Hades and Persephone: Crown of Souls (Gods of Myth #3)

Chapter 26

Chapter

Twenty-Six

P ersephone

Hecate is not Hecate.

Well, she is— but she isn’t.

Like always, her raven hair drifts as though weightless around her body. She hovers in the air now, though, her arms dangling at her sides as her breasts heave with heavy, ragged breaths. The air is so cold here. The icy wind lashes like a whip across every inch of my skin.

Frost nips at the tips of Hecate’s glossy black nails and freezes the wispy fabric of her gown into place, casting a web of frost crystals over the black fabric.

It would be beautiful, if it wasn’t harrowing.

Her eyes snap open, and there is no white left. Glossy black orbs stare down at me and Hades, stealing the air from my lungs.

I am not sure that I have ever been so afraid in my life.

I cannot even summon a scream.

Her head angles unnaturally, and I get the sense that her black eyes have shifted to look entirely upon me. She smiles, and it cracks on her face.

Everything about this—about her smile—feels terribly wrong.

Her smile falls and her head shifts to Hades.

She opens her mouth and speaks. The voice that sounds from her lips is hers, feminine and darkly lyrical—and yet it is also a man’s, deep, and baritone, and promising the violence of thunder within the wreckage of a storm. “Hadeeees.”

The voice elongates Hades’ name. There is a rattle of deep hatred within that single greeting. A hatred that has spanned millennia. It is so old, so vast, it is webbed into every fibre of this torturous world in which the bodiless God has existed.

“Uranus,” Hades returns flatly.

If it’s possible for a spirit to flinch, Uranus does. It doesn’t affect Hecate’s body, but I see it in the black of her borrowed eyes. I feel it in the growing cold of this disturbing world.

“You couldn’t face me, Gooood of the Dead?” A dark laugh follows the question. “After ripping my soul from my body, you used your witch to contain me for what ?” Another laugh, spiteful. “A simple conversation? Am I so frightening to you, God of the Dead ?”

Hades’ title falls from Uranus like a mockery. A challenge.

Hades doesn’t take the bait. “I want to know what your connection to Atlantis was.”

“Atlantis.” Hecate’s face changes, her chin lifting to roll her head on her shoulders. The gesture is one to induce a prickle of shivers across every inch of my skin. “A name I haven’t heard in a looong time. How is the city of power?”

“How are you connected to Atlantis?” Hades repeats, unwilling to engage Uranus.

Hecate’s eyes snap to Hades, displeasure rolling from her in waves that promise a painful death.

I am hit with a blast of agonizingly painful cold. When I breathe, the breath I release appears as a mist on the air before turning into a thousand tiny crystals that rain to the ground where they shatter in a shower of little chimes.

I feel as though I am a moment from freezing to my death, incapable of doing anything at all to escape my terrible fate when Hades moves, pulling my body into his. The warmth that radiates from him should be impossible. A dewy sheen of melting frost clings to my flesh as I shiver in the circle of Hades’ warmth, regaining control of my fingertips rather slowly.

“It’s been so long since I’ve entertained conversation. How about you tell me how you think I am connected to Atlantis.” There is dark glee tinged with hunger in the voice that resonates from Hecate’s body. It is a glee that is entirely not of her, even as it forms from inside her.

I’m not certain if Uranus hears it, but a low growl sounds in Hades’ chest. If I weren’t pressed against him, my ear to the thunder of his heart, I might not have heard it.

“Atlantis dimmed when Cronus castrated you.” Hades ignores the rumble of male rage that overpowers the lyrical sound of Hecate’s feminine voice. “Somehow, Atlantis felt the severing of your seed, and the power it bestowed to her.”

“My seed,” Uranus and Hecate say together. “Yes, it was the pathway in which Chaos fed her child.”

That makes no sense. God, I think my brain is still shivering.

Hades’ arms tighten around me, the warmth increasing until the flesh that touches him is on the cusp of burning. Still, I press closer, careful to keep an eye trained on Hecate and her floating self.

And, yes, she is floating. Her feet dangle in the air, the thin chains that hold tiny charms wound around her delicate ankles glittering with the kiss of frost.

“Why would your seed be the path of her power?” Hades demands, but there is an edge to his words. They are sharp with a blade of knowing he doesn’t want to accept.

Hecate laughs. The sound spills from her lips wrongly.

Nothing about this situation feels right. Nothing about the dark soul restrained in Hecate’s tiny body feels safe. It feels like we’re playing a deadly game, and we don’t have all the rules.

I shiver, and Hades pulls me closer.

