Tempted by Darkness (Bound to Hades #1) - Lillian Sable Page 0,1

done, if just to restore the balance that the rules of the universe required.

And they would ultimately suffer together, over and over again. This was the stuff of myth and magic, written in the stars by what humans so naively termed fate. They belonged to each other as completely as the sun did to the sky or ocean waves to the pull of the moon. One simply could not exist without the other. Neither of them could survive apart, death would inevitably come for them both if what had gone wrong was not eventually righted.

But if Hades had learned anything, it was how to bide his time. He would lie in wait, dropping his clues like breadcrumbs for innocent lambs led to slaughter. Soon his world would be set to rights, and she would be his again.

Silence surrounded him as it so often did, but he watched her mouth shift as she spoke. Her movements were slowed, transmitted across galaxies and eons to reach him, but he still found himself fascinated. So little about her had visibly altered, although he understood that everything about her must have changed.

She would not know him, despite the whispered imaginings floating through her head. Her history would be no more in reach than the dreams that were barely remembered come the morning.

And he would become the stuff of her nightmares.

Chapter One

"Submit to me, and I will give you your dreams."

Hades’s face was pale in the moonlight, all sharp lines and stark edges. He looked like something out of a dark fantasy or a nightmare, even as he beckoned me closer. Features so sharp that they could have been etched in glass filled my vision as ash-blond hair shifted around his head in a wind that I couldn’t feel. Everything about him was pale from his nearly translucent skin to the snow-white coat from a mountain beast draped around his shoulders.

I saw my burning soul reflected in ice-cold eyes.

"Submit."

The command was softly spoken, but it resonated down to my bones. His entrancing voice seeped into me like a virus that would infect every cell of my being. A pulse fluttered in my throat from my rapidly beating heart, and his heated gaze rested there for a long moment.

Words came to me as if they'd been written on the stars. I knew they were not my own creation but an ancient incantation. These were words spoken to invoke shifts in the very fabric of the universe.

"Through rivers of souls and the ruins of Tartarus, I have met your challenges and stand before you as an equal. I have resisted your every temptation—"

His gaze hardened as his mouth curved down in displeasure. I fought the urge to snatch back the words and fall to my knees at his feet while begging for forgiveness. To submit was the thing I wanted most in the world, and the only thing that I knew would ensure my destruction.

Again, the words slithered along my skin, insidious and seductive. His voice was the caress of a lover and his anger like the pain of a lash. "Submit to me."

My own voice caught in my throat, but I forced more words past the painful knot. "This kingdom is mine as much as it is yours. I will not submit to you."

A hand reached for me, stopping just short of touching. His voice was pleading, even as dangerous anger burned in his gaze. "I would gift you the universe, if only you say that you are mine."

Even if I didn’t understand why, I knew I had to resist. “The power to maintain this realm is mine alone. You have only the dominion that I allow.”

The ground swayed beneath my feet, even as he remained still and unmoving. My body betrayed me as his hands shifted down my form, so close to touching that the lack leaves a deep yearning in its wake. I didn't have to imagine how good those hands would feel on my bare skin, how easily he could bring me the most terrible pleasure and the most enticing pain.

I wanted to succumb. I wanted to drown under his will, the force of it like a wave crashing onto the shore. But I knew that the moment I did, I would be lost forever.

"Submit, or all that you love will be destroyed."

Pieces of the world fell down around me until all I could see was creeping darkness and the cruel gleam of his eyes. The land beneath my feet fractured and broke,