I woke up from strange dreams, still trapped in that hazy state between wakefulness and sleep. My memories scattered like chaff on the breeze, but I was able to recall bits and pieces.

A journey. I’d been on a journey, a long trek, but I hadn’t been alone. I’d been with another. A female. My female.

I rubbed at my chest, wincing as I sat up. But I wasn’t in bed. I’d not slept in my bed since this nightmare had begun. I’d simply passed out on my throne as I’d been watching the one called Rayale racing against the clock through the ley lines that had trapped her future in-laws inside of it.

I never slept. I didn’t need to. Calypso and I would sometimes lie in a bed after strenuous bouts of sex, cuddling and talking to one another for days at a time. But sleep had never been something we’d done. And yet, since I’d used that damned key on myself, I found myself simply collapsing right where I stood. I suspected it had something to do with the curse, or rather, remembering all that the curse had taken away from us. New memories were crowding my thoughts daily, reminding me of moments that’d once meant so much to me.

I scrubbed at my face, glancing around my eerily quiet throne room, which was so pitch black that the only light around was what little glow came off my looking glass, currently tipped precariously between my knees where it must have fallen when my body had forcibly shut down my mind.

Frowning, I gazed at the rushing movement of colors in the glass. I’d been watching Rayale do the seemingly impossible for days now.

When she’d arrived, I’d only given her three days, tops, to pull her in-laws out of the time loop trap the curse had flung them into, knowing full well she’d never succeed. Being stuck in Time for so long could alter a person’s consciousness. Rayale, who’d also been trapped in a Time loop during the games, had appeared to be unscathed by her years in the spatial dimension. But not so her in-laws. They’d both reverted to their baser and simpler forms.

Violet, also known as Little Red Riding Hood, who’d once been a killer thirsting for the blood of wolves, had become that fearless predator again. And her mate, the Big Bad Wolf himself, could barely reason higher than the beast he was forced to shift into night after night.

The task Rayale had been given had been completely impossible. But I’d watched that female do the miraculous. Somehow, her years trapped in Time had altered her, too, and now she was able to control time itself, along with her other powers of flute enchantment. She was a force to be reckoned with, and I was almost ninety-nine percent certain that if anyone could pull off the impossible, it would be her.

It’d been many days since Rayale had entered the ley lines to bring back her in-laws, and I found myself growing increasingly fascinated by why she was doing what she was doing. She had no guarantee of reclaiming her own happily ever after, and yet it didn’t stop her from attempting all that she could to ensure that at least her in-laws would.

Additionally, for the first time since the curse was flung, Calypso had not only returned to my realm, but had given Rayale a message to give to me.

Where is my heart?

She’d said those exact words, verified by Charon himself, and I found myself questioning everything I thought I’d known.

She’d come for me, an expectation I’d stopped hoping for after months of very little contact between us. In the beginning, I’d hoped she’d come for it far sooner. And then I’d stopped hoping, believing she either didn’t know, or worse yet, simply didn’t care enough to bother with it.

Calypso had been so certain she would not return as she’d once been, but maybe the curse hadn’t harmed her as badly as she’d expected. Then again, Fable—the one we used to call our granddaughter in the other life and who I still kept my eye on—was trapped in a perpetual loop of water. Fable was frozen and could never again be unfrozen except by the hand of the one who’d cursed her—her own grandmother, Calypso, who seemed to have zero knowledge of her. If we unfroze Fable, those enchanted waters would rise and drown her.

Calypso had never again returned to our granddaughter’s castle, and so far as I knew, didn’t even recognize who Fable even was.

The more I watched Calypso, the more confused I became. On the one hand, she was taking on human characteristics far quicker than she said she had the first time. I could only hope that meant that, deep inside of her, there was still a part of her that remembered us all.

But she’d also killed her nymph. I’d seen her flood her realms, killing much of the sea life in her rages, which seemed to have no rhyme or reason to them. She’d simply start to scream, and then her waters would run out of control. Though, she’d never brought her waters upon land, as if some part of her held back.

Or maybe that was just my hope talking.

I sighed and slumped on my throne as I rubbed at my aching brow, I wondered yet again why was she suddenly ready to find her heart. Was she remembering me? Remembering us? Or was this nothing more than wanting back that which was missing? Those were questions I had no answers for. Glowering, I slouched down on my throne, frustration mounting with each minute that passed.

