Chapter 44

Chapter 44
Quanah
My tears didn’t help at all. No matter how much I begged her to stop or pleaded, she kept going.
“You should’ve stayed out of my way! I warned you that if I saw you today, you’d pay for yesterday.”
“But Dad found me,” I whimpered, hoping she’d hear that I hadn’t gone to him and stop hitting me, but that never happened.
“Shut up! Or you’ll get it even worse!” The leather belt cut through the air before striking my back, and I cried harder. “You shouldn’t even have been born. You’re a burden in my life, ruining everything!”
I didn’t understand why she didn’t like me. Mothers were supposed to love their children, right? But I didn’t know what that word meant. Maybe my dad loved me a little. He was almost never around, always off helping someone, which is why he was always traveling.
I liked when the elders called me for lessons about our history. It was the only way to spend more time with my dad and stay as far from her as possible.
I told him once about what she did to me, but it got worse after that. She threatened to kill my dad while he slept and then sell me to the highest bidder. Since then, I hid, and when I couldn’t, I endured. After all, I’d heard stories about witches and werewolves fighting, and that was the last thing I wanted.
“Poor child. I didn’t know you suffered so much at the hands of a witch.” Hades’ voice was starting to make me nauseous, or maybe it was the pain of the daggers cutting through me every time he rummaged through my life. “Now I understand all your repulsion toward witches and your lack of trust in people. Not even your own father helped you.”
“Why don’t you do it again, this time harder, so I can pass out and not have to listen to your nonsense?”
“I give you credit for your strength. Even in the face of all this, you remain defiant. I don’t know if that’s stupidity or courage—I’ll go with the latter.” I closed my eyes, praying something would happen to shut him up. “It’s a shame you broke the promises you made as a child. You got a witch pregnant, you’ll give your son the same life you had, and as if that weren’t enough, you fell in love with her.”
I thrashed against the chains, begging my ancestors for strength to escape so I could rip that bastard’s head off, but all my efforts seemed futile.
But then I remembered what Koschei said amidst the wreckage of the cabin. Bridget’s father was after her to stop the prophecy from coming true. He knew he’d be defeated by her and wanted to avoid it, since he clearly couldn’t kill her with his own hands.
“You’re really desperate, going to the trouble of digging through my mind for a weakness you can use.” I provoked him, turning the tables for the first time since I woke up in this place. “What do you think you’ll get out of this? Turn me against your daughter? Make me hand her over to the demon you promised her to?”
“Nikolai isn’t a demon. If only it were that simple, I’d control him, and this would all be over. He’s an immortal being who’s had enough time to learn to wield certain magics.” His smile widened, and I knew he’d try to attack me with words. “Nikolai genuinely cares for Bridget. He longed for a wife who was his alone, not someone he had to steal from another man. For years, he watched over her from afar, but when you touched her, you defiled his bride.”
“A person can’t be engaged to someone without their consent. Bridget didn’t even know this world existed, let alone him!” I shouted, knowing that no matter what they said about this, Bridget was never his and never would be.
“It’s touching how you mortals can become so possessive over something in so little time, even if it could harm you.”
“Bridget isn’t a thing!” My words came through gritted teeth, my jaw aching from clenching so hard.
“She is a thing—a powerful thing, born with magic inside her. She’s half god, half witch. Do you have any idea what that means? No, no one does! She should’ve been killed when she was born!”
We were back to the core reason we were here, everything that had happened in the last few months—a shitty god scared of his own daughter. It was almost laughable.
“You can’t touch her, can you?” The slight shift in his gaze might’ve gone unnoticed by others, but not by me. “That’s why you keep sending people to do what you want. Otherwise, you would’ve killed her when she was born instead of just giving her away as a bride!”
His laughter exploded in the place, so deep and powerful it shook the walls of the lair. I could feel we were meters and meters underground, and that only made me more anxious because I couldn’t gauge how much time had passed. Between the blackouts and the memories of the past, I didn’t know if hours or days had gone by. I didn’t even want to think about the possibility of it being longer.
“You think she’s only a threat to me? If she can kill a god, imagine what she could do to the rest of humanity?” Hades stepped closer, his fingers gripping my face, forcing me to look at him. “In the hierarchy of creation, we gods came first, then the powerful beings of the earth came from our procreation, and then Zeus decided to create those ridiculous things called humans. And that’s where you come from—nothing but humans cursed by Zeus after one of your kind thought they were too clever to deceive a god.” I knew the story; the elders had told me since I was a child. “You really think she doesn’t have the power to destroy you? If even your mother, some ordinary witch, could break you, imagine what Bridget could do.”
And for a moment, I imagined it. I’d witnessed the strength of her power and how quickly it grew each day. My fear had now shifted to something else. If Bridget was this powerful, what would our son be?
“Let’s go back to your childhood. I enjoy hearing your screams and cries of pain.”
He was a monster, one I could never let get near her or our son, even if it meant giving my life. But my thoughts stopped there, because the next moment, my screams filled the space of the lair.