Stunned into silence, I stared at the spot where she’d been. Calypso had always had a wild and unpredictable nature. She’d hated it, called it a weakness of hers. She had told me that no matter what she did in that agitated state, she’d always love and care for me, and I should try not to take it personally. It was just part of loving an elemental, and I’d always understood that.

But this had felt like more.

She’d been in a rage, yes, but I knew her well enough to know it had stemmed from pain. But why?

What in the bloody blazes had I done?

A heavy, shivery sigh sounded over my shoulder, and the air quickened with a curl of desire.

My nostrils flared. “Why have you come, Aphrodite?”

“Well, I won’t talk to your back, so you can either turn, or we’re just going to stand here all day like two heartbroken losers.”

Glowering, I gnashed down on my molars but did as she asked.

Dressed in a gown that was fashioned from Apollo’s own rays, she shined like fire. But it was not her I wanted. It never would be.

She shook her head, glancing at the spot where Calypso had vanished.

“And still you think of her as just Caly. Don’t you get it yet, you hothead?”

I scowled. “Excuse me?”

She rolled her eyes. “Must I do everything for you two? I swear, just the other day I found a thread of silver in my hair. My. Hair!” She tapped her chest with a long red fingernail, and her face curled into a grimace of disgust.

“What do you want me to say? I’m doing everything in my bloody power to get through to her.”

“Dammit all,” she snapped and walked up to me. I didn’t know what she planned, so I stood there like an idiot until she walloped me with a peal of her power, nearly knocking me flat on my behind.

“What was that for?” I growled, rubbing at my temple, which still tingled and made even my veins ache for some sort of sexual release. I hated when Aphrodite got into a mood. She had very little control over her powers when she did.

“Because you’re such a bloody idiot, that’s why. Stop doing what you’re doing.”

“Who gave you permission to watch what I’m doing anyway?”

She popped her hand on her hips, looking like an angry Chihuahua as she bristled back at me. “Because I knew you’d screw this up, that’s why. And I was right, wasn’t I?”

I opened my mouth, and she twitched her brows as if to say, “Deny it, Death.”

I snapped it shut, but my stomach roiled with anger.

“Who do you want, Hades?”

I seethed. “I would think you above all people would know bloody well who I wanted. I want Calypso.”

All the fire burned off her, and she wilted before my eyes. Her pretty face crumpled. “And that’s the problem.”

I shook my head. “What’s the problem? That I want my wife back? Your best friend back?” I pointed at her.

She sighed and walked nearer to me. “One second you remember who she is, and the next, you’re reminding her of who she’s not and who she might never be again. Don’t you remember who she was at all?”

“I know who she was. Who she is,” I snapped. “I’ve always seen her.”

Her smile was soft but sad. “Yes, you always did. But do you still? She’s an elemental, Hades. She’s been reborn. She didn’t lose all her memories. In fact, she remembers quite a lot of them, I’d wager.”

“And how would you know that?”

She touched her chest. “Even without it inside of her, I can still hear it sing to me. I know the deepest parts of every heart. It is my power. And I am telling you that you have to stop this before it’s too late.”

“Stop what?”

“Oh, c’mon, Hades! Don’t play stupid with me. We both know that traipsing through centaur lands and now Baba’s lands is a puny effort at forcing her to remember her life before. But so much of her already does. Don’t you see that yet?”

I spread my arms. “I’m trying. I love her. I still do, with everything inside me.”

“You love the bits of Calypso still left in her. But she calls herself Thalassa in this world. She thinks as such. She is driven by that darker aspect of herself. Instead of trying to coax the ghost from her, you should take this time to get to know her, the real her, the new her. That darkness in her shouldn’t terrify you, Death. Is it not just an extension of yourself as well? You as much as said so to her this morning, and yet you’ve already forgotten all of that. How could you?”

I glanced off to my right, staring at the wall of trees, searching for answers they could not give me.

“Will she never come back to me?” I asked, voice trembling as the feeling that I was losing her all over again wormed its way through me.

“I don’t know. Maybe. But that woman took years, even centuries, to create. This one is a new version of her, and wouldn’t it stand to reason that she, too, could take centuries to be remade? You loved her once, and all these sides of her were always in Calypso, some more dominant at times than others, but always a part of her. Deep down, you know that. So love who she is, not who you want her to be.”

