Series: Willow Winters
Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 94417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 472(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 472(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Though I must admit that I can admire her spirit. I admire her fight, even if I am certain she will lose. The game itself is … intriguing but not so much as the reward.
And what does it mean to lose? Persephone thinks it would be a great defeat, but I know better. It would be a triumph.
Closing the distance between us, I take another step. Persephone takes a long breath as if to steady herself. Her hands grip one another tightly, then relax.
She keeps her eyes lowered until I reach her and place two fingers underneath her chin. Persephone offers no resistance when I lift her face to mine. The heat of her skin against mine is everything, electrifying and alluring. I need more. More of her. More contact.
There is no resistance except for another flash of emotion in her eyes. Her lips tremble slightly, but she does not speak. I wait to see if my presence will compel her. If my eyes on hers are enough to break her. To bring the future tumbling in to meet us. To bring her future and her power into their full, uninhibited form.
I can imagine the cries that would come from her mouth when she felt it. I can hear them reverberating in my memory as clearly as her screams, though I have not heard her impassioned moans.
I haven’t heard them yet. I have not drawn them out of her yet.
I will do so even if it requires sacrificing all of hell and burning it to the ground for her pleasure. Whatever her heart desires, I will discover it and I will bend the Underworld to her will.
Time passes slowly as I wait, inhaling the sweetness and warmth her skin creates against mine. Inhaling the flame-like connection between the two of us, burning invisibly through the air and binding us together as surely as the chains bind her to this realm.
I see, I want her to say. I see that this is not a cage, but a coronation. I see what it is to rule.
But she does not speak. I drop my hand to my side, and Persephone swallows, her head moving forward as if to capture my touch.
Victory. A small one, but a victory nonetheless.
“I do not deserve your anger,” I tell her. This is the truth, and it is time Persephone hears it.
“Are you not the God who took me in the night?” she snaps back, her voice clear and ringing. I do not care if the guards hear her words. They are loyal souls, and the plans of the Gods are not theirs to judge. Their tongues will not stay attached to them if they utter a word and they are aware of that.
“There are others that forced my hand.” Although I hesitate to confess such things, I add, “They would have hurt you.”
Her eyes narrow, darkening. “Lies.” The singular insult nearly hissed.
With my hackles raised, I respond easily, “I tell no lies, my queen.”
Her eyes flash once more at my queen. Her teeth clench together, and then she bites at her bottom lip, stopping as quickly as she discovers herself doing so. The struggle she faces in her mind is clear in her expression.
Oh, it will be delicious to coax it out of her. She must feel it growing in her. She must know that she craves power, and even more so, she must know that she craves vengeance.
There are those who have betrayed Persephone, but she is not used to such impulses. She is not used to the resolve it requires to seek revenge that is well earned with a wrath deemed intolerable. It requires one to put aside the empathy they hold for other people’s weakness. It requires a certain bloodthirsty yet righteous rage, and I have no doubt that if I nurture it in Persephone, it will create havoc on the Gods who have done this.
Who would not want to know that their pain had been avenged? Who would not want to see their enemies vanquished, once and for all?
The Gods know I would relish both.
“There is no need to feel conflicted within yourself, my queen. I can offer you the balance you seek.”
Persephone lifts her chin. “You speak of balance, but you are still the God who—”
“Who rescued you from danger. You must have known that there was no safe harbor for you on Olympus.”
“I knew no such thing,” she says with certainty, but the volume of her voice gives her away. It is obvious to anyone that Persephone was keeping secrets when she dwelled in the home of the Gods. She would not have craved my presence, would not have accepted it, if she had not been afraid. If she had not known she was near a precipice of abandonment.
They did not want her as she was. I crave her as she is presently and as what she will become. Mine.