I chuckled. “You know, considering I’m about to kill myself, I feel strangely at peace.”
A sorrowful flicker passed swiftly over her face. “It won’t hurt, Violet. I can make sure of that.”
I thought I saw a flash of black shadow up ahead, and I knew that if I saw him, I would lose my nerve.
Closing my eyes, I thought one last time of my beautiful children. Whether I could be saved or not, Ewan would finally be released from this madness. He knew where they were, and he knew how to recover them. I hoped she was right, hoped she did know someone who could bring me back. But I was a mother, and a mother’s love was eternal. If the choice was me or my children, I would choose them. I would always choose them.
“Do it, Rayale. Do it now.”
The music was so beautiful, so overwhelming. There were no tears in me as the blade pierced my breast, slid through my ribs, and pricked my heart. I felt a rush of wind whistle past my ears as I fell from the tree.
The last thing I heard was a howl, lonely and haunting and beautiful. The last thing I felt was the circle of warm, muscular arms banding tight around me as a hand, his hand, tried to yank out the blade that refused to budge an inch.
I smiled and exhaled my final breath.
Thirteen
Ewan
I tumbled through the dark funnel of time, tears blinding my vision as I stared at her pale, blue face. When we got to where we were going, I didn’t look up. I didn’t need to because I didn’t care what the watcher wanted to show us this time.
“Lass, please,” I whispered. “Wake up.”
I’d not panicked too bad when I’d seen the fool female shove the blade through her chest. There’d been music echoing through the woods, beautiful, sad, and mournful.
Something within me had known that something dreadful had happened and that it had all centered around my heart. I’d exploded down the trail, kicking up clods of dirt beneath my paws as I ran like a madman, trying to reach her in time. But then I’d seen a flash of red falling from the branch, and I’d howled even as I’d raced to her not as a beast, but as a man.
I could remember everything.
Our last moments.
Our children.
And just how very much Violet meant to me.
She was all things to me.
My heart.
My soul.
My light.
And my world.
A deep, barrel-chested voice broke through my confusion and agony. “She is only suspended in time. She is not dead, my friend.”
Clutching her limp body tight to my chest, I looked up and realized where I was.
I stood inside a chamber of glittering stones that shot up from the ground and dripped from the massive, stony archway above us. At the center was a throne of black where a giant man sat. He was dressed in black armor from head to toe, his long black hair fanning behind him in the raging snowstorm that fell only around his shoulders. His blue eyes glowed like hottest flame as he watched us.
My knees felt weak, and my strength was lagging. The shock that was keeping me numb was beginning to wear off.
I remembered everything.
And Violet was still dead.
The male leaned back on his throne, which I now realized was built of skulls. My nostrils flared.
“I can assure you, Wolf. Your queen is not dead,” the male said again.
I looked down at the bloom of blood on her chest and shook my head. “How can ye say that? She is ice to the touch and coated in her own essence.”
“Easily. Because I am Hades, God of the Dead, and she is not dead until I deem it so.”
My head whipped up, and my heart beat a furious tattoo in my chest. “Ye are—?”
He grinned, and the smile gave him a hard, sinister appearance. I swallowed, wanting to leave this place, wanting to go far from here, but I couldn’t leave until I had my Violet returned to me.
“Do ye ken who she is? Who she really is? The—”
“Heartsong, you mean? Yes, I know it. She is the balance of darkness to the light, a necessary evil in our world, I suppose. Also, the mother of your children. And… the future mother of one to whom I owe a great debt of gratitude.”
My brows dropped.
I heard a shuffle of noise. When I turned, I spied a female dressed in red, with long white braids trailing down her back, nearly touching the ground. Her face shone with a radiance that was almost too much to look upon.
She practically glowed.
Tiny lines dotted her mouth and eyes, the mark of wisdom and age. I thinned my gaze, the sense that I knew her making me study her closer.
She grinned cockily, first at Hades, then at me. Her gaze flickered toward Violet, and a tightening, like a quick frown, pinched her lips together, before she finally looked back up at me.
“I hope you understand why she had to do it, Ewan. She built the curse that kept you both safe, but also kept you both trapped. The only way to end it was to destroy herself. Her magick was too strong otherwise.”
