Goddess Test 02.5: The Goddess Legacy by Aimee Carter

Author:Aimee Carter [Carter, Aimee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin Enterprises
Published: 2013-03-31T04:00:00+00:00

Part Three

Naturally Aphrodite was responsible.

Not directly, of course, but close enough. Ares, who we all knew was the jealous type, had sicced a wild boar on Adonis the moment Aphrodite had left his side. Why she hadn’t seen that coming, I didn’t know—more important, why she’d put Adonis in that sort of danger, knowing Ares might try to take revenge…

It didn’t matter. Adonis was a citizen of my realm now, and I sat frozen in my throne as Hermes explained what had happened. Hades dismissed the remaining dead, leaving the three of us alone, and the tension was as high as ever between us. I’d searched the faces of the departing souls, but Adonis wasn’t among them. No surprise there, really. Only a small percentage of our subjects needed to be judged.

“I’m sorry,” said Hermes once he’d finished his horrific story. Adonis had bled to death on the bank of a river, and nausea rolled through me as I imagined his blood mixing with the water. How long had it taken him to die? How badly had it hurt? Had Ares stood there, watching the life drain out of him?

“Do not apologize,” said Hades. “For once, this is not your doing. Persephone?”

It was the first time he’d addressed me all winter. I looked up, blinking away my tears. There was no point in crying. I couldn’t change the pain Adonis had gone through, and at least now he was safe from Aphrodite’s games. “I’m all right,” I whispered. “I need to go.”

His lips thinned, but even though he must’ve known exactly where I was going, he nodded. “Very well. Make it quick.”

I stood, and without bidding them goodbye, I pushed myself through the space between myself and Adonis’s new eternity. In that split second, a barrage of images flashed through my mind—possibilities of his afterlife. The shore where we’d first met. Mother’s cottage. Even his childhood home, which I’d never seen, but he’d told me about in passing. What were Adonis’s favorite memories? Which ones would he want to surround himself with for the rest of forever?

I held my breath as my feet landed on solid ground once more. Instead of the green forest I’d expected, however, swirls of white surrounded me, and something soft and cold brushed my cheek. Snow.

My feet were buried in several inches of it, and it fell heavily from the gray sky, thick enough that I couldn’t see my hands. This couldn’t possibly be right.

“Adonis?” I called. I must’ve managed to land on the edge of another soul’s afterlife. One step in the right direction, and this would melt away, returning me to the familiar. “It’s me—where are you?”

A groan cut through the silence, and my heart leaped into my throat. I scrambled through the drifts of snow, unused to moving around in it. We didn’t exactly get any at Mother’s cottage during the summer.

My foot caught on something, and I flew forward, landing on my hands and knees. With my nose to the ground, I saw a patch of crimson leading to a soft mound only a few feet away.

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