Eve
I swallowed, my hoarse throat working painfully. Had I cried that hard? A mental breakdown?
"I don't know what you are talking about, Hades," I muttered.
My stomach flipped when he replied with a frustrated growl. Then silence.
I held my breath as I waited for him to speak in the darkness again.
"I just want to help, Red." The softness of his voice caught me unawares. "Just tell me. I can't stand not knowing what could have sent you into such a spiral."
I was stunned into silence by his words. The quiet was wrought with tension so tangible that I could feel its uneasy buzz along my skin. I braced myself.
"Hades..."
"No lies, Red," he warned, but his voice was void of its usual harshness. "I want the truth."
Another silence held us captive in the darkness as I battled with two choices: to continue to lie or tell the truth, the doctored one.
"It was my sister," I finally blurted. "The onesie brought back some memories that I, for the life of me, have been trying to suppress. I guess... I guess," tears were already gathering in my eyes, "I guess it made my reality hit harder than it had before. I see just how far we have come from being sisters because now we..." I sniffled, "we are... What are we, Hades?"
Could I call her my enemy? Because according to the accounts, 'Eve' was dead. Could my 'dead' sister be called my enemy?
"You are here, and she is not. You are alive, and Eve Valmont is dead."
I tried not to flinch at the way he spat my name, but I flinched anyway.
"She is dead," I murmured, feeling drained and fractured. These mind games that I was playing with not only Hades but myself would have dire consequences. I felt it in my bones. In more ways than one, I was slipping. I was losing myself to whatever lies I told. If this went on, Eve would indeed die, and when that happened, who would I become?
"The mental breakdown was triggered by the onesie," he said.
"Yes... and I just found it in the wardrobe. I did not get it for myself—"
"I got it for you," he revealed. "I was not aware of the effects that it would have on you. It was the way you held on to it in the boutique. I thought that you wanted it."
"But that I was too embarrassed to let you know that I wanted one for myself." I took the words out of his mouth.
Silence.
"Shit!" he snapped, jolting me. "If I had known..."
"No, no," I quickly said. My fingers found his hand in the dark, clutching it tightly as if the contact could anchor me to reality. "No, Hades. This isn't your fault."
His grip on my hand tightened in return, but I could feel the tension rippling off him like a storm barely restrained.
"I should have seen it, Red. I should have known."
I shook my head, even though I knew he couldn't see me.
"How could you? I barely understand it myself."
The weight of his stare pressed against me, even in the absence of light.
"I should have understood."
The vulnerability in his voice cracked something inside me. I had tried so hard to hide the fractures, to keep him from seeing just how fragile I actually was. But now the pieces lay scattered between us, too obvious to ignore.
My defiance and stubbornness were a front. The girl that broke down and cried from the sight of a piece of clothing was who I actually was. It was a fact that I tried to shove away because it was easier to pretend to be strong than to actually be.
Maybe that was why I gravitated towards Hades. The tragedies of my life had become a torrent that threatened to drown me, but Hades was an inferno—one that I craved because anything was better than the cold. Anything was better than drowning in sorrow. Hades was… chaos, but he was warm in a way that stung and soothed.
His fire didn't burn me the way I feared it would. If anything, it kept the shadows at bay, even if only for a fleeting moment.
I let out a shaky breath, realizing I had been holding it for too long. My fingers curled tighter around his, and for once, I allowed myself to lean into that warmth.
"Hades…" I hesitated, my voice barely above a whisper.
"I'm listening," he said softly, as if speaking louder would shatter the fragile space we had created between us.
I swallowed hard, forcing myself to give life to the words that had been clawing at my chest for too long.
"I keep telling myself that Eve Valmont is dead because… but to me, she is alive and watching me. She is a ghost that refuses to let me be. An entity that haunts me. She is in every step that I take, she is the air that I breathe. She suffocates me..."
The confession tasted bitter, like ash on my tongue. But at the same time, there was relief in letting it out.
His thumb brushed over the back of my hand, steady and grounding.
"And she is in your reflection."
I froze. Ice filled my veins.
Hades pushed.
"You refuse to look in the mirror because you see her face," he murmured. "You see her staring back at you."
I tried to pull away from Hades, my pulse thundering, but his grip tightened.
"Eve is dead," he told me. "Dead for what she did to you," his words hit me like a bullet. "Dead for the chaos she sought on your pack. She is—"
I could not take another bout of slander against myself, so I did the only thing that would shut him up. I grabbed blindly for his collar and pulled him to me.
My lips slammed against his.