Hades

Chapter Nineteen

I puff out my cheeks, clutching the turquoise pendant tight in my hands. Selene's the only one who notices. "Just before I blacked out, someone appeared right in front of me, almost like they were floating in the water. They looked really blurry around the edges, but I could've sworn that I recognised them."

"Who did it look like?" Spencer asks sharply.

"Well..."I hesitate. "I don't know for sure, but it almost looked like Hades. But that's crazy, right? It couldn't have been him."

"Oh crap." Axel curses loudly as a realisation visibly dawns on him. "Hades. He's going to kill us."

"Why?" I shrug my hoodie on, flicking my still-wet hair over the top. "He won't know what happened."

"Evie, you're his queen. Your souls were forever connected the moment you agreed to become his consort." Selene says quietly. "He'll immediately know the moment you're hurt or in danger, and vice versa."

"Which means he'll be heading this way right now to kick our asses." Spencer deadpans.

Axel curses again, turning to kick the wall. "This is bad."

I frown. "Why is it bad? What's going on, you guys?"

"The fact that you saw someone, whether it be Hades or someone else, pretty much confirms that one of the gods was trying to kill you." Spencer runs his hand through his hair. It sticks up slightly in his hand's wake, courtesy of the saltwater stiffening up his dirty-blonde locks. "Which means that things have hit the fan big time."

Selene lets out a long breath and leans back against the wall. She glances over at her twin. "Ap, do you think this might have something to do with what happened with—"

"Arty." Axel stops her, giving her a pointed look. She matches it with an equally heated stare.

"Well? Do you?"

Axel sighs. He eventually shakes his head. "Yes. I think it does."

"Then that settles it. We have to tell the others." Selene replies curtly, her expression smoothing out into one of such severity that it scares me slightly. I hadn't yet glimpsed her ethereal side, but now that I suddenly was, it only reminded me how powerful she really was.

My gaze flickers between the two of them, but theirs don't budge. "Guys, what's going on?"

"Not now, Evie." Axel says tersely. Outrage floods my limbs.

"Don't you 'not now' me!" I exclaim, jumping to my feet. I plant myself between the two of them and glare at him. "Look Axel, I'm one of you now, which means that I deserve to know what's going on! I almost died because of this, so whether you like it or not I'm a part of it now! I'm pretty sure we're way past the point of 'not now Evie,' and we passed that point when someone tried to drown me in the ocean!"

They both still. Axel's the first one to move. He shoots me a small, wry smile.

"You're scary when you're angry, did you know that?"

"Yes." I snap. "Now tell me what's going on."

"Evie, I don't think—" Selene starts to argue, but when I round on her, her sentence dies down in her throat. She swallows and holds her hands up in the air. "Okay, point taken. We'll tell you."

"Good." I cross my arms tightly across my chest and raise an eyebrow. "Well?"

"A couple of months ago, we came across a dead ghost." Axel tells me.

My eyebrow rises higher. "A dead ghost?"

"Not what you're thinking." Selene says. "What humans think to be 'ghosts' are actually agents of Hades', stationed around the world as his eyes and ears. They're nymphs called the Lethae, and are known to carry around little bottles of water from the river Lethe, so that any human who accidentally saw them would have their memory erased. That's why ghosts have always been so aversive to humans. They don't actually see ghosts, they see the Lethae, but usually forget what exactly they saw because their memories are always scrambled."