I hissed and turned on her. “Why would you say that to me? You know how I feel about her.”

She shook her head. “Because we both know its true. Stop talking of the past. Stop dragging her from one stupid place to another that has no bearing on her life today. Discover who she is now. You’re more compatible than you might imagine.”

I closed my eyes. I knew Aphrodite spoke truth. I did like what I’d seen in Thalassa today. I’d loved her touch and her taste, but mostly, I’d simply enjoyed the presence of her company.

For so long, my world had been filled with nothing but gloom. But on this day, it’d been bright, overflowing with color and verve. But since she had gone, the leaves looked less green, the sky a lighter blue, and my world was turning gray again.

“What if she won’t come back to me?”

“Oh, Hades,” Aphrodite whispered, “you’re the only one she would return to. She’s as drawn to you as a moth is to flame, and that’s why she fled as she did. You scare her. You scare that darkness in her, the one that believes that love is a weakness and a torment. But all of that, all of that, stems from the pain of losing you. It is that severing in her that she grapples with. She may not even recognize that on a conscious level, but I taste the terror and panic of that loss as keenly as if those feelings were my own. It is not you that causes her to run. It’s her. It’s all her. So be there for her. Remind her as many times as you need to that love is not a weakness but a strength. Her strength. That… that is what you must make her remember and nothing more. You may yet get Calypso back in the future, but today, she is Thalassa. And if you actually claim to love her, then you must love all parts of her because that’s how love works. You don’t get to pick and choose, Hades. None of us do.”

Hoarsely, I said, “I could say the same to you, you know. Fight. Fix yours. Do what needs doing. As I recall, I’m not the only one dealing with this fallout.”

She shrugged, and a look of bitter disappointment flashed through her eyes. “Yes, well, the fate of Kingdom doesn’t hinge on my toxic romance, now does it? Fix yours, Hades, because only you can.” And with those parting words, she was gone.

My thoughts turned back to Calypso, and I cringed, stopping my thoughts in their tracks. I realized with a start that Dite was right. Much as I’d told myself I knew who Thalassa really was, I’d been trying to coax out her past.

But I’d felt the passion of her kiss, the feel of her on me, the way she’d responded to me, and how easily we could still be together. Calypso or Thalassa, she and I were still one.

And somehow, I would make this right.

---

I sat in the deepest folds of my waters, staring with eyes that saw nothing into the vastness of time and space.

Why had I done as I’d done? What in the bloody hell had made me think that acting out in such a manner would have been a good thing?

My nostrils flared as I tasted the bitter, acrid tang of my waters on my tongue. It was my own emotions that caused my waters to be dead this way.

I remembered the other life, when my waters had been full of fantastical and whimsical creations of mine, birthed from the deep-seated peace and contentment just being with him had elicited in me.

I remembered the animals that trailed behind me as a child would its mother, content merely to be in my presence. I remembered the hippocampus I’d once called sister, and the glorious opulence of my underwater home, the castle built of a giant pearl with golden overlay, and how I’d even managed to create a type of moon and sun, even down there.

I’d created such beauty then.

I sighed and looked around me. There was no disturbance of either beast or man with me. No sirens.

Seren had once sparkled with verve, but the waters here were perpetually black and empty, with no warmth at all.

I squeezed my eyes shut, contemplating who I was and who I wanted to be.

The drive, the need to find my heart, take back my soul blade, and conquer the realm was naught but a tiny spark in me now. An emotion that had once been so overwhelming in me was but a whimper of noise.

I’d not laughed since my rebirth, had not understood the simple joy of spending time in the company of someone I truly liked, mostly because I’d liked no one.

I remembered so much of the previous world—the extended family I’d built, the friends I’d made. But I’d felt no pull toward them again, no desire to reclaim that which I’d lost. And even Hades’s memories hadn’t tugged at my heartstrings enough to make me curious enough to seek him out.

I’d been nothing but antipathy and alone with my isolated thoughts, imagining that the giant void inside of me might be filled once I became the goddess I should have always been, the powerful ruler of the pantheons, the mighty Thalassa once more.

Then I’d felt him watching over me, day and night, not interfering, but always there. It had infuriated me at first, confused me even. I’d tried to hide from him, but one could not hide from a god. If they had a mind to find you, they always could.

