Chapter 22
Chapter
Twenty-Two
P ersephone
“I am not having sex with you!” My face is on fire, and not even a full body dunk in the sea would put out the flame. I am humiliated and horrified—because I’ve only seen one, ahem, thing—in my entire life. Hades’ thing. I would have been happy with only seeing his—ahem— thing until the day I die.
Alas, it appears such things are not meant to be. Still. That doesn’t mean I’m not a bit put out and red hot with horror.
Poseidon chuckles. It’s deep and rich and warm in the kind of way that makes one want to curl up and snuggle in. But no ! No, there will be no snuggling with the naked God.
Absolutely not.
“I admit, I was expecting another kind of greeting.”
I groan, dropping my burning face into my cool hands. It’s a very short-lived relief as I groan. Then, I huff, “I slept with you, too, didn’t I?”
There is a long pause. It is so long; I dare a peek through slitted fingers at him. His brow is wrinkled, his blue eyes only slightly darker than before. “No, you didn’t.”
My hands fall away from my face, only to snap back up at the sight of the thing as I loose a sharp squeak. There is another pause, and then an uncertain, although slightly amused, “Does my nakedness make you uncomfortable, my friend?”
I sigh. Just like my face, it’s hot. “Yes.”
“Interesting,” he muses, but I hear what sounds like whirling—and then dripping ? There is movement around me as Poseidon— Poseidon!! —stands.
Poseidon is standing beside me, as though this very thing happens all the time. Like it’s no big deal that I’m chilling with the God of the Sea.
Honestly, I can’t tell if I’m fan girling, freaking out, or about to hurl.
At the sound of rustling, I can’t help but steal another peek at the God. Bracing myself for the thing, I exhale a breath of pure relief when I see that he is fastening something dark and green around his waist, and it is effectively covering said thing. It looks suspiciously like seaweed that has been sewn into a makeshift fabric.
His lips hitch into an unmistakable grin of pure male roguishness that has certain red spilling into my cheeks, as if they weren’t red enough.
“You were never bothered by my nakedness before. I apologize for my assumption now.”
My face is still burning, but I feel my discomfort waning bit by bit. “You said we never slept together.”
“We didn’t.”
I frown. “But your nakedness never bothered me?”
He lowers his hulking body to sit next to me in the sand, but not quite as close as before. He is trying to give me space. To ease my discomfort.
I am grateful.
“I am a creature of the sea, my friend. If I am moving through the waters, I am in my Mer form, which, as you saw—” His lips quirk in a teasing grin. “Has little need for clothes.”
“Oh.” Duh . I feel like an idiot.
“In the city of Atlantis?—”
My head whips to the side. I blurt, “Atlantis is real?”
I shift just a bit closer in my excitement. I can’t help it. The nights I spent reading about the lost city while my house slept are countless.
Poseidon tips his head curiously to the side. “You truly have no memory of before?”
I shake my head, my new flame of excitement getting hit with a big fat wave of reality. I breathe, “No.”
He lifts his chin in simple acceptance. “Atlantis is very real. It was an island of the Gods, remaining a mystery even today for the wonders it held and the whereabouts it existed. You see, it held the most powerful portal between the realms.”
“You mean between Earth and the Underworld?”
Poseidon studies me with those unusual blue eyes that seem to invade my soul through the windows of my eyes. He pulls in breath, expanding his already massive chest. “Between all the realms.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means that Atlantis had been, and still is, the most powerful city to have ever existed.”
“But it—it sank.”
“It did.” Poseidon smirks like a man who has won a prize far greater than the game he’d played. “Thanks, in part, to you.”
It’s my turn to frown. “Me? What did I have to do with the sinking of an island?”
“You must first understand that this ancient island was the heart of all realms, but more, it was a realm unto its own. Its power was so great, it fed the realms of Olympus, the Living Realm, and the Underworld alike. Power surged in constant supply from this heart into the realms surrounding it, like the arteries from the heart in your chest now.” Poseidon leans back on his palms in the sand, and I am only a little struck when his feet stretch into the water and fail to instantly turn into a fin. “Legend says Atlantis was the first of the land pulled from the seas, created by Chaos, herself.”
“Chaos?” It’s not the first time the Goddess of Matter has come up in conversation, but for some reason, I see her as powerless in my mind. Shackled, somehow, even though it isn’t something I can make sense of. To know she created a land of such immense power is not the way of a shackled Goddess.
I dismiss the thought.
“Yes, Chaos, the Goddess of Matter,” Poseidon tells me as though I don’t know. To be fair, he has no idea what I know or don’t know. He continues, “After Atlantis, Gaia, Mother Earth not to be outdone by her Mother Goddess, pulled Pangea from the sea. It was an astonishing feat of astronomical power. Pangea was rich with resources and beauty, but it was no Atlantis.”
