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

Chapter 30

Chapter

Thirty

P ersephone

“Why is he here?” I ask from my seat high on the stone lookout of a pale white mountain that borders the colder parts of Tartarus. The chilling wind of the white mountains that sprout from the Grove of Persephone, blows down to collide with the prickly heat that radiates off the burning River Phlegethon which borders Tartarus, crafting a storm of vicious weather that taunts the Elm of False Dreams, where Thanatos has explained Addison’s—Adonis’—soul currently resides.

Thinking of him as Adonis feels wrong, even though I know it’s right. He is Adonis, even if I know him as Addison.

“When a soul enters Souls Landing and they either drink from the Acheron or enter the Acheron, either way, they pass first through the House of Cerberus, where the truly evil or truly pure are plucked. The evil are dragged by the jaws of Cerberus into The Pit, while the truly pure are granted passage through the Blessed Mountains to the Isle of the Blessed. All the rest continue along the Acheron, whether in the river or along it. They are stopped again at the House of Judgement, where they are judged by the Crown of Souls.” There is tension in Thanatos’ face as he pulls in breath, his eyes cast out over the vast lands of the Underworld. “After judgement has been passed, those worthy of direct passage to Asphodel City or Elysian Fields will be carried across the Marsh by Charon, provided they carry passage. Those without passage will either wait at the banks of the Marsh, or they will ride the Styx. The Styx will release them as per the judgement cast by the Crown of Souls.”

I look beyond Thanatos to where Minthe sits on his other side. She’s brought her legs up so her thighs are pressed to her chest, and her ankles are crossed. She’s hugging her legs as she peers over her knees to the land far below, as though searching for the soul we both know.

“You’re saying the Crown of Souls judged him worthy of The Elm of False Dreams?”

Minthe slides her pretty green eyes to me. The sadness I see there is infectious. The prick of it steals my next breath.

“The River Styx first spit him into the River Cocytus,” Minthe explains. “He spent a few weeks in the Vale of Mourning.”

“Why?”

She tears her eyes from mine to look back down at the Elm of False Dreams. She points a long, green painted nail down the steep path carved into the White Mountains. “I think you should ask him. He’s there.”

My heart kicks in my chest, but I stand. Nerves needle inside me, threatening to expel the breakfast Maya served this morning. By a miracle, I keep it down as I begin the descent down the mountain. After a time, I look back to find I’m alone.

Thanatos is no longer where I left him, as though he’s vanished into thin air. But Minthe is still sitting with her ankles crossed, her eyes holding mine. She says nothing at all, and yet I understand that I am to do this alone.

With nothing for it, I turn around to continue my downward climb. By the time I’ve found myself at the bottom, I am both cold and hot. My skin is covered in a sheen of sweat and my heart thunders with exertion. The white mountain isn’t covered in snow, but it seems to radiate a kind of cold I’d expect from a frozen, snowy mountain. It’s a dizzying combination to then be met by the hot heat from the red river which spits little bubbles filled with the echoes of the tormented into this treacherous land.

The Elm of False Dreams feels nothing like the Grove of Persephone, which borders it. The Grove radiates a feeling of soothing healing. A place of quiet thoughts and gentle reflections. This land is something other.

Trees dot a spread of rolling green, and there is beauty here, but it’s a harrowing kind of beauty that makes me think of how I might feel if I were walking through a haunted forest. A swirl of hot and cold air commands the long-limbed branches to dance, casting ghostly shadows.

I continue to walk, deeper and deeper into the forest of lost dreams. The leaves stroke and whisper in the wind to the composition of an eerie lullaby. It’s an opus of misery. A masterpiece of traumatic ends and dreams just out of reach.

I keep my head cast down so as not to look too long at the seductive allure of the leaves that whisper shards of a promise never intended to be .

Thanatos told me not to touch the leaves, lest I be lost to the forest. He warned me against the large elm in the heart of them all, with her weeping limbs a dark seduction of lost promises. He’d claimed her call would be the sweetest of them all. And the repercussions the greatest.

When I’d asked what the point of such a place as the Elm of Lost Dreams was, Thanatos had simply said, “A soul who clings to the dreams of the life lived, is a soul who cannot move forward with their life in the after . The lost dreams will fester and ooze, tainting the soul beyond healing. The point of the Elm is to force the soul to face those dreams as exactly that. Dreams of a past life. It will whisper to them of their particular dream, and it is the soul who must resist. The soul who must not pluck the leaf. Only then will it become a place to shed what was lost, to grieve, and move beyond .”