I am warm now, the frost that had spidered over my skin has officially melted. With my eyes on Hecate, and the frost that inches along her skin, I can’t help but wonder if she is going to come out of this intact. Or if she’ll shatter into a million tiny shards of frozen Goddess.

We must hurry this along.

I want to step forward, closer to Hecate and the ruined king of Gods she chains inside. But I am bound by the circle of Hades’ arms and the warmth his embrace provides me. If I step outside this melted circle, my fate will surely be an icy one.

Pulling warm air into my aching lungs, I project my voice. “You consumed her—Chaos—didn’t you?” Hades stiffens behind me, even though I’m certain he’d been thinking exactly this. “You envied her power and stole it for yourself.”

Hecate’s pitch-black eyes snap to me. She—he—them— they had looked at me when I’d first entered this prison world for the dethroned king of Gods. I’d felt Uranus’ curiosity as his dark gaze moved over me then. But it had passed rather quickly, replaced by his hatred for Hades.

Now, however, his black gaze is not so quick to drift away.

It stays fixed on me, battling Hades’ warmth in an attempt to chill me. I keep my chin lifted, my eyes holding the black orbs that have entirely taken over Hecate’s eyes.

It must be because I am staring with such focus, but I don’t miss the way Hecate’s nostrils flare. Uranus is scenting the air in that disconcerting way I’ve come to know that Gods do. And even though Hecate’s eyes are entirely black, they somehow sharpen.

I feel the laser focus that lands on me, threatening to cut through me as Uranus’ words hiss from Hecate’s lips.

“Human?”

“My name is Persephone.”

Hecate stiffens in the moment before her floating body lowers to the whirling ground. I can’t make myself look down, not really. Because what we stand on appears to be a whole abyss of nothing. It is an endless swirl of ebony and cobalt and soulless grey that bleeds into a frosty pit that howls with the shriek of an everlasting cyclone of shrieking grief.

Still, Hecate’s floating form lowers to the place where we stand. There is a very visible moment of struggle where I think Hecate might be fighting Uranus inside her. And then a step is taken. Then another.

Behind me, Hades stiffens, but he does not retreat. He does not pull me away.

Inside my chest, my heart quickens in a haphazard pattern of fear. It shows itself only in the rise of new gooseflesh that pricks my skin.

Hecate’s form stops outside the circle of warmth, nostrils flaring as Uranus works to catch my scent. There is an arc of something like light in those pit-less black eyes, before Uranus’ voice speaks alongside Hecate’s again. “Demeter’s daughter.”

I say nothing. Neither does Hades.

I can’t begin to fathom what has the dethroned king of Gods speaking his truths, but he speaks them all the same.

“I took Aether first,” the dark rumble of Uranus’ voice has a chill slithering along my spine. Hades holds me tighter, crushing my back to his front. The black eyes flicker over us with curiosity as he speaks again. “I had a theory that it could be done. That one God could consume another, even though such a thing had yet to occur.” Hecate’s face twists into something truly hideous. “I’ve always liked to be first, and Aether and his light—” Hecate’s nose wrinkles. “Annoyed me.”

“Why?” I can’t help but ask.

“The sky was always meant to be my domain. He was always lighting it up with his light. Playing where he was not meant to play.”

I don’t ask where else Aether was meant to shine his light, if not in the sky. I simply prompt, “So you consumed him for his power?”

“Yes. His was not a power I desired—” A dark little laugh falls into the icy wind between us. “He was a test to see that it could be done.”

“The true goal was Chaos’ power?”

“The power to create from nothing?” Even through the pit-less black, greedy excitement spills. “Of course, it was the goal. With her power, I could create an entirely new universe where I alone would rule. A planet entirely my own.”

I don’t let myself respond to the horror of such a thing. I simply wait.

“Aether’s power was easy enough to harvest. It came to me naturally, you see. But Chaos was—” His head tips to the side. “She was difficult to defeat. She knew my intentions when I came for her. Her power could sense Aether within me—and she knew my intent for her. She fought me. I was weakened, but I overpowered her in the end. I swallowed her immortal soul and the power bound to it.” A low growl hums from the deep of Hecate as she begins to pace slowly before us. She reminds me of a caged animal. “But her power was not so easily used. It was, for lack of a better word, chaos.”

Bitterness radiates from him, and this world of torment in which he has been cast responds to that bitterness, feeding off it. The howl of the wind kicks up as the bite of the cold sinks its teeth deeper, as though aiming to battle the soothing heat of Hades’ warmth.

I stand tall and strong against it, even as fear quakes through me.