I’m rapt with interest, desperate to learn more about this ancient city and the Godly history that surrounds it.
Poseidon obviously senses my desperation for more, because he continues without much pause, “It was Gaia’s rage and ego that led her into the arms of Uranus, and together they became a great and terrible power that ruled the Gods and Pangea for eons. Uranus was the first of the Gods to be known as King, and Gaia his Queen. But their rule never extended into Atlantis. The Golden City was a city of amnesty for the Gods and Goddesses. It was a city bursting with great and terrifying power, never entrusted to a single God. From the center of the city poured a great light that lit the sky, plunging into Olympus high in the clouds.”
“It sounds magnificent.”
“It was, very much.” He sighs as though the next part of his story will bring with it catastrophe. All good stories wrought with wonder are, unfortunately, woven with tragedy. “Gods warred and fell to possess the power that ruling the Golden City would bestow. Primordial Gods and Goddesses with names lost to the passing of time fell in defeat into the seas that surrounded the island, drifting in the oceans until they rooted in their eternal cage. Their calcified remains sentenced to an eternity of punishment, of confinement to the seas even today.” His grin is not sad, but it is not unfeeling either. “You might know them as the small islands that exist today within the deep blue of the seas.”
I gape. “All the islands that exist today—you’re telling me they’re the calcified remains of Primordial Gods and Goddesses who tried to overthrow Chaos to then rule Atlantis?”
Poseidon lifts one long, thick finger. “Not Chaos. Atlantis was— is a sentient island. Atlantis fought to protect herself against the Gods and Goddesses who sought to rule her for the power that ruling her would bestow.” A second finger joins the first. “As for the islands, they are, indeed, the remains of Primordial beings whose ego drove them to the worst punishment.”
“To become islands?”
Poseidon slides his shocking eyes to mine. “To be devoured by time. Their very existence, once worshipped, forgotten by the passing of ages even as their minds, ever active, are trapped within the knowing that their ego imprisoned them to an eternity in which all manner of life would feed from them, without ever knowing it was a God in which provided them the fruits of the land which sustained them. To exist forever in an eternity in which they are not entitled to, nor can they demand, worship. That is the punishment in which Atlantis decreed them worthy and imparted upon those who sought to capture her unwilling power.”
“That’s—” There are no words for such a punishment. For the endless torture they must endure.
“Fitting?” Poseidon nods. “Yes, indeed.”
My lips part on a shocked inhale.
“Atlantis fought her own battles for eons, powering the realms in which existed around her. But no realm was so wonderous, their power as great as the immeasurable power in which sustained the Heart of Atlantis.”
“It sounds breathtaking and tragic.”
“Yes,” Poseidon agrees, but there’s a smile touching his lips that speaks to more than what he simply says. He knows more than he lets on. “Technology on Atlantis was far superior to that which erupted on Pangea, a lesser forgery crafted by the Gods which longed to attain that which came naturally to Atlantis. Time continued this way for a while, Gods striving to replicate the sentient wonder birthed by Chaos. But it was too quickly forgotten that Atlantis wasn’t simply an island like Pangea, a mass of land with the ability to create life—but that she was a Primordial Goddess unto her own, and her power was great.”
“But she sank into the sea?” I can hardly make myself speak the words, and they sound on the hesitant breath that they are. Even now, I feel afraid to offend the sentient island. Like it might rise from the inky depths of the deep and banish me to a fate of aware calcification in the waves.
Poseidon dips his chin, casting his eyes to the glowing sea that dances for him even now. “Atlantis was formed well before my time. It was once rumored that Atlantis was the favorite child of Chaos, the one in which she infused the light of her love, for Atlantis glowed .” Poseidon’s seeing blue eyes settle on me. The weight of them is massive, and for a moment, the very breath in my lungs feels captured, sinking under the seeing weight of eyes that read too deeply into the abyss of my soul. “The stories of her light remind me much of the glow which erupted from the depths of the Underworld, infused with the gift of your innocence.”
A chill pricks at my skin. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
Poseidon doesn’t explain. He simply studies me for so long, I am unable to keep from shifting under the weight of it. Finally, he continues, “It was in the millennia before I was born, that the light that speared from the Heart of Atlantis, began to dim. The power she syphoned into the realms surrounding her lessoned to a point the arteries of power that connected the realms, turned brittle. By the time I was born, although still a great and wonderous power, the glow of Atlantis was significantly duller than it had been in its prime. And the presence of Chaos was entirely absent from the realms, almost as though she hadn’t existed at all.”
“But?” I hold my breath, because there is a but.
There is always a but.
“Greedy little goddess, aren’t you?” Poseidon accuses teasingly. “Yes, there is a but. However, it comes much later.”
“Okay…?”
