She glared at Hades. She hated being kept in the dark about anything. “Dammit, Hades, what did you not tell me?”
“The Orphmage who captured you is using your life force to fuel the spell that will open the Inner Sanctum’s barriers. He did the same thing to the human. Cerberus thinks that if we can get you close enough to the human, you’ll be able to detect him. It should also unlock the doors between the Inner Sanctum and Azagoth’s realm. Basically, the mutt wants to use you to track the human. Funny, yes? How it’s the opposite of in the human realm, when humans use dogs––”
“I get it,” she blurted. And criminy, could this situation get any worse? “But I can’t believe you were keeping this from me. My life force? Seriously?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, but he didn’t sound very contrite. “I didn’t want to worry you. Especially not after I was such a dick to you earlier.”
Well, at least he admitted to being a dick. “I’m not worried,” she explained. “I’m mad. We need to be out looking for the human. I have to fix this so the world isn’t overrun by demon spirits and so Azagoth won’t expel me from Sheoul-gra.” She watched the hellhounds grab the stick and start a game of tug-of-war. “And fixing this could go a long way toward earning my way back to Heaven.”
Hades’s head jerked back as if he’d been slapped. “Why the everloving fuck do you want to go back to people who kicked you to the curb?”
“Heaven is my home,” she said simply.
Even with the growls and snarls coming from the hellhounds and the shouts of people yelling at the beasts from a safe distance, Hades’s silence was deafening.
Finally, he said quietly, “Seems to me that home is where the people who want you are.”
For some reason, his words knocked the breath out of her. “And who would that be?” she asked. “Azagoth? I clean his house. And not very well. Anyone can do that. He’s probably going to fire me anyway, once he learns that I was the one who got the human sent here in the first place. Lilliana? I consider her a friend, and I hope she feels the same about me, but she’d be fine without me. The other Unfallen living in the dorms? Sometimes I cook for them. They’d miss my brown butter vanilla bean cake, but aside from that...”
She shrugged as if it was all no big deal, but the realization that she was so insignificant hurt. Making matters worse was her status as an Unfallen. She had no powers, no status, no identity. Maybe she should have entered Sheoul and turned herself into a True Fallen. At least then she’d have wings and power.
But the cost would have been her soul.
Suddenly, Hades’s hands came down on her shoulders. “I want you, Cat. I want you more than I’ve wanted anything since I fell.”
Her heart pounded with joy, but a blanket of sadness wrapped around it, muffling the happiness. “And what good does that do either of us if Azagoth is so bent on revenge?”
“Cat––”
She pulled away from him. “Don’t make things worse. We need to find the human, and I need to get back to Heaven. Can we do that, please? Before all of my life is drained?”
A chill settled in the air, so noticeable that even the hellhounds looked around to see where the cold front was coming from. Cat didn’t bother searching.
An icy glaze turned Hades’s eyes cloudy and his expression stony. Blue veins rose to the surface of his skin, which had lost a few shades of color, the way it had back at Azagoth’s mansion when he’d shown her his wings. A darkness emanated from him, making her skin burn, and it struck her that this was the Hades who came out to play when things went to hell. This was the Jailor of the Dead. The Keeper of Souls. The Master of Torture.
“Tell me, Cataclysm.” His voice had gone deep, scraping the craggy bottoms of Hell’s fiery pits. “How did you get your name?”
Oh, God. He knew. Humiliation shrunk her skin. “It doesn’t matter. We should go.” She spun around. The door to the hut was just a few steps away––
A hellhound blocked the path, drool dripping from its bared teeth. Clearly, Hades wasn’t done with this conversation, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of turning around to face him.
“Did you choose your name?” She jumped at the sound of his voice, so close to her right ear that she felt his breath on her lobe.
“You know I didn’t,” she ground out, her humiliation veering sharply to anger that he’d chosen to go there. But then, he was the Master of Torture, wasn’t he? He’d proven earlier that he knew where to strike in order to extract the most pain from a victim, and names could be an extremely sensitive subject for fallen angels.