Relics of Ruin: Greek Mythology Romance (Gates of the Underworld Book 2) by H.P. Mallory & J.R. Rain

Author:H.P. Mallory & J.R. Rain [Mallory, H.P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rain Press
Published: 2022-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

TEN

PEN

The necklace glows.

It’s still in my fist.

My fingers have curled into my palm so hard, my knuckles are white. Slowly, I open my hand to look at it.

The light overtakes the room.

When it fades, I’m not in Azhrea’s fortress anymore. I half expect to see Hades, ready to congratulate me and feel me up again, but he’s not here either.

“Hello, Penelope.”

I look up at the sound of Mother’s voice. It’s like water, trickling into my thoughts.

Clear and bright and oddly soothing.

I don’t understand where her voice is coming from because I can’t see her. In fact, I can’t see anything. I’m surrounded by white.

Until I’m not.

Maybe it takes my eyes a few seconds to adjust, but fairly soon the white gives way to color and the color gives way to images and I recognize the images as bushes, flowers, trees, pathways and columns of Olympus. I blink and I can see Mother’s face as she smiles down at me. But she’s not really in front of me—she’s floating up in the ether and kind of reminds me of God in Monty Python’s Holy Grail when he looms in the clouds above Arthur and the knights and yells at them.

“Where am I?” I ask. The sound flows away from me, dissolving into the metallic cold space that surrounds me and this mirage of my mother. She’s smiling at me. She almost looks like she means it.

“Still at the First Gate,” she says. “I am here at the behest of the stone.”

“You’re in the Underworld?”

“No. You are dreaming.”

“You knocked me out just so you could… what, congratulate me?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why are you here?”

“The necklace called me. Thus, I am here to bring you home.”

“… home? To Olympus?”

She laughs. “What did you think the diamond was for?”

For a moment, I don’t understand.

“It is time to let go, Penelope,” she says, and sounds impatient.

“To let what go?” I demand.

She holds out her hand. “It was a valiant effort, daughter. But I think it’s time you realized you are done here.”

Then it clicks.

She never believed I could do this.

She sent me to the Underworld with thirty days to get through all fucking five Gates, with an instant mission-abort necklace for when I inevitably couldn’t do it. Only, she didn’t tell me that was what the necklace was for, because she knew if I knew as much, I’d never use it. Instead, she made me think the necklace was something that would help me, should I need it.

And now she’s here, smiling, like she’s going to offer me a bowl of popcorn and we’ll Netflix and chill for the rest of the day. Like nothing is the matter and my time in hell will soon be a distant memory of the past. And Janie’s soul along with it.

I look over, behind me, and suddenly I can see the throne room and Azhrea’s very dead body. I look at her head laying in a huge pool of her own blood.

Bitch ain’t getting back up again.

Maybe that’s why I’m so confused.

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