The Hellhound

Ch. Thirty-Eight

"Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game."

- Voltaire

                                                                                ***

Sirius closed his eyes for a moment, shaking his head. He couldn't believe he was doing this. He couldn't believe he was going to take this risk. It was insane. He was insane.

Not insane, Galloway's voice whispered. Good.

Not good, he argued silently. Stupid. Ridiculously, dangerously stupid.

Her soft laugh was the only answer and he growled in response, hating himself. Hating that he couldn't just do what needed to be done. With another harsh growl, he opened his eyes and found Caydryn watching him with a raised brow. 

"You would attempt to cheat or trick the lord of the underworld?" he asked, incredulous. "Are you mad?"

"Jury's still out," Sirius muttered as he began to walk, fighting his way through the trees. "But...yes."

A scoffing sound came from the prince, who began striding through the trees, never having to so much as duck a branch. Dead leaves crackled like bone under his boots as he stalked past Sirius. Tossing his long hair over a shoulder, Caydryn gave him a scathing, weary look. 

"Why bother?" he asked, his pearly teeth flashing in the weak sun. "Why play with Fate when tempting her can only end in disaster? For you and your Huntress."

Sirius flinched, the last few words hitting him like thrown rocks. It was a damn good question.

That voice he was beginning to hate just a little offered, Because this is how I would do it. It's how you should do it.

"Because," Sirius said heavily, his shoulders slumping in acceptance, "what good would it do to save her, if she would just hate me after the fact?"

No good at all. 

He really, truly believed that if he did something too wrong for her to forgive, she would teach herself to hate him. She would run—maybe to Caleb, or Rhys, or maybe to nothing and no one. Even if she knew he had only done such terrible things to save her, she would still leave him with nothing more than painful memories and this new, wretched morality.

If that's what it could be called.

"Hate and love are the same thing," Caydryn said thoughtfully. "They simply wear a different face." He glanced back at Sirius again. "It would be best that she love you, but hatred is better than apathy, is it not?"

Sirius shuddered as Caydryn's words hit eerily close to something Hades had told him. He touched his tongue to his dry lips, unsure how to answer.

Once, he might have believed that hate and love were the same. Once, they might have even felt the same. But they weren't. Galloway had shown him the difference. He couldn't unsee it.

And he couldn't unlearn the ugly tangle of caring for another. She'd made him care, and she'd snared him in a thicket of brambles that cut deeper the more he tried to free himself.

So he might as well stop trying to escape.

Sirius couldn't help but shake his head. He'd been fighting that battle ever since he'd met her. 

But, he supposed, it had to happen sooner or later. You couldn't love someone as fiercely as he loved Galloway and come out of that fire completely unscathed. She'd burned away his inability to care, and he was just going to have to get over that.