The Netherworld seemed brighter and more wondrous than ever. It was a living thing, thriving off passion. As winter hardened the world above, Parvani was resplendent in her love and curiosity.

Except when they stood before the Dreamers’ Gate, carving out the dark seeds of nightmares.

It happened during the last of winter’s choke hold. Parvani had been observing Hajan these last few months, quietly demanding that the nightmares turn more vicious, more unrelenting. She had turned bold in the light of Hades’s affections, powerful in body and purpose. Eventually she’d come to savor that twilight merging of pleasure and pain, love and darkness at war with each other even as they entwined.

So they gave him dreams of treason and subterfuge. Spies and assassins and foreign conquerors. Dreams of grave illnesses, poisons, gangrenous diseases that peeled the flesh away from his bones. She could see their effect through the window of the archway—Hajan reduced to an ashen, trembling mess of a man, bloodshot eyes constantly shifting in suspicion. Parvani sometimes stumbled away to be sick, though she did not ask Hades to stop.

Perhaps, if she’d known what was coming, she would have.

Hajan had become wilder, more unstable in his demands. He broke into sobs and threw goblets of wine at the walls. He beat his wives and sons (Parvani clenched her fists and teeth, feeling responsible) and ordered more than one of his advisors to public execution for doing little more than cautiously questioning his decisions.

And then one day, his fragile shell shattered.

He was shaking after a nightmare about a usurper, faceless and young and mocking. He’d been forced naked before the city, then drawn and quartered. Hajan paced his chambers, mumbling and frantic, clothes practically falling off his emaciated frame.

A knock on the door. He spun around, gripping a knife from the table. His eldest son came in, face drawn tight, an heir about to overstep his bounds. Parvani almost recoiled, remembering the sadistic glint in his eyes as Ranya had been taken.

“Father, you must come out. You cannot stay in here forever.”

“No. I won’t let you lead me astray.” Hajan breathed like a bull, eyes wide and terrified. “I will not go! You will not take my throne from me!”

His son frowned. “Father, that’s not—”

Hajan couldn’t distinguish between nightmare and reality. The young man before him was an enemy, the one who had laughed at him from the gallows. With a yell he darted forward with a speed that heralded his past as a soldier, plunging the knife into his son’s chest.

Parvani gasped. Hades’s eyebrows rose. Hajan stepped away and watched as his son sank to the floor and gurgled over the blood in his mouth, gaze incredulous. He twitched a few times, then was still.