Hades' Cursed Luna novel Chapter 217

Hades

The question slammed into me like a wrecking ball.

"Who would you choose?"

I didn't move. Couldn't breathe.

The air between us was razor-thin, thick with the weight of every single thing I had never said aloud. My claws were still at her throat, but I wasn't seeing Felicia anymore.

I was seeing Danielle.

I was seeing the blood on my hands, the body I hadn't buried, the ghost that had lingered inside me for five fucking years—wrapped around my ribcage like a noose, tightening every time I tried to breathe.

Felicia's lips curled, a mockery of a smile, daring me to answer.

"You can't, can you?" she murmured, voice softer now. Almost mocking, almost pitying.

My chest burned.

My shadows coiled tighter, writhing against my skin as if they, too, could feel the noose drawing closer.

"Say it, Hades."

The words weren't real, but they might as well have been.

Danielle's voice, a whisper in the back of my mind.

I had never said it. Never let myself say it.

But Felicia?

Felicia was forcing me to.

I hated her for it.

I hated that she knew exactly where to twist the knife.

I hated that she was right.

"You think you know me so well," I muttered, my voice hoarse, my grip tightening just enough to make her breath hitch. "You think you have me all figured out, don't you?"

Felicia's throat bobbed, but she didn't look away.

She didn't back down.

Not now.

Not when she had backed me into a corner I had spent years avoiding.

"I don't have to know you," she murmured. "I just have to know her. No woman on earth could love you the way she did. You felt the same."

A sharp, cold pain lanced through my chest.

I didn't answer.

Because there was no answer.

Because the second I spoke it aloud, it would become real.

Danielle or Eve.

One ghost, one future.

One I had lost, one I could still lose.

Felicia's lips parted, as if she were about to say something else—about to push further, twist harder—

—until my claws slammed into the wall beside her instead.

A sharp crack splintered through the air as wood shattered beneath my strength.

Felicia flinched.

For the first time.

She flinched.

A slow breath rattled through me, shaking from the force of what I hadn't done—of what I had barely stopped myself from doing.

My hands trembled.

My fucking hands were trembling.

I had been seconds away from ripping her apart.

Not because she had lied.

But because she had spoken the truth.

I stepped back, teeth clenched so tightly my jaw ached.

Felicia swallowed hard, her pulse pounding visibly in her throat.

But she smiled.

Because she knew.

She had won.

"You can't say it," she whispered. "Because you already know the answer. And that answer?"

She tilted her head, voice like silk-draped poison.

"It terrifies you."