by Lucas, Naomi
No, he was looking at Cyane, with his sword drawn and pointing straight at her.
The cup fell from her slack fingers.
He was the warrior that pulled her from the depths. He was also the monster who threatened to kill her. Now his sights were on her, as if he’d read her thoughts, heard her words.
The left hand of the God of the Dead. Her stomach fell to pits. The same foreboding aura that surrounded Hades shadowed Cerberus now, and she was afraid of him once more.
Cerberus took a step in her direction.
Run.
Hermes pulled her against his chest, his hands everywhere at once. Cyane tore herself from his arms. The crowd’s laughter grew in volume.
I’m not supposed to be here. Fear choked her.
Run.
But where would she run too?
Cerberus was now striding towards her. The otherworldly power spreading from him sucked the festivities dry. How had she ever thought that he was her savior? Savagery bled from his glowing red eyes.
Run!
Anxiety surged.
Someone pushed her hard toward the grand entryway, and she fled.
An Oath to Styx
The grand foyer was split like a star, each point a different path, while the central path led to the ballroom. She picked a direction at random and ran. The path went on, with only the rocky cavern walls and candles on either side of her.
No doors, no windows, nothing.
Then it occurred to her that there were no sounds of pursuit. She stopped. The only thing she could hear in the hall was her own labored breath.
How far had she even gone? Could she still be seen from the foyer?
She turned around to check—and there was Cerberus, soundlessly stalking her, with his sword drawn. As if they never left the ballroom at all.
Cyane’s throat tightened, and she jerked back around with a yelp, sprinting, pushing her body to the extreme, down the corridor. She didn’t want to die. Regret choked her. Why had she thought that running would help her? She could feel Cerberus’s hot breath against the back of her head, could sense him behind her even without the sounds of pursuit. He was almost upon her.
As she ran, she couldn’t stop imagining the hundred-headed monster with tongues that licked out through the darkness to taste her hot-headed mistake.
Cyane couldn’t stand it anymore. She spun around, threw herself against the wall, and cried out, “Please don’t hurt me!”
Her heart thundered. She didn’t fully understand what she’d done wrong, only that she must’ve done something to anger Cerberus.
Cerberus towered over her. She shrunk away from him, pressing herself flat against the wall, but he caught her by the neck, wrapping his fingers around her throat, pinning her in place. He applied just enough pressure to hold her still without choking her. Jagged edges poked into her back. Her fingers twitched at her sides before she pushed at his chest to keep him at a distance.
“Hermes cannot help you,” Cerberus warned, his voice exacting. “He is loyal to no one but his own hide.”
He had heard her.
How?
The dog. Cyane’s brow furrowed as realization hit.
Cerberus controlled them.
She swallowed against the tightness of his palm as he lifted her back to her feet. The heaviness of his presence made it hard to speak, and part of her wanted to start running again if only to get a moment to find those words. But then she remembered he was more than she would ever be. Powerful. Powerful in a way she could barely comprehend or even begin to understand. She’d never escape him.
She’d been envious of Melinoe, but now that Cyane was back with Cerberus, a monster of myth, she realized she must’ve had some misguided power herself. She’d stolen the attention of the monster.
She hated to admit that she’d wanted to be in Melinoe’s place, especially after being thrown from one frighteningly forceful dance partner to another. The idea of being held by one such as Cerberus had seemed...safe.
Now that he stood before her, with his hand around her throat, she didn’t understand why she felt that way at all. He was anything but safe. Nothing was safe here. This was the realm of the dead, and she feared she was about to join their ranks.
“You’re watching me,” she finally said. She would say anything to break the brutal silence and the wait. “W-why?”
Cerberus released her with a hiss. He sheathed his sword, and the darkness that seemed to be part of him flared, swallowing Cerberus and Cyane in pitch blackness before vanishing in the low light that came from Styx.
She started, and her hands came up to rub her throat. Her eyes flickered over her new surroundings, half expecting to be back in the ballroom where everyone could laugh at her while she was executed. It wasn’t the ballroom though.
We’re back in the gatehouse.
The endless hallway and its thousands of candles were gone. She dropped her hands to her chest and peered, disoriented, out over the dark waters around Hades’s castle. She saw thousands of naked bodies swimming towards the castle right below the surface.
Cyane jerked away from the edge, holding back a scream.
Cerberus crowded her. “You dare ask me why? When you have shown up here unexpectedly, fought against the laws of nature, and contribute to a plot of one of the most powerful gods?” He leaned in close, stealing her air. “The last time Hades brought someone here against their will—”
“Persephone?” she whispered.
“—the world as we know it changed. First, the rape,” Cerberus continued, his voice lowering. “Then came Demeter’s agony and winter was born, a genocide of all life on Gaia, and finally, the prospect of war between Olympus and Tartarus. Do you know what happens when gods war, little mortal?”
She could only imagine.
He leaned in even closer, and what Cyane could glimpse of his face filled her vision.
“The realms unravel,” he whispered dark and low. “Do you feel it?”
