CHAPTER 22
No.
Such a small, simple word, but it cut Esher deeply, and the control he had over his rage snapped, the violence twisting with the darkness inside him as he gave himself over to the hunger rising swiftly within him. His claws lengthened, echoing his father’s armour, and he felt his eyes change, the red emerging in them as he stared him down.
Around him, the river boiled, the surface churning in response to his rage, tipped with grey crests and beginning to foam.
Esher stepped towards Hades and roared as all the pain, the trauma of losing Aiko and the agony born of the thought he might never see her again, twisted tighter inside him, pushing him closer to the edge.
“Don’t you dare deny me!”
His father remained relaxed, cold and calm in the face of Esher’s fury, completely unaffected by it.
Esher threw his arms out at his sides and dragged them forwards, gathering the entire river and hurling it as a wall of black at his father, his heart slamming hard against his bruised ribs as he bellowed and his muscles strained, his entire body quaking as he put all of his strength into the attack.
The water dropped to the ground before it reached him, revealing Hades where he stood with one hand outstretched.
Esher snarled as the dark water rolled back into the riverbed, obeying his father.
He should have known he wouldn’t be strong enough.
Calm swept through him in the wake of that thought, washing it away, and he stared at Hades, into the bastard’s cold eyes and let it flow over him.
He was strong enough.
He had just forgotten how strong he really was, and it was his father’s fault.
He reached for the black bracelet on his right wrist, and Hades reacted at last, his eyes narrowing on what he was doing, a warning ringing in them.
Esher didn’t care.
He snapped the band and power flowed into him, surged through him and rocked him forwards, lighting him up like the strongest drug. He growled as strength poured into his muscles, his bones, his very soul. It had been too fucking long since he had felt the true depth of his power, had put up with it being limited in order to protect the mortal world, but no more.
His father would give Aiko back.
Even if he had to kill him to make it happen.
He snarled through his fangs and whipped his hands forwards again, sending two spiralling funnels of water at Hades.
His father deflected the first one with a wave of his hand, and grunted as the second hit him, sending him slamming into one of the black marble columns to the left of Esher. It fractured under the blow and Esher kept pummelling him with water, hurling thick streams of it at him until the column shattered, collapsing on top of Hades.
The water splashed to the ground as Esher severed control over it.
He breathed hard, staggered back a step as the exertion hit him and barely maintained his footing. He had forgotten the toll his power took on him, but he wouldn’t let it hold him back.
His father would give Aiko back.
The broken column rolled towards him and Hades pushed onto his feet, his crimson eyes sliding to lock with his.
He mustered his strength and faced his father, growled and focused on the river, calling it to him. It rose as a wall around them, towering higher than the plateau above them on which the main palace stood. He raised his hand, felt the strength of it surging through him, power that he would bring down on his father’s head, would condense into a prison that would force Hades to agree to his terms.
Or drown.
He dropped his hand.
The water crashed down.
Hit an invisible dome and slid harmlessly over it to land back in the riverbed.
He snarled at his father.
He needed to be stronger, hit harder. He needed to make his father give in. He needed Aiko back. Pain shot through him at that thought, bringing tears to his eyes as his heart fractured. He needed her. Gods, he needed her. His father had to see that. His father would see that.
He would make him see it.
That thought drummed in his head and his heart as he gathered his strength again, his body shaking from the exertion of commanding water that was under his father’s control. Water that he would never be able to use to convince Hades to return her, because his father was stronger than he was and would always win.
He was being weak.
Water wasn’t his strongest weapon.
He was allowing fear of truly harming his father to hold him back.
But if he was weak, if he allowed fear to restrain him, Aiko would be lost to him forever.
The only way to bring her back was to make his father submit.
Was to defeat him.
Esher narrowed his eyes on Hades, focused on his pain and the agony ripping him apart inside, and his need to see Aiko again, to have her back in his arms. He would do anything for her. Even this.
He had to defeat him.
