The Death King Read online

  “Only tell me what to do, Thalassa, and I vow to you, my lover, that it will be done.”

  “Oh, Hades,” she murmured brokenly, and it pained me to the core to see her this way. I wanted to take the pain from her, make her believe in us the way that I did. But whatever was wrong with my female, she was truly terrified.

  “Tell me, Thalassa. Speak your truth, my heart.”

  She shivered and gripped me tight.

  “Understand that in my primal form, my moods will be as mercurial as the shifting tides. What made me the woman I am today took lifetimes to create. I do not think there can be a reset button for me. That is not how gods’ minds work, as you well know. So either I will be as I am now or I won’t. And if I’m not, you must know that what comes next for me could be monstrous. A true evil. A nightmare. And if that is the case, then I… I give you permission to kill me.”

  “Calypso!” I gripped her tight, so fearful that my words came out sharp with anger. “How dare you demand that of me!”

  She shook her head and reached into her own form, gently pulling out an object I hadn’t known she’d kept hidden on her person. Then she looked at me, clutching a long silver blade in her hands. It gleamed like smooth steel and was inscribed with ancient runes that not even I could understand. Her fingers shook even as she glided them along the smooth edge of the steel.

  “This is my soul blade,” she said in a low tone, but she did not look at me, only stared in fascination at the object of her destruction, “attuned only to me, the only weapon truly capable of stopping me.”

  “Calypso, you are scaring me,” I gritted out between clenched teeth, refusing to take the blade as she repeatedly tried to hand it to me. “No. No, I don’t want this. Are you mad! I will find another way!”

  “Dammit, Death Boy!” she snapped, grabbed my wrist and, using her enormous strength, opened my palm before setting the wicked-looking stiletto in my grip. “Do you think I want to give you this? No! But I would be a fool if I didn’t. A great fool. My love for you goes beyond sanity, reason, or even self-preservation. I’m not saying you must use this, but I am saying that should you need to, you can stop me. You do not know who I am, Hades. None of you ever truly did.”

  I shook my head, hating the bloody blade, and wished I could release it, but Calypso had always been stronger than me. Than any of the Olympians. She was a primordial, one so ancient and powerful that when I thought about the type of destruction she could unleash if she so chose, it made me breathless with fear. But…

  I held her gaze with mine. “I do know you, Calypso, formerly Thalassa of the ancient world. And I do not care one whit about your darkness, because the one constant between us is our great and deep love. I will take this cursed blade, but only because you have forced my hand. I will not need to use it.” And to punctuate my statement, I concealed it in a hidden pocket in my jacket. I would not look upon it again, not if I could help it. There would be no need for this ridiculous weapon, but if it made her feel happy, then I’d pretend along with her.

  She cupped my cheek with her small, cool hand, and I melted beneath her touch. I might be the taller of us, and the physically most imposing from the outside, but I’d always known and understood that if she’d really wanted to, she could have crushed me to dust beneath her dainty heels. It was part of what made our relationship so exciting for me. As an Olympian, I was powerful in my own right, far more powerful than most of my peers. With a mere touch, I could just about stop the heart of anything I cared to except the Titans, our forefathers, and her kind. Feeling so small in comparison to her it had always given me a secret thrill.

  Because with Calypso, I’d learned I did not have to always be the strong one, I could be weak with her. I could be myself, my real self. It was a gift no one else had ever given me, and I worshipped the ground she walked on because of it.

  “I will always save you, my priestess,” I murmured, and spread my thighs so that I created a kind of living shield around her, wishing that mere desire alone was enough to stop this from happening to us.

  “You will try, my Hades. And for that, I think I could not love you more. But do not let your love for me twist you into believing an invention of your own mind. I am not like the humans whose memories might be reset. Mine will likely not be, and I do not wish to give you false hope. I might well be as different to you as the sun is from the moon.”

  I grabbed her flailing hand in a fierce hold and brought her fingers to my lips, giving them a hard, almost bruising kiss. She gulped, trembling in my arms but not trying to pull back from me.

  With my other hand, I framed her cheek, cupping it and memorizing every line and plane of it. I didn’t know how much I would remember in the next life, but I knew that my will was strong enough that, curse or no, I would never stop searching for her.

  “Never. Even if you hate me, I will never leave you alone. You are mine, Calypso, as surely as my dark heart will always be yours. You are the one, and you always will be. And if in the next life you abhor me, just know that I will never stop loving you.”

  She wept, and everywhere her tears rained down, new life sprang up. Gardens of kelp and a plethora of jeweled crustaceans scuttled off toward the waters below.

  “My destiny was to mate with life, and I always assumed that the Fates meant Persephone. It was why I so doggedly chased after her, believing in something that did not truly exist. But I know now there is only one woman in all of the cosmos that I will ever love. And it’s you, Caly. It has always been you and always will be. I will make you love me again, no matter how much you might not want to.”

  She laughed through her tears. “So much we’ve hidden. So much we couldn’t say to Dite and to others. But I’m glad I always had you by my side, Hades, because you were always the one too. Water should not love, and yet I brim over with it. Without you, I am nothing, I am empty. It should not have been this way. This should not have happened.”