At first, she didn’t know what he meant, how could she separate one feeling from all the forces that entrapped her. He was so close, so intimidating, and unlike any man she’d encountered.
The ground trembled.
“What is that?” she breathed. Her feet parted for balance.
“Typhon, the God of Destruction, my father.”
The trembles stopped.
“And he is not alone,” Cerberus said.
Only something enormous could make the world shake like that. Not just a world, but the afterlife. What kind of primordial beast was below her feet? If it could make hell shake, would what it do to Earth?
The gravity of it frightened her.
At least she understood why he’d been watching her. She’d done nothing wrong and had been forced to this place against her will—but to him, she could be a catalyst, a bad omen.
Nah. She was none of that. I’m going to get out of here, forget any of this ever happened, and find my parents. Happy thoughts, happy family. Happy trails to this nightmare. Cyane held in an insane giggle. Those were just dreams. Not long ago, she’d been forced to dance, had envied the sight of Melinoe with Cerberus, and had cared about her appearance. All of it was done without actually considering what the effect of her presence had on everything around her.
She had nowhere else to look but at Cerberus and ingest what he was telling her.
“I never asked for any of this,” she whispered once her shivers stopped. She wanted him to believe it, needed him to believe it. I’m innocent.
“Would you swear on it?”
For the first time since getting on the sailboat, a flicker of hope returned.
“I don’t want to start a war,” she said. “Yes.”
His eyes narrowed, and she caught sight of the edge of his eyebrow.
So human. For having seen only Cerberus’s eyes and his armored physique, it was beginning to alarm her that she didn’t know what he truly looked like. She was beginning to suspect he was handsome, b
ut what if he wasn’t? What if he were ancient and diseased? A skeleton?
An illusion?
“A war will not happen. Not if I can help it,” Cerberus said.
She didn’t want war either. “What can I do to help?”
Cerberus drew back, and she took a much-needed breath of air from the space he’d provided. Cyane hadn’t realized how hard it had become to breathe.
Silence fell between them. He’d stiffened as if her question was a surprise. He thinks the worst of me. He thought she didn’t care, but that wasn’t it at all. She cared. She cared too freaking much. She’d barely accepted this new reality—and that had been quite the feat alone—but Cerberus didn’t seem to realize how different her world was to his.
Perhaps I’ve been too selfish.
His eyes roamed over her. Cyane curled her arms around her middle, hiding from his gaze, diverting her own.
The thrill was back.
It surged through him like stolen lightning the moment he’d sensed Cyane’s desperation to leave in the ballroom, and it had thundered when he’d heard her ask Hermes for help.
Hermes was a trickster, a thief, and a lackey to some of Hades’s most powerful opponents. The winged god’s loyalties were easily swayed, and to think Cyane could’ve slipped from the realm in Hermes’s arms made the primordial beast in Cerberus furious. If she’d escaped with him, war could’ve easily happened.
It’s my job to do Hades’s bidding.
But as he stared down at Cyane, hiding behind her arms, he wasn’t sure if he had chased after her out of duty. He didn’t have a name for the way she made him feel—the thrill was not always the same.
She wouldn’t meet his eyes.
The damnable pounding inside him grew. She wants to help.
To serve.
Hades’s words came back to him. Serve. Hades?
The same feeling he’d discerned as he’d seen her next to Hermes returned to him now.
“You wish to help?” Cerberus asked if only to hear her response.
“I don’t want anyone to die on my behalf.”
It wasn’t the answer he wanted, but he took it all the same.
“Would you swear such a thing to Styx?” Would she dare?
“Like an oath?”
“Yes.”
Cyane licked her lips, and his gaze was drawn to them. It was such a strange thing for him to want to watch.
“I will if you will,” she said.
She dares.
He reached forward and grabbed her wrist, drawing her against his body as he called the darkness. The next moment, they stood on the rocky shores of Styx. Cyane pulled away from him with a shudder, and he grudgingly let her go.
He turned to the black and red waters. The gatehouse he resided in was up and to their left, and Hades’s castle to the right in the center of the beginning of the ocean of blood. Harpies swarmed so high above that they could be mistaken for birds by the human.
Cerberus sensed her hesitation. An oath was no small thing, but an oath to prevent war was not such a hard one to make. He knelt at the water’s edge. “Don’t be scared.”
She gingerly joined him on his right and lowered beside him. “What happens if an oath is broken?”
“Divine punishment.”
“Will you let me leave when this is all done? Will you believe me if I make it?”
He nodded again but didn’t believe she’d have the courage to go through with it. Cerberus had no fear swearing his own convictions to Styx, having made many oaths to the wet goddess over the countless years of his life. Styx was fond of him for protecting her shores and for his adherence to his oaths.
But would Cyane commit a vow that would last her mortal life?
Instead of answering, he bowed his head. “I vow on Styx to protect this realm.” He lowered his face until it was right above the waters. He breathed in its sweet scent.
A red mist rose from the waters and enveloped him, touching him all over before it dissipated into the air.