I am not fool enough to think myself powerful enough to best a Primordial God, even one stripped of his bodily form and contained within the confines of another. Even limbless, I have no doubt he could tear my flesh to shreds, my soul to ribbons.

Hecate tips her head to the side, eyeing me though those chilling black orbs before the blend of lyrical feminine and ruthless masculine sounds. “Such a brave, tiny human. I believe the glory for that is mine, child.”

Confusion is a bud that only grows into a full bloom as Uranus continues to speak. But behind me, Hades has stiffened. As though he is plucking the thorns from Uranus’ confusing words and somehow drawing sense of them.

“Let me tell you a little bedtime story, my child.” Uranus chuckles like the literal psychopath that he is. He is very possibly the first of his kind.

I straighten my shoulders as I lift my chin, not missing the shine of disembodied pride that flares in those pit-less windows to an ancient, treacherous soul.

Uranus’ chuckle dies, but the smile on Hecate’s face stretches wide. Too wide. “Ah, yes. A brave little human you are.” He takes a single step closer, Hecate’s body bumping into what can only be a wall of power in which I can’t see. But I feel relief in the tightening of her features, the anger or resentment ? that bleeds from her very pores as she settles there.

Uranus sets in to tell his tale. “The power of Chaos whirled inside me, wild and unchecked even as it was contained, for centuries. The sky I’d held such tight control over was, for a time, chaotic. Rain one day and snow another. Sun pushed through chilling winds that taunted the waves of the seas to play wild games. It took a great time to master the Chaos inside me enough that I could once again relearn my own gifts. To control the very thing I’d been created to possess, the thing that was of me. The sky. I knew, in the end, my efforts would be rewarded. I would craft a universe all my own in which I would design the Goddesses who would sire my spawn. We would create a new species, a greater species than the humans Prometheus loved so much.” Hecate’s lip curls on the word humans , but the black orbs somehow soften as they fall on me, as though the sight of me alone is altering his view on a species he obviously abhors, if just a little. “I wanted a better species, one with the intelligence to understand the Gods who ruled above them and offered appropriate sacrifice.”

“Appropriate sacrifice?”

“The blood of the innocence, of course.”

“Like virgins?”

“Little Goddess,” Hades’ rumble behind my ear is one of terrible warning.

Hecate’s brows furrow on her pale face touched by frost. Then Uranus laughs, as though I’ve said something hilarious. It is a bone-chilling sound. Horrible. It strokes my soul with a talon of despair. “Human sacrifice, child.”

I can’t even summon the ability to gasp. My ears ring, but I think I hear Hades curse softly at my back.

Uranus continues, “It’s a practice my pathetic grandson allowed to fall, and such an act eventually led to our waning power. The very reason the pathetic species that is the human race no longer worships the Gods, feeding us the blood we are owed for this world in which they pillage. Zeus demanded sacrifice for a time, like the rest of us. But while Zeus was weak enough to hear the pleas of mankind and accept the blood of the beasts they brought him, I suffered no such sympathy. I accepted nothing less than the finest boy on the stone of my altar.” Hecate’s chin lifts proud and tall. “It was Zeus’ allowance of his subjects to spill the blood of beasts that eventually led to the discontinuation of our worship. They feared us less and less as the centuries spanned, and then they forgot us entirely. We became myth, and even our wrath was seen through blind eyes.”

I have never known a revulsion quite like the one I feel now as I look upon Hecate as she harbors the wretched soul of a dethroned God.

I can’t help myself as I hiss, “They don’t even know your name.” Uranus stiffens. I continue even as Hades’ arms pulse around me in a warning against the words I let spill. “The people who live today, they feast on the stories of the Gods of Ancient Greece. We’re taught about the Gods in school. We know their names and stories, but never once before Hades, had I heard the name Uranus.” It’s not true, I’d heard his name in a passing, pointless kind of way. But this despicable God who sees merit in the consumption of sacred human life with the sole purpose to amass his own power…no. Just no.

“You are a forgotten thing of history. There is no more purpose to your existence, to your legend. You provide no meaning for life as it is today.”

“Your insolence, child,” Uranus warns as Hecate’s head shifts to an odd angle. “It is comical, considering.”

“Considering what ?”

“Of whom you come from.” The grin that stretches Hecate’s face is pure male aggression.

I square my shoulders even as Hades grows stone still behind me. “I am Persephone, born first of Demeter and Zeus. I know very well who I come from.”

Uranus laughs, as though I’ve told the joke of the centuries. It dies on a tail of eerie rumbling that rises from the deep soul restrained in Hecate’s chest. “My story, child, is not finished. In fact, it’s only just begun.”