Hades Legacy (Hades Series #3)

Chapter One

Chapter One

My name is Ellie, and I'm the daughter of death.

Well, not death specifically. Death isn't my father; that's Thanatos, and he doesn't have any children. My mother has always said it's because he's weird and creepy, but then again, she says that about a lot of things - including my father on some days - so I don't really trust her judgment.

My parents, my actual parents, are the rulers of the Underworld, Hades and Evie. My mother has told me their story so many times, I could probably recite it backwards with my eyes closed; how my father, who had lived since the dawn of time, had never found true love until he met my mother, and how my mother, who had been human for the first nineteen years, made a deal with him to save her best friend - who she thought had died, but in reality had been the god Dionysus in a human disguise. Then, the rest, she says, was history. They went through a lot of hardships, and their relationship was put through the proverbial wringer, but they came out the other end stronger than ever, and they've been happily married ever since.

Well, that's what my mother says anyway, but I'm fairly sure she romanticized her stories out to be a lot more tumultuous than they actually were - seeing as my father's descriptions of their history are contrastingly different. I always have tended to believe my father over my mother when it comes to these things; I've never quite been able to figure out why, but I suspect it's because I'm much closer in personality to him than my mother. She's always been larger than life, and is one of the brightest, and most outgoing people I know. My father, on the other hand, is the polar opposite, and prefers to stay quietly back in the shadows and observe, rather than throw himself into the spotlight without a moment's hesitation like my mother does. I'm exactly the same. Maybe that's why they get along so well; they perfectly balance each other out.

But enough about my parents. I've talked about them and described them too much already, and you already know all about their story anyway, don't you? Unfortunately, I can't help myself; that's what I do. Like my father, I observe people, and am able to unravel the threads of their very personality and decipher exactly what kind of person they are, just from my observations of them. I've been doing it ever since I can remember; I guess to some people, that would sound creepy, but it's what makes me so good at my role. And when I say my role, I mean my role as the goddess of suicide; that's what makes me important to the inter-workings of the universe.

The only downside to that is, I've gotten very good at reading my parents and their reactions to absolutely everything. In my defense, it's not my fault; I've been stuck down in the Underworld my entire life, and the only people I've really been able to talk to are my parents and my only friend, Dorian. I've never been up to the surface, not even once, because my parents have never allowed me. I've never been sure of their motives; all I know is, every time I asked them if I can go up to the surface and experience what life is like up there, despite their better efforts, their eyes would well up with the pain and trepidation of undisclosed knowledge, and they would immediately refuse my request without even hesitating to think about it. And even though I had no idea why my simple request caused such an explicit response, I still felt guilty for asking. So even though every part of me longing to travel up to the surface, I stopped asking, and they stopped worrying. Instead, I just stayed silent and kept my desires close to my chest, where nobody would be able to discover them or my wish to travel up to the surface and experience what life was like for normal, teenage girls.

I always assumed that my parents were being over-protective. But never did it cross my mind that in forbidding me to travel up to the surface, my parents were trying to protect me from my own fate. Not once did it occur to me that they were desperately trying to thwart a future that resulted in me inexplicably throwing the supernatural world into the darkest civil war it would see in centuries; trying to thwart a future that resulted in my death.