I can’t help but wonder what dream it is that Addison is struggling to relinquish now. I can’t help but wonder why the Styx had pushed him into the River Cocytus, also known as the Wailing River, or why he’d been thrust onto the sorrowful shores of the Vale of Mourning.

Why hadn’t his soul been granted passage to Asphodel City, where I felt he belonged after all the pain he’d endured in his earthly existence? After the sacrifice he made for me…

I feel such guilt for the life he lost—and the life I continue to hold even though I can never return to it.

I feel such loss.

A faint mumbling catches my attention, and I lift my head to see a woman I don’t recognize pacing under a limb of an elm whose leaves quiver as though they know she’s close to touching them. To grazing her fingertips over the dreams she’ll never be able to catch.

When she lifts her head, her face is streaked with tears that have dried and fallen and dried again. I wonder how long she has been here, pacing under the whispering leaves. When her hand drifts to her belly, her palm presses into the fabric of her gown as though to hold some part of her in.

I take her in then, really take her in. And I see.

Horror strikes my heart and roots me to the earth beneath my feet. The gown she wears is nothing fancy. In fact, it’s threadbare and simple and old .

It reminds me of something I’ve seen in television shows set in the early eighteen hundreds. Only, she was not the wealthy, but the poor. One who worked her fingers to the bone time and again. One who suffered.

She screams then, jolting me violently from my moment of realization.

Face streaked with tears; she reaches high to pluck one of the whispering leaves.

“No!” I cry out, but I’m not certain she hears me through the call of her lost dreams.

As soon as the leaf is torn from its place on the tree, I hear it all clearly. The prayer for a child. The excitement of a high, lovely laugh in celebration of a new life. Lullabies and dreams whispered to a child in the womb. And lastly the agony that brings the woman to her knees. A birth, excruciating and filled with fear. Only, it’s not a birth. The child never cries…and the woman dies.

My hands cover my cry as the woman falls to the twisted roots of a knotted land beneath her feet. Fingers twist at the leaf, tearing it to shreds that rain down on the gnarled earth and she begins to crawl away from the elm which has taken her most precious dream and crafted it into the pains she suffered in her life.

I start toward her, but I’m caught by something firm and warm. A hand around my wrist. Inside my chest, my aching heart lurches with quick fear that stills when I see the man who the hand belongs to.

Addison.

Adonis.

“She moves back and forth between the Vale of Mourning and The Elm of Lost Dreams. I’ve seen her pull at least six different leaves since I’ve been here. The result is always the same.”

“Oh, Addison.” I can’t help myself as I dive into his arms, holding him tightly. Emotion balloons inside me. Feelings too big, too complex, flood me. “I’m so sorry.”

Slowly, his hands come around me. He is stiff in my arms. “Are you real, Persephone?”

It’s my turn to turn stiff. Am I real?

Pulling back to gaze up into his handsome face, all beautiful and golden and…filled with uncertainty and fear ?

“Of course, I am real.” I step from the circle of his arms. “Why would you think I’m not real?”

“I pulled a leaf,” he admits brokenly. “And I saw you. I loved you. And I lost you to him.”

I am struck by the realization of his lost dream. The realization that his dream is me.

For a moment, I can’t think. Can’t speak.

Turns out I don’t have to speak. Addison has more to say. “I remember everything now. All the lives I lived, searching for you. Loving you.” The shake of his head is sad. “You were so deep under my skin, from the very first life I lived.”

“Addison…”

“Adonis,” he corrects. “My name is Adonis, Persephone.”

“Adonis.” I swallow hard, forcing the name to my lips. It sounds in a breath between us that he savours with eyes that flutter closed, as though he is tasting the sound.

“I spent my time in the Vale of Mourning. I’ve accepted that the love I felt for you was never meant to be. I’ve seen that you were always tied to him—that I never had a chance. I pulled a leaf, and I lost you all over again. I suffered the hurt and returned to the Vale of Mourning. I made it farther into the Forest of Lost Dreams. I walked past the Elm of Lost Dreams without reaching for a single whispering leaf. And yet you are here.”

He looks so lost. So uncertain. So defeated in this moment.

He peers down into his empty palms, as though he might see a quivering leaf there. My heart weeps. I can’t help myself as I pull his hand between mine, holding tight.

