The Fates must be on her side, she thought.
When she stepped off the elevator on her floor, she found Adonis standing at the front with Valerie. He was leaning over her desk chatting. They seemed surprised when she arrived, and Persephone felt like she was intruding on a private moment.
“Persephone, you’re here early.” Adonis cleared his throat and straightened.
“Just hoping to get a head start. I have a lot to do,” she said, and passed them, heading straight for her desk.
Adonis followed. “How’d Nevernight go?”
She froze for a moment. “What do you mean?”
“Hades invited you to Nevernight before we left the interview. How did it go?”
Oh, right. You are too paranoid, Persephone, she thought.
“It was fine,” she answered, stowing her purse and opening her laptop.
“I thought he might convince you not to write about him.”
Persephone took a seat. She hadn’t considered that Hades’ intention in inviting her on a tour of the Underworld might be a tactic to keep her from writing about him.
She looked up at Adonis and answered. “At this point, nothing could convince me not to write about him. Even Hades himself.”
Especially Hades. Every time he opened his mouth, she found another reason to dislike him, even if that mouth inflamed her.
Adonis smiled, oblivious to her treacherous thoughts. “You’re going to make a great journalist, Persephone.” He took a step back and pointed at her. “Don’t forget to send me the article. You know, when you’re finished.”
“Right,” she said.
When she was alone, she attempted to sort out her thoughts on the God of the Dead. So far, she felt like she’d seen two sides to him. One was a manipulative, powerful god who’d been exiled from the world so long he didn’t seem to understand people. That same god had bound her to a contract with the very hands he’d used to heal her. He’d been so careful and gentle until it came to kissing, and then his passion was barely restrained.
It was like he starved for her.
But that couldn’t be true—because he was a god and he had lived for centuries, which meant centuries of experience and she was only obsessing over this because she had none.
She hung her head in her hands, frustrated with herself. She needed to reignite the anger she felt when Hades had so arrogantly admitted to abusing his power under the pretense that he was helping mortals. Her eyes fell to the notes she’d taken after interviewing Hades. She’d written so fast, the words were hardly legible, but after a few careful readings, she was able to piece it together.
If it is help Hades truly wants to offer, he should challenge the addict to rehab. Why not go a step further and pay for it?
She sat up a little straighter and typed that out, feeling the anger spark in her bloodstream again. It was like flame to an accelerant, and soon her fingers flew across the keys, adding word after angry word.
I see the soul. What burdens it, what corrupts it, what destroys it—and challenge it.
Those words pierced all the wrong parts of her. What was it like to be the God of the Underworld? To only see the struggle, the pain, and the vices of others?
It sounded miserable.
He must be miserable, she decided. Tired of being the God of the Dead, he inserted himself in the fate of mortal lives for entertainment. What did he have to lose?
Nothing.
She stopped typing and sat back, taking a deep breath.
She had never felt so many emotions about a single person before. She was angry with him, and curious, caught between surprise and disgust at the things he had created and the things he said. At war with both of those was the extreme attraction she felt when she was with him. How could she want him? He represented the opposite of everything she’d dreamed of in her whole life. He was her jailer when all she’d wanted was freedom.
Except that he had freed something inside her.
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