Then movement in the glass caught my eye, and I shot forward, watching avidly as Rayale and her family lost. The ley lines had fractured from the stress, and from one second to the next, they were simply gone.

“No!” I barked. “No!” I shook the looking glass, knowing it did nothing, but so shocked that I didn’t know what else to do. I was shaking my head furiously, denying to myself that I’d just seen what I’d just seen. “It cannot be.”

They’d been winning. Rayale was going to save them, I’d just known it. I was going to call their souls to me, and fix this somehow. I was going to…

My thoughts trailed off as I suddenly saw a light, weak and very faint, but glowing softly, like a ghostly soul remnant. Throat dry and mouth hanging slightly open, I waited on tenterhooks, silently willing Rayale to do the incredible. But she was no goddess, that kind of power was not in her.

“Oh my gods,” I murmured as I saw her do the miraculous with my own eyes. Rather than quit, Rayale had harnessed a supernatural power I’d never known was in her and rolled time back. But not just for herself. For her family too. They raced through a barrel of starlight like rocks being thrown out of a slingshot.

After that, I couldn’t tear my eyes from the looking glass as I saw a woman, a human woman, not all that different from most mortals who crossed over into my realm, perform an impossible feat.

I sat on my throne for days, watching them win, actually win, against incredible odds. And as they did, a fire began to burn right through me.

When it was over, I called Rayale and her family to my throne room. I stared at them all intently, unable to believe that I’d actually experienced a miracle. Rayale had paid for her act of sacrifice, but she had made peace with it, and for the first time, I realized I could no longer sit upon this throne and do nothing.

If a human could beat the curse, then didn’t it stand to a reason that a god could too? Looking around my cavernous chambers with new eyes, I knew what I had to do.

Calypso’s waters were the very ones that fed my own rivers of woe. In fact, Calypso had already begun to traipse through my waters. Something was calling her here. It could be the need to reclaim her heart, or maybe, just maybe, it was so much more than a mere heart that brought her back to my shores.

I swallowed hard, feeling an angry buzz build through my blood, making it throb and pulse. I’d become so paralyzed by the fear of going after her, only to discover she was nothing at all like the woman I’d once loved, that the very idea of losing her was actually becoming its own self-fulfilling prophecy.

If I called her, might she actually come?

Placing a hand on top of my stomach, I told myself that I feared nothing. I was the lord of death, god of my dominion, ruler of life. Nothing scared me. Ever.

Save her.

The loss of her.

Knowing that she and I existed in a world where we weren’t together was my worst kind of hell. But it was time to be brave, be able to be the god that I was, the god that she deserved.

Staring at the shimmering black waters that sparked and winked from the flicker of torchlight set within the walls, I knew there was only one way for me to find out. I rubbed at my chest, the place where I’d always felt the steady cadence of a strong, beating heart. But now there was nothing but silence. My chest was empty. Void.

But I didn’t need that heart beating in its cage to know that what Calypso and I had was worth fighting for.

I could save Caly.

I could save us.

Closing my eyes, I called my god armor to me, black as shadow and as strong as steel, with wickedly spiked vambraces and pauldrons. I opted out of wearing the helmet. I would meet Calypso as her equal, or at the very least, as the god that I truly was. I wanted her to see me as a powerful entity in my own right so that maybe, just maybe, she’d be more willing to listen to me.

Wetting my very dry lips, I flexed my hands, hearing the comforting sound of ringing metal, then nodded. I stood and walked down the dais. Then I stopped and glanced over my shoulder, remembering something I’d almost completely blocked from my mind because I’d never wanted it in the first place.

Caly’s blade.

After the curse, I’d found the stiletto in my jacket pocket and had forgotten all about what it was or even why I had it. So I’d carelessly tossed into my armory, imagining that it was just one of many blades I owned. But once I’d used the skeleton key and remembered what it was, I’d still avoided it like the plague.

I bit my lip. If I was reaching out to her now, it seemed nonsensical not to use it. Calypso had given it to me for a reason, and she’d never been a stupid or foolish woman. She’d made me take it for a reason.

