Page 61 of Branded By Shadow
Hades.
A slow, terrible smile touched the god’s lips. “Your father is not here, Damon Blackwood. But I suppose it wasn’t a bad guess. If you squint.”
His voice cut through the dead air with a precision that made me flinch. It was the sound of a verdict being delivered, a finality that stripped the breath from my lungs and left no room for appeal.
Finally, I realized where I was. The underworld. Most likely, on the shores of the River Styx.
“Lord Hades,” I forced out, the effort stealing what little strength I had left. “Why did you pull me from your river?”
A flicker of amusement touched the god’s ancient eyes. “Because the damned have been gnawing on your bloodline for millennia. It’s usually a quiet, tedious affair.”
He tilted his head, a gesture of almost clinical curiosity. “You, however… you were screaming her name. A novel sound in this place. It entertained me.”
A hot flush of shame burned up my spine, so intense it charred my pride to ash. My survival was a spectacle. The one pure thing I had left in that abyss had been nothing more than a moment’s diversion for a bored god.
“The shades,” I forced myself to say. “But why do they…?”
Hades didn’t answer with words. He clamped a hand on the back of my neck, the grip a brand of cold that seared through me.
He dragged me forward, forcing my face inches from the black water. Immediately, skeletal claws broke the surface, grasping, clawing, their undiluted hunger aimed directly at me.
“Ask them,” Hades said, gesturing toward the river. He plucked one of the forms from the mass and dragged it onto the shore.
It was a pathetic, horrifying creature, its form a twisted mockery of a man, its limbs too long, its mouth a permanentOof silent agony.
“Speak your grievance, little echo,” Hades ordered, his voice resonating with an authority that left no room for refusal.
The shade’s head snapped toward me. “Blood of the musician!” it shrieked. “He walked away! He took his prize and left us here to rot! We will have our due! We will consume his line until none remain!”
The creature’s loathing washed over me in icy waves, the same distinct note of hunger I’d heard in the void’s taunting. And that was when I knew. The void’s anger was never mindless. It was a vendetta.
The shade hissed a final, venomous curse before Hades kicked it with a foot shod in black iron. The impact dissolved the shade into a puff of greasy smoke.
“These dead souls will always hate the heirs of Orpheus,” he said. “How could they not? He escaped, while they remain trapped.”
It made so much sense it turned my stomach. But it didn’t explain the presence of Hades himself.
“What do you want from me?” I asked, the words feeling small and useless on my tongue.
“I’m a god, Damon Blackwood. I have everything I want.” He flicked his wrist, and the mists of the realm swirled, thickening before me. “No, child of Orpheus. This is about whatyouwant.”
The darkness resolved into an image. Cora. She knelt in a place of absolute black, her face pale, sweat glistening on her brow. Spectral flowers and vines of pale green light erupted from the ground around her, a desperate, living shield.
The shadows licked at her, tasting her, and I saw her flinch as one brushed her arm. But she kept fighting. When a flower lashed out at the boldest shadow, a dark tendril snatched the summoned plant and devoured it like a greedy beast.
“Interesting, isn’t it?” Hades mused. “She’s feeding the void pieces of herself to keep it at bay. For you.”
I could hardly hear him anymore. The only thing I could focus on was her.
Then, she looked up. Her gaze cut through the vision, through the space between worlds, and found mine. She couldn’t see me, not really. But she knew. Her lips formed a single, silent word. “Damon.”
The name, however quiet, was a command. A thread of impossible warmth shot across the abyss and slammed into the center of my being. The broken thing on the shore of the Styx ceased to exist. The grief collapsed inward, utterly crushed, replaced by something new. Something cold, hard, and absolutely certain.
“Tell me now,” Hades drawled. “Who are you? What are you? Why do you exist?”
I rose to my feet and met the god’s amused gaze without flinching. The things in the river were no longer a terrifying swarm. They were just meat. I could smell the thin, sour scent of their ancient fear.
“I am Damon Blackwood. I am an Alpha of House Hades. And I exist because we always get what we want.”
