Read Hades (The God Chronicles #3) for Free Online Page A

perfectly.
Striking green eyes shone out from under full lashes, almost taking
away any notice of her perfectly shaped, cherry red lips. A
flowing, black dress hugged her form, giving her the air of someone
regal.
    At the same time, she appeared menacing and
dark, much like the version of myself I’d see before. It made me
afraid of her, almost as if she would destroy me if I so much as
continued to look at her.
    Erebos pulled a box from the pocket of his dark
coat and opened it, revealing a sparkling diamond ring. At his
motion, the form began to disappear, breaking apart into smoky
wisps that spun around in the air and then dived into the ring,
turning the rock blacker with each strand that was
added.
    “I can’t impersonate a goddess,” I said, half
laughing in disbelief. “I don’t even know how I wou—are you nuts?!
Everything I read said it was impossible to trick Hades. I’d rather
not be the next person forced to push a giant rock up a mountain
every day for the rest of eternity.”
    “For a human,” Erebos said, pulling the ring
from the box and examining it once all the smoke had been locked
inside. “It is impossible to trick Hades. For me, it is
easy.”
    “I’m a human,” I said in a panic.
    “But you have my help,” he said
smoothly.
    I could see the darkness sifting around in the
diamond, slowly becoming more solid as it took on its new
form.
    “I can’t leave town,” I said suddenly, another
bad situation rising in my mind. “I’m a suspect in the murder that you committed. Thanks for that, by the way.”
    “When all goes as I have planned, it will not
matter,” he said, looking up from the jewelry. “If I were you, I
would be more worried about what’s going to happen if you don’t
follow through on your part of the deal.”
    “My part?” I laughed at him, not caring that he
could easily destroy me for my rudeness. “What about your part?
It’s been a day! I’m sorry, but I haven’t seen anything in the way
of what you promised me and I don’t think you should be coming to
collect on your end without having filled yours.”
    “Do not think to order me around,” he said, his
voice dangerously low, the darkness around me thickening slightly.
“You who are weak and nothing! I come to you with an offer of
royalty and it is not good enough for you?”
    I could feel his anger growing around me and
took a step back, tripping slightly and stumbling.
    “I am not required to fill my end of the deal
until yours is taken care of as well. It would do you good to
remember that.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said, my voice shaky. “I just
don’t know why you want me to do this. What could you possibly gain
from it?”
    “That is my business,” he said, his voice
cooling some. “To appease you though, go home. Look in the back
window and then tell me what you see.”
    He leaned back against another tree, spinning
the ring in his palm, apparently content to wait for me.
    I hesitated for a moment, not really sure if I
was supposed to leave or not. After he continued to ignore me,
though, I started moving forward, passing by him and making my way
back through the woods.
    As I walked the unbeaten path, my mind tried to
make sense of what was happening. In the space of a day, I’d been
thrown into a world that didn’t exist. If that wasn’t enough, I was
in trouble in my own world because of it. And now I was supposed to
go in deeper? How was I supposed to trick a god, let alone the
master of the Underworld? What would happen to me if I refused? Or
worse—what would happen to me if I did go and was found
out?
    I shuddered, remembering feelings of my almost
rape. Hades had raped his own wife after kidnapping her, hadn’t he?
Would he do the same to me?
    The lights from the house appeared before me in
the distance, the warm feeling of my home pushing out some of my
scared thoughts. If I stayed home, Daddy would take care of me.
There couldn’t be enough evidence for them to pin the murder