My skin crawled with gooseflesh. With a low muttered oath, I called the weapon to me. The rush of it flying through the air sounded like a shrieking whistle in my ears and when it landed on my palm, golden runes glowing with the power trapped inside the bright steel, I shuddered.

“May the Fates have mercy on me,” I whispered and tucked the damnable thing into a slit of my armor, not wanting to hold onto it any longer than was necessary.

With a determined set of my jaw, I took the last few steps toward the water’s edge, watching as the murky waves rolled gently upon my land and tickled at the tips of my booted feet.

If I called her, then the fight was well and truly on. I could no longer pretend to ignore our situation or hope that all would be miraculously set to rights on its own. I was scared, and I was man enough to admit it. I was gearing up for the biggest fight of my life, and I dared not think what would happen to me or to her if I lost this battle. Simply put, I couldn’t afford to.

Girding myself, I took a second to reflect on what I was fighting for. Her smiles. Her whispers. Her heated caresses, her words of forever, and the image of her beautiful face shining up at me with such love and devotion that it brought a sheen of heat to my eyes. My hands flexed by my sides as I whispered in a heated rush, “Calypso, primordial goddess of the waters deep, I am Hades. Come to me.”

The waters parted. The sea roared.

And there she was. My goddess. My female. My truest and only love.

She was a pillar of water and of flesh. In our early days together, she’d sometimes come to me thus, both water and woman. I’d always wondered why she chose this form when coming to me, but now I wondered if maybe it had been her way of showing me her duality.

I studied her, wishing very much that I could find the words to say that would convey all that I was feeling right now. But words had abandoned me.

She was still as potently beautiful as she’d ever been, with hair long and black and hanging silkily down her back. She wore a golden crown made up of creatures that glittered with diamonds and gems, crustaceans that were encrusted with turquoise and sapphire. Diamonds and blood-red rubies skittered across the crown of her hair. She wore a gown of sheer, translucent water. No fish swam within it this time. Her form was exposed to me, and my mouth watered. If I’d had a pulse, I was sure it would be pounding so hard that I might have actually suffered a stroke.

As it was, I felt light-headed and dizzy. I’d not been this close to her in what felt like an eternity, but had only been months.

Her scent of brine and salt and sweet-water flowers punched me in the nose, and I rocked back on my heels, knees temporarily threatening to give out from under me.

Her turquoise eyes were slitted and glaring at me. That rosebud mouth of hers that I’d had many a heated dream about—remembering how she’d sucked and fondled me with it, making me squirm and cry out until I felt I might actually die from the pleasure and pain of it—was now thinned into a straight line. Razor sharp cheekbones and a softly rounded jaw that made her look both powerful and delicate at the same time.

I felt weak all over. Seeing her here was almost unreal. For so long, all I’d had was my memories of her, but I was heartened to realize that I’d remembered every line, plane, and dip of her. I’d not even forgotten the tiny freckles that dotted the bridge of her nose and the tops of her porcelain-white cheekbones.

Aphrodite had always been the legendary beauty, but in me, she’d never inspired a tenth of these feelings of mania and need and desire so sharp it cut through me like the sharpest blade.

“Calypso,” I said. The word a reverent whisper that spilled off my tongue like a silky husky drawl, and I felt outside of myself as I saw my hand reaching out toward her.

She was as still as a statue, glaring hostilely at me, giving me time to study her body, her thick and curvaceous form I’d always been crazy for—full breast, trim waist, with a neatly shaved bush between her exquisite thighs, which she’d so often wrapped around my neck as I’d supped and feasted upon her.

Blood rushed south in me, making me feel heavy and heated. I’d been so long without her that I did not think I could feel this again. But I was being bombarded by memories of us. Not just sexual memories either.

Though sex was predominant in my memories, there were other moments, so many others. Us laughing. Teasing one another. Acting like adolescent teenagers in my Elysian Fields after one of our marathon coupling sessions.

Her running away from me, taunting and teasing me over her shoulder as she commanded that I catch her. Her long, lovely hair whipping in the breeze behind her like a banner, guiding me straight to her, always to her waiting and willing arms.

The love we’d shared had been so much more than just sex. It’d been all-consuming. It had been everything. And through that love, we’d built a life together. A bloody brilliant one. We’d raised children together. And both our kingdoms had thrived because of our union with one other.

