Was this the game now?
The game of questioning... and answering?
Faced with the unexpected question, all Evangeline could do was freeze. It wasn't that she had never wondered, nor that the answer held no weight to her.
Rather, Hades had always felt older than anyone she knew, not merely in maturity, but in the way he carried himself, as though he stood slightly apart from the world, watching it unfold from a distance. Like a bystander who already knew how every story would end before it was ever told.
Perhaps it was because he had seen it all before.
And how old would someone have to be, to look at the world that way?
Not to mention… those portraits. The ones she never dared to ask about, nor even allow herself to think too deeply on. Portraits of him, his face always holding the same features, yet each bearing a different name, a different year etched beneath the frame.
That alone told her his age was never meant to be something normal.
