“Well,” she said, looking out over the valley herself. “I guess that’s it then. Good luck wherever you’re heading.”
He grasped her by the sleeve before she made it a step away, and tugged her back to face him. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“You said if I cooperated and helped you get out of the tunnels, I’d be free to go. I did that.”
“That was before.”
Her eyes narrowed with distrust. “Before what?”
“Before I realized I need you.” He didn’t miss the flash of fear in her eyes at his words, followed by the quick burst of anger. Anger that told him keeping her with him might not be the smartest idea he’d ever had, but it didn’t do a thing to change his mind.
“But you said—”
“Forget what I said before, female.” His hand tightened around her upper arm. “Focus on what I’m saying now. You’re not going anywhere. Not without me.”
Chapter Eight
“My lord, we have…a problem.”
Seated on his blackened throne in the heart of the Underworld, Hades turned his attention from the view of the boiling red sky he’d been gazing out at to Orcus, the four-foot-tall gnomelike troll whose one and only job was to monitor that fucking stain Maelea.
“Be careful in how you present this problem, Orcus, or it will be the last you ever voice.” Hades was in a piss-poor mood already. Not only had his wife, Persephone, been summoned back to Olympus for the miserable summer, but Maelea hadn’t shown herself in months. The stain knew he was hunting her, so she was hiding somewhere, likely with those pathetic Misos. Only no one knew where their precious colony was located. He’d had hellhounds searching for Maelea for months, and they’d come up empty. Not even Orcus, who always knew where she was, could find her.
Hatred brewed hot in Hades’s veins. Because Maelea had not only helped Orpheus find the Orb of Krónos, but had helped the Argonauts, she had to pay. Fuck the Fates and their so-called rules that said he couldn’t touch her unless she ventured into the Underworld. Fuck his wife’s inevitable reaction. He didn’t care what it cost him. He wanted Maelea dead and gone once and for all. It had become his obsession.
Orcus, knowing the extent of Hades’s fury, swallowed, tapped his long clawlike fingernails together. “Yes, my lord. It seems Maelea is on the move.”
Hades pushed himself forward in his throne, excitement bubbling in his chest, the first he’d felt in months. “That’s not a problem, you moron. It’s what we’ve been hoping for.”
“Yes, my lord, I know. It’s just…”
Hades rose out of his chair and glared down at the pathetic creature, his patience at its breaking point. “Spit it out already, Orcus.”
“Somehow she ended up in a tunnel. She and…an Argonaut.”
Those fucking miserable Argonauts. Always interfering. Orpheus—the son of a bitch who’d become a good-for-nothing Argonaut, thanks to Lachesis the Fate—obviously had a soft spot for the stain. “They left together?”
“It looks that way,” Orcus answered.
An Argonaut would be of use getting her settled somewhere, but out in the open, Hades’s minions would be able to track her. One measly Argonaut was not a detriment to Hades’s goal. And if Orpheus was killed in the process? Even better. “I’m still not seeing the problem, Orcus.”
Orcus wrung his scaly hands together, looked right and left. “My lord, the tunnel they were in…” He swallowed, finally looked up at Hades. “It was the Tunnel of Arima.”
Hades stiffened. “She found the therillium? Is that what you’re telling me?”
Orcus nodded. “Yes, my lord. She and the Argonaut…They found it and…and it’s possible they took pieces with them.”
“Do you know this for certain?”
Orcus looked to the left and motioned with his hand. A kobalos, a distant cousin of Orcus, hobbled into the room, his long nails clicking along the black stone floor.
“My lord Hades.” The kobalos bowed. “It is with great pleasure I meet you, my king.”
“Dispense with the pleasantries,” Hades snapped. “Tell me what you know of the stain.”
The kobalos lifted large, round eyes to peer up at Hades. “She and the male escaped the tunnels before we could catch them.”
That anger morphed to fury. “How the hell did they get there in the first place?”