Page 6 of Love and Death
This time ... not even Death can save us.
2
HAZEL
The darkness is all-consuming.
The shadows cling to me, stealing my very breath away and miring my feet within them. If I did not already know I was moving through them, I would think I’d been lost to time and space.
My racing thoughts are overtaken by the suffocating stillness that is the darkness now surrounding me. Here, within the overwhelming crush of oblivion, I know nothing.
Feel nothing.
Amnothing.
My mind spins, and my steps falter. The darkness wraps around me, drawing ever tighter as it pulls me further and further into its cold embrace.
And then a voice echoes through the emptiness, calling out from an unfathomable distance. I cannot make out the word, nor whom the voice belongs to, but it does not matter.
The still, small sound is sweeter than the most honiedmusic to my starving ears, and I cannot help but turn toward it. But even as I do, I find myself jerked backward.
All at once, the nothingness abruptly gives way to blinding light and a rush of noise. I gasp, a long shuddering breath filling my lungs as I struggle to reorient myself.
Confusion still wrapped around the corners of my mind, I barely manage to regain my footing before Cerberus continues onward, dragging me along a half-step behind him.
Blinking away the pain from the edges of my vision, I look around as understanding slowly returns to me. We’re no longer on the arena floor but in a hallway leading out toward the main city. Hades is not far ahead, flanked by several of his men as he barks orders to them that I can’t quite make out, let alone comprehend.
Glancing over my shoulder, a seemingly impenetrable wall of pitch-black blocks the way back, and yet, I have the strangest urge to turn and run straight into it … if only in an attempt to hear the sound of that voice once more.
But I don’t, not that I could with Cerberus still holding my arm so firmly in his grasp.
This thought catches me off-guard. As tight as his grip on me is now, I’d barely felt his presence amidst the shadows. Though, I suppose, he was the only thing truly keeping me from losing myself among them.
Did he hear the voice then, too?
Making our way out onto the streets, I find the city in a state of chaos as armed guards press in from all sides, ordering residents to return to their homes immediately … and until further notice. Hades’ men only seem to grow in number with each step we take, marching past us as they patrol the streets with calculated expertise.
The more I see of them, the more I get the impression that they’ve been preparing for this exact moment for quite some time, and fear roots its way even deeper into my chest.
As the shadows slip from the recesses of my mind, it slowly dawns on me that everything that has happened—everything that has led up to this moment—was never about me.
This, Death’s sacrifice, is what Hades wanted all along, and I allowed him to play me for the fool that I am, a mortal trying to outwit the gods themselves. I walked right into his trap, and I took everyone I loved down with me … or at least I will, if I can’t find a way out of this, and fast.
“You don’t have to do this,” I plead with the hellhound in a hushed whisper as the distance between us and Hades begins to close. “You don’t have to listen to him. I thought you wanted to protect me.”
But my pleas fall on deaf ears.
Cerberus’ eyes remain trained forward, his face expressionless, as we continue following the king through the winding streets.
What happened to him during the trial? This version of him is nothing like the protective, chatty Cerberus that I knew before.
My heart sinks as we continue on in silence. The promise I made to Hades echoes louder and louder in my mind, like a curse, the closer we get to the sapphirepalace, and I know that soon I will have no means of escape.
Soon, I will be entirely at the king’s mercy.
I struggle to free myself from the hellhound’s grip, but his fingers only tighten around my arm, making me wince in pain.
“Please,” I say, sucking air in through gritted teeth, “you’re hurting me.”
