55

G E O R G I E

✿

The cell door was opened and I was dragged to my feet. They previously untied me and ordered me to put on the new pink fitted cheongsam dress as if the upcoming occasion was worth looking pretty.

"Come along," the guards said, and I didn't even have to dig to understand where I was being taken. It was time for me to open the gate for her, or rather, for him the Deathbringer.

Hades.

I had suspected that I would be scared, that I would resist madly at the sight of him and tremble with panic, but the time in the cell had dulled me and made me dull to the slightest emotion.

They led me through the corridors of the tomb, then stopped in front of a heavy solid wood door and opened it with a key.

And then what I saw... confused me. I knew these corridors, had run down them before. Cold horror crawled up my limbs as I walked past the skulls and bone wall.

'But how can we be in the catacombs already? Don't I have to go through a portal?' I asked, puzzled. Didn't I have to go far north where Arya and Xenos were looking for Hades?

The guards ignored me and then we entered the underground vault complex through the great arch. It looked like the last time. The indented niches, the burial mounds built out of the wall.

And then I saw Reyna and Hades standing in front of the mirror, behind them was one of the chosen girls from the arena and she seemed less than pleased to be down here. I followed her disturbed gaze and discovered the remaining girls piled in a heap in one of the alcoves.

I clapped my hands over my mouth and backed away.

Her white robes were soaked in blood, her wrists ruthlessly cut open. This was a hoard of bodies of innocent young girls who shouldn't have been dead.

"No! I do not want that! That was definitely not Ozuro's will!” the girl screamed and resisted desperately against the guards who dragged her to the big mirror.

"No, but it's mine!" Reyna commanded, standing in front of the mirror in her black and gold dress and nodding at the guard to begin.

The man holding the girl quickly pulled out a knife and cut her wrist.

"No!" I blurted out and jumped forward, but was immediately held back by my guards and roughly pulled against them. "Reyna! You can't do that!"

Reyna, just glancing at me, motioned for the guard to continue. He dragged the girl to the mirror, pushed her to the ground so that she was lying on the glass surface and her blood dripped onto the glass.

Then I heard the voices of the shadows.

Bluuuuut!

We want her Bluuuut!

Yeahaaaa! hungry!

They pressed themselves against the glass from the other side of the mirror, their mouths glued to the mirror greedily and famished, as if they wanted to drink every drop of their blood. And that's exactly how it was. The girl's blood oozed through the pane of glass, and as soon as the shadows caught their first taste, they cried out in ecstasy.

Why on earth did Reyna and Hades do this to the girl? What were they trying to achieve? Did they have to feed the shadows to tame them? Was that it?

I was getting sick but couldn't look away, couldn't abandon the poor girl whose eyes were already clouding. When it was all over, they piled them up on the mountain with the other corpses.

“I gave you what you asked for. Now give me my price.” Hades, his form still hidden under the dark blue robe, demanded of the shadows and placed his hands on the pane. Reyna did the same and then I saw a black stream flow from the mirror into her limbs.

I narrowed my eyes as if I could get a better understanding of what was happening here.

When no more power came from the shadows, they both rose from the ground. Reyna blissfully closed her eyes. "Finally. It's been too long since the last time.” She sighed, then opened her eyes and her purple eyes blazed with red flames.

"What have you done? What's this all about?” They had sacrificed the girls, I knew that. But what did they get from the shadows? What price had the blood of innocent girls been? And what kind of princess did this to her people?

Reyna's lips curled into a big smile. “It is Ozuro's will, Georgie. He gives us the powers we are born with.” Then she opened her fists and flames danced on her fingers.

Reyna was just hideous. “This is not Ozuro's will, Reyna, this is cold blood murder of your people to get what you want from demons! This is black magic!”

Sparks flew from Reyna's eyes. "I am a Dragonborn!"

"No, you're not!" I shot back. 'Otherwise you wouldn't have to kill a dozen girls who didn't deserve to die for something like this! You lied to her about everything, you sent her to her death for something that doesn't exist!'

Reyna pursed her lips in anger and was about to reply pepperily when Hades interrupted us and reminded me who the real danger was here.

He heaved his staff into the ground. "Enough! Guards, take them to the mirror, it's time!"

Now I was afraid. As much as Malvera had prepared me for this moment, I still wasn't.

The guards dragged me across the hall while every cell in my body wanted to run the other way. Everything inside me was screaming at me to get up and run from this monster. Oh god, I couldn't do it all, I couldn't do it! Fear was eating me from the inside, gnawing at me with its sharp teeth, and I looked around in panic, hoping to find a way out.

Then they knocked me on my knees before Hades. "Ah!" I hit the sand hard, sending dust into the air. I looked up, trembling with fear as he stared down at me. Then he pulled his hood down and...

