Page 645 of Flirting with Darkness

“What —?!” I can’t say anything else, staring open-mouthed up at him.

His lips crack open wide in a smile, and he’s still staring at the necklace down in his hand.

“If I’m not here… if this is gone… they won’t have any reason to come after you. Ever again.” His voice sounds unearthly, like there’s reverberation to it, an ethereal echo. It’s almost as if he’s been pulled away from me, like he’s somewhere else, his voice having to travel distances that could be multidimensional in nature to reach me on the stairs in uptown.

My heart is screaming in my ears, beating so hard it hurts.

I take a step toward him.

“Hadrion?” My voice breaks. “I don’t understand —”

“You wouldn’t. And it’s not Hadrion,” he says, matching my step with one of his own, but in an opposing direction, moving toward the top of the stairs. The door to his apartment swings open on its own.

Ice stabs me through my chest, metaphorically, but painful all the same.

“It’s Hades. And thank you. I owe you. Now I can go collect my rightful throne, my place, and rule over my domain again.” He snatches his hand tight around my necklace, my mother’s necklace, and steps backward, onto the landing, giving me one long look.

“Don’t forget me,” he says, “I won’t forget you.”

One more step and he’s vanished across the threshold. The door slams shut and the stairwell lights go out, pitching me deep into the whirling blackness. A cry rattles up my chest into my throat and I storm blindly up the stairs, ready to open the door, demand answers, shout at him until he tells me what he’s talking about —

The roar hits me before the heat does and I flatten to the steps as the door is engulfed in flames, white-blue flames, hot enough to steal the air right out of my lungs. My scream is drowned out as my eyes close tight, my arm across my face to protect it from the intense burst of dry, wretched heat.

As fast as it came, it dies, leaving me gasping for air and choking for answers.

I lift my head gingerly, tears baked right onto my skin, and find myself bolting up the stairs. I know, somehow, instinctively, that the doorknob will be metal-cold to the touch. It is, and I grab onto it and throw the door wide open.

“Hade —!”

My call fades out, cut off. The apartment in front of me is empty, and there on the floor, etched into the wood in a circle of blackened soot, is a pattern I recognize all too well.

I’ve run my thumb over it before falling asleep, every night, for the past few years of my life.

It’s the faded design from my mother’s pendant — barely recognizable due to the tarnish, only now in the middle of the apartment I can see it clearly.

It’s a set of gates, one open, with vines climbing up them. And above them, floating in mid air, is a skull.

My chest squeezes tight.

Hades.

He’s the god of the underworld. The prince of darkness.

And he stole something from me that I can never get back.

The tears start to slip down my cheeks and I fall to my knees at the edge of the circle. Grief wraps around me like a cloak, and in the silence, a single thought comes to me.

I’m going to get my revenge on him.

Somehow, someway.

Hadrion. Hades. I don’t care what name he goes by.

I’m coming for that son of a bitch.

And he’s going to regret the day he ever broke my heart…

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