Valentine.

Oh Devil, Show Me Your Horns.

I try to tell myself to act natural, but no matter how much placidity I reach for, my shivering fingers and trembling joints betray the trepidation and alarm furiously coursing through my body.

Yielding, I peel my eyes open only to come face to face with his pale-grey eyes. He stares at me for a moment longer before feeling my forehead with the back of his hand. His features bend with the ghost of suspicion as I study his face, stomaching the urge to run from his touch.

"Pomegranates, huh?" he sullenly mocks, exhaling. Then suddenly, he buries his face into the crook of my neck. "I thought I lost you" he breathes, his breath slightly wavering as his hand finds my mine. Caressing my trembling fingers, he peers at me and pleads: "Say something."

Horrified, I shake my head as in reflex, I grimace under his touch. Seemingly taken aback, he stops and rises abruptly. His gaze goes cold as he tilts his head at me. "Very well Highness" he says now, this time a lot less politely.

His eyes narrow as he turns and begins to pace the room. The loose padlock immediately catches his attention and his shoulders tense as he clutches his hands behind his back. My stomach falls to the ground, and I grip the bed's railing for support. I have been discovered. The temperature in the room rises as he continues to stare at the heap of chains on the ground. He doesn't move when utters his next words. "See, when I claimed you Lillith, I hoped for one thing."

"Do you know what that one thing was?" he asks, venom seeping into his tone. Trembling, I continue to remain silent, but he turns to face me. His expression is now completely stoic and unreadable. Like that of a psychopath, hiding his ace in preparations to strike. The hallowing sensation left by the pomegranates I'd consumed earlier pales in comparison to the horror that currently befalls me.

"Power." he continues.

He slowly traipses back towards me, his hands still clasped behind his back. Kneeling down over me, he brings his face close to mine again, so close that our noses almost touch."But..." he continues.

"As the days drew on, I had watched you. I had grown under your sweet influence. You bewitched me, Lillith."

"I even..." he trails off briefly looking down and then away. The muscles in his jaw clench as his eyes gloss over wearily, the only hint of emotion he'd allowed to break way since catching me. But his pensiveness doesn't linger for long, as those same eyes suddenly fade into a sickly, dark red color. His brows furrow as he redirects his now fiery gaze to me.

Black sparks start begin to fizz around his body as he readjusts to his full, menacing height. The deathly bolts of electricity dance their way up his sleeves and through his wild, black hair. My stomach knots up in bunches as I climb off the bed and back away, not stopping until my back collides against the cold wall. My breaths come out fast and heavy as I think of the rights words to say. As I think of an excuse, but I am too petrified to open my mouth.

I TRUSTED YOU echoes a furious Hades in the depths of my head through a mind-link. I motion to cup my ears, but an invisible force seizes my body. I lose control of my limbs as the foreign power takes full control, yielding them instead to its every beckon and command. Another wave of nostalgia hits me as I stare at a wild, angry Hades. In his true form.

"Puppet" echoes a faint memory in the back of my mind as this becomes all too familiar to me again.

My hands mechanically retract down to my sides as my legs stiffly start marching towards him, on their own accord. Fear saturates me as I try and helplessly fail to regain control of my body. My legs don't stop until I am standing mere inches from his threatening, fizzing figure. His fiery eyes zero in on me as he sneers, and heat from his sparks zap menacingly into the air like snapping vipers.

"To think I allowed myself to be enticed by a... mortal" he spits, scoffing. As he does so, his fizzy sparks travel up my body, dancing along my skin like the smooth edge of a sharp blade grazing along its target. All the items I had taken come falling out of my dress and sprawl out onto the ground.

Never once breaking eye contact, Hades grasps my chin again, but his grip is much tighter this time. "Is the truth what you really want?" he grits hoarsely, his voice bouncing off the walls and filling the chamber in a demonic echo.

THEN SO IT SHALL BE comes his voice from the back of my mind once more and immediately, a sharp pain seizes me while his electricity dances up unto my head. I can feel his current mutating and scorching everything in its path and to say I am in pain is an understatement. Agony is a much more fitting description. I clench my eyes shut as I let out a helpless cry. There's no escaping his menacing hold.

As I clench my eyes tighter however, my memories come rushing back to me all at once. They hit me like a forcefield. ALL of them. Picnics...weddings...long nights...All with the same man. But it was never Hades. It was Valentine. All along. The visions, the dreams, his messages. They were all him.

By the time he releases his hold over me, my limbs are spaghetti, and I slump to the ground. Silence crowds the air as I give into the tears and sob in misery. Why did this always happen to me. Why?

I peer up at Hades in time to see a lone tear, sliding down his cheek. However, his face remains stoic.

When he finally speaks, I wish he hadn't.

"Winter Solstice is tomorrow. It is then that I have lured my brother here. It will be his only chance to enter my realm. He will come looking for...you."

My sobs grow louder as he continues. "When he does so, I will make him surrender the throne."

"Please. Please don't do this. Take me instead. Please" I cry, pleading for his mercy, but to no avail. "I loved you" he whispers quietly. "We could've ruled together. With you at my side. My blood queen" he continues, the ghost of a broken boy momentarily seeping through his mask before vanishing back behind an icy wall of insouciance.

"Please just-" I start but he doesn't let me finish this time. "You proved to be exactly what I thought you always were: A short-sighted, foolish mortal girl" he laments, disappointment lacing his tongue.

"In your frantic pursuit of the truth you've forgotten one very important thing. You failed to consider that your weakness just so happened to be my strength."

Despite the thick layer of sweat coating them, my brows furrow together as he continues. "You've consumed my pomegranates, Lillith."

"You are now just about as bound to the underworld as I am." There's a hint of a scoff in his tone as he says this. How could I be such a fool? If I had the energy to, I would strike myself.

"Tomorrow, I will retrieve you for the coronation" he breathes. But it's his next words that pull the word from beneath me and send me into paralysis.

"You are going to kill Valentine." he commands calmly.

One last tear escapes, before he turns to leave, my shaking form gasping for air on the floor. I clutch my stomach and heave over and over as his last sentence rings through my mind in an illusory loop.

"You are going to kill Valentine."