His father’s crimson eyes narrowed.
He had to do it. His father had left him no choice. He couldn’t command the rivers, but he could command another liquid, one Hades had no power over.
He closed his eyes and focused through the rage burning inside him, let it stoke his strength and crush the part of him that whispered not to do it, that there was no going back if he did such an atrocious thing, that Aiko wouldn’t want him to do this.
He had to do it.
He focused on his father.
On the blood in his veins.
And shut out the regret.
Because this was the only way to bring Aiko back.
He would destroy the world for her.
His world.
He flicked his eyes open. Narrowed them on his father. Focused his power.
Hades grimaced and lifted his hand, visibly struggling as Esher began to seize command of his blood. His father curled his clawed fingers as if grasping something.
Esher’s throat closed.
His focus shattered as fire banded around his neck, burned him as he wheezed and fought for air, his windpipe blazing as it compressed.
He fell to his knees on the wet floor and clawed at the invisible hand on his throat, cutting his own flesh as he desperately tried to breathe. Tears burned his wide eyes as he choked, and panic replaced his fury, fear that he was the one who was going to die.
His father was going to kill him.
One thought rang in his mind as his father glared down at him and squeezed harder, cutting off his air supply entirely.
He would never see Aiko again.
Hades would make sure of that. He would banish his soul to a place far from hers to punish him.
“You dare attack me over this?” Hades boomed and squeezed harder still. “You act like a mortal.”
He struggled to focus on his father as his vision dimmed, his heart labouring and body shaking as the need for air became dangerously real.
A slender pale hand settled on the black metal plates of his father’s gauntlet and the hold on Esher weakened, allowing him to get a little air into his tight lungs.
“Not a mortal, my love, but he is much like his father.” A voice as soft as a summer’s breeze swirled around Esher, easing his panic and fear as he sucked down all the air he could get and his head began to clear again. “Did you not rail at Zeus and threaten all residing in Mount Olympus when Demeter demanded my return? I see much of the young god-king who claimed my heart in our son, and I love him all the more for it.”
She was calm, soothing in the chaos, a force to be reckoned with as she worked her magic on Hades.
The pressure on Esher’s throat lessened and air whooshed into his lungs through his burning throat, his skull splitting as he choked on it.
When the hold on his throat disappeared, he fell forwards, pressing both hands into the wet black floor and coughing, each one stirring the water beneath him. Tears joined the water, sparkling and mingling. He struggled to breathe, but for a different reason as fear of death swept away and pain swept back in, ripping at him, tearing him apart as he realised he had failed.
“What is wrong?” Persephone’s soft voice reached out to him, but he took no comfort from it this time.
“Aiko is dead… the daemon killed her.” He choked on the sob that wracked his entire body. “I need her back.”
He stared at the floor, feeling weak and pathetic. He couldn’t even beat his father for Aiko’s sake. He shook his head, causing water to drip from the tangled ends of his black hair that hung in his field of vision, obscuring his parents and close to brushing the marble tiles. No, he couldn’t give in. He wouldn’t surrender. Not while there was still fight left in him.
Cold swirled through him.
With the moon still affecting him, and Aiko’s death weighing heavily on him, it would be dangerous to unleash his full power.
He would lose control of himself and change.
But he had to do it.
He couldn’t let her die.
He pushed himself up a little and reached his right hand across, shaking as he mustered the last of his strength. He clenched his teeth and breathed hard, shut out the weaker side of himself that said not to do it, and closed his fingers over the band around his left wrist.
Bare feet appeared close to his left hand where it pressed against the flagstones.
Jagged layers of sheer black fabric pooled around them to blend with the floor as she crouched.
Her fingers were warm, smelled of sunshine and flowers, lilies, as she pressed them to the underside of his chin and lifted them.
Esher obeyed, raising his head and his eyes to meet her glittering green ones through the threads of his hair. Sorrow shone in them, love that knew no bounds, no drop of darkness as she gazed down at him.