I looked at Hades, who was stroking his jaw with long fingers, staring not at me or Violet, not even at the white-haired wise woman, but beyond us all toward a dark, churning river that ran alongside us.
Inhaling deeply, he turned those sharp blue eyes on me. “Go save your family, Wolf. This bloody curse must come to an end once and for all. I am weary of all it has taken from us.”
Then, with a flick of his finger, I saw him pull at nothing but air, and as he did, a great thread of glittering, golden light filled his hands. Cupping them together, holding the thread with near reverence, he blew upon it. That golden light fluttered like thousands of miniature butterflies toward Violet, sinking into her, making her gleam from within.
She gasped once, then coughed, and I cried out with joy and indescribable delight. Then she looked at me, and in her smile, I read love, a bottomless pool of it, and it was all for me.
“Hi,” she said shyly. “Looks like we made it after all, my wolf.”
“Vi,” I croaked, groaning as I fought the wave of tears threatening to flood out my throat.
She threw her arms around my neck and held me, resting her now-warm cheek against my chest, and gave me a moment to collect myself. I swallowed hard several times before I trusted myself to speak.
In a whisper, I said, “Let us go find our children, Vi.”
“Yes, my love. Let’s.”
Then she turned her eyes toward the mysterious wise woman and mumbled, “I will not forget what you’ve done, Rayale. You will be honored amongst us.”
I jerked, staring at the stranger who was no stranger at all. “Rayale?” I breathed.
She smiled softly. “Don’t forget me again, Papa. And I promise that I will safely return Lleweyn to you both. You can trust me.”
“We never doubted it for a second,” Violet said softly, her words ringing with truth and sincerity.
“Aye,” I grunted. “You’ve proven to us that anything ye set your mind to can be done, even the impossible. Ye are a good woman, Rayale Pyper. The very best kind.”
She swallowed hard, looking as if she was trying to hide her own tears, but nodded back at us both.
With a final clipped nod, I turned on my heels, and Violet and I left the land of the dead. We still had much work to do, but soon our family would be whole again, and this nightmare would be behind us forever.
“I love you, my darling Red,” I whispered as I climbed the endless stairs back up to the land of the living.
She laughed, and the sound filled my soul with light. “And I you, King of Wolves.”
Forever.
For always.
No matter what curses got thrown at us, so long as we had each other, we would always find our way back. I knew that now, and I loved my sweet Heartsong even more for it.
I was home. So long as she was with me, I would always be home.
She kissed my chest, and I heaved a long sigh full of all that we’d gone through and the hope
that, once more, we’d start to rebuild our lives together.
It was time to make our family whole again, and I knew we would, because Violet and I would always fight. No matter how dark the days or how fierce the trials, we would always fight for each other.
It was who we were.
And who we would always be.
She was my Red and I her Wolf, and our story would always be the stuff of legend.
Epilogue
Rayale
I looked at Hades, and he looked at me.
“You will leave now.” He said it simply, and I nodded.
“Yes. I’m not done yet. Lleweyn remains trapped in stone, locked away within a labyrinth of time.” I snorted. “Gods above, how I detest Time anymore.”
He chuckled. “And you have the Gorgon’s gift?”
I nodded and patted the pouch tied at my side. “I do.” I sighed, my feet itching to turn and go, but feeling compelled to say one last thing to him.
But when I opened my mouth, he held up his hand, as though he understood what I’d been about to say.
“You haven’t the time to worry over me.”
I shrugged. “No. And yet, so much of what’s wrong is because of you two. You can fix so much more than even I can. Are you ready yet to take the risk?”
He pursed his lips, staring at the trickling waters of the dark river behind me. I felt his eagerness like a flame licking at my skin.
“I believe… I believe I am. Though knowing Calypso, I do not think she’s ready at all. In so many ways she thinks like a—”
I cut him off. “Is there ever a right time, Hades? Honestly? You can talk yourself into doubt, and doubt is a poison of the mind. The only way to get through a hurdle is to just get through the hurdle. Fight like the god you are. Fight for her. Fix this. Both of you. You have friends who want to help, so let them. Stop being a prideful ass for once and just… let them in.”