  “We cannot always understand the why of destiny, and I do not understand why we did any of this, but I do know one thing.” I brushed my thumbs down her cheeks with reverence, cupping her pretty face with tender love and devotion. “Whatever or whoever has done this to us, they cannot make me ever stop loving you. I will find you. I don’t know who I’ll be then, either. All I know is, so long as I have you, I can be made whole again. And, Calypso, not to be arrogant, but if you have me—”

  She grinned, and my heart felt like it would burst in my chest. “If I have you, my dark king, I will be whole again too. I may be dark, or even evil, but if you’re willing to hang in there with me, I honestly believe I can be healed. For you are the only one I will ever love. And so I will give you one other part of me.”

  My heart rattled in the cage of my chest, suspecting I knew what she was about to do. If I was right, it meant she did actually believe she would be saved. I swallowed hard, fingertips feeling cold and my whole body going numb. With one last breath, she gave a nod, as if to say, “I’m ready now.”

  And reaching once more into her chest, she pulled out her heart with one quick tug. A sharp cry spilled off her tongue, and she sagged in my arms.

  “Caly!” I barked, clinging to her as I felt her body go limp.

  She smirked, looked at me slyly, and said, “Gods, that wasn’t fun.”

  And though our doom was but hours away, I laughed because she could always make me laugh. She was the spot of sunshine in my life that I would never not need. But then my laughter turned serious, and the air between us quickened with crackling tension.

  I looked down at the golden, glittering organ in the palm of her hand and shook my head. That she should love me this much… the idea of it was humbling and even startling. I knew Calypso loved me, but this wasn’t just love. This was absolute and complete trust in me. She’d given me both the means to destroy her and save her in one.

  “Hades, Lord of the Underworld, and ruler of my heart.” She said the words deeply as she cupped her hands around her still b
eating organ. “Do you promise to love me forever?”

  Wanting always to be worthy of her, I squared my shoulders and studied her lovely glass-like features before slowly nodding. “Forever and a day, my darling.”

  She smiled. “Then if you trust me, give me your heart too.”

  I didn’t even question her. What we were doing now went deeper than any other god or goddess had ever known or felt before. We weren’t jut declaring ourselves. We were literally handing one another the very key to our personal destruction. Without a moment’s hesitation, I reached into my chest and pulled. The separation of my heart from my body burned like fire through me, and I clenched my molars together so hard that I heard them groan from the pressure. But I freed my golden heart and handed it to her. My heart was twice the size of hers.

  She smiled, and the beauty of it burned like a blaze. For just a moment, I saw the flicker of blood rush beneath her glassy features, giving her a lovely tinted-pink shade. Goddess, I loved this woman.

  “You will bury them,” she said, “where no magic can touch them. And these two hearts will beat as one until we find them again. In our hearts will be locked our memories, and with them, my hope that we can find our way back to one another, that you will never need to know the pain of harming me. Because I know you well enough to know that if you had to destroy me, it would destroy you too. And that is a pain I could never wish upon you. Maybe, just maybe, once we have recovered our hearts, I will become as I am now. Maybe it can work.”

  I heard her doubts. She was giving me hope, but it was not hope she believed in. I shook my head. “This will work, Calypso.”

  She cried through her beautiful smile. “Then lay your heart over mine and let us bind ourselves one to the other in the most absolute of ways.”

  Turning my hands over, I tipped my heart onto her palm, and the moment they touched, they blazed like the sun, fusing as one just as she said they would, sparkling with threads of deepest fiery orange between them.

  “It’s so beautiful,” I breathed, and she grinned up at me.

  I would never hurt her. I never could. It would work. It had to work.

  “It is our love that makes it so.”

  “Where can we bury it that no magic can harm it?” I asked her.

  She shook her head. “I cannot know that. I will be water again, and my memories of you will be all but lost. My only aim will be to find my heart, and I will not rest until I do. That search for my heart will eventually lead me back here, to you.”

  I clenched my jaw, determined that no matter what should come, I would fight like the fires of my underworld to ensure I remembered her. Remembered us.

  “And”—she paused for emphasis and to make certain I listened well—“if you decide that you want us to be together again, then we will journey onward. Or, if you decide that you too have changed and wish for another life, then simply tell me where to find it and you will never again have to worry about me or who we once were.”

  I growled deep in my chest, clinging tight to her arms. “That will. Never. Happen.”

  Her eyes grew wide like saucers, and a tremor coursed down her spine.

  “There will never be a day, could never be a day, that I will not want you. It is impossible.” I cupped her chin, making sure that she stared straight at me. “And just because we’ll have no hearts doesn’t mean we won’t feel, Caly. I will never stop burning for you.”

  “Yes, my beloved, but water does not burn.” She shook her head sadly, and my soul squeezed.

  “Then I will have to love you enough for the both of us until you do.”

