Hades' POV
Her hazel eyes are the first thing I see.
For a second, I think I've seen them, but another step into the room, I can't place them in my memory.
They catch the candlelight, bright in a way that feels misplaced here. Too alive. Too aware. They lock onto me as if she's been waiting.
"Saphyra."
She stiffens.
Her back meets the headboard with a soft thud, breath hitching as she retreats until there is nowhere left to go.
"Don't," she says. The word is thin, rushed. Fear roughens it.
I don't stop.
I take another step forward.
Her gaze flickers over my face like searching for a memory she's lost and expects to find it carved into my skin. Her hands curl into the sheets. Knuckles blanch. She does not scream. She does not beg. Her body reacts faster than her mind.
"Don't touch me," she says again, quieter now, as if saying it softly might make it real.
I lift my hand anyway.
The space between us tightens. I hear her pulse before my fingers reach her. It beats fast and uneven against her throat.
The moment my fingertips graze her skin, heat tears through my arm.
A surge.
My breath cuts short. My heart stumbles, slamming once, twice, hard enough to knock air from my lungs. The curse rears inside me, stretching awake like something that has sensed blood in the water.
Fur ripples beneath my skin. My veins constrict, burning, tight as drawn wire.
I rip my hand away.
The reaction is violent enough that she flinches.
Astra steps forward. "Alpha—"
I turn to the door, pushing past her. The door slams open under my hand. The corridor swims. The walls tilt. Heat thrums through me, relentless, and demanding.
I should go to my chambers. I should summon Malen. I should put distance between myself and the girl whose skin feels like a trigger pulled too close to the heart.
Instead, I stop just outside the door.
I stand there, staring at the wood grain until my breathing evens out.
The hybrid.
It isn't safe to be near her.
But I reach for the doorknob.
The door slides open, and her eyes are staring right at me I almost believe they saw through the door to know I would come back.
Fear flickers through them, but beneath it, there's defiance. There's grief too, and of course, confusion.
"How do you feel?" My voice is too quiet it doesn't sound like an Alpha's.
She swallows. Her lips tremble before she forces them still. "How do you think I feel?"
There's heat in her words, but it holds. She doesn't look away.
I sit on the edge of the chair beside the bed, careful not to crowd her. The space between refuses to stay empty.
She drags her hands over her face. When she speaks again, her voice breaks clean through the middle.
"Blaine… he sold me to you."
I nod once.
"What happens to me now?" she asks.
Her hands lift, then stop short. She presses them into her lap instead, fingers digging into her palms.
I know the answer.
I have known it since the moment Malen confirmed her bloodline.
But saying it would turn her into what everyone else already sees.
A solution.
A resource.
I have looked into terrified eyes before. I have ignored them. I have lived through doing so.
And yet my body does not move the way it should.
She watches my face, reading hesitation I have not given anyone permission to see.
"I know my fate isn't good," she mutters. "You hate hybrids."
"I don't," I say, too fast.
Her gaze sharpens. She leans forward without meaning to. I feel the air she exhales brush my chest.
"You dragged me into your pack."
"My men did."
Her mouth twists. "That makes it better?"
I don't answer.
She grips my shirt suddenly. Her fingers curl into the fabric, tight enough to wrinkle it.
"Tell me…" Her eyes are wet, tears slowly sliding down her cheeks. "Just say it. What happens to me?"
I freeze.
I catch her wrists and pull her hands off, gentle despite myself. I stand, the chair scraping the floor.
I cannot lie to her.
I don't want to.
"Hades!" she calls as I reach the door. "Hades!"
Her voice follows me down the corridor, echoing too loud inside my skull.
***
Malen's hands are steady on my shoulders as he murmurs under his breath. The syrup burns as it goes down. Slowly, the heat retreats. The pressure eases.
"You feel better?" he asks.
I manage to sit upright. My body feels hollow, scraped raw from the inside.
"Is she supposed to have that effect on me?"
He doesn't look surprised. He caps the vial and sets it aside. "Yes. That confirms she's authentic. Her essence will interact properly with the curse."
Six years ago.
That is where my thoughts fracture.
Stone slick with blood. My parents unmoving. A healer standing too still. A witch I trusted. When I try to hold the memory in place, it splinters, breaks apart, leaves only pieces sharp enough to cut.
I remember deciding something that night. Not carefully. Not with thought.
Just deciding.
After that, witches became enemies. Violence became easier than doubt. Answers stopped needing proof.
The curse followed. Or maybe it had already been waiting.
"Hades?" Malen's voice cuts in. "You're drifting."
"The girl," I say. "She feels familiar."
He snorts, shaking his head. "You're overtired."
"She doesn't submit," I continue. "She looks at me like she's searching. Like she expects something."
"That hesitation will kill you," he says flatly.
"Is there another way?"
His hands pause over the vials.
Just long enough to notice.
"There isn't," he says at last.
I watch his reflection in the glass cabinet. His jaw tightens. His eyes refuse to meet mine.
"The witches who cursed you sealed every other path," he continues. "They wanted you desperate. Predictable."
"And the girl?" I ask.
"She's the loophole," he says. "The only one."
The word sits heavy in the room.
Loophole.
Not salvation. Not mercy.
A crack carved into fate with intent.
"She won't survive it," I say.
Malen finally looks at me then. There's no sympathy in his expression. Only urgency.
"You will," he replies.
The truth settles into my chest like a weight I can't dislod
ge.
Outside, the moon climbs higher.
And for the first time since the curse took hold, I find myself fearing the night not for what it will do to me—
—but for what it will require of me.