Neon Gods: A Scorchingly Hot Modern Retelling of Hades and Persephone (Dark Olympus Book 1)

He’s real.

I know I should be screaming or fighting or trying to make it to the nearest phone, but I’m still grappling with the fact that Hades is real. My sisters are never going to hear the end of this. I knew I was right.

Besides, now that my panic is fading, I can’t exactly fault him for anything. He might have threatened me a smidge in front of Zeus’s men, but the alternative was to be dragged back to Dodona Tower. And yes, my stomach might have the permanent imprint of his shoulder there, but as he keeps growling at me, my feet are injured.

Not to mention the careful way he cleans my wounds doesn’t exactly support the rumor that Hades is a monster. A monster would have left me to my fate.

He’s…something else.

He’s built lean and strong, and there are scars across his knuckles. A full beard and shoulder-length dark hair just lean in to the imposing presence he creates. His dark eyes are cold but not entirely unkind. He just looks as exasperated with me as he was with Hermes and Dionysus.

Hades pulls out a tiny shard of glass and drops it into the bowl he brought over. He glares at the glass like it insulted his mother and kicked his dog. “Hold still.”

“I am holding still.” Or at least I’m trying. It hurts and I can’t stop shivering, even with his coat back around my shoulders. The longer I sit here, the more it hurts, as if my body is just catching up with my brain to realize the trouble we’ve gotten ourselves into. I can’t believe I left, can’t believe I walked for far too long through the dark and cold until I landed here.

Thinking about that now is out of the question. For the first time in my life, I don’t have a plan or a clear bullet-pointed list to get me from point A to point B. I’m free-falling. My mother might kill me when she tracks me down. Zeus… I shudder. My mother will threaten to toss me out the nearest window or drink herself to death, but Zeus might actually hurt me. Who would stop him? Who is powerful enough to stop him? No one. If there was someone who could stop that monster, the last Hera would still be alive.

Hades pauses, a pair of tweezers in his battered hands and a question in his eyes. “You’re shivering.”

“No, I’m not.”

“For fuck’s sake, Persephone. You’re shaking like a leaf. You can’t just say you’re not and expect me to believe it when I can see the truth with my own eyes.” His glare is really impressive, but I’m too numb to feel anything right now. I simply sit there and watch him stalk to the door tucked back in the corner of the room and return with two thick blankets. He sets one on the counter next to me. “I’m going to lift you now.”

“No.” I don’t even know why I’m arguing. I’m cold. Blankets will help. But I can’t seem to stop myself.

He gives me a long look. “I don’t think you’re hypothermic, but if you don’t warm up soon, you might end up there. It’d be a shame if I had to use body heat to get you back to a safe temperature.”

It takes several long seconds for his meaning to penetrate. Surely he can’t mean that he’d strip us down and bundle us up together until I warm up. I stare. “You wouldn’t.”

“I sure as fuck would.” He glares. “You’re no use to me if you die now.”

I ignore the outrageous impulse to call him on his bluff and instead hold up a hand. “I can move on my own.” I’m painfully aware of his close attention as I shift myself up and over until I’m sitting on the blanket instead of the cold granite countertop. Hades wastes no time wrapping the second blanket around me, covering up every inch of exposed skin above my ankles. Only then does he go back to his work of extracting glass from my soles.

Damn him, but the blanket really does feel good. Warmth starts seeping into my body almost immediately, fighting the chill that’s taken up residence in my bones. My shivering gets more violent, but I’m aware enough to realize that’s a good sign.

Desperate to grab on to any distraction, I focus on the man at my feet. “The last Hades died. You’re supposed to be a myth, but Hermes and Dionysus know you.” They were at the party I fled—my…engagement party—but I don’t really know them any better than the rest of the Thirteen. Which is to say I don’t know them at all.

“Is there a question in there?” He pulls out another sliver of glass and drops it into the bowl with a clink.

“Why are you supposed to be a myth? It doesn’t make any sense. You’re one of the Thirteen. You should be…”

“I’m a myth. You’re dreaming,” he says drily as he prods my foot. “Any sharp pain?”

I blink. “No. It just aches.”

He nods, as if that’s exactly what he expected. I watch numbly as he lays out a series of bandages and proceeds to wash and bandage my feet. I don’t… Maybe he’s right and I really am dreaming, because this doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense. “You’re friends with Hermes and Dionysus.”

“I’m not friends with anyone. They just show up periodically like stray cats I can’t get rid of.” No matter his words, there’s a thread of fondness in his tone.

“You’re friends with two of the Thirteen.” Because he was one of the Thirteen. Just like my mother. Just like Zeus. Oh gods, Psyche is right and Hades is just as bad as the rest of them.

