. I blinked, shaking my head as I tried to imagine that in any reality Calypso had ever been mine.

  It wasn’t possible.

  She was nothing but water. She mingled with none, was said to have the most violent of tempers and was a virgin elemental.

  Aphrodite must have lied.

  And yet... And yet she said the Fates had told her truth.

  It couldn’t possibly be possible. Not even remotely likely. Death and water. I snorted.

  Death and life. Perhaps. Maybe I could understand it a little. It was why Persephone and I were tied together in myths. Though we loathed the very sight of each other now, I could reason why the mortals had deceived themselves into believing the story’s veracity.

  But what was Calypso to me?

  Absolutely nothing.

  A terrible grating sound echoed through my chambers, and it was only when I glanced down that I noted I’d shoved my fist through an ebony skull, cracking my throne down the right side.

  I didn’t want to believe any of this. I was meant to be alone. Always. Forever. It was my lot in life.

  And yet... And yet...

  Sighing, I did something reckless. I acted without thinking.

  Standing for the first time in over a year, I called the darkness to me. The endless funnel of death that twisted and whirled with the souls of millions headed toward their own version of the afterlife, and I reached a heavy hand inside.

  The dead crowded me, pleading with me to take them to Elysium, to not let them fade off into the darkness pulling at them. But I cared not a whit for any of them. There was only one I’d come for today.

  I called forth the one soul Aphrodite had promised me would change my own lot in this damned existence I called life. “Come to me, Alice Hu. I know you’re here,” I crooned, wiggling my fingers like bait toward her.

  And then I sensed her.

  Swirling madness and beauty. Fragmented memories of a woman split in two. I frowned. One woman was of this time. Normal. Mundane. Nothing all that interesting. But there was a wisp of a memory that coiled tight to her soul. And I caught a glimpse of that memory, of a woman dressed in gothic gowns with exotic face paint and a ready smile. And all around her bloomed strange and wonderful creations that brimmed over with magic.

  But the image didn’t last long. It was as fleeting as a flake of snow upon sun-warmed lands. Not sure whether I’d seen what I’d thought I’d seen, I dismissed the image as a mere quirk of mucking around too long in the darkness of lost souls.

  “Take my hand,” I commanded the fragile spirit.

  She did not say a word, but I felt the coolness of her touch press against my own. Were any mortal to touch me, they’d perish in an instant, but the dead were immune to my sting. I yanked her through the portal of darkness, and the blur of blue light took form before me.

  Confused me all over again. Because this woman looked just like the one I’d glimpsed in the all-too-brief image of before. How could two separate memories of the same woman exist?

  It wasn’t possible.

  Mortals lived only one life. But her spirit reflected a duality that I’d never witnessed in another before. She’d been here, but she’d once been there also.

  But where was there?

  I studied her, lost to my own deep contemplations. And having the patience of the dead, she stood there quietly and let me. This Alice confused me mightily.

  She was not dressed in the gothic attire, and there was no smile upon her face. But her beauty was the same. Almond-shaped eyes with liquid brown irises that seemed like warmed chocolate. A small, heart-shaped face framed by a silky fall of ebony hair. And at the center of her forehead was a prominent widow’s peak. She was dressed in death as she’d last been in life—in a hospital gown—and I would have known, even had I not been who I was, that Alice had died a tragic death.

  No more tragic than many others, but still, disease had ravaged her body. Though death returned you to your purest and most perfect form, I recognized the stench of cancer upon her.

  When I allowed a dead into my Elysian fields, whatever form of death had taken them would be mine to bear. It was why my body was covered in scars. But when a soul came to me like hers did, there was nothing left for me to take. Because the sickness had taken it all from them.

  Why was Aphrodite so sure this frail-looking spirit could do anything for me? What was so special about this human?

  No sooner had I thought it than I recalled the brief glimpse of magic I’d seen from the different reality. Was it possible Aphrodite had spoken truth then?

  Had Calypso and I truly been something in an alternate life? And if so, why did I not know it anymore?

  I’d never before seen a spirit like Alice’s. There were two very distinct and separate life threads coiled up within her. What the bloody hell was this?

  A crystalline tear rolled down her honey-colored flesh, and it jerked me from my musings. I did not greet her. Did not even speak with her. I simply whispered a command for her to go to the fields of Elysium.

  Her glowing blue form moved on without looking back at me once. Tears dripped steadily down both her cheeks as she floated away.

  And for the first time in a long time, I began to wonder. Wonder at her tale. At her story. Who she’d been in this life and the one before it.

  Alice Hu was gone, and I was once again alone with my thoughts and solitude.

  I did not want to believe Aphrodite, and yet I could not seem to forget the haunting sadness that crushed Alice’s small spirit to the point that I still tasted the tangy breadth and weight of her agony.

  ~*~

  Hatter

  “Why can I not go to her!” I growled, glaring hotly at both Danika and Galeta as they sat down to my table for a spot of tea and crumpets. “We sit here, doing nothing. Day in and day out, and you both just—”

  Danika frowned, curling her fingers around her deli
cate bone china teacup. But Galeta shoved to her feet, staring fixedly at me.

  “There is nothing we can do right now, Hatter. Not until, or even unless, Hades decides to allow you entrance into his realm. Only the dead may pass through.”

  Stopping my pacing, I bit out, “Then kill me.”

  Danika gasped, hands shaking so violently tea slopped over the rim of her cup.

  I curled my nose. “I don’t bloody care. But I need to go to her. I need—”

  “You know that’s not how this works. Hades saved her because he opted to. But there is nothing saying he’d do the same for you. You and she are not of his world, and your soul... Only the Creator knows where you’d wind up. No. We wait. You wait.” Galeta’s words were sharp and snappy, and I glowered at her.

  My days were getting harder, but the nights were the worst for me. In the week since learning of Alice’s fate, I’d been plagued with nightmares, continued memories of a life together I hardly remembered at all except in the deepest recesses of my subconscious.

  Desperation clawed at me, made me reckless and impatient and foolish. Aphrodite had come to us days ago with astonishment and hope brimming in her ice-blue eyes; Hades had saved Alice after all. Tears had even fallen down her cheeks, but I suspected those tears had nothing to do with Alice or me.

  Either way, it didn’t matter. All that did was that Alice was safe. For now.

  Her obvious shock at that revelation had shaken me to my core. Rather than being relieved by it though, I’d grown frantic instead. What if the Lord of the Underworld changed his mind and decided to send her back? What if he never allowed me to go to her? What if—

  “You’ve gone a lifetime without her, Hatter,” Danika’s gentle voice cajoled. “We’re so very close now. Surely you can wait a few more days?”

  Stopping my pacing, I shook my head, not even sure what the words on my tongue were at the moment. All I knew was I felt myself sinking into a quagmire of depression the likes of which I’d never known.

  Half the time my thoughts were scattered, like dandelion fluff blowing in the winds. Incoherent and nonsensical. And though my dreams revealed to me the man I once was, I knew what I felt now, and it was nothing like the madness that’d afflicted me in the other life.