My Life From Hell (The Blooming Goddess #3)

And Here I Thought It Couldn't Get Worse (Part 3)

With a beast this size, and this dangerous, it probably didn't matter. He wasn't worried about dominance. He was the top of the food chain.

I stopped in front of him, feeling his hot breath against my hand. Cerberus was massive but not quite as enormous as I remembered him. In my memory of fleeing Hades with my sapphire pendent, I must have built this puppy up to nightmare proportions.

I squatted down. "No rest for the wicked yet, buddy. I need you to find Kai. And Theo, but I'm betting you know Kai's scent better." I shoved at him. "Up and at 'em."

Cerberus dropped his middle head on the ground. His deep, ancient eyes looked back at me with a profound stare. It was a stare that said, "I have lived an eternal life and you are the biggest idiot I've seen."

"Seriously. Get up." I nestled against him, my nose wrinkled at his musky smell. I turned around with my back to his body, dug in my heels for leverage, and pushed. Complete with straining face and grunting.

That's when I heard Kai say, "There you are, kardia mou. I've been looking for you."

Kardia mou? "My heart" in Greek?

I looked up with a laugh, happy to hear Kai tease me with such sappy affection. But my laughter cut short at his perplexed expression. He hadn't been teasing—clearly Kai had no clue what I was doing, and he wasn't dressed like I'd last seen him. Now he wore a dark linen short-sleeved shirt over similarly colored linen pants. He was barefoot. And looking at me all kinds of weirdly.

I stepped away from the dog, stood up, and brushed myself off as best I could. "I know I look bad, but come on. That tunnel was a bitch."

He placed a finger over my lips. "Such language mars the perfect beauty of your mouth."

Was he kidding me? I eyed him, worried that maybe he'd suffered some kind of concussion on his way here. Maybe Felicia had done a number on all of us. "Enough, Kai."

Kyrillos. Persephone's voice rose up unbidden inside me. "Kyrillos," I found myself amending.

Kai gave me one of his cat-going-to-eat-the-canary-that-was-me grins. It put me at ease and had me on delicious, anticipating edge as he held out a hand. "I've blown off my father for the afternoon."

He took a step closer. "We can be alone, Persephone."

Persephone?!

Say what?! "Say what?"

Everything fell into place with a sickening lurch. Why Cerberus hadn't tried to kill me, why he didn't seem as large. Why Kai was acting off.

I glanced down at myself, praying this horrible impossibility was not, in fact possible. I saw that the ground was now much farther away than it should have been, and that the body I now rocked was definitely not mine.

Somehow, I had become Persephone.

I heard in her my head, full of spiteful glee. I'm back.