Page 60 of Love and Death
“I promise,” she says, every word spoken in truth, “I will do as you’ve asked. I will find a way to save us all.”
Gods, I love her for thinking it is so simple.
Another tremor, the weight of the world bearing down on my shoulders.
“No, that is a promise not even a god can make,” I respond vehemently, my fingers tightening around her arms. “I must reject it. I refuse to have you bound by a promise you cannot keep.”
Her face blurs before me, bleeding from my memory even as I struggle to hold on. To keep my mind from collapsing upon us both.
“I—”
The corners of my mind splinter.
“It is time. You must go.”
“Eros—"
I relish the pleasure of my name on her tongue, carving it forever into the depths of my mind; of my soul. I want nothing more than to keep her here with me, to hold her, but I will not.
I refuse to be the end of her.
Distant rumbling, fragments of memories turning to dust, quickly drawing nearer.
“Remember me,” I say, my voice calm, refusing to let her share in the knowledge of coming destruction. “When the choice comes, remember that I have loved you. That is all the promise that I ask.”
The ground shifts beneath me. There is no more time.
I lean down to press one last kiss to her forehead, and then, I shove her backward, over the gallery’s balustrade, and out of my mind, with all the strength I have left in me.
The marble splits beneath my feet, the curtains rending as the sky shatters above me, and the petals turn to ash.
The illusion tears itself apart, crumbling into ruin.
And I fall—not into memories or dreams—but into silence and shadow, in which I feel nothing.
I see nothing.
17
HADES
Igrit my teeth, fury licking up around me in blue flames.
The ascent should have been simple, if not painless, but the Fates appear to be up to their old tricks. Unlike the woods outside Aglaia, this one will not bend to me, nor would it bend to any other god of the Underworld.
Not even Persephone.
Here, I have only the crones to curse.
A half dozen times already, I have tried and failed to make it to the top, the twisting path always leads up, yet brings me right back to the foot of the mountain.
I can hear the crowing of their three-eyed ravens, even from here, as they mock my failure. They will not think it so funny when I make a pyre of their tree. Iwillmake them pay; I will make themallpay once I am God of All the Living and the Damned.
Do they think they can outwit me? That theirmountain will protect them from keeping their end of the bargain?
I laugh bitterly at this.
Then they are all the more cowards for it.