Poseidon chuckles, but he gets to the point. “Lost to the legend of humanity, but still whispered amongst the Gods, is the fact that Atlantis darkened once again when Cronus castrated Uranus, as though Atlantis had been directly connected to the first King of Gods, and died a little more when the path of his seed into the world was severed.” His pitch dips, the smooth baritone of it turning rough. “There are some who speculate that the creation of Atlantis was not owed in whole to Chaos, but that Uranus had strayed from Gaia, and the sentient island was a product of their affair, and that is why she dimmed yet again when he was castrated.”
“But you don’t believe that…” I hesitate to say it, but the words are pulled from the depths of me. As though they need to fall between us. As though their arrival into the folds of time was written by the very stars that shine life onto us all.
“No, I don’t.” Poseidon presses his lips together thoughtfully. “Time continued to pass, Cronus claiming the title of King of Gods when Uranus took to the sanctuary of the sky. The Olympians were born and swallowed by our father. Rhea’s deception in the birth of Zeus was not only our hope to find release from the prison of our father’s belly, but it was the first step in Cronus’ ultimate demise.”
“I know this story,” I tell Poseidon bashfully. “I know how you all fought to end the reign of Cronus.”
“And you know that Zeus took his crown and title of King of Gods.” When I nod, Poseidon mimics it soberly. “Zeus was the last God to attempt to rule Atlantis. Her glow had drastically faded, but her power was still enough to protect herself from the tyrannical overthrowing of Zeus. But the consequence was a severing of those brittle arteries in which connected the Heart of Atlantis to both Olympus and the Living Realm.”
“But not to the Underworld?”
“No.” Poseidon pulls in a breath, and the sea rises higher over the sand to caress our outstretched legs. He sighs a sigh of pure affection. “No, she clung to her connection to the Underworld. This is important, so listen closely now,” Poseidon warns me. “By this time, Hades had battled and trapped the soul of Uranus, stripped of his Godly form, in the bowels of Tartarus.”
“I don’t understand why this is important.”
Poseidon stiffens, but not for long. It’s there and gone before I can think to search our surroundings for intrusion. “I was already tasked with rule over the sea, sequestered to life with only the creatures of the sea for company. They were all I had outside the rare times I stole away to the land, desperate for affection. For touch. For reprieve.”
God, but Poseidon’s story sounds too much like Hades’.
Poseidon tells me, “I often found that reprieve amongst the nymphs and humans of Atlantis. Still, I longed for a Queen, but each one I dared pull into the depths of the seas passed in my arms.”
“I’m sorry,” I gasp, horror-struck.
He shutters his eyes for only a moment, before those eerie blue orbs land on me once again. “I’ve forgotten myself. I am not here to share my story. I apologize.”
“Poseidon—”
He interrupts, “It was on one of my visits to Atlantis, a night far darker than usual, where clouds stretched to conceal the light of the stars, and just the faintest glow of a full moon could be spotted through the cover, that the artery to the Underworld throbbed. It shook Atlantis like the tremor of an earthquake. To my wonder, I recall the faint glow of a white moon shimmer, for a moment, blood red.” I don’t miss the way his gaze drifts to the thin sliver of the two moons in the sky above us. Both blood red. One veined in gold, the other onyx. His eyes slide back to mine. “It wasn’t much later that a child was born. A girl. A Goddess with no power.”
Pebbles rise on my skin. “Do you mean me?”
Poseidon doesn’t nod. He doesn’t move at all until he speaks. “When Hades claimed you as his, that artery again throbbed, and for a while, Atlantis glowed with her rich light, before she again dimmed. For centuries, you moved between the Underworld and the Living Realm, and Atlantis remained unchanging in all that time. Until the night you were taken. Murdered. I had, again, been on Atlantis, although I’d given up my search for a Queen.” He looks to the sea again, where it glitters under starlight. “The echo of Hades’ grief, and the loss of the Underworld shook so great, it surged into the Heart of Atlantis. Tethered to the Underworld as she was by her single remaining artery, the agony of the Underworlds’ great loss devastated her. From the Heart of Atlantis, the roar of Hades’ grief spilled for the world hear in an arc of light that speared into Olympus. A great and terrible rain began to pour onto the lands. Hades’ grief powered great quakes that rumbled across Pangea. It split the land for the rest of time—and Atlantis made her decision to flee to the sea.”
“She sank…because I died? Because Hades grieved?”
“She sank because her hope to restore what had been stolen had died.”
“I don’t understand…”
Poseidon’s eyes lift as a deep, dark, enchantingly rich voice agrees, “Neither do I, brother.”
I twist to see the man who owns my whole heart. My mate.
He is drenched in the shadows of the pillared mountains that spear from the earth, but he is impossible to miss even so. My heart quickens and my womb responds with a tightening I can’t ignore.
He pushes from the shadows. “Please, continue.”