The Sea Queen (The Dark Queens Book 1) (18 page)

“You were far kinder than I’d have been.” She lifted a pencil-thin brow.

“I don’t know. I do not exactly care for the woman, but looking at her now, she looked so young. And it dawned on me that in many ways, she mostly is. Spring is birth. Persephone is like a young seedling, and I do hope she will grow up someday, but Hades did right by bringing her to you.”

“Ah, the wisdom of the eternal waters.” She brushed a thumb across my cheek. “And you should know that Hades did not bring her to me. Cerberus did, dragging her in one set of jaws. Very carefully, mind you. Even though the chit had cut off one of his heads, not a tooth punctured her body. No doubt Hades’ doing.”

“He is such a thoughtful brute that way.” I nodded, and she laughed.

“What need you of me, sister?”

“I simply need the threat of you, my dear. And what can I give you in return?”

“An invitation to the wedding.”

I hugged her. If there was a wedding, it wouldn’t be for a few years yet—at least fifty or sixty years from now. I wanted to make sure that once the honeymoon phase ended, we were still a perfect match. But I answered, “Done and done.”

~*~

I shook my groove thang when I entered Themis’s cave of wonders. I really did like her taste in music. Today there was a cheery pop beat blasting through her home.

Dressed in Spandex workout gear, Themis twirled on the balls of her feet, a sweaty, sloppy mess but laughing effervescently. Clapping her hands, she stopped the music, and her eyes sparkled.

“Praise be. I thought you’d never come.”

I raised a brow. Not like she’d called me back. I crossed my arms.

“Oh stop, pouting, Calypso. You could see my dilemma with your own two eyes. The man is as guilty as sin, and yet how could I honestly condemn him for that? I was in a pickle, and you know it.”

Not the way I saw it. Anyone with two eyes could figure out that he’d done what he’d done for a reason and that goddess or no, Persephone had needed a good spanking.

“Bah.” She swatted a hand. “Justice is blind and all that. Everyone tells me that I am to judge with the facts and with not my heart, but I find that organ growing softer with each passing day. I weighed Persephone’s sins, and they are many. I’ve no wish to release her from Aria’s keeping for the time being.”

But if she didn’t release Hades and prove he’d not killed the beast, then Zeus would still try to punish him. All knew there was no love lost between the brothers. Right or wrong, none of that mattered to Zeus. He wanted absolute authority, and Hades had always been a vexing thorn in his flesh.

She nodded. “Exactly right.”

But why not just reveal that Persephone lived, at the bare minimum?

“I tell them that, and they would scour the earth and all its hidden realms to find her. They would never stop, and Hades would still be tormented. And so my quandary remains. Hades is guilty, but my scales weigh him innocent. So what do I do?”

I had spoken with my sisters, and I’d come prepared in case she planned to fight me. But I could see now that there was still a way to use our combined forces to do my will.

Themis touched the tip of her nose. “And so our thoughts finally align. You know, you really are quite fascinating to speak with. Don’t be such a stranger, Calypso.”

I waved. She wasn’t quite so bad herself. “Yup. Till next time, bat.”

~*~

My final stop brought me right to Zeus’s throne room. I really hadn’t been in the mood to spar with each and every a-hole. I’d hoped by seeking a private audience Zeus, I could settle terms with him, one adult to another.

He glowered at me, he was naked, and there was a woman (again, not Hera) sucking on him loudly. There was another woman behind him shoving something into something. I wasn’t quite sure what, but I suspected there might be a carrot involved.

“What in the
HELL
do you want?” he thundered.

“Oh Zeus, Zeus, darling, why must we always fight so? I come not to shake the hornet’s nest today. I merely come on a peacekeeping mission.”

Broad nostrils flared. I could never see what women found so irresistible about him. Had to be magic. He was blinding them to his true form.

Actually, his true form was a complete mystery to most. Paintings had depicted him as a tree, once even as a swan, and as a man on many occasions, but I knew what he really looked like. I’d seen him born, after all.

But I’d vowed never to think on it again. And so I wouldn’t.

The women, like the good little sycophants they were, continued to service him, their perky little breasts bobbing up and down, up and down, as they squealed and exclaimed loudly as though pleasuring him were the best thing evah.