Once I’d realized that he’d only intended to look, I’d found myself wondering about him, why he did as he did, why he seemed so obsessed with spying on me.

I hadn’t lied when I’d said it’d been easy to put two and two together. I had so many memories of Hades that I’d known he’d been someone to me in the other life. I’d seen myself kissing him in several of the memories and even noted that I’d rather enjoyed his attention and had actively sought it out.

As my thoughts became more and more consumed by him, it was like something inside of me kept urging me to go to him, to find him, to see with my own two eyes, in person, what it was about the hermit god that should draw me so.

Then I had seen him, and I’d suffered the very last emotions I’d expected to—rage and betrayal.

Those emotions had made little sense to me, but they had helped feed the fuel of my fire. They made me think that I’d been right all along, and the gods of Olympus were unworthy to even be in my presence. But he’d not been like anything I’d expected. In my waking dreams of him, he’d been warm and caring, but the reality had been shockingly different.

He’d been as cold as I. As bitter as I. And though he’d known me well enough to know that I could break him if I chose to, he’d not had the sense to fear me. He’d spoken to me as an equal, called me out on my duplicity, and had baffled me entirely.

He left me reeling and confused, wondering if I’d been wrong all along and questioning everything I’d thought I’d known. Being in his company had opened me up in a way I’d never expected, and I found myself falling into the same trap as the other version of me had.

It scared me that I could lose my edge so quickly. Was I doomed to become merely his wife again? With no thoughts of my own other than to please and serve him? Just what kind of relationship had we had before? Had I abdicated my divinity for him? Had I given him all of me and lost myself, my true self, in the process?

All I remembered was the sense of being stupidly content, like a meek little puppet who could not think or reason for itself, doing only as its master commanded.

That was a fate worse than death for me. I did not want to be unequally yoked to another, so addlepated in the head that I actually thought myself happy when, in truth, I was just a weak caricature of the woman I’d once been.

Just who had Hades been to me, really? But more than that, what had I actually been to him?

I knew the legend of him and Persephone, how he’d tricked her into becoming his bride in the Underworld, stealing her away from Demeter and making the poor child believe, after a time, that she’d actually fallen in love with her trickster husband.

There was a name for that kind of a romance. It was called Stockholm syndrome, and it was as unhealthy as Tartarus. It didn’t matter how real the emotions felt to the captive. The truth was that their captor had manipulated and tricked those feelings of fealty and devotion out of them. They had no more free will in what they did than a slave. They simply didn’t know it.

I could not imagine a more destructive and volatile union than that. The stories of Persephone and Hades seemed like a fable though, a tall tale, because though the stories of them existed, I could not actually think of a moment when they’d truly been together.

I swallowed hard and dropped my chin to my chest, feeling the movement of water that was my body expanding and flexing through the deepest canyons and ravines, scraping against rock, and rolling with the swirling tides. I might have no one for me down here, but at least I was free. At least I was still me.

“Thalassa, if you are there, please come out. It is Hades, and I wish to speak with you.”

I’d have recognized the deep, shivery timbre of his voice even without his formal introduction, and I debated what to do. My pulse stirred, causing the waters to roll harder and swifter, creating rushing currents that moved me every which way.

Why had he come for me? Hadn’t he understood that my intentions were not simply to run away, but to get away from him permanently?

No, no. I would not go to him. Whatever he’d been doing to me up there, it had to end now. I could not bear for him to pluck any more emotion out of me. It made me feel sick and desperate and filled my bones with longing so fierce that I thought I might even die from it.

I shuddered and squeezed my eyes shut. “Go away, Death,” I whispered, voice raw and broken.

My words rolled through the tides, but I knew he’d heard them because I heard his deep and sonorous sigh. Despite my earlier protestations, I found myself fighting an internal war.

I desperately wanted to rise up to the surface and go to him. Despite all my internal warnings not to be, I was drawn to the darkly handsome god, even now, even knowing just how dangerous being with him was to my equilibrium and piece of mind.

I felt his warmth pulse through the waters. He’d reached his hand inside of me just as he had the previous night, and I gasped, experiencing that same fiery sensation of touch and wonder and desire curl like flame all the way through me.

I shuddered and bit down on my tongue,

“Why do you hide from me? I would never hurt you.”

