Chapter 33 — Cleito

Dark hadn't intended to oblige his request, but as she turned to meet his gaze, she saw enough raw emotion there that her stomach dropped. The glamour slipped by accident really, Dark too stunned by the face Poseidon made, by the unfiltered look in his eyes. What was he seeing? Or thinking? What was he feeling? She kept trying to tell herself she didn't care; she didn't care about any of them, or about this life Angel had built, but…she wanted to know what was going on in his head. She wanted to understand, or at least try to understand, his emotions.

Her focus siphoned to the hand he raised towards her face, hesitating just over the skin of her cheek. Dark took a breath, flickering her eyes to his in silent permission. But he didn't touch her there, slipping a lock of her hair between his index and middle fingers instead. He slid down from the middle to the tip, only stroking the part that was still red, looping the hair with his index once, twice. Then he let the hair fall back to her shoulder.

"My wife's hair was red too," he said to himself, looking past her as if she wasn't even there, "Not this shade, more fire than wine, but red all the same. Cleito. Gods, it's been thousands of years since I've said her name, longer since I've heard her voice. Sometimes I can't even remember her face. But you…sometimes when I look at you, I see her still." The pain etched into his face was a wonder Dark couldn't fathom. To have loved anything as much, to have felt that rotting, stretching chasm that seemed to crack inside his eyes. She couldn't understand it and didn't think she wanted to any longer.

"I remind you of your dead wife?" Dark whispered, her voice almost unrecognizable in its gentleness.

"No, you remind me that she's gone." His eyes returned to hers, hardening, searching for something he could never find there. "When she died, she was as mortal as you were once. Hell, I wished I was too then, just so I could go with her. To meet my brother as only a soul. To go to that place I could never follow. But a long, long time passed since I had been turned, before men had even learned to count their years. So, when she went, she went alone. And there is not a day I do not regret, not a day I do not blame…"

"Where do we go when we die, Poseidon? I always assumed we went to the underworld." She hated to let her mind drift back to Cue. Or to Eros, who she now knew was dead as well. How many more would fall? How many more would she grieve in the clipped, angry way she could manage?

"We do and we don't," he sighed, rubbing his jawline, "We never stand before Hades. We never become a soul, if that makes sense. We don't go to those houses you've already seen. When gods and goddesses die, we go straight to Tartarus. Nothing more than essence. No physical forms to inhabit at all."

"I thought Tartarus was a prison? I thought the Titans were chained there?"

"It is. And it houses many other terrible things than just the Titans. Tartarus came before Hades, before any of us. It was a place Asteria made for all her mistakes, as I'm sure you can now surmise the same thing. We go there, into the restless lake that sits in its center. Our essence goes in and never comes out. So, no matter if I convinced one god to help take my life…I'd still never see her again."

"How did you meet your human wife? I heard many gods take lovers, not brides," Dark resisted the urge to ask how she died, resisted the urge to ask why she hadn't been made into an immortal. His lips thinned into a distant smile, one that almost made him too handsome, too real.

"She lived on an island, wholly surrounded by sea, wholly alone. It had been some punishment, if I recall, from a king who didn't take kindly to being turned down. I had been out in the surf, trudging onto the shore of a supposedly empty island, enjoying a reprieve from the bores of my additional duties as king of the oceans. When she just happened upon me. I saw her hair rippling like unbound fire at her back and I was lost. I had always been the romantic one if you let Zeus and Hades tell it. But at that moment when I saw her, I believed it. I felt it."

"When she asked how I ended up on that shore, I lied. Made up a mortal tale, something utterly ridiculous, but to my relief she didn't press it. So, I stayed with her for a while, as a mortal man, lying all the while until she trusted me. I thought the way I felt would fade with time, but in the end it didn’t, and I'd damned us both with my deceit."

"I was supposed to turn her first. That was Asteria's one rule when she found out about my plans to wed Cleito. I couldn't show her anything of our world or take her as my wife until then. But I couldn't. I didn't want to condemn her to this life before she could fully understand what she was agreeing to. She trusted me too much, gave herself too fully for me to continue to deceive her. She hadn't met another god. Hadn't seen the world of lies and treachery. Hadn't known how miserable we could all make each other…she deserved to know what was in store for her here."

"You didn't obey Asteria…" Dark said, not a question but a hesitant realization.

