God of My Dreams (Greek Heroes #1) ✅ Completed

Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Underworld is No Place for Love

The Underworld is No Place for Love

“You must eat something.” Hades looked across the bistro table at Gwen-Stacey, his own meal still untouched. As a god he required no food to exist. His goblet of wine from the Elysian Fields was another matter. It was a special grape created by his nephew, Dionysus, one that only grew in his fields. Hades' servants mixed it with his precious stock of ambrosia to make a wine fit for an Olympian.

And he was already on his second cup.    

“No, thank you,” she replied quietly, refusing to make eye contact. To Gwen-Stacey, Hades was nothing more than a glorified warden with a movie star face. Morpheus was out there going through God knew what trying to get to her and Hades was holding her captive in his palace. The very idea of eating anything from his table made her stomach turn.   

The god of the Underworld sighed and put his wine down in front of him. “I do not wish for such contentiousness between us, Gwen-Stacey,” he said. The sincerity in his voice appeared heartfelt but she was beyond giving him the benefit of the doubt. Initially she’d felt Hades might be a misunderstood god, a figure cloaked in death and grimness but perhaps with an underlying sense of justice and conscience.

She’d been mistaken.  

Her eyes snapped to his face as she spoke now, “Is that so, Lord Hades? You have a funny way of keeping the peace. I shudder to think what you would do to make me hate you.”

He sighed. Mortals were such an emotional, highly dramatic lot. It had been amusing to him once upon a time, but now it simply tired him to no end. “I cannot change what the gods have decreed.”

“No, why would you? You’re only one of them after all,” she replied bitterly.

“It was not I who decided your fate, nor how quickly the light of your life was extinguished,” he pointed out. He was more than used to the lamentations of the recently dead. How many mortals found the truth to be too horrible to accept? Men, women, it mattered little. Most did not take news of their untimely demise well. His newest guest was no different.  

“No, you weren’t,” Gwen-Stacey agreed. She knew where the fault of her own death lay, but she couldn’t be bothered with such trivial matters now; not when there was a much more pressing concern happening just outside the palace walls. “But you are responsible for what happens to Morpheus. How can you do this to your own kind?”

News of the proposition he’d given the dream god had spread quickly. The dead were notorious for their gossip. When Gwen-Stacey was called to the dining room, Hades had little doubt Cassiae or another servant had already brought the human soul up to speed.

“The Oneiroi broke a sacred trust,” he answered, fighting to maintain his composure. The one thing he would not abide was being challenged, not on earth and certainly not within his own kingdom.    

“Sacred to whom?” she demanded to know.

“To my kind,” he replied using her own word and though his voice did not rise, the dining room darkened with his growing ire. “Our laws are sacred. The Underworld is no place for other gods. Permission must be granted before any one of them is allowed passage through my realm Do you think the dead have it easy, Gwen-Stacey? They do not. These rules are in place so that the souls who are here may remain at rest. Even now, your precious dream god wreaks havoc across my domain, intermingling with souls whom should have never known he was here. Can you imagine the amount of clean-up this is going to require on my part?”