I snorted. That was what everyone said until, of course, they hurt you. I might be reborn, but I wasn’t stupid.

After several long minutes during which neither of us said a word, he finally spoke. “Okay, Thalassa. I suppose that if you’re going to stay here for an eternity, then I must settle in, too, because I’m not going anywhere.”

Glowering, I felt the rise in my water’s internal temperatures, causing the surface of it to bubble and steam.

His responding low chuckle, full of humor, set me off, and without stopping to think through what I was doing, I shot to the surface with the swiftness of a mako shark. I solidified into something resembling a mortal and planted my fists on my hips.

“Leave,” I said, voice low and deep, unflinching in my desires that he should do as I bid.

He was sitting on the edge of the canyon, one knee lifted before him. He was no longer dressed in the black, stifling armor he’d forced himself to wear on our initial trek through the forests. Now he wore a pale dove-gray shirt that opened at the neck, exposing the olive complexion of his firm skin and his clearly defined chest

I’d known that he was a big man, but seeing him now, wearing nothing but a loose shirt and dark trousers with no shoes on at all, he looked somehow… more. Bigger. Stronger. More handsome.

I swallowed hard, temporarily stunned by the sheer masculinity oozing from off him. Without the severe steel encasing his body, he seemed infinitely more approachable and yet, oddly enough, far more daunting and sinister.

He wore an easy grin, and his dark-blue eyes glittered with starlight. “I’m not going anywhere, Thalassa.”

I gritted my teeth and my nostrils flared as I tried to regroup, get my edge back, find that anger again.

But all I felt right now was a quivering in my stomach and a strange fluttering that traveled all the way through me and even made my toes tingle.

“You’re a bastard, Hades, and I no longer wish to play this game with you,” I said, voice far more tremulous than I’d intended it to be. I wanted to lash out at him and hurt him as badly as I now felt that hurt, but instead, I was weak and stupid, and I needed him to go away. “Please.” I squeezed the one word out just as I slammed my eyes shut, not wanting him to witness whatever it was that was happening to me.

I was so mortified by these feelings coursing through me.

Pain.

Anger.

But mostly, I felt so bloody alone all the time. Except when I was with him. However, one thing had become very clear to me. I might be with him, but he was with her.

I was so lost to the anguish in my head that I’d not heard him near until his hand was framing my jaw. I sucked in a sharp breath, and my teeth turned to fangs that wanted nothing more than to tear into his flesh and make him feel just a tenth of the agony that I did.

“Don’t you want your heart back?”

I gulped, hating that I loved his touch as I did, hating that it made my body burn with desperate feelings, shameful ones for a virgin goddess. I suddenly understood my previous self more than I cared to admit. I knew why she’d turned as she had, why she’d forsaken all that she was for this man alone.

He’d placed a spell on me then, and he was trying his hardest to place one on me now. I clenched my jaw, nostrils flaring as my fingers curled and unfurled, nails turned to deadly curved claws that could eviscerate a man just for staring at me wrong if I wished to.

I was one part agony and one part loathing. But I didn’t know if it was him that I hated or myself. I shook, fighting that stupid lump in my throat. “A goddess does not cry. She does not feel. She is cold. She is—”

“Oh, my dark queen,” he murmured tenderly.

I jerked, spasming in his clutch, loathe to admit just what his words did to me, how they tortured me and made me want and burn and need with a recklessness that stole my breath.

“Leave me, Hades,” I pleaded one last time, voice little more than a reed of sound, thin and fragile. I was exposing myself to a man I barely knew. But that was a lie because from the moment that he’d come back into my world, everything had been upended, and the memories that’d meant so little to me before were now pounding away at me like one of Cyclops’s massive fists. I shook.

“Look at me, woman,” he said in that deeply accented voice of his that never failed to turn my knees weak.

So I did because he was the enchanter, and somehow, this lesser being, this lesser god, had a hold over me that was inexplicable and very, very dangerous.

His eyes were dark, looking almost like a twilight blue, and filled with the starlight from the heavens. His gaze was piercing, looking not just at me, but through to my soul.

I trembled almost violently in his grasp. “What have you done to me?” I whispered.

I told you who he was to me… to us. That ghostly voice of my past was almost smug in her arrogant triumph over me.

All my plans, all my desires from just a few days ago were burning away to dust every second that I spent in this lesser male’s company, and I hated him for it. Hated. Him.

