The Death King Read online

  The Death King

  Jovee Winters

  Jovee Winters Publishing

  Contents

  The Death King

  The Death King

  1. Hades

  2. Thalassa

  3. Aphrodite

  4. Aphrodite

  5. Hades

  6. Hades

  7. Hades

  8. Thalassa

  9. Hades

  10. Hades

  11. Hades

  12. Thalassa

  Epilogue

  Untitled

  Other books by Jovee: Blue Moon Bay cozy pnr mystery romance

  The Death King

  Copyright March, 2018 Jovee Winters

  Cover Art by Phatpuppy

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  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning, or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Jovee Winters, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in the context of reviews.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Jovee Winters. Unauthorized or restricted use in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patent Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  Published in 2018 by Jovee Winters, Colorado Springs, CO United States of America

  The Death King

  Hades is the Dark King of Legend, the god of the Underworld and the master of death itself. Calypso is a wild, capricious, and ancient goddess more powerful than all the gods of Olympus combined. Theirs was a legendary love until a curse came and tore through Kingdom and with it the end of all they'd once been. Without her is lost and without him, she's lost her way.

  * * *

  In the new world, Calypso remembers little of who she'd once been, but Hades remembers it all. And the agony of her loss is slowly killing him. But the Dark King refuses to lose at anything. He will get his dark priestess back, he will make her remember him, remember their love, or die trying.

  * * *

  Calypso is an elemental with a dark secret, she's dual-natured and now, thanks to the curse, that dark side of her she'd long suppressed is awake and ready to blaze a path of terror and destruction through all the worlds. And she'll do it too...except a man with dark, starlit eyes has suddenly begun to haunt her dreams. She's remembering things, things that couldn't possibly be. Things like touches, whispers, and seduction. But she's a virgin goddess, untouched, unspoiled by the hands of another, or is she really? Who was she in the before? In that once upon another time? That's what Calypso aims to find out, and when a wild elemental makes a plan nothing and no one can stand in her way...

  1

  Hades

  The Day of the Curse

  * * *

  I watched her as she watched me. My love. My lover. My best and truest friend. We’d just sent Rayale into the void of time, both of us following a compulsion that said something monumental was about to take place in the world we called our own.

  The sham of the “love games” was over, and we were both feeling the pull back to our home away from home. Not to Olympus, where the rest of our pantheon lived, but the place to which we’d dared to escape and create a new life for ourselves. A place of wonder and magic and fairy tales. Kingdom, our true home. The only place to which Caly and I could go to when we needed to feel… sane.

  Calypso was in her goddess form—a tower of water manipulated into the shapely dimensions of a lovely woman. Her tentacle braids flowed behind her back, and her smooth, glass-like countenance was calm and composed, so unlike the tempestuous female she normally was.

  For a year, we’d been waiting for this day. Waiting and planning and knowing it would come and with it, the end of all we knew and loved. Neither of us had known exactly what was coming, only that it could spell the end of all we’d built for ourselves.

  We stood upon the cliffs of Never. Her Seren waters sparkled below us. With the way the sunlight glinted on the surface, it looked like colorful diamonds winking in the glow of fire, every color of the rainbow reflected back at us.

  The air here smelled of salt and ocean, brine and… her. This was my Caly’s smell—fresh, intoxicating, alluring.

  I clenched my jaw, having so many words to say yet. But all of them rested on the tip of my tongue.

  “Did we do right, do you think, Bubble Butt?” she asked me, and I chuckled despite the heavy tone of her words that hinted at the deep and terrible anguish we were both experiencing.

  She was in agony, but she was trying to lighten the mood because that was Caly’s way. She’d once told me she loved nothing in the worlds so much as to see me smile. And by the way her finger traced the curve of my jaw, I knew she still felt the same.

  At our backs, a ripple was forming in the very fabric of the heavens, a line of deepest, almost jeweled blue, and it rolled with the might of a heavy and terrible curse resting upon it, waiting for just the right moment to be unleashed upon us all. Only a few in Kingdom would have power and intellect enough to know what it was, and they’d likely already begun to make preparations for whatever came next.

  This was what we’d been sensing all along, what we’d known would come. Not even the gods would be spared this curse, and I had to wonder what kind of power existed in the cosmos that could affect even us this way. Something greater, that was certain.

  But I’d pondered on this all I could—or would. Now was the time for goodbyes, though I dreaded the very thought of it with every fiber of my being.

  Closing the scant space between us, I didn’t answer my dark heart’s question. Instead, I studied her. I watched how she breathed and how she moved. Even in her glass-like state, with no color in her, she was the prettiest thing I’d ever known in the entirety of my existence. I framed the delicate column of her neck with my large palm. To an outsider, it might appear as though I wished to crush her swan’s neck, but in truth, it was how I most preferred to feel the beat of her heart. She leaned deep into my touch as her long lashes fluttered like moth’s wings upon the tops of her glassy cheekbones.