The events of the night crash over me. Flashes of scene after scene. The sculpture room. My mother’s caginess. Zeus’s hand trapping mine as he announced our engagement. The terror-stricken run alongside the river. “They ambushed me,” I whisper.

At that, Hades looks up, a frown pulling his strong brows together. “Hermes and Dionysus?”

“My mother and Zeus.” I don’t know why I’m telling him this, but I can’t seem to stop. I clutch the blanket more firmly around my shoulders and shiver. “I didn’t know the party tonight was announcing our engagement. I didn’t agree to our engagement.”

I’m exhausted enough I can almost pretend I get a flash of sympathy before irritation writes itself across his features. “Look at you. Of course Zeus wants to add you to his long list of Heras.”

He would think that. The Thirteen see something they want, and they take it. “It’s my fault that they made that decision without even talking to me because of what I look like?” Is it possible for the top of a person’s head to literally explode? I have a feeling I might find out if we continue this conversation.

“It’s Olympus. You play power games, you pay the consequences.” He finishes wrapping my second foot and pushes slowly to his feet. “Sometimes you pay the consequences even if it’s your parents playing the games. You can cry and sob about how unfair the world is, or you can do something about it.”

“I did do something about it.”

He snorts. “You ran like a frightened deer and thought he wouldn’t chase you down? Sweetheart, that’s practically foreplay for Zeus. He’ll find you and drag you back to that palace of his. You’ll marry him just like the obedient daughter you are, and within a year, you’ll be popping out his asshole children.”

I slap him.

I don’t mean to. I don’t think I’ve ever raised my hand to a person in my entire life. Not even my irritating younger sisters when we were children. I stare in horror at the red mark blooming on his cheekbone. I should apologize. Should…something. But when I open my mouth, that’s not what comes out. “I’ll die first.”

Hades looks at me a long time. I’m usually pretty good at reading people, but I have no idea what’s going on behind those deep, dark eyes of his. Finally, he grinds out, “You’ll stay here tonight. We’ll talk in the morning.”

“But—”

He picks me up again, scooping me into his arms like I’m the princess he named me, and gives me such a cold look, I swallow my protest. I have nowhere to go tonight, no purse, no money, no phone. I can’t afford to look this gift horse in the mouth, even if he’s growly and goes by the name parents have threatened their children with for generations. Well, maybe not this Hades. He looks like he’s somewhere in his early to midthirties. But the role of Hades. Always in the shadows. Always catering to dark deeds best done out of the sight of our normal, safe world.

Is it really that safe? My mother just effectively sold me in marriage to Zeus. A man who empirical facts paint not as the golden king, beloved by all, but as a bully who’s left a string of dead wives in his wake. And those are just his wives. Who knows how many women he’s victimized over the years? Thinking about it is enough to make me sick to my stomach. No matter which way you spin it, Zeus is dangerous and that’s a fact.

By contrast, everything surrounding Hades is pure myth. No one I know even believes he exists. They all agree that at one point, a Hades did exist but that the family line that held the title has long since died out. That means I have next to no information to pull from about this Hades. I’m not sure he’s the better bet, but at this point, I’d take a man in a bloody trench coat with a hook for a hand over Zeus.

Hades takes me up a winding staircase that looks straight out of a gothic movie. Honestly, the bits of this house I’ve seen are the same. Bold, dark hardwood floors, crown molding that should be overwhelming but somehow just creates the illusion of leaving both time and reality behind. The hallway of the second floor is covered in a thick deep-red carpet.

The better to hide the blood.

I give a hysterical giggle and clamp my hands to my mouth. This is not funny. I should not be laughing. I’m obviously thirty seconds away from losing it completely.

Hades, of course, ignores me.

The second door on the left is our destination, and it’s not until he’s walking through it that my missing self-preservation kicks in. I’m alone with a dangerous stranger in a bedroom. “Put me down.”

“Don’t be dramatic.” He doesn’t drop me on the bed like I expect. He sets me down carefully and takes an equally careful step back. “If you bleed all over my floors trying to escape, I’ll be forced to track you down and haul you back here to clean them.”

I blink. It’s so close to what I was thinking that it’s almost eerie. “You are the strangest man I’ve ever met.”

Now it’s his turn to give me a wary look. “What?”

“Exactly. What? What kind of threat is that? You’re worried about your floors?”

“They’re nice floors.”

Is he joking? I might believe it of anyone else, but Hades looks just as serious as he has since I saw him standing there on the street like some kind of grim reaper. I frown up at him. “I don’t understand you.”

“You don’t have to understand me. Just stay here until morning and try to resist the urge to do anything to injure yourself further.” He nods at the door tucked back in the corner. “Bathroom is through there. Stay off those feet as much as possible.” And then he’s gone, sweeping out the door and shutting it softly behind him.