  “Then take it,” she said, shoving her hands at me. “Take it and bury it where I can never find it. For if I find my heart without you, I will not come back to you. This I know. I will remember, but I won’t care, Hades. I won’t. I know myself enough to know that. So if you love me at all, don’t let that happen to us. You are the only male I’ve ever loved, and the only one I ever could. Men are almost all weak, pitiful, vile beings, save for you. Save for our family. You taught me that there is more, there are better than what I’d seen and known before. You taught me to love so deeply, so fiercely, that if I could kill whatever it is that dared come against us now, I would do it without a second thought. I would end that which dares to take you from me.”

  Her tears dripped again, and I brushed at them with my thumb.

  “I will never forsake you, my Calypso. Not ever. I will hide our hearts in a place that will force us to journey for days. Weeks, if we must. But I will make you stay beside me, and I will make you fall in love with me again.”

  Her watery lashes fluttered. “Understand, Hades, you might not want me in the next life. Who you love today, she may never be again. Are you certain that you wish to—”

  I swooped in and stole those ridiculous words from her tongue, refusing to even let her utter them. Her tongue tasted of salt and sweet nectar. She sighed when I finally released her several seconds later.

  “Oh gods, I cannot believe there could ever come a moment when I might not possibly want you. You make me crazy.” She rubbed the tip of her nose against mine, and I couldn’t contain my grin. “You are everything, my Hades. Everything.” She squeezed the words out and looked at me.

  “Our story is not yet done, Caly. You could never rid yourself of me that easily.”

  Her smile was weak and small, but it was also full of hope. “You promise?”

  “The end is only the beginning for us, Calypso. And that is a vow sealed with a kiss.”

  And I did kiss her. I kissed her like I wanted to take her sweet, precious soul and steal it for my own as I’d taken so many others before hers. I wanted to hide her, keep her with me forever. But I couldn’t do that, no matter how much I wanted to.

  The time for our goodbye had come, but I wasn’t lying either. This was far from the end for us. I didn’t care what I had to do to make certain we found each other again. I’d kill the world and everything in it if I had to. It didn’t make me good to feel that way, but I did. I’d never once been selfish in my whole damned existence until I’d found her.

  She was the one thing I’d fight to protect. To keep safe. To make mine always.

  I braced myself against her, letting her feel in my rigid length just how badly I wanted her. At her purr, a beast was unleashed in me. In us. We attacked each other with the ferocity of the impending doom that rested heavily on both our hearts. We made love as if it was the first and last time, with claws and violence, heat, and unimaginable passion.

  But when it was done, it hadn’t been enough. Not nearly. With heavy hearts, we turned from the place that had always brought us such comfort in Kingdom—the cliffs of Never—and sailed together toward our granddaughter’s castle. Our date with destiny had finally come.

  And my heart had never been so dark or so empty.

  I would save her. I had to, but I feared the woman she might become, the force of nature she would be. I feared that even if I found her again, Caly might not want me.

  And if she didn’t, I might just die.

  2

  Thalassa

  After the curse… in the beginning

  * * *

  I woke up and looked around, trying in vain to remember what had just happened to me. But when I tried to raise my hands, I realized I had no form. I was water, simply the wet particles of life.

  I thought of a body. My body. A form. A shape. A woman… but nothing happened. I couldn’t take on a structure. I was merely this, whatever this was.

  Panic began to tear at me as I tried to reach deep into the vault of my eternal memory for some clue to my identity, to why I felt so out of place and out of touch with the world around me. I searched through the empty corridors of my mind, only learning that I was me, the me that had just opened her eyes mere seconds ago, as if I’d just been birthed. But that was not possible. I knew it was not possible. I dug deeper, reaching farther and farther backward, looking for any glint or glimmer of someth
ing that would guide and lead me. But the more I searched, the less and less I found.

  I was a clean slate. I was nothing at all.

  Breathing heavily, tasting the brine of my waters upon my tongue, I looked all around me. I was in darkness, a pitch-black pool with no life in it at all. But I was water, so should there not be life in me? Should there not be… children?

  Panic was clawing at my insides, making me twist and dive down into myself. Surely, I was not alone here in the darkest abyss of the earth. Surely, there were others.

  But no matter how far I reached out with my mind, the waters were completely empty. I trembled, knowing something was wrong, just not knowing what or why. A feeling of despondence stole over me, and I grew quiet, wondering what I should do next. I was not even certain of my own name. Who was I? What was I? I stared down at the thing I called my body, but it was shape without form. There were no clues to be found there.

  Then I felt a brush of power roll through my mind, delicate at first, like the gentle lapping of a wave upon shores. But soon it grew in strength and size and began not to roll but to roar.

  It was as if something knocked at the door of my soul. Like a giant pressure wave that wanted in, it was shoving, shoving, shoving against me, making me groan, making my waters burble and churn. Deep down, I knew if I let it in, I would die, and I did not want that. So I didn’t peek. I didn’t touch that door. I moved away.

  Let me in.

  I heard its ghostly whisper roll through me, loud as a thunder strike, and I trembled. What was that thing inside of me?

  Violently quivering, I moved back into deeper and deeper darkness until it was not so loud or so painful, but then I felt empty and cold. So desperately cold.

  What had that voice been?

  Why was I here?

  What was I doing here?