Chapter Six

It'd been two days since I last saw Atros.

This was the first time I counted the time I had spent away from someone and I loathed every bleeding second of it. I was restless, bored, uneasy. I couldn't sit still for more than a few minutes before I had to get up and move around. I debated going back, but my nose still hurt from where he'd broken it with the door.

Of course, I couldn't find it in me to blame Atros. I knew when I'd done something wrong and this was one of those hundreds of times. I had lied to Atros, pretended to be someone I wasn't, accepted all his love and affection without an ounce of guilt. Then he'd discovered the lie and only reacted the way a normal person would. It didn't surprise me in the least, but it still didn't stop the strange ache in my chest.

I ached to go back, to feel him stroking my skin for the sole reason of truly enjoying it. I wanted to feel him buried inside me again, to feel his hands on me, his lips against mine, and his deep lilting voice recounting memories of a past he longed to return to. I knew he loved his wife, and I knew he'd loved Hector. He loved Hector, not Hades. He hated Hades, which is why he'd reacted so negatively when he'd discovered that the one he loved was the one he loathed most in this world. Maybe that was why I didn't kill him. His hate for me was logical.

For once, though, I wished I could get angry. Instead of this ache.

Persephone had attempted to call me on several occasions, but I didn't want to speak to her. She would only try and twist my words and get into my head so she could figure out what was wrong, so she could fix me. To her, I wasn't a husband. I was a shattered pane of glass that she desperately wanted to piece together and restore. But her dream was a child's dream. Once glass was shattered into a thousand little pieces, it stayed shattered. No amount of her crazy glue could fix it.

I was fucked. I'd always been fucked. And I always would be.

Maybe it was her attempt to help me that pissed me off. Her reaction to me when she'd met me had been the same as Atros's. I remembered that day when I had first met Persephone.

She'd been very young then, younger than I. She was petite and slender with her long blonde hair laced heavily with brilliant pink flowers that matched her long summer gown made of almost tanslucent silks. She had been twirling and dancing. It was like a cheap shit Disney movie. Except there were no talking creatures dancing with her. She just kept twirling under the rays of Apollo's sun, basking in its golden ribbons while her bare feet were getting dirty from beating the earth.

I hadn't meant for her to see me in the beginning. I wasn't even supposed to be there. Zeus had been very adamant that I stay the fuck away from the mortal realm. I would be a plague to them. So I had figured that, so long as I stayed away from people, I should be okay. I stayed hidden in the shadows of the forest bordering the field she and her mother frequented. Her mother had gone off to fetch food for one of their many picnics.

I was such a fucking idiot then. If it had been a cartoon, my tongue would have hit the floor and dragged me forward because I stumbled out of the woods and Persephone had jumped when she saw me. She'd never seen me before, so she didn't recognize me. She just smiled brightly.

"Hello! Sorry, was this your land?" She asked. Baffled by her innocent question, I had just stared at her blankly. She kept smiling, not at all bothered by my young stupidity.

"My name's Persephone. You?" She asked. I'd managed to find my voice and muttered something about just passing through, and threw out a random name. She had accepted it without hesitation and had urged me from the woods to stand in the field with her. The bright colors of the flowers hurt my eyes, the sunlight practically burned my retinas. I was used to the darkness of the underworld, and I was wary of standing out in the open, in case Zeus noticed me. I hadn't thought twice about any of the other gods.

A big mistake on my part.

Persephone had taught me the names of the flowers, walked me through the field, far from where her mother had been waiting. And it was when we were far enough away that she kissed me. I had been startled and tried to move away from her, but she insisted this was what she wanted. And because I had been stupid and believed in love at first sight, I agreed that it was also what I wanted. I laid her down on the flowers and made love to her. Her kisses were gentle and timid. Virgin kisses. Her hands had been small and soft, sliding up and down my back, caressing my skin. Her lips as soft as the flowers she loved, hair silky and soft like the grass.

She was beautiful.

And she had murmured she loved me. And I had stupidly corrected her.

"I love you, Marcus."

"Hades." I muttered. Persephone's eyes had flashed open and she stared at me.

"Excuse me?" She asked. I stared back at her, then swallowed.

"My name... My name is Hades." I said stupidly. Persephone clenched her teeth and shoved at my chest, climbing out from beneath me. She yanked her dress up off the ground and scrambled to put it on. At the time, her reaction had confused me. She was hurriedly putting her clothes off and making her way across the field, so I had quickly dressed and ran after her. I grabbed her elbow and she slapped me so hard, my head snapped to the side.