✿

Then he pulled down his hood and revealed a dark brown mop of hair and almond-shaped eyes.

"What?" I gasped and studied his face in confusion. "But - But... You are not Hades!"

Shiyan rolled his eyes angrily. "No of course not."

"Then why do you want to open the gate to the underworld?"

'More power - that's what he promised us. It's always about power girls, don't you get that yet? This is the world we live in.”

“Who promised you to gain more power? Who did you make a deal with?”

“You only have to worry about opening the gate, nothing more. Come on, let's get started soon!” the otherwise so calm and easy-going king roared and glared at me with a bitterly angry look.

I just nodded, banished my fear and straightened up. I knew what to do and now it was time to destroy the gate.

I put my hands on the round mirror in front of me and already the shadows flitted back and forth, moving swiftly under the pane, pressing against the glass and begging me to free them.

It was a short window of time that I had to destroy the portal. Once the gate opened, I had to act quickly to block the worlds from each other and nullify access. All I had were a few seconds.

Then I let go. I drew everything dark out of me, connecting my black current to that of shadows while at the same time concentrating on the white, light current that embodied good.

The streams of light mixed on the mirror surface, good and evil, light and dark, and the thick, frosty wall of ice thawed and became a still surface of water.

Now! The shadows were already pouring out of the underworld as I unleashed my powers at full power and shot them at the portal. The water became choppy, bright and dark lights illuminating the currents, and then I saw a small spark of light from the underworld dart past me seconds before the earth began to tremble and the mirror exploded with a loud bang.

I was thrown back with full force, hitting hard against the bone wall. My head pounded as some rocks from the catacombs smashed down with a bang from the explosion.

Blinking against my headache and the dust, I sat up with a groan as I saw the escaped spark of light begin to transform and form into a shape.

Shiyan immediately knelt down and bowed. “Oh great Lord, we have waited so long for this moment!”

Reyna put herself in the same humiliating position. "Lord, welcome to earth!"

The man they knelt in front of stretched his pale, bony arms, flexed his pointed fingers as if doing all this for the first time. "Finally!"

How could I have ever thought that I had forgotten his voice? I would always recognize him.

If I thought I was shaking with fear before, I was in a completely different state now. My heart was pounding in my throat, my hands were shaking. Slowly and very quietly, I slid back and hid in one of the alcoves. Please make me invisible!

"Georgie! I know you are there!”

I bit my lip to keep from crying in fear and crawled further back into the alcove until I bumped into something soft. Then, suddenly, the smell of decomposition hit my nostrils. I choked and pressed against the bone wall, away from the pile of corpses whose eyes stared at me as if I had killed them.

"There's no point in hiding, I'll find you anyway." I heard Hades' voice much closer now.

I couldn't back away without touching the girls, so I stayed where I was and narrowed my eyes. Don't find me, please don't.

"There you are."

I opened my eyes and stared at his skinny feet peeking out from under the red seal. My mouth went bone dry. "You should be dead."

Hades laughed. 'Yes, I should. But a god has many lives, so they say.”

"How did you survive the judgment of the gods?"

He forced me with his powers to raise my head and look at him. His face was sallow and seemed almost to be seen through, as if his life hung by a thin thread that could be severed at any moment.

“They killed my body but not my soul. I kept part of myself in a locket before they took me away."

I stared into the ice-cold blue eyes and felt like I had traveled back in time. "Like us healer werewolves?" Every time we healed someone, we nested a small part of our own life energy to avoid giving all of ourselves and dying in the process. We always held something back.

"Yes," he said, and with a small movement of his hand pulled me out of the alcove so that I slid across the sandy floor to him. My feet dug into the ground and my nails scraped the sand, but as scrawny and exhausted as Hades looked, he still had enough strength to control me.

"Why did you do this to me? Why did you make me a half-demon?” I yelled when I was in front of him, ducking back as he bent over me.

"Quite simply, you were my plan B. I created you to get out of the Underworld if Serdas failed... Which he did, that fool!"

"You took everything from me! You took my family and made me a cripple!"

"You're talking about your she-wolf? No, I wasn't, although I have to say it would have been a pretty good way of bringing you wolves to heel."

"If it wasn't you, then who was it?"

"You don't have to worry about that now, because you're giving me all your healing energy."

What am I supposed to do? I didn't have a gun with me, Reyna and Shiyan were only meters away from us and watched my every reaction with eagle eyes. I wish Beau was here. "No, I can't, I can't heal."

He became angry. "Yes, you can and you will!"

Then he put his hands on my body and sucked everything out of me. I knew pain, it was as familiar to me as an old childhood friend. I knew all of its individual facets and shells, how it filled up in each of my limbs, and how long my vocal cords could utter the cries of pain before they gave out. But this pain, what Hades was doing to me right now, was something else entirely.

And I screamed louder than I've ever screamed in my life.