As if I had any choice in the matter at all. “Fine.”
His smile was feral. “You have to say it.”
“I agree with your deal. If I can cross your realm before thirteen hours are up, then I go home with my friends. If I fail, you keep all of us.”
The ground shifted under my feet, even though nothing had moved. It was as if the world had taken in a giant breath of anticipation and was waiting to blow it out. Nothing visibly changed, but I knew something fundamental, like the very fabric of the universe, had altered.
It was so easy for me to fall under the spell of my imaginings.
The triumphant look on his face made it clear that Hades considered the game already won. I wanted to slap the smugness off his face but consoled myself with the determination to meet his challenge and crush it.
Thirteen hours? I’d do it in half that time.
Although, I was smart enough not to say that out loud. That was another rule of dealing with the gods. If you gave them politeness, then they would probably give it back. Give them something else, and they’d return it to you a thousandfold.
Hades continued to study my face. “You make it sound so easy.”
I’d never seen irises that were truly silver in color before now. His eyes clearly changed from one shade to another, depending on some unknowable whim. Now they were illuminated with anticipation. That gaze like liquid moonlight bored into me as if he could sense my bravado and wanted to crush it under his boot.
I raised my chin. “You issued a challenge, and I’m meeting it. What more could you possibly want from me?”
“Such an insolent girl.” He slid back a step, so the path in front of me was clear. His arm swung gracefully wide as he gestured for the door. “Step forward and meet your destiny.”
I couldn’t hold back a scoff. “You sound like the cut scene at the beginning of a video game.”
It was impossible to know if he got the joke, but his eyes narrowed as he regarded me, if just from my tone alone. “You should think of your words as tally marks in a ledger. When you become mine, I will collect my due. Consider this your only warning.”
A shiver worked down my spine as I momentarily contemplated precisely what he meant by collecting his due.
I want all of you, without resistance or restraint.
I should be afraid, and I was, but another and even less welcome sensation wormed its way through my insides. “I won’t apologize to you, not after what you’ve done.”
He only smiled as I stepped past him and went to the door of the bar. Tension sang through my body as I passed, but he made no move to touch me. I couldn’t decide if I was disappointed or relieved.
At the threshold, I looked back to see that he had moved to the table that had been behind me. I’d set the handkerchief he gave me on the wooden surface and left it there when the bleeding stopped. My hand ached, a reminder of the blood I’d spilled even though I’d forgotten about the wound until seeing the makeshift bandage reminded me.
Hades picked up the bloodstained square of linen and brought it to his lips. I only realized too late that I should never have put it down. Pieces of yourself, like your name, your dreams, and most definitely your blood, could be used to hold power over you.
I’d already made my first mistake, and we hadn’t even begun.
Chapter Five
I expected to walk out the door of the Taphouse and into fantastical darkness, but that wasn’t what happened.
Instead, I found myself overlooking the Los Angeles skyline as the wind whipped around me, catching in the train of my dress and chilling my skin. The starless sky was dark overhead, but it was impossible to mistake where we were.
This was not some domain of infinite mystery. Hades hadn’t magicked me across time and space into another world. We hadn’t even left Los Angeles, save for the fact that we were one thousand feet above the ground.
I was on the roof of Wilshire Grand Center, which also happened to be the tallest damn building in the city.
Hades appeared next to me as I looked down and then swallowed a scream. His expression was perfectly neutral, so he had to be unsurprised we were here.
“The entrance to the underworld awaits you.”
“Where?” I snapped, thoroughly sick of his shit. This did not bode well for the next twelve hours and fifty-eight minutes. “Off the side of the building?”
His smile was my only answer.
I looked nervously at the edge, lit by the Los Angeles skyline. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am. Always.”
That felt like a warning, but it was impossible to know for what. He was as inexplicable as he was beautiful, which seemed to be entirely the point. “You just magicked my friends away. Why can’t you do the same thing for me?”
He made an annoyed sound. “This is no simple thing. You wish to enter another realm by choice. That requires a sacrifice.”
By choice was a stretch even with the loosest definition. “Throwing myself off a seventy-story building isn’t sacrifice, it’s certain death.”
“You must offer up your fear, of death and loss, or anything else that tethers you to this world. All of these are things you must leave behind to have any hope of walking the path laid out before you.”
“And if I die?”
He shrugged. “I rule the realm of the dead. You’ll find your way there eventually.”
Oh, fuck that. “A realistic assessment of the dangers inherent to a particular action isn’t the same as fear. Just because I don’t want to die doesn’t mean I’m afraid.”
I looked for a door that had to be used to access the roof but didn’t see one. That was likely because no one was ever meant to come up here. I wouldn’t be able to get down again unless he decided to take me there in whatever way he’d brought me up here in the first place.
Not fucking likely.
“Are you already admitting defeat?” he asked, voice like music on the wind. “Even I thought you would make it further than your first challenge. My victory has always been assured, but I am a bit disappointed it happened so quickly.”
His arrogance was absolute. But that was also how I’d always imagined him.
Everything I wanted to say and didn’t was a debt I accrued toward the future. Each time I swallowed my voice, it made it harder to stay quiet the next time. Eventually, I’d lose the ability to hold my tongue and suffer for it when I gave Hades the verbal lashing he deserved.
Looking down at the dark streets below, I fought off a wave of dizziness. I could already see the headlines now. Suicidal girl jumps from L.A.’s tallest building in an epic display of selfishness. It was late enough in the night that at least there wasn’t anyone down there to break my fall and take out with me. I stepped closer to the edge and stared down at the dizzying heights. There was no doubt that I gaped at the face of my own death.
The mind could be a powerful thing. During my last hospital stay, there were at least three different men with paranoid schizophrenia who believed they were Jesus. Not to mention the woman who convinced herself she was in labor after being constipated for a few weeks, then proudly brought the results of her efforts bundled up in a blanket to the nurse’s station.
Maybe I hallucinated Hades and then somehow made my way up here like a true lunatic. Everything but the fall could be fantasy.