It took less than a minute for the binding to take place. When he was done, he rose back up.
And in awe, she mimicked his position and bowed over the water.
“I vow on Styx, on you,” she whispered to the water, “to do all in my power to…to do no harm to this place.”
Cerberus watched in shock as she breathed in, and the red mist enveloped her. When it was gone she rose up as well. She tilted her head back, closed her eyes, and inhaled again. She’d not only listened to him.
She trusted him.
Stunned, his hands tensed at his sides, finding he had no idea what to do with them. He wanted to grab hold of her again but didn’t dare. A god would never give an oath so easily. Gods were afraid of their own words. But this human had done what hundreds of divine beings would never do.
He’d always looked down upon humans. They’d always been beneath his notice—the live ones at least. What else would the mortal do if he asked it of her? If he demanded?
How far did her trust actually go?
Was this what Hades saw in her?
Is this what it’s like to be worshipped?
“What happens now?” she asked, peering around nervously.
The thunder in his chest built to a crescendo. He stood slowly and reached his hand out. She took it, and he helped her rise.
The Day of Gifts
Cyane woke feeling like she’d slept for a hundred years. There was no more pain. She wasn’t even hungry—not like she’d thought much about food in the last few days, and when she had, she realized she was neither hungry nor thirsty.
Which was fine since she knew what had happened to Persephone after she ate the pomegranate seeds. If she wasn’t forced to eat in Tartarus, then she damn well wasn’t going to.
She lifted up on her elbows to find Cerberus sitting in his chair, watching her.
She stilled before pulling the covers up to her chest and sitting up.
“You’re back,” she said a little too quickly. This was the second time she’d fallen asleep in the strange man’s room and woken to find him watching her.
After she’d made her oath to Styx the day before, Cerberus had brought her back to the gatehouse before promptly leaving. And when he hadn’t returned, the hours had melded together, and Cyane had succumbed to exhaustion. She hadn’t wanted to sleep here again, but her choice in the matter had been taken away.
Something in Cerberus changed yesterday. Part of her still knew he was the same horrific creature that now plagued her dreams, but she’d ceased to see him as such.
I think I confuse him.
He confuses me.
“Today is the Day of Gifts. You’re to meet with Hades,” he said, scattering her thoughts.
Cyane jumped out of the bed and pulled one of the blankets atop it with her. “Okay.” What more was she supposed to say to that? “You’re still watching me. How long have you been sitting there?”
“Since you fell asleep.”
Her face scrunched up. “I made the vow.”
“You toss and turn when you sleep.”
“And you don’t?”
“I don’t sleep.”
“You have a bed.”
“It’s for you.”
Her heart skipped a beat. She narrowed her eyes and drew her blanket tighter around her. Cerberus lifted his elbows off his knees and crossed one leg over the other, leaning back in his chair. It was such a human thing to do… But humans slept.
“It’s not for me if it was already here,” she said.
“It wasn’t. You fell asleep on my chair on the terrace over Styx the first day. I put it there so you may sleep as the others do.”
“In beds?”
“Yes.”
She didn’t remember whether she saw a bed or not when Cerberus first brought her here. But that seemed no stranger than anything else that had happened. She recalled the terrible headache, and how she’d first been transfixed by the art on his walls and then the overlook.
It was possible. It hurt to recall the memories, and she guessed it was her mind protecting itself by denying that any of this was real.
“Okay,” she said. Truthfully, what other response could she have? Maybe she could okay her way out of everything else. “Wait, I’m meeting Hades?” She questioned if she could okay her way through a meeting with the Lord of the Dead.
“Yes.”
She tried not to let panic overcome her.
She was going to meet Hades. The god.
The same Hades who supposedly orchestrated her fall. The very being she should be demanding to meet so that she could go home.
But who in all the worlds, realms, or other such places that might yet exist, would willingly go before the devil?
Not fucking Cyane.
The thought alone alarmed her, even if the notion of ‘devil’ was skewed in her head.
Hades hadn’t been a blue man with fire for hair like he’d been depicted in the Disney movie. Nor was he the devil from her religious studies, not a pitchfork was in sight. No, from what she glimpsed of the God of Death he was entirely different.
Black, curled hair fell down over his ears, tumbling wisps of shadow that danced around his body, making him appear as a mirage. The life in the room, for as much as it could be described that way, appeared muted, as if the raw power Hades exuded crushed everything around him into subservience. The air itself seemed to bend the knee. A dark smirk painted his lips as he lazily scanned the crowd, perched like a tiger surveying his domain. A note of fear coursed through her as if someone had thrummed a primal chord on her heartstrings. Dark eyes found her and paused before resuming their lazy perusal.
Cyane’s mouth fell open.
Cerberus glanced around the room as if he had realized something, completely unaware of her growing panic. “What other things do mortals need?”
Cyane pursed her lips to blurt out Space! Being as far away from the God of Death as possible! But instead, she remained quiet, shaking the image of Hades from her head.
Cerberus spent more time with Hades than anyone else, even Persephone if the myths were to be believed.
