He tilts his head to the side, a strand of obsidian hair catching in the torchlight and giving it blue undertones.
“Umm…?” I simply stare at him, silently urging him to continue.
Hades sighs heavily. “Hundreds of years ago, the five of you grew up together. Trained together. You, my dear reaper, were the fifth and final member of their team.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
THEA
Ican’t seem to wrap my head around what I just heard. Maybe the minotaur pushed me a little too hard and I hit my head. Could I be concussed? Perhaps the “bandage” Athena placed on me ripped and I’m hallucinating again. Hearing things.
Because there’s no way in hell Hades is telling me I was once a member of an elite team of supernatural warriors.
That would mean I trained with them. Knew them. Cared for them. Maybe even…
I swallow, though it’s immensely difficult to do with the knot in my throat.
“How is that possible?” Krystian barks.
“We would’ve remembered her,” adds Zaid, though his expression is bleak.
“No,” Rafe simply says, that one word a low, guttural growl.
But Everett, surprisingly, is quiet. There’s a tiny crease between the shifter’s brows.
“We don’t remember a lot of things from our training,” he says softly, his eyes narrowing. “What if one of the memories we lost…was of her?”
“No.” Zaid shakes his head adamantly. “I have memories of the four of us training. Doing drills. Playing card games. Thea doesn’t make an appearance once.”
“Unless someone fucked with our memory of her. For all we know, she could’ve been with us during all of those events, and we just don’t remember,” Everett points out.
“Fuck.” Krystian’s face drains of color, his skin turning almost as white as his hair.
I want to demand answers, ask if there’s a way to receive missing memories, but my tongue feels like a huge, wet cotton ball in my mouth. I can’t speak. I’m paralyzed, a plethora of emotions I can’t name holding me hostage.
“I’ll give you some time to…digest this information,” Hades says, his lips firming. “But tomorrow, I will receive answers.”
He levels a cold, penetrating glare in my direction. I would’ve assumed that the God of the Underworld would have red eyes, like hell fire, or black, like the rocks in the River Styx. The molten silver is somehow more unnerving than anything I’ve seen. They’re so…simplistic. Normal, almost.
Which makes the coldness emanating from them exponentially more terrifying.
“Guards!” Hades snaps his fingers together. “Show them to their rooms for the night.” To us, he says, “We’ll reconvene in the morning. And youwilltell me the truth.”
It’s a threat and a warning combined. If we choose to disobey him…
Well…
I imagine we won’t be walking out of this palace alive.
The guys still seem stunned, so I agree for all of us, nodding sharply.
Hades stands and walks gracefully away, moving towards a door directly behind his throne. Before he can reach it, however, it opens, and a petite woman steps through.
While Hades appears as if he’s in his mid-thirties, early forties, this newcomer can’t be older than twenty-five. Despite her youthful appearance, there’s an ancientness in her forest-green gaze, a primitive intensity.
Her rosy cheeks are flushed—almost as if she just ran a mile to get here—and her blonde curls cascade loosely around her shoulders, the top strands braided into an intricate crown that wraps around her head. She wears a violet dress that hugs her curves, flaring at the waist in a poof of tulle. She’s beautiful and elegant and staring at the five of us intently.
I narrow my eyes at her.
