Clomp! Clomp! The sound of heavy footsteps came like the low beating of a drum before a sanguinary war ensued. It energized the battler and terrified the enemy. My hold tightened around the knife as I straightened up pointing it at the door. Clomp! Clomp! With every step nearing, my heartbeat quickened so much I felt like it was going to jump out of my mouth and ditch me. Even my hands gotten so slippery, I was struggling to hold onto the knife without cutting myself. The doorknob twisted slightly. Once. Twice. It didn't budge. I prayed and prayed hard so he would leave finding the door locked. He didn't. He stayed there.I could just imagine the reddish stuff in his anger calibrating scale going up. Then the jiggle of a key inserting into the lock sent a tremor down my back. I had been such a fool. Of course, he had the key. Hurrying to the door, I leaned on my back against the wall beside. Considering his inhumane strength, I would only have one chance. One chance to ram t

My fingers curled around the paper, crumbling it from sight. All my fears came to a halt when those ruthless silvers met my blue ones, and pure anger and worry morphed the emotions into a swirl in the back of my mind. He stepped in, closed the door and strolled past me in such arrogance like he wasn't even the list bit concerned about the seething girl before him. How could he? It was the same vulnerable girl he tortured, pushed around as he wished, pulled the strings as he deemed essential. But this girl wouldn't back down when it came to the people she cared about. She could growl and fight back. I turned around and found him sitting on the sofa with his arms splayed over the sofatops, and one knee over the other. His eyes watched me bored like rudely encouraging me to spill the beans already. "What did you do to Nola?" I asked. He stared at me for a few seconds, then his eyes dragged lower to my thighs and back, and he tilted his head as if to ask 'Did you forget your last pun

Before I could stop her, Tera snatched the paper from my hand. "No-no. Wait!" I tried to reach for it, but I was no match to her height, and the glare she was directing my way froze me in my ground. My heart didn't beat inside me, it pounded like a madman getting all his anger out on a door. The word caught echoed in my head. I was dead. So dead. She'd tell him; he'd know. He'd know about my papa. He would go after him and...Uncrumpling the paper, she stared at it, her brows furrowing angrily. I gulped. I had the urge to hit her in the head, finish her, stop her from going to Hades. I urged violence to save my loved one. I might have even acted on it had she not turned the paper over, her eyes blinking in confusion. She turned it back, then raised it before my eyes. "What is it? What were you trying to do?" I stared at the blank paper, not being able to fathom a thing. There was no single word message on it anymore. It looked like not even a scratch from a pen graced it ever.

Hades's POV~ Darkness; a prime part of me if not the whole. I functioned better in its cloak, almost like the devil feeding off of its sinister energy. It took me under its wing the day I became an orphan, promising me the agonies of my enemies in return. I heeded, and now I ruled it. It never disappointed me either, rather welcomed me with an open arm. That's how I felt when I entered my favorite part of the penitentiary. The smell of blood filled my nostrils, and I sucked it in like a sniff of drug. The smell of my enemy's blood. There is a difference in the smell of the blood regarding its holder. Some smelled sweet and pure while the others acrid and acerbic. It's true when they say your blood rots with the amount of corruption you feed your soul with. Rogues; they had the foulest of blood, so putrefied it stung the lungs when sucked in, poisoned the flesh. Yet they were my favorite type. It was the type belonging to my enemies. Stopping in front of a body on the cobbled

I was running again, the world gliding past. The trees were a blur, the ground a fast-paced reel. We were jumping over fallen branches, tackling bushes and crossing river streams. No time to spare a moment and look back or fuss over the thorns splitting through our skin. It had been an hour or two I supposed. Maybe more, maybe less. My lungs were burning, and my legs felt painfully numb. Every time I thought about stopping, I could picture those angry silver orbs, and it only fueled my pace. So many thoughts swirled in my head; some sanguine, some adverse. So many feelings bloated my chest; some overwhelming, some nerve-racking. I was going to see my papa finally after so long. I wanted to ask him where he had been all this time. How he had been. Why he committed such a sinful crime like murdering two souls who had a little bundle of joy to take care of.He had a reason that I knew for sure, but I wanted to know how severe the reason had been for him to stoop this low. Then there