With a swiftness of rage that I’d never seen coming, I shoved those claws of mine through the sides of his stomach, making him heave and gasp and seize up as he stared at me with a look that was at once betrayed but also knowing.

It was not a killing blow. I’d never intended it to be. But I was angry, and I didn’t know why.

The tears were flowing down my face, and I was screaming words I’d had no intention of saying.

“I am dead inside. Dead! In constant torture and agony. I’m all alone in those dark waters, and I hate it! I hate you. I hate you. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you! I hate you all!”

My words ended on a pitiful wail as his darkly handsome face was blurred from my vision. I felt his hands gently wrap themselves around my wrists. I could have fought him, could have clawed my way in even deeper. But the anger was giving way to something else, and instead, I found myself yanking my hands out and dropping to my knees.

Covering my face with hands that smelled of his dark essence still, I murmured, “I am so very wrong, Hades. So very wrong. Something has happened to me, something I cannot explain. I… I can’t… I can’t be this anymore.”

I’d had no intention of laying myself open to him in this way, had no intention of saying these mortifying, truthful words that made me burn with shame. But out they’d come anyway, and I fully expected him to leave me then.

It was probably why I’d stabbed him, to make him feel my darkness, to make him see how terribly bad and wrong I was for him. Whatever he’d hoped to find in me, it wasn’t there anymore. That woman he’d once loved wasn’t me. Maybe she’d been better, but I was not. I was a monster.

“I’m not a good person,” I murmured weakly, shoulders heaving violently from my tears, which were turning these woods from a forest into a sprawling lake bed full of glimmering blue-green waters.

But he did not abandon me as I’d expected him to. As I’d almost hoped he would.

Instead, his hands were on my face. “Look at me, female, and so help me, if you stab me again, I will do terrible, violent things to you. So play nice, Thalassa.”

I almost chuckled to hear him threaten me in that way because “terrible” and “violent” were two words that thrilled me to my soul.

Pulling together whatever dregs of humanity I still had left to me, I looked up at him. His jaw was clenched tight, and his dark eyes, with which I found myself becoming more and more obsessed, were narrowed into slits of barely leashed rage. They sparked with flames of blue, and if I hadn’t already been kneeling, I knew my legs would have given out from under me.

I pressed a fist to my stomach, wanting so badly to apologize to him for what I’d done, feeling suddenly and very terribly ashamed of my actions. I still wished to destroy all of the glittering, golden ones, and yet Hades was no longer one of them in my mind. He was outside that realm of debauched and debased lesser gods, and that was absolutely chilling to me.

I knew that history was about to repeat itself for me, and unless I left immediately, I would be absolutely lost to his dark spell again. I would lose myself all over again. I would become weak. I would become that other creature once more. I wasn’t sure I wanted that, but a part of me wasn’t sure I didn’t, either.

My jaw trembled, and he growled, making my blood sing, making my soul feel as though it would soar. For the first time, I began to feel the breadth and movement of life begin to sparkle within my waters.

I gasped, blinking, staring at him and wondering what in the devil he’d done to me to turn my magick as he had. Whatever life I’d managed to create before had been dark and deadly. But what I felt being birthed now was light and beauty, creatures with fins of glittering jewels and gold. My waters were pulsing, breathing, and I was so stunned that I could only stare at him.

“Who are you?” I heard myself asking, feeling outside of myself somehow.

At that, he finally spoke. “I never lied to you.”

I shook my head. “It’s not possible.”

“Dammit all, Thalassa!” He snatched up my wrists in his impossibly powerful grip, and I trembled, but not from pain.

I’d called him my lesser, but it wasn’t true, and I knew it. I was more physically powerful. That was fact. But Hades was pulling a spell over me, just as he had before, and I knew that if I gave in again, I would be lost for good.

“When will you realize that I am not your enemy? You say you are alone, but you never were. Always I’ve kept my eye on you, waiting for you to grow stronger, waiting for you to become form again, waiting. Always waiting, but always watching. Always making certain that you were safe, that you were sane and as well as could be expected. Yes, you’ve suffered a trauma, but bloody hell, woman, so have I!” he snapped, and I shook, awed by his fury.

He was like a regal male lion, majestic, powerful, and so bloody dangerous to my sanity and my health. I wet my lips, completely awed by the male before me.