“Who are you, that you should dare call me so?” Her voice rang with command, and I went suddenly cold all over.

“I am Hades, God of the—”

She slashed her hand through the air and grinned, but this smile was cruel, full of teeth and mocking.

“I know who you are, puny one. That is not what I asked. I asked who were you to think you could dare call upon me!”

The rocky chamber above my head quivered from the roll of thunder that’d clapped through her words, and I shivered.

“You spoke with my man just last week. You beckoned me, Calypso.”

She scoffed, glancing to her left and looking cold as ice. “I know what I did. And why I did it. But do you, Hades, god of the lesser beings, know why I called to you, or have you called me just to waste my time?”

My skin crawled with gooseflesh. This wasn’t the first time she and I had interacted. There’d been other moments, other times when she’d seemed distant, yes, but not cold. Not ice. She’d at least acknowledged me then. This might look like my Calypso. It even sounded like her. But the creature with me now wasn’t my Calypso at all.

She laughed, and the sound was cruel and tittering. “Speak, fool. You called me here.”

“What’s happened to you?” I said bluntly, words shivering with shock and anger.

Tipping her head back, she planted her hands on her hips and chuckled. The sound was deep and menacing, chilling my blood and leaving me feeling empty all over.

“Oh yes, I know how this conversation will go, now. You think that because we’ve bumped into one another before that we are what… friends?” Her laughter was cruel. “I know who you are. And I also know,” she said as she walked closer to me, leaving wet footsteps in her wake, “that you’ve been watching me. I feel your eyes all over me. When I swim. When I bathe. Even… when I’ve killed.”

My brows dipped. What the bloody hell was going on here? This wasn’t Calypso. This wasn’t her. Surely, I’d not lost her like this. Surely, the curse hadn’t been so cruel to her. Surely, this wasn’t my female now.

“You called for me,” I snapped and pounded my gauntleted finger against my armored chest.

She tipped her hand over, the movement insolent and arrogant. “Indeed I did. And do you want to know why, Hades, lesser god?”

I winced, and that only seemed to delight her. Her smile grew even wider, but there was no warmth in it, no kindness, no love. Just disdain and contempt for me.

My nostrils flared as anger wormed hot and heavy through my heart. She and I had never fought in our past life. Not once. Not like this. We’d had disagreements. We’d even occasionally bickered. But we’d never been cruel to each other because she’d been the love of my life, and I’d been hers.

“Do not call me that,” I said low, deeply.

She tittered but shrugged. “If you wish, little one. But you are not my peer, and you never will be. I do not respect you. I do not like you. But I do need you.”

Grinding my molars together so hard that they groaned under the pressure, I glared at the person wearing the skin of my female. This wasn’t my woman. This wasn’t my lover. This was something else, someone else, entirely.

“You need me? For what?”

“Oh, you know,” she tipped her hand over and glanced down at her palm, “just a small, insignificant little thing. Where’s my heart?”

Her face contorted sharply, turning less delicate and sharper. Her cheeks hollowed out, and her bones became more prominent. She was a twisted, darker version of herself, but no less beautiful.

Feeling on the verge of fury, it was my turn to grin just so that I could cover the unimaginable pain of Calypso’s cruelty. “Ah, so you do remember me, Calypso.”

All humor vanished from her. “My name is Thalassa.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s not, and hasn’t been for a long time.”

The waters of my rivers began to rise as her face twisted into a darker version of herself. Her gown, which had been clear, was now swirling with thick bands of ebony smoke. Her hair, which had hung long and loose down her back, was snapping and spitting like venomous vipers.

And damn my dark heart, but she was the most magnificent being in all of creation to me. This was not my Calypso, and yet my soul and my mind were at odds because I’d never wanted her more.

I clenched my fists.

“Your name is Calypso, and you are the most glorious creature in all the lands. You are fierce. Your depths are unfathomable. Your heart is pure even though a part of you is dark.”

Her eyes, once light turquoise, now turned as dark as the deepest depths of the ocean, and the mocking laughter that’d so cruelly filled my hall instantly ceased upon her tongue. She blinked.