"No, I didn't," Poseidon leaned back fully against the cell wall, "I took her to the seas, showed her my realm, my real self. And when she didn't scream or curse me, I took her to Olympus, showed her around, introduced her to Zeus and Hera. For that defiance, I doubt Asteria would have cared much. Sure, she'd have made my life difficult for a spell, but that's where it would have ended. Gods, if Cleito hadn't been so happy to meet everyone, hadn't been so accepting and open to everything I showed her, to who I truly was…if I hadn't thought myself more capable than I was to weather whatever storm would come of it. But I damned her. I married her right there in Zeus' home, with Hera presiding over it. And I damned her because it was direct defiance. It was too far to stretch her mercy, if you could even call it that."

"As soon as we arrived home, back safely on our little island, I went for a swim just to tire myself a bit. Take the edge of emotion off. But Asteria sent Tantalus before we'd even had our wedding night."

"And he killed her?" Dark could understand him hating Tali for that. Especially with how much he clearly loved her, even if he had gone about it in the worst way.

"No," Poseidon's eyes shuttered and Dark thought he wouldn't continue, but he did, his voice dropping to no more than breath on the air, "He tempted her. Bedded her on our wedding night, in our wedding bed, and waited for me to discover them. I killed Cleito. In a fit of blind rage, in agony and betrayal and pure wrath, I drowned her, brought the sea into the bedroom just as Tantalus portaled out. She was there one moment and gone the next, and I'd barely registered what I'd done before it was over. I'd swept her away."

"I must have stated at that soaking bed for hours, months, years. It made no difference because she never reappeared. All that was left to do was see my brother. To beg Hades to release her back to me. But if there’s one thing about my brother, it’s that he would never relinquish a soul. Not even for me. And when he refused, I begged him to at least give her something more than darkness and pain. Give her a proper life beyond."

"But hell isn't awful. If she was as good as you say she would have had a happy afterlife. Probably reliving her best moments with you."

"That is hell now. Not hell always, Dark. Once upon an age, when Hades was still young and his realm dark, there was only misery for the souls that entered there. Endless, black nothingness. He had no desire to make a world for them. Had no desire to cultivate anything in the same way Zeus and I did. And perhaps that's why Asteria gave him the underworld. A cold ruler for an inhospitable place. A god who would never look too hard at the cage she kept at the edges. If I'm being hopeful, I hope it was Cleito that helped created the hell of today because he agreed to my request, but I never saw her again. And there is not a day I do not blame myself."

"Yet you do not hate your brother?"

"I cannot hate who he was. We were all broken, the oldest gods, when Asteria found us. Mortal life was enough to break any man in those early days of civilization, and he was always the coldest of the three of us. He took our parents' death the hardest and let that ice settle over himself completely. It's taken millennia to get him here, to the place where Angel found him. And even then, I'm sure he was still difficult to the bitter end."

Dark grunted an understanding, "And yet you hate Tantalus."

His jaw clenched, nostrils flaring for a moment, "I hate Asteria. Tantalus had as much choice as any of us do when it came to her, so yes, I hate what he did. I’ve tried to kill him too many times to count. But you need to understand that I hate myself more. I drowned her. He only pushed me. I shouldn't have been capable of hurting her and yet…"

A shaky breath pushed out of her mouth, "There have been several times already in my brief existence here that I am glad for my icy heart."

"I understand that too, you know," Poseidon touched Dark's cheek finally, her real cheek, now that she'd dropped the glamour, "I understand the self-hate, suppressing yourself in order to survive." His palm was cool against her, like being kissed by ocean waves. He was speaking of what Angel had done to survive their torture, the price she had to pay. And even as she denied it, Dark was paying a price too.

"And I'm sure Hades would have said the same before you. I'm not so sure he feels that way anymore if the last few months is any measure," his eyes glimmered then hardened, "And yet you returned with no less than four males after your attention. And I'm not even counting myself. I find myself feeling a great swell of pity for my brother these days, despite whatever happened between us back then." His hand dropped, leaving her cheek colder than it had been.

Dark growled, arms stretching across her chest, "I am not Angel."

"I am well aware. And as I've said, you don't have to be. But you are not nearly as cold and heartless as you think you are, Dark Angel," his look was pure frustration, and she hated the way he said her name, the way it sent heat spiraling under her skin, "Just be sure that whatever bed you make for yourself, you intend to sleep in it in the end because if you push Hades over the edge he will break and there won't be a thing any of us can do to undo it. He let you see behind that cold exterior. You. Not Persephone, not his brothers, you alone."

The heavy thudded footsteps in the distance cut off her reply as Dark threw their glamours back over them, still glaring at his words. They sang somewhere deep in her chest and there was nothing she could do but let them.