"You lied to me," She spat, raking me with a sneer, "How could you do that to me! I was a virgin!"

"I wasn't thinking correctly," I had told her, perplexed, "I was distracted--"

"By my awe-inspiring beauty," She snapped impatiently, wrenching her arm away from me, "Yes. I've heard that garbage before. You shouldn't even be here! You're not allowed in the mortal realm! Mother!" She turned to call for her mother. Icy cold horror gripped me and I'd grabbed her roughly from behind. She screamed and I clasped my hand over her mouth.

"Shut up!" I snarled. She writhed and sank her fingernails into my skin, making me curse. She wrenched away from me and started to run across the field.

"Mother! Mother!" She screamed. I ran after her, slammed into her so we went sprawling to the ground. She continued shrieking as I struggled to cover her mouth. We rolled through the grass and flowers, away from the field and rolling down a small hill until we splashed into a stream. Her dress was torn, face dirty and stained, eyes glittering with angry tears as she struggled to rip my skin open. She'd already cut my cheek with those dagger-like nails of hers, and punched me in the throat. She was unlike any other woman of her time. By nature, the ancient Greek women were submissive to men. They could be fierce and they could be demanding and protest, but in the end, they did as men told them to because that was the way things were. Her attack against me had caught me off guard, so I kept fighting back to her, almost momentarily forgetting she was a young girl and not a boy.

"Apollo! Hermes! Mother! Someone!" She screamed. Unable to take it any longer, I grabbed her up in my arms, teleporting us from that bright field and into the dark depths of the underworld where she screamed and destroyed half of my home to escape.

It was only after I had stupidly tricked her into eating that pomegrante, after the mess with Demeter and Zeus, that Persephone stopped protesting me and began to pursue me. Not sexually. Not romantically. She followed me everywhere. She kept asking me intrusive questions. She insisted I had done what I done for a reason deeper than simply wanting to capture her.

Now she was doing the same thing via technology. Had this all happened while she was here, I was positive she'd be running after me everywhere. Now, since she was with her mother, she was calling me non-stop. I had to destroy my laptop so she would buzz off. She just wanted to act like my therapist, like a concerned wife, a concerned friend. Any other time, I may have allowed her in just a bit, but not now.

Not right now.

Persephone wasn't allowed to see me like this.

No one was.

I stalked the hallways of the palace, weaving in and out of rooms, passing by that one black door in the hallway and tempted to go inside, but I knew for a fact it would only further the pain in my chest. I found myself wandering in the garden, picking a pomegrante off the tree and sucking the seeds and juice out. I walked back and forth, pacing mostly and ignoring all calls. I almost bashed the servant over the head because he kept coming to me about Lucifer calling, Persephone calling, Theo calling, but I honestly did not want to talk to anyone right now. Just being around another breathing creature would make me go insane.

Well, aside from the plants. The plants didn't talk or try to piss me off.

I went to my lab and tinkered around with Alaric's blood, but nothing of interest came up. I even messed with a few viles of Cerberus's before I ran out. I was half tempted to ask him for more, but he'd probably punch me in the mouth.

I eventually drifted out of the lab and went down the hallway, pausing near the kitchen where the servant's were preparing for dinner. I cloaked my powers so as not to cause them to scatter, frowning slowly as I listened to them play some weird folk music from whatever country they were from. It was exotic and consisted mainly of drums and tambourines. A couple were dancing as they cooked, a few singing along with the strange lulling "oohs" and "ahhs". And oddly enough, the little half-breed servant was with them as well as he carried a bucket of warm water over to an area surrounded by bags of potatoes and he was laughing at something a woman said to him.

Even weirder, he wasn't stuttering with them.

But then, I suppose that made sense. These were his people. I was his boss.

I rolled my eyes at their play and moved on when I felt a fissure of power coming from my throne room. I frowned and teleported there instantly, surprised to see Noe there, looking a bit pale.

"What now?" I demanded. Noe glared at me impatiently, clenching his fists.

"Rhea's throwing a fit. She keeps screaming."

"Then crush her windpipe."

"She's screaming for you. She keeps spewing some bullshit about how you're in some kind of agony, so Zelios sent me to check on you. Considering you're as surly as ever, I'd say she was trying to use it as a way to distract us." Noe explained dryly. A small chill crept up my spine at that. That was incredibly terrifying. How could she possibly know what was going on with me? We had no connections. I hadn't gone to Tartarus since my siblings and I had first locked them up. Since then, I've not seen Rhea, or Cronus. They never even made it out of their cells during the attack a few years ago.