I dared to hope that somewhere inside of her there was a part of her that still remembered me, remembered us. Daring to be bold as Rayale had been, I took a step toward her and held out my hand in the universal gesture that I meant her no harm.

She trembled, but the waters beneath her continued to churn angrily. Was this confusion, anger, doubt? I did not know, but I pressed on.

“You are everything to me, Calypso. My lover. My friend. My world. And some part of you must know that. Some part of you must remember. Yes, I’ve been watching you, but you’ve been watching me too. You’re curious too. Even if you don’t remember why, you know you belong here. You belong here with me.”

She laughed, batting at my words. “Oh, you say that to me as if you think me a fool that I should believe such nonsense. I am empty inside. There is nothing good in me. Just darkness. And it grows and spreads because you took my heart! I want it back!” Her voice vibrated, rolling with a thousand others, and the bodies of my dead spirits began to wail and moan.

Calypso had always had an uncanny ability to attune herself to them. Ghostly hands reached out of the waters as the moans grew louder and sharper.

“Give. Me. My. Heart!”

And then she pounced me, but I wasn't prepared for her attack. I was shoved down to the floor, with her kneeling over me. Her face contorted into one of fury and rage.

“You did this to me! You did! And I couldn’t come back on these lands until you invited me. But you did, you fool. You finally did!”

Then she slashed at me with her nails that’d curved into wicked claws. I grappled with her wrists, not wanting to hurt her, even though in the back of my mind I knew that for the utter lie that it was. If Calypso really wanted to, she could kill me, obliterate me with a mere thought.

I grunted as she jerked swiftly out of my hands and then rammed her claws through my armor like it was nothing, straight into the soft meat of my belly. I jerked, sat up, and clutched her hands to me. The attack wasn’t deadly, but it hurt. Dammit, did it hurt.

Pain blossomed through me like an arc of sweeping electricity that grew in speed and strength from one wave to the next.

Her face was pressed so tight to mine that I had to cross my arms to see her properly. There was nothing kind on her face, nothing of the old Calypso, not even a spark of it.

I knew what I had to do, and I did not want to.

“Don’t make me do this, Caly.”

“It’s Thalassa!” She screamed, and as if the world had slowed around me, I saw her yank her hands out of my belly and then lift them over her head for another swift and brutal attack.

I squeezed my eyes shut, and with tears rolling down my cheeks, I called her blade to me. It came without question, listening to me only because I was the master of it. Calypso herself had gifted it to me willingly. The only way to end a primordial was to have that very primordial give you the only means with which to do it.

Then time sped forward suddenly, and I was the one in the dominant position. I was on top of her, somehow, though I didn’t remember moving. Her very own soul blade was in my hand and pressing dangerously against her throat.

She gasped, eyes going wide, all color draining from the fleshy side of her face.

“Hades?” she trembled, and for just a second, just one second, she sounded so much like my female, my dark heartbeat, that I lost focus on what I’d been about to do.

I quivered to hear her say my name in that way, just as she used to, all soft and breathy and lovely. It was my Caly again.

“Hades, please. Please.” Her eyes were shining, their color still dark and stormy, but she sounded so bloody real. But she was a master manipulator, or had been in another life. Always for the good, then. But what if she’d retained those skills and was just waiting for me to lower the blade so that she could end me permanently?

My brain and my soul fought a vicious battle for dominance. My brain told me this was nothing more than a lie. But my soul said this was really her, that she was still in there, maybe buried so far down that not even she was aware of it. But I had heard it. I heard her. It had to be real.

Right?

I blinked, staring at her, brows furrowed. I’d heard something in her tone that I’d lamented of ever hearing again.

When I looked into her eyes again, it was not the monster I saw—her irises were clear blue and the anger had vanished. There was another emotion there, though, and I recognized it instantly—a bottomless pool of endless and unimaginable pain.

“Please,” she whispered and then leaned forward, causing her impossibly sharp blade to sink through even the glass of her like a knife through hot butter and I finally understood.

She was not begging me for her life. She was begging me to end it.

Horror stole the breath from my body.

“No!” I cried and tossed the blade away. It clattered on the rocky soil beneath us. Then I crawled off her and moved away, lost, scared, and alone. She’d wanted me to do it. She’d actually wanted me to kill her.