I count to ten slowly and then do it three more times. When no one rushes in to check on me, I inch up the bed to the phone sitting innocently on the nightstand. Too innocently? Surely there’s no way to make a call without being overheard. With those secret tunnels, Hades doesn’t seem the type to leave anything resembling a security breach just sitting here. It’s probably a trap, something designed to have me spilling secrets or something.

It doesn’t matter.

I’m afraid of Zeus. Angry with my mother. But I can’t leave my sisters frantic for my whereabouts any longer. Psyche will have called Callisto by now, and if there’s anyone in my family who will rampage through Olympus, stepping on toes and making threats until I’m found, it’s my eldest sister. My disappearance will already have set fire to the hornet’s nest. I can’t let my sisters do anything to aggravate a situation that’s already an unmitigated mess.

Taking a deep breath that does nothing to brace me, I pick up the phone and dial Eurydice’s number. She’s the only one of my sisters who will answer an unfamiliar number on the first try. Sure enough, three rings later, her breathless voice comes across the line. “Hello?”

“It’s me.”

“Oh, thank the gods.” Her voice gets a little distant. “It’s Persephone. Yes, yes, I’ll put it on speaker.” A second later, the line gets a little fuzzy as she does exactly that. “I have Callisto and Psyche here, too. Where are you?”

I look around the room. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try.” This from Callisto, a flat statement that says she’s half a second from trying to figure out how to crawl through the telephone line to throttle me.

“If I realized you were going to take off the second I went to get your purse, I wouldn’t have left you alone.” Psyche’s voice wobbles as if she’s on the verge of tears. “Mother is tearing apart the upper city looking for you, and Zeus…”

Callisto cuts her off. “Fuck Zeus. And fuck Mother, too.”

Eurydice gasps. “You can’t say things like that.”

“I just did.”

Against all reason, their squabbling calms me. “I’m okay.” I glance at my bandaged feet. “I’m mostly okay.”

“Where are you?”

I don’t have a plan, but I know I can’t go home. Walking back into my mother’s household is as good as admitting defeat and agreeing to marry Zeus. I can’t do it. I won’t. “That doesn’t matter. I’m not coming home.”

“Persephone,” Psyche says slowly. “I know you’re not happy about this, but we have to find a better way forward than running into the night. You’re the woman with a plan, and right now, you have no plan.”

No, I don’t have a plan. I’m free-falling in a way that feels dangerous and has terror licking up my spine. “Plans were meant to be adapted.”

All three of them are silent, a rare enough occurrence that I wish I could appreciate it. Finally, Eurydice says, “Why are you calling now?”

That’s the question, isn’t it? I don’t know. “I just wanted you to know I’m okay.”

“We’ll believe you’re okay when we know where you are.” Callisto still sounds ready to mow down anyone who gets between her and me, and I manage a smile.

“Persephone, you just disappeared. Everyone is frantically looking for you.”

I digest that statement, picking it apart. Everyone is frantically looking for me? They mentioned Mother before, but I didn’t really connect the dots until now. It doesn’t make any sense that she doesn’t already know my location because… “Zeus knows where I am.”

“What?”

“His men followed me all the way to Cypress Bridge.” Thinking about it makes me shudder. I have no doubt they had instructions to haul me back, but they could have easily taken me a few blocks from Dodona Tower. They chose to pursue me, to drive my desperation and fear higher. No underling of Zeus would dare do something like that to his intended bride…unless they were ordered to by Zeus himself. “He’s acting like he doesn’t know where I am?”

“Yes.” The anger hasn’t quite bled out of Callisto’s voice, but it’s dampened. “He’s talking about organizing search parties, and Mother is fluttering at his elbow as if she hasn’t already ordered the same thing done with her people. He’s mobilized his private security force, too.”

“But why would he do that if he already knows where I am?”

Psyche clears her throat. “Did you cross the Cypress Bridge?”

Damn. I hadn’t meant to let that slip. I close my eyes. “I’m in the lower city.”

Callisto snorts. “That shouldn’t make a difference to Zeus.” She’s never paid much attention to the rumors that crossing the river is nearly as impossible as leaving Olympus. I honestly didn’t quite believe it, either, not until I felt that horrible pressure when I did it myself.

“Unless…” Eurydice has gotten ahold of her emotions and I can practically see her mind whirling. She plays the ditzy damsel when it suits her, but she’s probably the smartest of the four of us. “The city used to be divided into three. Zeus, Poseidon, Hades.”

“That was a long time ago,” Psyche murmurs. “Zeus and Poseidon work together now. And Hades is myth. Persephone and I were just talking about this tonight.”

“If he weren’t a myth, Hades would be enough to give Zeus pause.”

Callisto snorts. “Except even if he existed, there’s no way he wouldn’t be just as bad as Zeus.”