Honestly, I adored Death Boy, but I’d had to rub one out this morning. Pleasuring another was great, but getting pleasured was even better. But, none of my business.

“Peacekeeping.” He snorted as though he did not believe me. “Enlighten me, then, Calypso.”

“Toss out this ridiculous charge against Hades. Let him return to his realm and do what he does best: take care of his dead.”

When Zeus tossed his head back and laughed, bolts of lightning danced through his hall, filling it with the stench of ozone.

What a show-off.

“I think not.” He knuckled fat tears from his eyes.

I crossed my arms, remembering that I was here for peace. Peace.
Peaccccce, ohhhhhmmmm
, I mentally chanted. “What would you do with the Underworld, then? Hades can handle it now, but add torture to the equation and you’re looking at a big, fat, rotting mess. I hardly think you’d want that.”

His face contorted, and I knew what was coming. I’d seen that look on Dead Boy’s face a time or twenty. Curling my lip, I turned my back. I had no desire to see Zeus ejaculate rainbows, or whatever the hell he did.

Once I no longer felt the shudders roll through the floor, I peeked over my shoulder. The women were back to bobbing again, although this time they’d swapped places.

Ew
.

“I’ve already chosen his replacement.”

Oh, how very convenient. That prick didn’t care if Persephone was dead or missing. His only concern was dethroning Hades. Because only Hades could actually make a power play for Zeus’s throne. Well, so could Psycho, but he was Zeus’s bitch in all things. But how could Zeus not realize by now that Hades had no desire to dethrone his brother?

Rubbing the bridge of my nose, I tried one last time to reason. “He’s got no plans to boot you to the docks, Zeus. Your title is secure.”

He lifted a brow, and at first I thought he was about to squirt out more rainbows, but I was wrong. “The gods are loyal to me. None of them would take his side, so my throne is already secure.”

“Oh, you fat bastard.” I stomped my foot. “I tried, but you’ve pushed me to it!” So angry I could spit nails, I exploded from this pathetic form into a geyser of water and glared at him. My words reverberated with the depths of my raw power. “Do as I say, or I shall see Olympus destroyed. You have three days, and then you are all gone. So I say. So it is decreed.”

A tsunami eighty stories high rolled through the confines of his chambers, sweeping the disgusting creatures away from me. Zeus was sputtering, slamming thunderbolts at my side, but I swatted them away.

“You are nothing, nothing to me, you fool! Today I rain fire. Tomorrow earth. And the day after that, I shall scatter you to the seas, a fate you shall never recover from. Send Hermes to me when you change your mind.”

Then, giving him one final, mighty shove, I returned to my home, to my sex slave.

All things considered, I thought I’d handled that affair rather well.

“Two points for Calypso. I think I deserve a gold star today.”

Chapter 16

Themis

“Father, what do you expect me to do?” I sidestepped a flaming disk of molten magma that punched a hole through his walls, nearly knocking the head from my body.

When Calypso had threatened to destroy us, she’d meant business. Apollo’s home had taken the worst of it; I did not envy that man. Whatever he’d done to her, he’d earned her lifelong wrath for it.

“I expect you to make that bitch stop!” he roared.

Father had been in a horrible mood for the past night. The moment she’d left, the skies had rained fire.

Calypso couldn’t control fire, which made this Fiera’s doing, and I had to hide my grin. I’d never expected her to speak with her sisters. How she’d corralled them into doing her bidding utterly fascinated me.

“I can’t. You know this. She is a Primordial and far beyond our control or punishments.”

I could feel his wrath burning holes through me. There were times I was grateful to be blind.

“Judge that man! Send Hades straight to Tartarus.”

I notched my chin. “The hand of justice is my own. Only I can sentence him and only I can weigh his sins. My decision has not yet been determined.”

“Damn you, girl,” he spat. “If I should discover you to be in cahoots with—”

I crossed my arms. “Father, are we done here? I’ve much left to do before sentencing.”

Actually, I had nothing left to do but wait him out. If my wretched father didn’t suspend this ridiculous hearing, I would be forced to judge Hades. My last play was the hope that Calypso’s threats would change the heart of a rather hardhearted people. I didn’t hold out much hope, but as long as there existed even a shred of it, I’d wait this out as long as it took.

