The King Of Death | Hades + Fae

Chapter Three

Tallulah

Death is coming. Death is coming. Death is coming.

A knock at my door pulls me from my restless dream and I launch up, sweat dripping between my bare breasts and dotting my forehead. The morning sun beams through my three arched windows as tall as the ceiling, opening to a large balcony overlooking the courtyard. It is a beautiful morning, but my mind is elsewhere.

Death is coming.

"Tally?" I suddenly become aware of a weight on my left thigh, a hand. The knock sounds again and Ilias groans in frustration, pulling his hand off of me to roll onto his stomach, a sign he doesn't expect to rouse with me.

Death is coming.

"Queen Tallulah!" Harwyn's sing-song voice slides through the cracks of my large oak doors like they aren't even there. How such a small beings' voice carries so far I'd never know. With a sigh, I kick my long legs over the bed and push myself to my feet. The whispers had grown louder in the night, flashes of black plaguing my dreams like a shadow. Death is coming, and soon.

"I swear to Aidoneus, if you do not rise soon-"

"I'm coming, Harwyn." My grumble comes out harsher than I intend, but my handmaid is used to it. In my chambers, in the privacy of our home, my status is all but a small storm cloud that hovers in the corner of the room, visible but not damning.

Once I slide my satin robe over my curves hiding my sun-kissed skin, I move on light feet to swing the door open. I stand almost a head taller than the small Fae, at six foot one, but her sharp glare always made me cower within. Harwyn is young, only a few years older than me, but her motherly instincts are stronger than Fae hundreds of years her senior.

"You have petitions in an hour." As the words slip past her thin lips she pushes past me with a gentle bump but enough force to send me stumbling slightly. 

Within a blink she's at the edge of the bed and dumping cold water over my friend's head. Admittedly we'd stayed up later than anticipated, much as we always did when vinum was consumed before our fucking.

"Gods be damned, Har!" The male thrashes in the cold bedsheets and with another blink, Harwyn is back by my side and guiding me to sit in the green velvet chaise by my ever raging fire. Her hands get to work quickly on my pale pink hair, twisting it and braiding it into a 'do much more fitting for a queen than my previous bedhead.

"I think I'd rather go back to the king's guard." Ilias mumbles when he finally rises, slipping his trousers on before Harwyn can see his still hard cock.

"You mean the Queen's guard, and you and I both know Talullah wouldn't survive a single day in court without you." The casualness of our morning banter always fills me with enough realness to get me through a day of lies, snarky comments and hidden agendas. Ilias laughs and Harwyn shakes her head, her short yellow hair brushing her soft chin.

The doors open again and both Pilos and Grison pile into my room, making the large space feel small and comforting.

"Thought you'd be hungry, milady." Pilos doesn't wait to throw the apple at my head, much to Harwyn's startled scream as it skims her cheek and lands perfectly in my outstretched hand. I grin in reply while Grison lands one of his ever common slaps to the back of his brother's buzzed head.

Harwyn moves back to my hair after mumbling another curse to Aidoneus, our god of death. He was her favourite of the famed three, ruling over souls as they sat between life and death. The main god was Xenios, the the protector of strangers followed by Aidoneus and his brother Enosichthon who was the God of mountains, earth and seas. Other deities dotted through our religion but the main three are worshipped most in our culture. Though I never believed myself to be overly religious.