MARS
“Mars!” someone shouted to me. “Mars!”
I glanced over at Aurora, my eyes widening at my mate. “Kitten.”
She extended her arm to touch me, even if it was just a small scrape of our fingers against each other, and I did the same. This might’ve just been a dream—one of the many that I’d had of her since I’d left—but I needed to feel her skin on mine again.
“No!” she screamed, our fingers not once touching.
Every dream I had of her … I never got to touch her. If I did, my body and my fingers drifted right through her flesh. I was like a fucking ghost down here in the underworld. If I ever really saw her again, I didn’t know if I would ever be able to touch her.
It was hell down here. Literal hell.
“Mars!” she said again, but her voice sounded different. It was fading away, out of my dream of her.
“He once was a feared god of war,” someone sang softly, stroking the strings of a lyre.
I lifted my head from Helios’s porch post and slowly blinked my eyes open to see the dark night sky and forest before me. Apollo, the god of many things, leaned against the opposite porch post, humming and singing to himself.
“But now, he’s become the god of sleep, god of the night, sleeping through the darkest of times,” Apollo continued, eyes closed, as if he was having a grand time with his little song that he must’ve been making up on the fly.
After shifting slightly, I leaned my back against the post and arched a brow at him. A chuckle escaped past my lips, my chest feeling light, especially after the dream of Aurora that I’d had only a few moments ago.
I still couldn’t believe that I had seen her. It was almost as if … it was really her and not just a memory of my mate. She looked slightly different; her eyes so tired.
“You’re awake,” Apollo said, his tone humorous. “Finally.”
“I barely closed my eyes.”
“You’ve been out like a light for an hour since I found my way here.” Apollo placed his lyre down on the porch stairs and sat beside me. “Why is it that every time I find you, you’re always sleeping, Mars? Dreaming of your girl?”
My lips curled into a soft smile, warmth spreading throughout my chest. “Yes.”
Apollo chuckled. “Well, no more dreaming!”
“I can dream of Aurora as much as I please,” I said, closing my eyes again. “In fact, I plan to dream about her again. You’re welcome to stay and watch, but I’ll be off to dreamland now before another hundred years pass for me. She’s the only thing getting me through this.”
“The only thing?” Apollo said, crinkling something.
I opened one eye and glanced over at him. “The only thing.”
He pulled out a sheet of paper from his pocket, the same kind he’d used to draw that image of Aurora for me years ago now. There looked to be another drawing sketched on the sheet, but I couldn’t really make out what it was yet.
“What about her?” Apollo unwrinkled the paper and handed it to me.
“What’s this?” I asked, the young child looking oddly familiar.
“Your daughter.”
My heart stopped. I sucked in a sharp breath and grasped the drawing tighter, unable to believe that Apollo had drawn a picture of my daughter. “How did you get this? Where did you find this? How do you know what she looks like?”
“Dawn,” he said. “She and Ares are residing with Hades for the time being.”
Suddenly, I shot to my feet. “They’re what?”
“They’re in the underworld, staying with Hades until further notice.”
Unable to stop myself, I ran forward toward the dark woods, hearing the hollering and growling of Hella’s pack of hounds closer than they should’ve been. She was closing in on us, but I knew where Aurora was. I needed to go get her.
But Hades’s kingdom was so far. I wouldn’t make it with Hella between us.
Still …
“You can’t.” Apollo wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me back before I could get even a few steps away from the porch. “I would love to bring you there, but Hella’s armies have invaded the territory between here and there.”
“I need to find her.”
Once he let me go, he lifted his shirt to show me the deep gash wound underneath it. “I almost died on my way over to you, traveling alone, even with my magic. Those hounds are becoming rowdier by the day. More have traveled through there since.”
“But it’s only been an hour,” I said. “We have to go back.”
“We can’t,” Apollo said. “If you do, they will trap you, just as they trapped Helios years ago.”
“It’s true,” Helios said, stepping out of his home and onto the porch steps. “I once came down to the underworld to find the love of my life, and Hella forced me into a trap. She will use your love for Dawn and my sister against you.”
“I need to see her again,” I whispered, staring down at the image of my daughter.
“If Hella traps you in her castle, you won’t ever see Dawn,” Apollo said.
“Unless she traps Dawn, too, and tortures her in front of you,” Helios finished.
And while I wanted to run into that forest, right into Hella’s armies, I wanted to see Aurora more. I stared at the image of our daughter. I especially wanted to meet this girl at some point too. I couldn’t do that if Hella trapped me down here for as long as she’d trapped Helios.
I refused to be her plaything.