His skin was sparking, turning that golden shade the rest of his pantheon’s did when the god power rode them hard. But his body was rolling and curling with snapping blue flame that made me hiss as it licked at my flesh and made me undulate—not away from—but deeper into him. I moaned as that beautiful and deadly fire spread from his hands to mine.

But he was not done yet.

His face was a mask of fury, and my soul flowed through me in wonder to watch his divinity take him so.

“You think you were the only one who suffered? Blast you! I’ve been dead inside, dead!” He slapped powerfully at his chest, causing the very earth around us to boom and roll with his own fury.

I gasped, delighted and hypnotized by the deadly grace of the male before me.

If he had been dead before, he certainly wasn’t now. I wasn’t the only one creating. He was too. Jagged outcroppings were ripping up from the earth’s crust, but these weren’t just any rocks. They were raw gems of sapphire, rubies, and amethysts. And they were covered in the golden shells of my creatures. We were building a city of water and rock, and it was all so beautiful that I couldn’t stop looking at what we were doing together.

I’d not been able to do this before, make something this beautiful, this… perfect.

He continued pounding on his chest, bringing my tear-filled eyes back to his. “I am not right without you. Whoever you are, whatever you are, it is only for you that my soul yearns. I cannot be without you, Thalassa. Don’t you understand that yet? Don’t you get that? You think I lie. You think I trick you. Well, damn you to the bloodiest pits of Tartarus for it! I’ve never wanted a thing in my life, not in my entire life, save one. One thing.” He stuck his finger in my face, his own contorted into a mask of righteous fury that stole the very breath from my lungs and made me burn, made me sizzle. “You. You and your harridan tongue. Gods above, I’ve never wanted anything more than you. And since you never seem to believe a bloody word I say, then here. Here is your proof!”

And without giving me a moment to wonder what it was he was about to do, he slammed his hands to my cheeks, and I felt the godhood flow through me. He was ripping me open and pouring himself into me. It was an invasion of the most intimate kind, and I screamed as I felt it all.

The pain of our separation. His agony. How he’d wailed and gnashed his teeth in the first days, marching down his halls, screaming out for me. Tearing at his body with his large, powerful hands until he bled. Then the rage morphed into something colder, something more sinister.

I watched as that strong and powerful god became a husk, a shell of his former glorious self, sitting on a throne of black-stained skulls, staring straight ahead as ice and snow swirled all around him, lost to the world, looking so alone and so bewildered.

I jerked, shaking my head because I saw it, finally. He understood it completely, the agony of feeling adrift, of feeling abandoned and betrayed, the pain of it all.

And then the impossible and agonizing joy of finding me again only to note that I was no longer the woman I’d once been, the woman he’d kill for, the woman he’d die for.

I watched it all, crying the entire time, confused and scared. Scared because I didn’t know what to make of this or of him. Scared of what I felt now. Confused by what this meant for me, for us, for all my future plans.

When it was over, he was looking down at me and shaking his head. His voice was a throaty, shivery whisper as he asked, “Have I no choice then? Is there no hope at all?”

He was cracking before my very eyes, and I was so bloody sorry. Sorry for hurting him as I had, sorry for wishing him such pain for so long. I was terrified out of my mind, even as I dared to touch him again.

He flinched away for a split second, and I pulled my hands back as though burned. He looked down at my fingers, which were no longer tipped in claws, and he groaned from deep in his belly.

“Oh, my darkness,” he murmured almost tenderly, “if you touch me, let it be with love and only love. Otherwise, leave me be, for I ache all over and do not think I can stand anymore of this agony tonight.”

I blinked, biting down on my lower lip. I wanted so badly to trace my fingers along the perfect smoothness of his sides where I’d just stabbed him not too long ago. He’d healed as I’d known he would, but I was so unforgivably sorry for it and wished I could take it back, wished I’d never harmed him in any way.

I’d done it to try and push him away, my last pathetic attempt to rid myself of the one thing I knew would spell the end of the me I was right now. But it had been a vain and futile gesture because if he’d abandoned me, I’m not sure I would have allowed that either. I was drawn to him just as I’d always been.

I wet my lips, staring at the space where I’d punched my claws through him, watching the shredded edges of his shirt undulate through my waters, mournful and ashamed by my actions. And yet, even still, he wanted my touch, but only if it was done in love, and the truth was that I didn’t know if I loved him.