“Damn you!” I snapped in my fury and pain, she’d come to me not for her bloody heart but to force my hand. I saw that now. How dare she?

“Hades,” she cried, looking stunned and shocked as she slowly sat up.

Wrapping my arms around my knees, I pulled into myself. I had thought I could do it. I had thought I could do the impossible, the miraculous, just as Rayale had. But I couldn’t.

I could not do it.

I lowered my head and sobbed silently into my armor.

“I’ve been so lost, Calypso. So lost without you,” I mumbled, the words so low that I doubted she could even hear them. But I thought I would shatter if I didn’t say them. “I can’t do this. I can’t do this anymore,” I shuddered.

A soft hand fell onto my shoulder, and I jumped, startled and sure that she’d picked up that blade and would sink it deep into my breast.

And I was partly right. She was holding the stiletto in her hand, but her eyes were fixed on my face, and the agony that’d stolen my will from me was still glittering in her eyes.

“Why do you have my soul blade?” she asked almost gently, so different from the cold and calculating sea hag she’d been just a minute ago.

I scrubbed at my cheeks, staring miserably at the object of my heart and affections. “Because you gave it to me, Ca… Thalassa,” I said and shuddered, hating the sound of that name in a way I never had before.

But she was right. This wasn’t my Calypso. My Calypso had never before felt deader to me than she did in that moment. My Calypso would have never tried to trick me into doing the one thing that wouldn’t end just her, but would have killed me too. It would have shattered me so completely that Olympus would have lost two great gods.

She nodded. “And why would I do that?”

Her look was earnest—broken, but earnest. Did she not remember giving me the blade? Did she remember me? I wet my lips and stared at the object of ultimate destruction in her hands.

“I sense that this blade wishes to return to you, but if it feels this way, then it’s only because I…” She swallowed hard. “I gave it to you in truth. Tell me, lesser god, why I would do such a thing?”

I cringed. “Because you loved me.” I spat the words out like a poison, angry at the curse. Angry at her. But mostly angry at myself for dropping my guard as I had. “Do what you want with me, then, primordial goddess of old. I am far too weary for these games.”

And I stared down at my feet, scowling because I truly was a lesser god if I could just roll over in this way. With anyone else, I’d have struck true. But I couldn’t do it with her. I would never be able to kill her. She was my priestess. My one true love.

The blade clattered by my feet. I looked at it, then up at her, shocked.

She had her arms wrapped around herself and was not looking at me, but over toward her waters, vulnerability tight on her face. I knew enough of Caly to know she’d never shown her vulnerable side with anyone else but me.

After what had just happened between us, I was loathe to hope that maybe she really was still in there. I clenched my back teeth, too conflicted and torn up to speak with her right now.

“The blade is no longer mine,” she said softly. “It is yours now. I only wish to be reunited with my heart. Give it to me, and I will leave you in peace.”

I blinked, having a hard time believing that she’d so willingly hand back to me the only key to her destruction. Why would she do that? And why was she really here?

For her heart?

Because just a second ago, she’d been pleading with me to kill her, to take her precious life and snuff it out forever, which made me believe that somewhere inside of her, she must have known that I’d had that blade. And if she’d known that, then was she really here for her heart or because I was the only means to ending whatever agonies she suffered?

My empty chest ached at the idea that she could actually be in such torment. I had a minute to decide what to do.

Instinct had always been my guide in the past, and my instinct had never led me wrong. It was why I kept my distance from most of the Olympians. They were backstabbers and traitors, nearly all of them, and I was too bloody old to deal with such nonsense. All I wanted in life was peace and some sliver of happiness. For a time, I’d found so much damned happiness that I wondered if I’d used it all up and now I was destined to become that bitter, angry old man I’d once been, like the Fates had finally realized that the god of death could never truly know such joy.

I studied her face, noting the fine worry lines around her eyes and the way her pretty pink lips were tight and tense, neither of which looked fake. For months, I’d watched her, seeing this conflict in her eyes and an endless pool of sadness that would quickly turn into a wave of rage at the mere drop of a hat.

Again, I found myself asking the one question I had no actual answer for—why had she really come to me in the first place? If she’d wanted to kill me for daring to “steal” her heart, she could have done so. But she hadn’t.