He looked startled by what I’d said, but I wouldn’t take it back, even if he smote me. I didn’t have time for games, which was funny considering how very easily I could manipulate it now.
“I’m tired,” I whispered. “Tired and scared that he will no longer want me. But it doesn’t matter. I know what the right thing is, and I won’t stop until I see it done.”
He frowned. “Scared? Scared of what? I’ve never met anyone more fearless than you, enchantress.”
Snorting, I lifted a hank of my snow-white hair and stared down at it mournfully. “I look older than his mother now. He is a beast in his prime, a vigorous male, and I’m covered in wrinkles with hair white as ice.” My heart clenched when I said it. I would pay the price again to see his family safe, again and again if need be, but that did not mean that I wouldn’t mourn the necessity of it.
Hades shook his head. “For a man truly in love, that love never dies. Even if you forget it all, it’s always in there, burning deep, an endless well of desperation to get back the one thing that matters most. And a man who loves that fiercely, when he learns all that you’ve done to save his family… what are a couple of wrinkles to that? You do not look weathered, Rayale, but rather wise, fierce, and unbelievably beautiful, brimming over with an innate power that is rather intoxicating. You have only to realize that, and then, my dear, you will be unstoppable.”
I chuckled, shaking my head. “What a load of rubbish,” I whispered hotly, even as my hands and knees trembled with hope and adrenaline.
His smile matched my own. “Goodbye, friend,” he whispered. “And thank you. Thank you for showing me the way.”
Then he stood and held a hand out to me, and I was falling once more through the dark dimension of time’s tunnel to meet my destiny, the end of my own story. I was very nearly there.
I closed my eyes and whispered beneath my breath, “I’ll find you, Lleweyn. I’m coming. I. Am. Coming.”
Hades
* * *
I watched her disappear into the eternal vastness of time and knew that my own time was now.
Staring at the body of black, churning water, I took one final inhale of breath and walked to it.
Calypso would not be happy to see me. She’d changed so much from the woman she’d once been.
But I was tired of sitting on the sidelines. Rayale had been right. There were far too many stories that could not move forward until my mad bride was well again.
Stepping to just the water’s edge, until my toes nearly touched it, I whispered, “Calypso, primordial goddess of the waters deep, I am Hades. Come to me.”
The waters churned, the ground rumbled.
I would fix this. Somehow.
I hoped.
Or I’d die trying.
But I was done being scared to press her too hard. Sometimes, the only thing left to do was to poke the sleeping giant to wakefulness.
The waters parted. The sea roared.
And there she was… my goddess. My female. My truest and only love.
The time was now.
Untitled
The Death King is releasing in just a few days! I know, SURPRISE! I worked really hard to make sure I could line up back to back releases for Hades and Calypso’s story. So keep a look out on my FB page, or better yet sign up for my newsletter so that you’ll know exactly when it goes live! Also, please leave a review if you enjoyed this story!
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Book Listing for Dark Kings and Queens written by Jovee Winters:
Sea Queen, Book 1 (Caly and Hades)
The Passionate Queen, Book 2 (Queen of Hearts)
The Ice Queen, Book 3
The Magic Queen, Book 4 (Baba Yaga)
The Dark Queen, Book 5 (The Evil Queen)
The Fairy Queen, Book 6 (Galeta)
The Centaur Queen, Book 7
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The Mad King, Book 1 (The Mad Hatter)
The Jaded King, Book 2 (Beauty and the Beast)
The Magic King, Book 3 (Rumple)
The Wolf King, Book 4 (Big Bad Wolf)
The Death King, Book 5 COMING SOON! (Hades)
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UPCOMING Titles
Rayale’s story
Hook’s story
Aphrodite and Hephy’s story
Other books by Jovee: Blue Moon Bay cozy pnr mystery romance
Cookies, Curses, and Kisses, Book 1
Holly, Curses, and Hauntings, Book 2
Cupcakes, Curses, and Spirits, Book 3
Jovee Winters, The Wolf King
(Series: The Dark Kings # 4)
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