"Shut her up," I told Noe sternly, making him roll his eyes, which only succeeded in irritating me further, "Break her neck or something."

"We've tried," Noe responded heatedly, "She's killed two more guards. We can't keep losing people for the sole purpose of shutting her up. She's just crazy. Maybe Cronus will beat her." I laughed at that, making Noe glare at me.

"Cronus is crazy himself. Her screaming is probably just blending with the voices in his head. Neither of them are a threat."

"That's what you said last time--"

"I know what their patterns are. You do not. You weren't even conceived during the time of the Titans. Now shut up, go back to Tartarus, and do your job before I send someone else to do it and you can go back to your master on Olympus." I snarled. Noe stiffened and vanished on the spot. My chest hurt from shouting and my head ached from trying to think past anything that wasn't Atros related.

The Titans were always a threat, but if I announced that, everyone would go into mass hysteria. Nothing would help the Titans win more than watching everyone run around like chickens with their heads cut off. We needed to approach it much more delicately, and right now, the Titans were just crazy. Crazy only got someone so far before it backfired. The Titans were cut off, starving, drugged, and dragging themselves around their cells with busted legs. They weren't going to get very far.

And it was a difficult thing to concentrate on when the only thing that kept bouncing around in my head was Atros.

Before I knew it, I was transforming myself from Hades to Hector before teleporting to Rajama. I shouldn't have gone, and I knew that the moment I stepped through the doors. A sick feeling pooled in the pit of my stomach as the prostitutes waved and smiled in greeting. The woman behind the desk served two more customers before she spotted me and her smile faltered.

"Hector, you're back." She said. I just gave her a short nod, withdrawing a sachet.

"I need to speak to Atros."

"That might be a problem," She said, frowning, "He hasn't come out of his room in two days. He won't let anyone in or out." I scowled.

"You're his owner. Can't you just burst in?" I asked. The woman shook her head.

"He seemed awfully hurt after your guys's fight. We figured he needed time alone to collect himself before he got back to work." She answered. That irritated me, but it didn't matter. I had to speak to Atros to straighten this out, and the fact that I needed to do that worried me. Why did I care so much? I shouldn't care so much.

"I need to see him anyway. He'll open the door for me." I assured her. She looked skeptical, but agreed as she got out his key and led me down the hallway. As we approached the door, a strange sensation crept across my skin. Goosebumps prickled me from head to toe, a horrid stench reached my nostrils, and my stomach dropped.

"What's that smell?" I asked. The woman shook her head as she approached the door.

"Dunno. It's been here for a couple days."

"And that doesn't bother you?"

"This place is old. We get a lot of weird smells." She answered. I swallowed tightly as a bad feeling came over me. The woman unlocked the door and it swung open. She shrieked and dropped the keys, stepping back and covering her mouth. My stomach dropped like a cement block.

Inside, Atros was hanging from one of the rafters above his bed, body completely still. I stared, frozen in place as the woman shrieked again and called for the security I hadn't even known they had. I barely heard her shouting, or the other prostitutes that were scrambling from their rooms to cry out in horror. It all sounded muffled as I came forward into the room. It was cold and reeked of his dead body. I came around to stare up at Atros's empty face, eyes still open and staring down at the ground, body pale with a bluish-tint, save for his lips. Once soft and a healthy shade of pink, now purple and chapped. His neck was completely purple where the rope had dug into it and his neck was bent at an awkward angle, meaning it was broken.

"Atros?" I asked stupidly. His body just hung there and my movement in the room caused his body to swing a little. I blinked a few times, stepping back and looking around he room that looked almost exactly the way it had when I had left.

He must have done it shortly after I left.

Maybe an hour or two.

Three.

My eyes fell on his nightstand to see that the gold necklace was gone. I frowned and looked back up at his corpse. Sure enough, the necklace was hanging around his neck, crushed to it by the rope. The heart hung swaying in front of his chest. I reached up to brush it with my finger and brushed Atros's body. I yanked my hand back, startled by how cold he felt.

I'd felt hundreds of dead bodies before.

But for some reason... this one was fucking terrifying.

Atros was dead.

Suicide.

I loved Hector, not you.

For once in my life, since Gloria died, I thought I could find something that would make me happy. And once again, you've ripped it away from me.

Rot in hell.

Someone would rather hang themselves than ever contemplate a relationship with me.