Aiko had looked at him like that.
Now she was gone.
“Everything will be alright,” she murmured, her voice reaching him this time, soothing the edge off his temper, but it refused to fade. “Calm now.”
He couldn’t.
The tide of his need was too strong, pulling him under.
His fingers tensed against the remaining band.
“Your father will respond better to his son, not this. Tell him what is in your heart.” She lowered her head, causing her wavy crimson hair to spill over her shoulders and the black layers of her dress, and lightly touched his left hand, and then his right one, and eased it away from the bracelet.
He clawed back control, piecing enough together that the rage boiling in his veins, the black need to fight to force his father to give Aiko back, receded, helped by her touch as she held his wrists, supporting him, using her link with nature to suppress his and ease the effect of the tide on him.
She smiled gently.
Esher drew down a shuddering breath as he eased back into a sitting position on his knees. He couldn’t bring himself to look at his father or his mother when he saw the destruction he had wrought. More than one of the temple columns lay broken, and the right frieze was fractured, the statue that had been above the point where it had cracked now shattered on the ground.
He hated losing it, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself.
He needed Aiko.
His father had to see that now.
But one look into his father’s cold blue eyes said that he was wrong.
His father didn’t care that he was hurting, that he needed her back, and that had the anger he had managed to calm rising back up again, engulfing him as the water in the river grew choppy and rose higher, becoming rolling waves that crashed over the small piece of flat land on which the temple stood.
“Esher,” his mother whispered.
He refused to calm.
She was wrong. Hades wouldn’t respond better to him if he spoke to him as his son. He had tried that, and then he had tried violence. Neither had worked.
Which left him only one recourse.
His heart ached at the thought, soul screamed not to do it, but if it meant Aiko lived again, that the world was warmed by her smiles and graced by her presence again, he would do it.
“Take my life instead and give it to her.”
Those words fell hard in the silence.
A flicker of astonishment surfaced in his father’s blue eyes. “After all you have suffered, you would sacrifice your life for the sake of this mortal?”
Esher sniffed back the tears that threatened to come as the thought he would never see her again after all rang in his mind, tormenting him, and nodded. “I don’t want to live in a world without her.”
Hades snorted. “Sentimental fool. The human world has affected you.”
Esher pushed onto his feet, gritting his teeth as his entire body ached, and faced his father. “You were once a sentimental fool too.”
Hades glanced at Persephone.
She took Esher’s arm, gently supporting him, her green eyes filled with sympathy. “Your father cannot simply return the human’s soul. You know this. Zeus does not permit such things, and neither does your father. Those who have died cannot be given back their life without some form of payment.”
He slid his gaze towards her, the way his father scowled at her words making him pay close attention to them, because she was trying to tell him something.
He wracked his aching brain, mulling over her words, desperate to find the answer hidden in them.
When it hit him, his eyes widened.
“I’ll do whatever it takes to regain Aiko’s soul.” He turned to his father, and Hades’s face darkened, his eyes beginning to glow crimson again. “I’ll stand any trial.”
His father stepped down from the dais, that single step shaking the ground as his words rolled over Esher. “You must lead her soul from the Underworld, on foot, and never once look back at her until you have left the realm.”
Esher’s blood chilled, and he teetered on the brink of begging his father for a different trial, anything but that one, but set his jaw and held his tongue.
The challenge was almost impossible, and all had failed it.
It was his father’s favourite trick, and he had been foolish enough to think that because he was his son, Hades wouldn’t play such a horrible one on him.
“I won’t fail,” he bit out. “I will save Aiko.”
Hades smiled.
Esher couldn’t tell whether it was a cruel one because he thought Esher would fail or whether it was a satisfied one, because Esher was willing to prove his strength and that he deserved her soul by besting a challenge all else had failed.
“Turn then, and I shall release her soul.” Hades held his left hand up. “She will follow your lead through the Underworld.”
