Curse the Flame

Take one last trip to the Other…

Willow

Do you believe in magic?

My cousin Daphne thinks that I’m ridiculous, but I always have. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t scared at all when I saw a fire-eyed puppy literally sitting on the other side of the antique mirror in my new apartment. Oh, no. I was enchanted.

The adorable little thing wagged his tail, barked once, and disappeared into the woods beyond the glass.

Naturally, I was curious. One touch was all it took. When the mirror opened up to let me through, I followed right after the puppy because, for some reason, I felt like I had to.

But now I’m trapped in the Other—a forgotten world where time stands still, each of us have our part to play as the old Greek myths get told again and again, and I discover early on that I’m not just impulsive, scatterbrained Willow Ackerly with a thumb so black, I couldn’t keep a cactus alive. I’m also the reincarnation of Persephone, and that’s not all.

Once I’m mirrorside, I follow the puppy right into trouble—and then I meet a devastatingly handsome man dressed like he stepped out of an old 1940s movie who keeps insisting he’s been waiting for me.

For eighty years…

Aiden
Death has always been patient.

When I was still mortal, I wasn’t. Back then, I was a veteran of the second great war-turn-hired gun working for the local mob—at least, that’s what I thought I was doing. But then I chased one of my assigned targets into an abandoned brownstone, followed him through a mirror, and arrived in the Other in time to watch the reincarnation of Narcissus fulfill his myth and die. As his soul crossed into the Underworld, the god inside of me finally awakened… and I had no choice but to cross with him.

Since then, I’ve never left the Pit.

For nearly a century, I’ve ruled the Underworld alongside a broken immortal who’s been slowly unraveling over the seasons without his queen. Hades has always endured the six months she’s gone. What he cannot endure is an existence without her, and he’s losing hope that she’ll ever return.

And that’s when a sunny schoolteacher tumbles through the mirror chasing the hound of Hades, and I know that the one soul we’ve been waiting for has finally returned to us.

But my bride… she doesn’t remember her husband. She knows who she is. She knows she’s Persephone… but my sweet Willow has never eaten the pomegranate—at least, not yet.

I already need her. She smiles too easily, sings off-key to flowers, and somehow has convinced Cerberus that his name is “Sir.” She’s the sunshine to my darkness, and for the first time in forever, I feel alive again.

She’s everything I lost when I let chaos turn a soldier into a killer. She’s everything Hades has been waiting his latest lifetime for.

Once I have her in my grasp, I refuse to let my soulmate slip through my fingers again. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her. Even if I have to make her my prisoner in the Underworld once more…

Because, this time, I’ll make sure Willow knows that I am her husband.