I was drawn to him, pulled in. But was that love? I did not think so.

I only knew one thing. “I do not hate you, Hades. I’m not sure I ever really did.”

His nostrils flared, and I realized distractedly that he and I were floating. The waters had become so deep that they rivaled the deepest trenches of Seren itself. With a snap of my fingers, I created a massive oyster bed that we could share.

He glanced down, one brow raised sharply as he noted, no doubt, that there was more than enough room for the two of us to rest upon it quite comfortably. He looked at me, and I looked down at my feet.

I owed him an apology, but I was too raw right now, like a wound that’d been picked open one too many times.

I’d felt the depths of his agonized love for the woman he’d once known as Calypso, and it hurt me deeply.

You and I are still the same. You just have to accept that. Accept me…

I felt that same powerful wave I’d felt in the first days after the curse shoving at the walls of my head, wanting in, demanding that I let it in. But I was scared and unsure. If I let that wave in, what would become of me? Would I even still be me? I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything.

I clutched at my breast. “I… I do not.”

I clamped my mouth shut, breathing heavy, not even certain what it was that I’d meant to say. It was all a jumble of noise and confusion in my head. So, so many thoughts rolled one on top of the other. I hugged my arms to my chest, feeling tiny and weak and exposed.

“What is your favorite color, Thalassa?” he asked deeply.

I gasped, caught quite off guard by that innocent and not very pertinent question. “What?”

He was so beautiful sitting there, staring at me with his big, star-lit eyes that were now so clear blue they could rival the glassy waves of my calmest waters. And again, I felt myself drawn to him like a moth toward flame. He would spell the end of me, I just knew it. And yet, I was no longer sure it would be the worst thing in the world.

For so long I’d grappled with only pain and darkness as my constant companions. But now there was something else, something lighter and indescribable. Something that made me hope and wonder and dream.

My hands curled impotently in my lap.

“Color?” he asked again softly.

I blinked. “Purple. I love the color purple.”

Swallowing hard, he nodded his head, but remained silent after that, and I wanted to know why. I wanted to understand why he’d asked me such a trivial question that did not matter.

But the thought of opening my mouth to speak made me feel like I was suffocating, like I couldn’t breathe right. All my plans for destruction, for ending the reign of the petty and lesser gods would die completely if I took this next step. I was at the crossroads, and I had only one choice left.

You think ending them will bring you joy. But, Thalassa, I was never weak. My love for Hades, and his for me, was what made me strong. Made us strong. Learn him. Know him. And then you’ll understand. Then you’ll finally awaken to the truth. Love is the most powerful force in all the realms, in all the worlds. Aphrodite taught us that. You only have to believe. Just believe…

She was so close to the surface that I could almost feel her like a tangible presence. I was shocked to discover that she wasn’t the weak-willed hag I’d thought her to be. I could feel her power, and it was stunning how strong it was. She would completely obliterate the me I was now, obliterate this violence in me, I knew. Deep down, I just knew it. Calypso would come back in, and that would be the end of me.

I took in a choppy breath, shuddering it out with my release. He wanted her, and I was just in the way of their happiness. I closed my eyes, my long lashes flickering upon the tops of my cheekbones.

No one really wanted me. They never had. This part of me had always been too dark, too wicked and full of hubris and violence. It was why she’d drowned me out in the other life and why she would do it to me again. I could have destroyed them all and reclaimed what was rightfully mine, but with just a few words, this lesser—no, greater—god had destroyed me completely.

I clutched at my stomach, butterflies diving and swarming my insides, making me ache, making me want. I looked at his profile, mouth tipped down in a soft frown. I should give her back to him.

I wasn’t one for acts of kindness, but then, I’d never really liked anything enough before to want to bother. My throat felt tight and hot.

“What… what was her favorite color?” I asked softly, so softly I was sure he’d not hear me. But his neck whipped around, and he stared at me as if I was something foreign and strange.

“What?” he asked, voice a deep, shivery tremble.

I shook, feeling heat and warmth and other more powerful, deeper things start to slink through me. The wave in my mind was growing stronger.

I’d made my choice. I was tired of being alone, tired of hanging on to so much hate and rage. I looked him square in his eyes, trapped like a fly in amber, and felt a rolling spark of something new and dangerously addictive beginning to wind through me.