“Adonis, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry you wasted your lives loving me when I couldn’t love you back. Not the way you deserved.”

He blinks, his face changing as he falls to his knees before me. His hands come to my waist, and he captures me against him. He buries his face into my belly even as I push my palms into his shoulders. Through the thin gauze of my deep red gown, the color reminiscent to the spilled juice of a pomegranate seed, I feel the warmth of his tears.

“I don’t care that you can’t love me like I love you. I need you. One last time.” He looks up at me with the bluest eyes. They are the color of sorrow, and I swear they spear my heart like an arrow dipped in agony. “Please.”

Before I can answer, the wind of this terrible land picks up. The wispy fabric of my gown wraps around him, twisting him in the ribbons of a deep red that now makes me think of the blood that oozes from the open wound that is his heart.

I realize now that Hades was right when he told me I can’t come here. That I can’t see Adonis.

I realize the mistake I’ve made in this journey I never should have taken. He is a healing soul, his wounds gaping wide and oozing.

I am salt in that wound.

“I’m so sorry.” I’m shoving at him now, fighting against the hands that claw at me. Hot tears threaten to fall in sync with his as I cry out, “Stop. Adonis, stop.”

The gentle need in his touch transforms into a violent hunger. The thin gauze of my gown tears in his hungry grip as a wildness overtakes his eyes. “I’ll pay in the Vale of Mourning if I can have just this one last time with you, Persephone. I love you. I need you. Just one more time.” He’s babbling now, fighting against the hands I try to free myself with. “You’re not real, I know. I know you’re not real. Not real. Not real.”

He's shaking with the same unhinged sorrow that touched the woman before him. The woman he’d warned me of. The woman lost to the dreams that never could be in life. The dreams that haunt her now in death. Dreams she must battle and accept as a thing never meant to be before she can find eternal life in this place.

True fear needles my spine when Adonis hooks me around the ankles, and I fall to my back. Even the blades of grass whisper a song of lost dreams, taunting.

I scream, but it’s only one more in a sea of screams that now sound loud in the surrounding forest. They mingle with the echoes of torment that ride the waves of burst bubbles from the boiling river in which this treacherous land is bordered.

Terror, truer than any other I’ve ever felt spreads like fire inside my body. Adonis lowers his body between my kicking legs, desperate for a closeness I refuse to give him.

“Why do you fight me? This is my dream,” he whimpers. “My last dream.”

Oh, God, he doesn’t know this is real. He can’t feel the difference between dream and reality.

He’s going to hurt me.

I do the only thing I can do.

I pray to my God. I pray to my soul mate.

Hades, God, please help me.

A flash of green moves overhead. Cold skin cuffs my wrists, and I am pulled violently from beneath my mad-with-grief friend.

Against the being who grabs me, I stumble to my feet. An arm wraps around my waist, adorned in twisting vines of green. Minthe, thank God.

I sob.

I am able to pull in a deep breath of scalding air as the leaves overhead quiver with a renewed violence, as though they can taste the soul on the brink of relapse.

He stares at me there on his knees, his hands cupped together as though in a broken prayer. He’s staring at me, his face slack as though he’s coming to the realization that perhaps I never was real. That now, like every time before, I am an apparition, no different from this love that consumed him in past lives as it consumes him now.

“Don’t go,” Adonis pleads to the whispering elms who dance for him hungrily now. “Don’t let her go.”

I shriek as he leaps to his feet, but he doesn’t try to chase me. Instead, his hand arcs high and he rips a leaf from the tree.

Whatever he sees behind the eyes that glass over brings first bliss and then terrible grief to his face. I hear the moans and sighs and whispered words of love that are met with only silence and loss as the elm feasts.

I hear his pleas, his devastation, and I swear I hear the cracking of a porcelain heart crafted under the wrathful pressure of a vengeful Goddess as Adonis falls to the forest floor.

“Come, Persephone,” Minthe calls as she drags me away, back through the forest toward the White Mountain.

I am unable to stop the tears that fall as I finally lose sight of my broken friend. And as I climb, I cry tears of lost love. For I had loved Adonis, I just couldn’t love him in the way he needed. And the tricks of my mother weaved threads of pain throughout so much more than simply me and Hades, alone.

For Adonis, for Hades, and for myself, I vow to destroy the Goddess who schemed to give me life.