He did as instructed, his muscles tensing as he waited, sure he would feel it when Aiko was released to follow him. He breathed through his nerves, trying to settle them as he told himself that he could do this. His father had given him a chance to save her, and he wouldn’t fail her.
Persephone rounded him and opened her right hand to reveal a new black bracelet. He lifted his right hand, and she gently took hold of his wrist as she slipped it on for him.
“Be strong, my son, my love, and do not look back. Only look forwards,” she whispered, her voice so low he barely heard her, and touched his chest. “Aiko is in here, and up there, not behind you. Focus on that and your desire to save her.”
She embraced him and pressed a kiss to his cheek, and he wrapped his arms around her, held her tightly as his fear and pain mingled together, threatening to overwhelm him already. He clung to her words, repeating them in his head.
“What are you doing?” Hades growled. “You had better not be telling him things that you shouldn’t.”
Persephone released him, all smiles and lightness as she looked beyond Esher to Hades. “I would not do such a thing.”
Hades huffed.
Esher frowned at the corridor ahead of him that would take him up to the palace.
He could do this. Finding the route to the nearest gate would take time, but he could do it, could deny the temptation to see Aiko behind him. He wouldn’t fail. Gods, he already wanted to turn.
He clenched his fists.
Marched forwards.
Doubts began to cloud his heart as he ascended the steps, his leg aching with each one. He wanted to look back, yearned to see Aiko, to see she was following him. He couldn’t feel her. His father was playing a trick on him. She wasn’t really there.
He needed to see she was there.
He went to turn his head.
A tiny flower glittering in the darkness on a step just ahead of him caught his eye.
He frowned as he spotted another one further up, and when he passed that one, there were two more. He followed them, up the tunnel, across the vestibule of the main palace, and along the path through the courtyard garden and the main temple. They faded whenever he reached them, wilting and turning to ash, leaving no evidence behind.
Esher looked ahead of him at the paths that branched off in all directions beyond the wall of the palace. If he took the wrong one, he would end up deeper into the Underworld, and further from the gates. He had to pick carefully.
He scanned them all.
His eyebrows dipped as he passed a boulder that separated two paths and his gaze drifted back to it.
A flower.
It was small, blue.
His colour.
He walked towards it.
A Himalayan poppy.
His mother was guiding him, risking his father’s wrath to show him the path. She knew the ways around the Underworld, the ever-changing routes to the gates, her connection with nature guiding her towards it at all times.
He followed the flowers, not slowing and not stopping, crossing rivers and mountains, until his feet were sore in his boots and his leg stopped throbbing, the journey so long that the bone had healed.
He focused as his mother had told him, on the path ahead of him, because Aiko wasn’t behind him, she was in his heart and up in the mortal realm. She was in his heart.
He pressed his palm to his chest, she was in his heart and she always would be.
It belonged to her.
He lost track of how long he had been walking, but he passed through several of the darker realms. Thankfully, none of the residents seemed interested in attacking him as they normally would those who came to the Underworld for such a thing as the soul of their loved one. He knew several who had attempted the trial had met a grisly end.
Were they avoiding him because of who is father was, or because they could sense his power and his foul mood?
The moon had waned again, releasing him from its influence, but the need to reach the gate grated on him, had his anger at a constant simmer in his veins, stoked by a desire to see Aiko again.
The path grew steeper and then dropped into a wide valley filled with towering black pinnacles.
In the centre of it, a colourful disc shimmered, the bands of glyphs lazily rotating in opposite directions.
He wasn’t sure which gate it was, and he didn’t give a fuck. It was a gate, and it would take him to Earth.
He was going to beat his father’s vicious game.
The ground shook as a gargantuan biped beast with mottled grey skin stretched over muscles like mountains stomped around the corner, five-storeys tall with a head full of grey-blue horns, its silver eyes glowing as it patrolled the valley.
A gatekeeper.
He wasn’t going to stick around to tangle with it.
He sprinted and skidded down the side of the mountain, hit a boulder and leaped off it, landing further down. He stumbled forwards as he reached the valley basin and the ground levelled out, and broke into a sprint.
