The Power of Hades (The Hades Trials, #1)

by Eliza Raine

'In my experience, the prettiest men are the best ones to avoid,' I told her. 'Now, what can I get you?'

'Come on now, Persephone, Hades will be so upset with me if I fry you before I can get you to his realm.'

'No. He swore after his first wife that he would never remarry, but he upset Zeus in a pretty big way recently. And the big man's punishments cut deep.'

'How the hell am I coming up with this?' I gasped through laughs. 'I've made myself the wife of the king of the dead? What the actual fuck?'

'I doubt that. He just told me never to talk to him again.' 'Which is angry-man-god-speak for: I'd very much like to have sex with you.'

'People only see smoke,' I said. 'He wasn't always like that,' she answered quietly. Something in my stomach tightened. 'What happened?' I asked, but deep in my gut, I already knew the answer. 'You.'

He kept the orchid alive for you. It's all he had left.

'You haven't met anybody as fucked up as me yet. With one exception that is, but you're competing to marry him.'

He loved me. I could see it in his face, hear it in his broken voice, feel it in his electrifying touch. All this time, all those years alone in New York, and someone, somewhere, loved me this much. And I never knew.