  “I wish you to know something, Thalassa,” I said, using her true and primordial name so that she would know what I said now mattered and that she must hear me.

  She nibbled on her clear bottom lip with her clear, strong teeth, and my heart lurched in my chest, aching fiercely. I knew that though I could not die from the pain of what was to come for us, I would very much wish that I could.

  Her gown, which was little more than a clear pane of water in the shape of a dress, with thousands of swimming beta fish of every color, suddenly turned a shade of deepest red as the fish reacted to their goddess’s internal anguish.

  Calypso could affect marine life with but a thought, for she was their mother, the life-giving waters of all. And if she was angry, so were they. Below us, the Seren Sea began to churn.

  After trailing my fingers down her neck, I reluctantly removed them from that strong column and grasped her hand. It was cold and smooth, like marble to the touch, but even so, I shivered with a delicious heat. My body tingled as I remembered all that we’d done to one another this morning in our frenzied need to imprint ourselves on each other’s skin, mind, and soul.

  “Do not be angry, my beloved,” I said slowly. “And whatever you do, do not lose heart a
t what is to come.”

  She closed her eyes, shook her head, and then gave a heavy shudder. I wrapped her in my arms, pressing her delicious coolness against my larger frame, and rocked her gently.

  Her hands slid up my back.

  I might be the god of death, but her touch always brought me back to life.

  “We should have told them.” Her words were so soft and filled with sadness. “Those in the games. We should have told them what we sensed, what we… felt. Was it fair not to?”

  I sighed. “We weren’t certain of anything then, Caly. We had only dreams. Dreams that told us to build the games.”

  “Love games,” she scoffed. “What do we know of love?”

  I frowned. “More than most, I’d wager,” I said meaningfully, holding her gaze steadily. Behind us, her waters calmed and turned radiant.

  And though I saw the pinch of exasperation around her eyes, she gifted me with a warm smile. “I suppose you are right, Death.”

  Leaning up on tiptoe, she moved her face so close to mine that I had to close my eyes. She did not kiss me, though I felt the comforting warmth of her nearness tingle upon my mouth. Instead, I heard her inhale the breath I’d just exhaled. A rumble tore through my chest as I clenched my fingers around her biceps, holding on to her so tightly that if will alone were enough to keep her with me always, I’d never have to lose her.

  “You are in me, Hades.” Her voice was a husky drawl, and I felt her pull back enough so that I could open my eyes.

  I nodded, knowing that to be truth.

  “But we’re gods,” she continued, staring up at me through her thick lashes, and though she was a woman without color, I had no problem reading the anguish in her eyes. “We… we should have said something. Why didn’t we try harder to tell the others? We should have tried, even if it killed us.”

  I cocked my head, thinking back on the days leading up to this moment, from the very first dream she and I had shared, to the very last one we’d had just a few nights past. We were bonded for all eternity, my Calypso and I, but it wasn’t common for gods to share one mind as we did.

  Something had changed for us, and it had all started about a year ago.

  “You know as well as I that we could not have. I do not think we were supposed to, Calypso. We were merely instruments leading to this moment, nothing more. We couldn’t even speak of it to Dite, and you know how many times we tried. Always, our mouths were kept sealed if we even dared to broach this subject with anyone else but each other.” I shook my head. “You must sense that this is a power greater than anything we’ve ever seen or known before, and this”—I spread my arm to encompass our surroundings and each other—“wasn’t our secret to tell. I do not know what will come of us, but I know that we are exactly where we are destined to be.”

  I brushed at the tears that slid down her cheeks as she took in a shuddery breath. “I just…” She hiccupped. “I feel we could have done more, should have done more. We—no, I—failed them all.”

  “No.” I gripped her by the shoulders and gave her a gentle shake. “No. Not even the Fates could change this path we’re on. We did all we could. We followed the prompting of our dreams, we created these games, we gave them all the matches that could best see them through what’s to come, and now we have to trust that it was enough.”

  She shook her head before resting her cheek upon my chest and kissing me just above my rapidly beating heart. We held one another for what felt like an eternity. Neither of us spoke much, content just to hold on for however long we had left to us.

  After several moments, she said, “Hades?” She spoke so softly that I almost didn’t hear my name on her tongue.

  I frowned and stared down at her, imprinting her features onto my long and eternal memory. She appeared perpetually youthful, with her heart-shaped jaw and slightly upturned nose. Her high cheekbones and those exotic, slanted eyes of hers snared me like a fish on a hook whenever I looked at her. I traced her cool flesh with the pad of my thumb. “Hmm?”

  “I lied to you.” She thinned her lips, and my skin ran cold.