The beast made a low grumbling noise and looked around.
Unleashed a roar as it spotted him.
Too late.
Esher hit the gate at a dead run. Colours swirled around him and then sunshine washed over him, blinding him, and he almost fell as he hit the edge of the gate that hovered above the grass. He dropped off it before any of the humans using the large park noticed him levitating, because he was fucked if he was going to get called in to pay penitence when he had to get Aiko’s soul back to her body.
The moment his boots hit the grass, he turned, adrenaline rushing through him, excitement on its heels.
It died when he found nothing behind him.
“No.”
He had done exactly what his father had wanted.
He growled, earning a look from a passing human, and glared at the gate as it shrank. It started to open again, responding to him as he commanded it, because he was going back to the Underworld to fight his father all over again and he wouldn’t stop fighting until either he was dead or he had Aiko back in his arms.
The temperature dropped as the park grew dark, clouds rolling in to block out the sun as he focused on the gate and fighting his father.
Rain poured down, the humans running for cover as it soaked New York, and the gate expanded and then flashed as it halted, signalling it was ready for him to open it.
A small blue Himalayan poppy sprouted between him and the gate.
He stared at it, sure it was a sign, a message from his mother.
Her words rang in his head again.
Had she been trying to tell him something, just as his father had suspected?
He clenched his fists and recited her words as he touched his chest. “Aiko is in here, up here, not behind me.”
He looked down at his fingers, focused on his heart.
A strange warm feeling tickled his chest, filled him with a familiar sensation, one he’d had before.
Whenever Aiko had smiled at him.
A chill swept over his back and down his arms.
His mother’s words suddenly made sense.
A soul didn’t have a form while it was awaiting his father’s judgement, which meant it wasn’t capable of following him of its own accord. In order to leave the Underworld, it needed a vessel.
His father hadn’t placed her soul behind him, that was just a trick meant to tempt him into looking there so his father could keep her soul.
Hades had placed her soul inside him.
He was her vessel.
His father had mingled her soul with his so he wouldn’t feel it, and because he hadn’t looked back, it was still there, waiting for him to reunite it with its own vessel.
Aiko’s body.
He stepped to Tokyo, landing in the mansion.
He growled when Aiko wasn’t where he had left her, and Megan leaped off the sofa, her brown eyes enormous.
“You’re back!” She scooted around the couches and pointed towards his room. “We moved her somewhere more comfortable.”
Esher ran there, his boots striking the wooden walkway hard enough to shake the timbers of the house, Megan hot on his heels.
The panels that formed the door of his room were open, and he halted as his gaze landed on Aiko where she lay on top of his bed, her skin as white as the moon, lips drained of colour, and her little hands folded over her bloodstained blouse. Beside her on the mats, a single lamp glowed softly, and her white phone rested beneath it.
He lifted his gaze to his brother, wanting to know how it had come to be back in her possession when he had seen it on the roof near the gate.
Ares stopped pacing and looked across at him. “I never left her. Daimon retrieved it. He tried calling her as soon as we knew they were targeting her.”
Esher nodded his thanks, fear that this wouldn’t work robbing him of his voice as he lowered head again and stared down at Aiko.
He wasn’t sure what he was meant to do now.
He took a step towards her, drawn to her as always.
The moment he neared her, tremendous pain tore through him, ripping a roar from his throat as his chest bowed forwards. Bright light burst from it, filling the room, and it felt as if someone was ripping a piece of him free, the agony of it so fierce his lungs seized.
When it faded, and he could breathe again, he sank to his knees, shaking violently as he struggled to remain conscious.
The light flickered and died.
And then a blue glow drifted in front of him.
He fought to focus on it, his vision hazy at first. As it cleared, another chill swept over him.
A delicate, iridescent blue butterfly fluttered around in front of him, dipping and dancing, shining so brightly it brought tears to his eyes.