“Get out of my sight,” he snapped.

Turning on my heel, I made to leave when suddenly I felt the shift of magic. No longer did fire light the skies; now the very earth trembled beneath my feet with a violence that made my heart stutter.

Tiera’s turn.

Zeus pounded a heavy fist on his armrest as his beautiful castle began to crumble around his feet.

~*~

Hades

“Thalassa,” I murmured in her ear.

She slept in my arms, hadn’t moved a muscle the entire night. Last night, she’d crawled onto my body, pressed a tender kiss to my chest, whispered a sleepy “mine,” and then lost herself to Hypnos’s touch.

I’d been unable to keep from spying on her yesterday. There’d been a point in time when I’d not been able to see her at all and had lost her to a void of darkness, to a place where none but the most ancient of peoples could dwell and no one could enter without seeking audience first. But after seeing her threaten Zeus and seeing the shower of rain, I knew she’d gone to speak with her sisters.

Stroking her bare back, I gazed down upon her. She looked so very human today.

Her skin was flesh, her hair blond. And she was snoring.

I chuckled.

“How is it that I’ve gone all my life without knowing you, my Thalassa?”

Mumbling, she smacked her lips and wiggled her exquisite bum against my thigh. I hungered for her, but I found that I always did anymore. In a matter of days, the woman had grown vital to me, necessary.

Even if her threats didn’t work and I was exiled, I would return for her. Oftentimes in the Underworld, when a day had been particularly trying, I’d somehow always found myself at the river Lethe, admiring the supple beauty of its movements, always so feminine to me. Talking to it, telling it my deepest secrets, sharing of myself with those waters in a way I did with no other.

And always I was renewed by the time I’d finished, as though I’d spoken not with water but with a lover who knew my heart and treasured it.

Threading her hair through my fingers, I whispered, “I once called myself master over you, but it is I held thrall by you, mistress of the deep. I am wholly lost to you. And deep down in my soul, I think I always was. I just needed time to learn it.”

Her sudden snap of movement blinded me, in an instant she had a leg tossed over my hip and was beaming down at me. “Aw, Death Boy, do you really mean it?”

“Witch!” I chuckled. “You were never asleep.”

“Well.” She squinted and then grinned. “I was until about an hour ago, but you made such a fine pillow that I had no wish to move, and then Nim told me that lovers liked to whisper sweet nothings in your ear when you were asleep, so I decided to test the theory.”

“And how did I do?” I scooted so that I was resting more comfortably against a pile of pillows, which also happened to cause her warm center to slide right over me.

Her eyes sparkled as she ahh’d. “Mmm.” She tossed her head back, swaying on me like a gentle tide, her movements so sensuous that I found myself already clenching my teeth from my need to release.

“Isn’t it my day?” she mewled, clawing at my chest with her nails, but she never stopped.

“I’ve lost count.” I nipped at a finger that came within reach.

Giggling happily, she snatched it back and swatted my chest. “Play nice, you beastly man, or I shall—”

“Oh shut up,” leaning up, I took her lips, snatching the words and breath out of her. Then, with a deft move, I reversed our position on the bed so that I was now the one on top.

We’d not had sex like this before, where so much of me touched so much of her. She’d rubbed herself upon me yesterday morning, but I’d been fully clothed. I looked at her eyes, trying to spy any sign that she did not wish this level of intimacy with me yet.

She wrapped her arms around my neck and grunted, “I’m not getting any younger, beast.”

And I settled in. Moving slowly, languorously. Finding a rhythm she liked, nuzzling the side of her neck as her breathy hum filled my ears. And then I’d stop moving and kiss her instead, licking and nipping my way across her body.

“The hollow of your throat tastes like the sweetest of honey,” I murmured, laving my tongue along the delicate flesh, delighted to witness a rush of goose bumps raise up on her skin.

“Tell me more,” she sighed, running her fingers through my hair.

Hiding my grin against her shoulder, I bit down gently and hefted a breast in my hand.

“What does that feel like to you?” she asked me breathily.

Plucking at her burgeoning nipple, I glanced up at her. Her skin was flushed with dew. Blue eyes gleaming like jewels stared back at me.