Free Medusa's Desire (The Fate of Eros #1) (The Fate of Eros Series) by E.B. Black Page A

love?" Medusa asked, trying to butt into the monologue. "What's it like? I never got to fall in love before I came here."
    But the girl didn't hear a word of what she said. "How did I not notice it the moment I first met him? I was such a fool. I let my feelings blind me."
    She was too lost in her own world to hear anything and Medusa wasn't sure how to get her attention.
    She noticed that there was no drachma in the girl's mouth. "Do you have no coin to get across? You don't have to live on the shores, you know. You can come with me and live with my sisters. They won't mind and you won't be stuck in this depressing place."
    The girl whirled around and tried to grip Medusa by the arm, but her hand went through it. "You have coins? Give them to me! He could be here any minute and I need to get across to talk to Hades."
    Medusa shook her head and showed her empty hands. "I'm sorry, but I don't have any drachmas. I was asking about yours, not offering one." But at least she had the ghost's attention. "But I can give you a good home, so you don't have to wander around here all alone."
    Instead, several other ghosts who didn't have money, started chanting the world "coins" over and over again, lunging at her, desperate. She looked into their pleading eyes and wished she could help them. It had been so long, she had forgotten how painful it could be to look at a sorrowful person directly.
    They didn't leave her alone until Charon finally arrived and they tried to beg him for a ride. His eyes burst with blue light that pummeled the ghosts without money and drove them away. He yelled about how he couldn't make a living if he ferried every cheap-skate across the river.
    Charon was a handsome man with pale skin and dark features. That is, until you stared at him for a while. The closer you got and the harder you looked, the more his skin would gray. His pretty clothes would become tattered and his flesh would rot, until he became a sad skeleton, spending his days rowing ghosts from shore to shore.
    Stheno and Euryale had followed her. She didn't turn around, but she sensed them sneaking up behind her.
    "Why are you here?" Stheno asked.
    "Yeah, what's so interesting about a bunch of stupid ghosts?"
    Medusa shrugged. She couldn't explain it to them. They'd never understand and might get offended by the fact that she felt a need for companionship when she already had the two of them around.
    Euryale noticed the large purse Charon carried at his side full of coins and she blew a raspberry. "No fair. I don't get paid for guarding the underworld, why should he?"
    The two of them were a little too quiet. Medusa could smell the greed wafting from them. They wouldn't desire actual wealth; there was nowhere to spend the coins nearby. It would be what they represented–victimizing ghosts and the power they had to hurt people at a whim. What had she done, leading them here?
    Stheno and Euryale began to corner ghosts over the following weeks. They'd sneak up on them and steal pieces from their mouths when they dropped the coin or threaten to turn their living family members into stone if they weren't paid. They gathered it into piles, hidden inside their caves. And watched the spirits forced to wander the Acheron shores heartlessly.
    Medusa tackled Stheno in the air as she tried to zoom off with a piece of loot one day. The drachma flew from her hand and landed in the midst of twenty ghosts. They all tackled one another for it, but only the ghost who it belonged to was actually able to pick it up. The rest of them went through it.
    "What's your problem?" Stheno stood and dusted herself off.
    "I'm tired of seeing you torment these people."
    Stheno punched Medusa in the face and her neck cracked backwards. She gripped her cheek.
    "Butt out of it," Stheno said. "It doesn't concern you."
    Unfortunately, soon it would. The harmed spirits formed gangs. When the sisters went to sleep one night, they were assaulted with a barrage of blows from the ghosts