Aiko.
His little butterfly.
This was his interpretation of her soul, and it was beautiful, like her.
He held his trembling hand out, his palm facing upwards, and the butterfly drifted down, fluttered higher, drifted lower still, and gave one more burst of its glowing wings before it finally descended and settled on his fingers.
He shuffled towards Aiko’s body, his eyes on the butterfly, and carefully lowered his hand towards her when he was close enough. The butterfly flew away from his fingers, danced in the air as it drifted lower and lower, casting a blue glow over Aiko.
When it landed on her chest, it glowed bright white, the light of it filling the room.
And then it was gone.
Absorbed into her.
The light spread through Aiko, shining through her skin, spreading colour over it again.
She lurched off the bedding, mouth opening on a gasp as she sucked down air.
Esher was beside her in an instant, gathering her carefully into his arms and cradling her, terrified of hurting her. She struggled for air, each rasping breath killing him, but as the seconds trickled past, they began to come more easily, until she was breathing softly in his arms. Her skin slowly heated beneath his hands, soothing him, but not taking away his fear.
He wasn’t sure what damage to expect.
The thick beard covering his brother’s face warned he had been gone for a long time, longer than he had thought.
What if her soul being out of her body for so long had caused permanent harm to it, or to her mind?
He brushed his fingers across her brow, sweeping her fringe away from her eyebrows, and feathered them down her cheeks. He would help her through it. He would make her strong again, would bring back her smile and keep her safe. He would shake Olympus and the Underworld until every god and goddess vowed to help him with her and he made her whole again.
“Esher?” she murmured, and he shot Ares a look.
Ares took hold of Megan and disappeared, leaving him alone with Aiko.
“I’m here,” he whispered, smoothing her black hair again, doing it to soothe himself as much as he did it to soothe her.
“I had a bad dream.” She winced when she tried to move, and he held her still, afraid she still bore injuries even when Megan hadn’t warned him that she did and he knew she would have if it had been the case.
“It’s over now.” He stroked her cheek, moved her so she lay with her head on the pillows and stretched out beside her, pressing the full length of his body against hers.
She groaned as she ignored his attempts to keep her on her back and rolled onto her side, pressing closer to him, and when her eyes fluttered open, their warmth hitting him hard, he didn’t have the heart to make her lay on her back again.
He wrapped his arm around her, and she used it as her pillow, resting her soft cheek against it, her hair tickling his skin.
Understanding shone in her eyes as she gazed at him. “You saved me.”
He only wished he had done it sooner, hadn’t failed and put her through so much pain.
He smiled for her, not wanting her to see how much that hurt him, leaned towards her and pressed a kiss to her lips.
“I love you too,” he murmured against them, unable to hold the words back any longer, needing her to know them and the feelings he held in his heart.
She broke down, each sob racking her body, more violent than the last, and he gathered her to him, letting her pour out her pain and feeling like a bastard as he realised he had reminded her of what had happened, had brought it all back to her. He pressed his lips to her forehead and kept them there, held her gently and weathered the pain each of her sobs caused as it tore at him, every one of them his fault.
Around them, blue poppies bloomed, until a sea of them filled his room and spread across the walkway, and through the garden. He floated on that sea with Aiko, holding her as her sobs finally began to subside, her shaking stopping. She let out one final cry and then swallowed hard, wriggled against him as she wiped away her tears, and lifted her bloodshot eyes to meet his.
He wiped the remains of her tears away, careful as he brushed his thumb across her cheeks.
“Do you hate me?” He wasn’t sure he could bear it if she did, but he needed to know.
She knew what he had done, remembered it all, he could see it in her eyes.
She put him out of his misery.
Shaking her head.
Speaking words that washed his pain away.
“I love you.”
He gathered her to him and kissed her forehead. “I won’t fail you again.”
It was his solemn vow.
He had a second chance with her and this time he wouldn’t mess things up, he would keep her safe, just as he had promised.
He would protect her.
Always.