“What was her favorite color?”

Dark, thick brows lowered, and he gave his head a slight shake. “Why would you want to know that? You’re not her. That’s not what I’m trying to do to y—”

Unable to bear his gaze any longer, I hung my head and stared at my dainty ankles as I whispered, “I am not as unlike her as I might have led you to believe, Death.”

I saw his entire body still, saw his broad shoulders become as boards and his spine turn rigid and inflexible, saw his flesh blanch to nearly bone-white, and my soul quickened. He truly did love her. It was so bloody obvious to me now that I almost smiled to see it.

The wave in my head grow louder, fiercer.

I was dual-natured, and I was about to lose myself to her. I knew it, but I was strangely okay about it all. Hating something was too exhausting and painful, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be so full of hate and rage anymore. I didn’t think I wanted to be alone anymore. If I destroyed the golden ones, I would be hurting him, and I no longer wished to hurt him. More than that, I would forever be alone, then. I would ruin any chance I had of knowing him or of him knowing me. And I wanted to know him. I desperately wanted to know him.

He was the one thing that I truly never wanted to hurt again.

“What. Do. You. Mean?” he asked me slowly, each word enunciated oh so carefully.

He was like a caged tiger gearing up for the strike, the way he held himself so still.

I shook my head. “I… I don’t know,” I admitted softly. “I don’t know. But I think that your female was far stronger than even she imagined. Even now, I feel her, Hades, deep within me, fighting to break free.”

“How is this possible?” His voice was a thread of sound, full of hope and burning with agony. “She said she could not—”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t understand it. She did not lie to you, you know. There are two very distinct sides to me in this body.” I closed my eyes, shuddering.

If I let her in all the way, I would lose me. I had been born alone, and I would die alone. It was not me that Hades wanted. It was her. And she was just as desperate to get back to him.

But all the rage and anger of the past few months had me weary to the bone. I did not want to be mad at him anymore. In fact, I wanted something very different now.

His thumb was pressed to my chin, and he was turning my face toward his. I could no longer hide from him because he saw me. He was seeing me and not just Calypso trapped within me, but me, the me sitting here on this oyster bed with him as life continued to form a brand-new world of wonders all around us.

Emerald-scaled fish burst from the waters in a symphony of motion, as if in tune to my pleasure, aware that I was altering, becoming more, bigger, better.

I clutched a hand to my throat, so scared of what he was doing to me without his even trying to. Just simply by being him, he was altering me, changing me. I should hate him for it, but I didn’t. I just couldn’t.

I’d spent the last of my anger with him.

I shook my head. “I did not know, Hades. I simply didn’t know.”

He swallowed hard, and I knew he understood what even I wasn’t sure I meant. But there was a peace in his gaze and a warmth in his smile that I felt, deep in my bones, was meant for her alone.

The wave in my head was encompassing me, growing and spreading. There was no way to stop it now, not anymore.

My shoulders wilted, and the pain of the past months was turned quickly to soul-deep exhaustion and sadness. I’d spent so much of my time drowning in hate that I didn’t know how to handle not hating.

He shook his head, his eyes still searching mine. “Oh, my beloved female,” he murmured tenderly as he drew me into his arms. “Ask me anything you wish, Thalassa, and I will tell you everything. Anything.”

“Why? Why would you still care about me after all I put you through? Why would you do this?” I asked, even as I rested my cheek against his chest, hearing the silence of a still and empty chest, just like my own.

But I swear it was weird, because somehow, I felt like I heard the beating of our hearts. I’d never heard it before, but it was like the very second I’d decided to let him in again was the moment I heard the first beat of us.

It was small and barely a teeny bump of sound, but it was growing with each second that passed.

Boom.

Boom.

Booooom.

I felt the wave growing within me, felt it surging faster and faster. I closed my eyes and drank in the scent of him, dark and cool, exotic, and so bloody appealing that I felt drunk on him.

I planted my palm upon his chest. The exhaustion was making way for other things, deeper and richer things. My body was starting to ache, and I was drawing closer and closer to him, practically crawling onto his lap, and he let me.

“Her favorite color?” I whispered.

He chuckled. “Purple, Thalassa. Purple like my favorite stone was what she always said.”