  “What? But you never—”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and pulled out of my arms. My pulse raged like a rocket within me, making me feel dizzy and lightheaded. We never lied to each other. It was our one sacred rule. In all our many lifetimes together, we’d always told the truth no matter how unpalatable the telling of it would be. We’d always been honest.

  I took a step back. “What are you saying, Caly?”

  Wrapping her arms around herself, she turned to the side, and a beam of sunlight shot through her, making her shimmer in much the same way as her waters below us did.

  “I… I told you that my dreams were exactly like yours. I said that I would mostly remember what came next but, but…”

  She turned to look at me, and the emptiness in her gaze left me reeling. I was sick to my stomach and clutched at it with cold, numb fingers. “Say it.”

  She winced.

  “I saw myself this morning when I awoke. I was dead within, Hades. Dead. Empty. I had nothing inside of me anymore. And everything that made me me was all gone. I was just a shell. Nothing. It took me lifetimes to gain some form of humanity. When this curse rips through our world, I fear I could revert, and I do not think I can—”

  “No!” I thundered and clutched at her arms with the preternatural strength of a god.

  She gasped, but she did not move. It was fear that gripped me now, fear of losing her, of losing our children, of what came next. I’d been somewhat okay knowing that we’d be in this new world together, but I’d be damned if I lost her.

  “No! You hear me? No!” I repeated, pressing my face to hers. She was sobbing openly now, and the sound she made ripped my soul in two. “I won’t let this happen to us, Calypso. I won’t let it.”

  “You won’t have a choice. You don’t know who I was before because you didn’t care about me then. In the beginning, your love was for Persephone alone. You did not know me, Hades, and I do not blame you for that. But I am an ancient goddess, a primordial, older even than you.”

  She bit her quivering bottom lip, looking at me with eyes that pleaded for my understanding.

  But all I could do was shake my head. I would not believe this. I would not entertain this. Ever.

  “Primordials. We are not like you.” She gave me a tight smile full of pain and heartache. “You are the shimmering, golden ones, the most humane of all the pantheons. You think and act as someone with a soul should.” She shook her head and clamped her mouth together, apparently unable to continue talking.

  Her jaw clenched, and I dug my fingers into her shoulders. From the corner of my eye, I could see the blue glow beginning to spread. Soon we would be forced to return to our granddaughter’s castle, where my dreams had showed me the beginning of the end would start. It was where we had to be. But I couldn’t leave like this, couldn’t whisk Caly away just yet. We needed more time.

  “I know who you are, Calypso,” I whispered, voice breaking as she tossed herself back into my arms, holding me so tightly that not an inch of space existed between us.

  She trembled like a sapling in a strong wind, and I held her, rocking her slowly and letting her sob, allowing her the luxury of weakness, one she never showed to others. Calypso was the strongest person I knew, god or otherwise, and only with me had she ever allowed the façade to drop. It was a gift I treasured above all else.

  “You don’t know what I was, Hades. When we met, I had learned to be almost human. I am afraid of who I will become again. I did not reason as a god when I was first born, or even as a human. And the truth is…” She took a deep breath before lifting her face to look at me, and her eyes, which had been clear as cut glass, were now a deep shade of black. “There is more. A secret we primordials have killed to protect.”

  “Tell me,” I whispered heatedly. My knees felt so weak that a strong gust of wind might knock me over.

  She bit her bottom lip, looking
at me through her now dark eyes. “You won’t like it.”

  I grinned, though my heart was grieved and sore inside me. “I am ashamed to admit that I would do great things, terrible things even, Calypso, if it meant securing our future together.”

  She closed her eyes, and anguish was written all over her face. The lines of her forehead were thick with grief, and even her jaw trembled. “What I am about to tell you, Hades, none other but me and my sisters know. We are dual natured.” She finally opened her eyes, and her look pleaded that I should listen and not interrupt.

  Cold zipped down my spine. I’d never seen Calypso this fearful, and I worried greatly about what I might hear next.

  “My”—she cleared her throat—“my sisters were always better able to control their dual nature than I was. I am loath to admit it is the one area in which I am weaker than they are. That is why it took me many lifetimes to become the woman that I am today. I had to battle with that part of me, the part that wants to kill and hurt and drown beneath the depths of my waves for no other reason than to watch it happen.”

  Tears slid down both her cheeks, and I lovingly stroked them away with the pads of my thumbs. “Oh, Caly, my heart. Do you think I fear the darkness? I am the god of it.”

  A small, barely even a hint of a smile graced her beautiful mouth before flitting off. “It’s not that, Hades, though I thank you for telling me so. It does help. But there is more. And if you do want me back, then I must be honest with you. When this curse strikes, if my mind is reset as I believe it will be, that dual nature could be stronger than ever after many centuries of suppressing my inner darkness.”