With his enhanced eyesight, he could see a soul far across the valley, in the center of a circle of rabid dogs, about to be devoured whole. Hades’s energy thrived on each soul he obtained, and his powers grew every time a soul was tortured within his realm. In this case, the man had enjoyed great wealth from the underground dog-fighting ring he’d run in the human realm. It didn’t bother Hades in the least to know that reliving those fights, with the human as the victim, again and again and again was a just and fair punishment for the man. In all likelihood, it was probably better than he deserved.
“Sin City, you say?” His gaze scanned this level of the Underworld. A good distance from Tartarus, where Atalanta was now scheming with the fallen Argonaut. He had no doubt she’d make the Argonaut Gryphon her bitch in every sense of the word. He knew all too well how she fucked not only with a male’s body, but his mind. While the sex had been hot enough, the aftermath with his wife, when she’d learned he’d lost the Orb, had been less than stellar. The question was, what did Atalanta plan to do with the Argonaut? She hadn’t been sentenced to the Underworld herself. She’d simply been trapped in the Fields of Asphodel by her son and his witchcraft. But it was clear she planned to use the Argonaut to her advantage. Somehow.
“Yes,” Persephone answered. “She was granted access to Sin City, and word is she’s meeting with Krónos soon.”
Hades had no doubt his father would relish a go at Atalanta. The bitch was hot. But she was also unpredictable. And Hades didn’t put it past her to use her feminine charms on Krónos to get what she wanted. Which was undoubtedly to find a way back to the human realm and to get her hands on that Orb.
Unfortunately, the area Krónos and his Titan goons had set up in Tartarus was the one and only part of the Underworld Hades couldn’t see into. Which meant he didn’t know what they did in their depraved corner of hell. Knowing his good ol’ dad, though, it was as immoral and degenerate as it could get, not that Hades cared. So long as the bastard stayed locked down there, things were fine. It was the wild card Atalanta and what she might promise Krónos that left Hades with a bitter taste in his mouth. “We have someone on the inside?”
“Tantalus is there.”
Tantalus. The human who’d cut up his son Pelops, boiled him into a soup, and served it to the Olympians when he’d been invited to join them for a meal. One corner of Hades’s mouth curled at the image of that banquet. Tantalus had been condemned to Tartarus by Zeus himself, but Hades had granted the soul special privileges other inhabitants didn’t have, simply because he loved the fact Tantalus had had the balls to pull that one over on Zeus and the other egomaniac Olympians.
“Tantalus is perfect. I want to know exactly what she has planned.”
“Yes, my lord,” Persephone said.
Hades turned back to his wife, moved close to her. She didn’t cower from him, and he liked that. Every other female cowered because they knew what to expect. Persephone loved his perversion.
She braced her hands on his forearms as he slid his arms around her waist and dragged her close, as he sank his teeth into her neck and drew the sweetest taste of her blood. Blood and pain and desire swelled in his mouth to heighten his need for her.
“There is one other thing,” Persephone said, tipping her head to grant him more access.
“Mm?” He ran his tongue over the bite mark, healing it with his powers, then taking another bite from her flesh in a more delectable spot.
“This part you might not like.”
He lifted his head, stared down into her emerald eyes. “Tell me.”
She never once looked away, but he saw the quick flash of fear before she masked it with steel resolve. Something else he admired about her. Even when she knew she was going to piss him off, she didn’t back down. She’d meet his fury head-on even when it left her battered and bruised.
“Orpheus has found Maelea.”
The slow, red rage he always felt when the bastard child’s name was mentioned slid through his veins and pummeled his chest. He’d banished her to the human realm, couldn’t kill her because those fucking Fates had meddled where they shouldn’t be meddling. But he wished only for that stain to die. While he didn’t have a problem with his wife screwing around on the side, the reminder that his brother Zeus had succeeded in seducing his wife right here in his realm and had created a child with her was a humiliation not even Hades could forget.
He dropped his hands, moved back mere inches. Never took his eyes off his treacherous wife. She was to blame too. Still was to blame. “And?”
She drew a deep breath. “And I sent hellhounds to stop him, but they got away.”
Hades looked past his wife to the marble relief again. Only this time all he saw was betrayal, not victory. A betrayal he would douse with vengeance. “And the bastard?”
Persephone frowned. “My daughter is not a bastard. But yes, she got away with him. I didn’t send the hounds there to harm her.”
No, of course not. Persephone loved that fucking stain. Even though that love made Hades hurt his wife time and again.
“What would he want with the bastard?”
“I don’t know.”
Hades looked back at her, only this time he didn’t see his wife’s beauty anymore. He saw deception of the most calculated kind.