A Touch of Chaos (Hades x Persephone Saga, #4)

by Scarlett St. Clair

“You are everything that makes me good,” he said. “And I am everything that makes you terrible.”

understood the power in being feared.

And she wanted to be dreaded.

“Waiting to carry you through the dark if you will bring me to the light.” Her heart felt so heavy, a weight in her chest. “I need you,” she whispered. “You have me,” he said. “There is no part where you end or I begin. Use me, darling, as you have for your pleasure. There is power in this pain.”

Strange that life granted power in the face of loss, stranger yet that the person who would be most proud was not here to witness it.

“You would burn this world for me? I will destroy it for you,” she had said right before she had torn his realm apart in the name of a love she thought she had lost. Theseus considered their love a weakness, but he would soon discover how wrong he was.

“I want blood, Hermes. I will fill rivers with it until he is found.” Theseus would soon discover that he had flown too close to the sun. Hermes grinned. “I like vengeful Sephy,” he said. “She’s scary.”

“It’s hard to know what evil exists in the world until it finds you.”

“Live in this moment with me.” He wanted nothing else. He wanted her to take up every second of every day, to live in every part of his mind, to never leave his side. She was the dawn of his world, the warmth he carried in his heart, the light that kept him looking toward the future.

“It is curious that death would choose life as a bride,” Hippolyta said. “It is like the sun falling in love with the moon.”

“One cannot exist without the other,” Persephone said. “Just as honor cannot exist without shame.”

“Though I suppose it is not about one or the other but what comes in between.”

Mourning was not just about the person. It was about the world one created around them, and when they ceased to exist, so did that world.

“I suppose what you said is true. Death gives birth to life.” Then she narrowed her eyes. “What will you birth, Persephone?”

“Rage,” she answered without a second thought.

“There are few things that survive war, Persephone,” she said. “Let your love be one of them.”

“Sometimes our love forces us to do extraordinary things.”

“You thought you knew pain? You thought you knew guilt? You are about to know the agony of living with the blood of innocent people on your hands.”

He couldn’t figure out what he hated most about having been a prisoner of Theseus. Was it that he was separated from Persephone or that separately, they had gone through unimaginable things and neither had been able to be there for the other?

“You asked me what I would fight for on the battlefield,” he said. “It is this. It is to have you look at me with these eyes. You worship me with these eyes.”

“You do not have to hide from me,” he said.

“I want all of you, even your pain.”

“If we do nothing, we cease to live,” Hades said. “And if we cease to live, Theseus wins.”

“I will love you through this,” he whispered. “I will love you beyond this.”

“It is unfortunate that those who do not appreciate children are able to have them while those who desire them cannot,” said Hades.

“Forever will never be enough,” he said. “Not when I have lived half my life without you.”