“He’s not.” The words slip free despite my best efforts to keep them internal. Damn it, I meant to keep them out of it, but obviously that isn’t going to work. I should have known that the moment I dialed Eurydice. In for a penny, in for a pound. I clear my throat. “No matter what he is, he’s not as bad as Zeus.”

My sisters’ voices comingle as they voice their shock.

“What?”

“Did you hit your head while you were running from those assholes?”

“Persephone, your obsession is getting out of control.”

I sigh. “I’m not hallucinating, and I didn’t hit my head.” Best not to tell them about my feet or the fact that I’m still shivering a bit, even after being bundled up. “He’s real, and he’s been here this whole time.”

My sisters are silent once again as they digest that. Callisto curses. “People would have known.”

They should have. The fact that we’ve all believed him a myth this whole time speaks to a larger influence that wanted to wipe Hades’s memory from the face of Olympus. It speaks of Zeus’s meddling, because who else has the power to pull something like that off? Maybe Poseidon, but if it doesn’t concern the sea and the docks, he doesn’t seem to care about it. None of the rest of the Thirteen operate with the same amount of power as the legacy roles. None of them would dare take out the title of Hades, not on their own.

But then, no one really talks about how little crossover there is between the upper and lower city. It’s just taken as the way things are. Even I never questioned it, and I question so much else when it comes to Olympus and the Thirteen.

Finally, Psyche says, “What do you need from us?”

I think hard. I only have to last to my birthday and then I’m free. The trust fund our grandmother set up releases to me then, and I don’t have to rely on my mother or anyone in Olympus for anything ever again. But not until then, my twenty-fifth birthday. I have some funds of my own now, but they aren’t really my own. They’re my mother’s. I could ask my sisters to bring me my purse, but Mother will have already frozen my accounts. She likes to do that to punish us, and she’ll want to ensure I come crawling back after humiliating her like this. More, I don’t want my sisters in the lower city, even if they could make their way across the River Styx. Not when danger seems to be around every corner.

Really, there’s only one answer. “I’m going to figure something out, but I’m not coming back. Not right now.”

“Persephone, that’s not a plan.” Callisto huffs out a breath. “You have no money, no phone that isn’t likely to be tapped, and you’re shacking up with Olympus’s boogeyman, who also happens to be one of the Thirteen. He is the very definition of dangerous. This is the opposite of a plan.”

I can’t argue that. “I’ll figure it out.”

“Yeah, no. Try again.”

Psyche clears her throat. “If Eurydice can distract Mother, Callisto and I can bring you a burner phone and what money we have on hand. It should at least buy you time to figure things out.”

The last thing I want to do is drag my sisters into this, but it’s too late now. I lean back against the headboard. “Let me think about it. I’ll call tomorrow with more details.”

“That’s not—”

“I love you all. Goodbye.” I hang up before they can find another angle to argue from. It’s the right call to make, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling like I’ve cut off my last connection to my past. I’ve been working out a way to leave Olympus for a very long time, so this break was bound to happen, but I thought I’d have more notice. I thought I’d still be able to connect with my sisters without putting them in danger. I thought, given enough time, Mother would even come around and forgive me for not playing a pawn in one of her schemes.

It seems that I was wrong about a lot of things.

To give myself something else to think about, I look around the room. It’s just as opulent as the parts of the house I’ve seen so far, the bed large and with a dark-blue canopy that would do any princess proud. The hardwood floors that Hades is so fond of are covered with a thick carpet and there’s yet more crown molding everywhere. It’s as atmospheric as the rest of the house, but it doesn’t really give me many clues about the man who owns this place. It’s obviously a spare bedroom, and as a result, it’s doubtful it’ll tell me anything about Hades.

My body chooses that moment to remind me that I walked for hours in the cold in those godforsaken heels and then ran over gravel and glass barefoot. My legs ache. My back hurts. My feet… Best not to think too hard about them. I am so incredibly exhausted, enough that I might actually sleep tonight.

I look around the room again. Hades might not be as bad as Zeus, but I can’t take any chances. I climb gingerly to my feet and limp to the door. There’s no lock, which has me cursing softly. I limp to the bathroom and nearly whimper with relief when I find that this door does have a lock.

My muscles seem to turn from flesh to stone with each second that passes, weighing me down as I drag the massive comforter off the bed and into the bathroom. The tub is more than large enough to sleep in, uncomfortable or no. After a quick internal debate, I go back to the bedroom door and drag the side table in front of it. At least I’ll hear someone coming this way. Satisfied I’ve done all I can, I lock the bathroom door and practically collapse into the tub.

In the morning, I’ll have a plan. I’ll figure out a way forward and this won’t seem like the end of the world.

I just need a plan…