I’d told myself that it was time to be brave, and I’d meant it.

Snatching up the blade, I hid it deep within a ley line and then got smoothly to my feet and stared at her face.

She looked at me, and there was still pain in her eyes, but I could see it was already fading. A small grin curled at the corners of her mouth.

She was going mad, flipping between the darkness and something else with cruel rapidity.

“Who are you?” I asked slowly.

She opened her mouth, but at first, no words came out, though her throat worked as if she were trying to say something. Finally, she sighed and shrugged.

“Sometimes, I think I know. Other times, I know nothing at all. Do you know where my heart is?”

Suddenly, I heard words whisper through me, not in my voice or even in hers, but in something else, something fuller and deeper and alien to me, but not alien at all, as if I’d known that voice forever but hadn’t remembered it until just now.

When the world says, “Give up,” hope whispers, “Try it one more time.”

My breath stuttered through me, and my skin shivered because that voice hadn’t been my imagination.

“I do.” My voice came out gruff. “I know where your heart is, Thalassa.”

She shuddered, long lashes flickering against the tops of her pale cheeks like a fanned paintbrush. “Then take me to it.”

I suddenly understood my dream of the past few nights. It’d been this very moment. The dreams had shown me the beginning of the end. Or rather, the end and the beginning. This was it, the start of another us, and whether we were as one again was entirely up to us. Up until just now, I hadn’t remembered where the journey would begin. But I knew now. And I also knew where it ended.

But the middle… the middle was the part that really mattered. The middle was where I’d make her love me again.

The middle was where we’d be reborn.

I stepped to the side and crossed my hands behind my back. I knew what to do now. Dipping my head, I whispered, “After you, goddess. A long journey awaits us.”

She hissed, face contorting into one of extreme rage and fury. “You lie! You do not know, and you—”

I shook my head. “I would never lie to you, Thalassa. I never have and never will. If you wish to find your heart, then you must trust me.”

And in a blink, that madness was gone from her. In its place was the broken shell, the woman that I loved, but who was scared and alone and fighting to make sense of her new normal. She was still in there, and it was that woman that I would save. I would save her. Just as Rayale had done, I, too, would manage the impossible.

Thalassa trembled. “I do not understand myself.” Her confession was small and tremulous and came out sounding broken. She looked down at her feet, but not before I caught sight of the tears rolling down her cheeks.

Telling myself I should not touch her because I did not know what kind of madness I’d ignite if I did, I ignored all caution anyway and tipped her chin up with my thumb and forefinger.

She hissed, face once more a mask of intolerable hate. But she did not move to strike at me. Thalassa could break me, but she didn't, which meant she was fighting in there. Calypso was still in there. I had to believe that. I had to.

Ignoring my own pain at seeing her like this, I smiled gently at her. “Trust me as you once did, sea goddess. Believe in me, just as you did when you gifted me your soul blade. Trust that I can help you. You believed it then, so believe it now.”

“I don’t. I don’t believe in you,” she said, ripping my soul in two.

But though her words were laced with cruelty, she reached for my hand and gave me the gentlest of squeezes.

I thinned my lips, but I nodded. She’d told me once that she was dual natured. Dual meant she was two at once. Somewhere inside of this beautiful shell, my woman fought to regain control of her true self, her real self. And if she needed me to fight, then that was what I’d do. To my dying breath, I’d fight for her.

I would always fight for her.

I turned us toward the trail that would lead us out of the Underworld, and we took that first step into the unknown together.

---

I would make him believe in this kinder, softer version of myself, and then when he least expected it, I would kill him for stealing my heart and for having my soul blade. I let him keep the soul blade because as long as he did, he thought himself in control, but he wasn’t. Not even a little.

I hated him.

A flutter of something roiled through me, leaving me breathless and weak in the knees. But I locked the emotion down tight. I did hate him for making me feel things I’d never felt before. I’d not lied when I said I’d felt him watching me for months, studying me, keeping a distance, and yet somehow pulling me in. It hadn’t been hard to figure out who’d taken my heart.

I peeked at him from the corner of my eye and frowned deeply. He was a problem that I needed to rid myself of. And then… then I’d be free. Free of the torment of him.

Of the dreams.

Free to be me.