Chapter 33
Chapter
Thirty-Three
P ersephone
It’s been three days—or nights—since I visited Adonis under the Elm of Lost Dreams, where the forest of haunting whispers taunt dreams that can never come to pass. It’s been three rise and falls of the moons since Hades worked me up and denied me.
He denied himself, too. And it’s obvious it’s been agony for us both.
It’s also obvious we’re both painfully stubborn.
I’ve lain next to Hades for three nights, my body ready to burst with need, and I’ve done nothing about it.
This morning, under the fall of the shower, each pebble of water that connected with my skin bordered on physical pain. Every inch of me is oversensitive and over stimulated by everything that touches me. Everything that is not Hades.
I am no less sensitive where I sit on the beach, watching blue waves roll.
I swear, I can feel every pebble of sand through the thin material of my dress. I am captivated by the color of the foam that bubbles over the deep midnight blue with every rolling wave. In the distance, the Isle of the Blessed glows with a halo of bioluminescence. It ignites the trees that dot the shore with shadows that dance.
Unlike Asphodel City, which is loud with life, the Isle of the Blessed hums with a quiet that is born of a demand for peace.
I can’t say I’m surprised when the dark water splits, and a crown of satiny white hair appears. Poseidon’s shocking blue eyes land on me as though he knew exactly where he would find me. As though he came looking.
I call as he swims closer, “Do you visit the shores of the Underworld every night?”
“No.”
“The two times I’ve come, you have, too.” I dip my toes deeper into the sand, reveling in the cool wash of the sea against my burning skin that hungers for a man who might be more stubborn than me.
I sense I’m close to breaking. To be fair, he’s had a lot more practice in holding out.
Poseidon stands in shallow water, and I’m relieved to see he’s already fixed the sea skirt thing he wears so as not to force me to blush over his complete nakedness. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still blushing. The man—God—is massive and mostly naked. Dark skin stretches taut over impossibly hard muscle, born from an age of pushing through rough waters, surely.
He tips his eyes to my feet in the water. “I know when you’re in the sea, Persephone.”
Grains of sand spill through my toes as I lift my feet and lower them again. “You can feel when I enter the water?”
“I can.”
“How?” I’m dumbfounded. The magnitude of the sea—the vastness. It shouldn’t be possible.
“Atlantis can feel you. I feel through Atlantis,” he explains as though it is so simple.
“Atlantis still searches for me?” I ask, thinking of his earlier explanation when he’d said Atlantis had recognized the power of Chaos inside me when I’d entered the waters of her oceans.
“Atlantis will always be aware of you.”
I sit with that for a moment as Poseidon settles beside me. I sigh as the waves stretch to caress my skin. “I wish I could visit her.”
I can feel Poseidon’s eyes on me. The heat that spills from the shock of iridescent blue. “I could try to take you.”
My eyes snap to his. “I thought—isn’t it at the bottom of the sea?”
“You possess the powers of Chaos.”
I shake my head. “Not like that. I can’t control the power inside me.”
Poseidon laughs low and smooth. The sound is warm, like the setting of the golden sun into the calm stretch of glassy blue water. “I wasn’t surprised to learn that Uranus had consumed Chaos for her powers.” I can’t take my eyes off him as he stares out over the glittering sea that blends into the dark of the night that stretches so far into the distance, I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. “I also wasn’t surprised that he was never able to harness her powers. To use those powers at will. To manipulate them.”
“Why?”
His eyes slide once again to mine. “Do you understand what Chaos is?”
“She’s the Mother Goddess.”
“She is. But most importantly, she is Chaos. And Chaos is wild and untamed. She is an eruption of land that bleeds power and feeling, sentient. She is an explosion of power so great and wonderful, from it births Gods and Goddesses. She is the great beyond and the fire that lights it. She is everything, and the power of everything can never be harnessed or controlled. She works inside you, because you don’t cage her power. You don’t try to twist and manipulate her power into the thing you need it to be, but instead, you allow her power to create through you.”
He considers for a moment. “With you, she birthed life into the Underworld, crafting a realm in which possesses the power to defeat Olympus, and the evil that occupies the living realm. The evil spread by Gods who have lived far too long, unchecked.”
I’ve never heard an explanation quite like this. I’m not sure how I feel about it. Because I’d been considered a giftless goddess for so long in my first life. I recall Demeter alluding to it in hazy memories, and Uranus had confirmed as much. My power hadn’t come into play until far later in my life.
And still that power hadn’t been my own, but that of Chaos.
I can’t help but feel disappointed in myself.
Poseidon murmurs, “You don’t look pleased.”
I sigh and rearrange my face. “It’s silly.”
“You can talk to me, Persephone.” He shifts closer, so close that his arm brushes against mine. “I have always cared deeply for you. My feelings have not changed in all the time you were lost to us.”
Discomfort slithers cooly inside me. “You said we never—that I didn’t—um—with you.”
His smile is tinged with sadness. “No, we didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“There was a time you invited,” he admits to my horror. “And even though I hungered to accept, I could feel your hope for rejection. I loved you too much to sacrifice the friendship I had with you for a night. To add to the hurt you felt with Hades. I didn’t understand it then, but now I know it is the connection I have to Chaos through Atlantis—the connection I have to you through them—that gave me that insight.”
I press my palms to my burning cheeks. “I was a terrible person.”
“You were tragically manipulated, twisted beyond a point of healing.”
“I should have been stronger.”
“How can you say that?” Poseidon demands. “You were only ever exposed to Demeter. She sheltered you against the rest of the world. She crafted you into exactly the thing she needed to defeat Hades and steal the Crown of Souls for herself. You were a pawn, brainwashed from the very beginning. One would argue that you didn’t have a chance at all. That it was us who failed you, for we failed to see just how ruinous her hold over you was.”
I admit, “I feel let down by my obvious lack of power. Both then and now.”
Surprise paints Poseidon’s face. “I would argue you are the most powerful of all the Gods and Goddesses.”
“Not me. Chaos.”
“Chaos is you now, Persephone.”
I shake my head, but my admission sounds on a whisper. “She’s trapped inside me, Poseidon.”
“Persephone.” He commands my eyes to his. “Chaos has sought sanctuary inside you.”
I don’t know why, but emotion swells inside me. It’s too big to contain, and spills over in hot tears that streak my face, surely glowing bright under the light of the nearly full moons.
The realization that I’ve been in the Underworld for an entire moon cycle is sobering. For nearly a month, the living realm—my parents—have believed me dead.
As the tears continue to fall, Poseidon pulls me into his side with an arm around my shoulder. When his lips fall to the hair on the top of my head, I no longer feel discomfort in any form. He is my friend.
“You will come into your power, my friend,” he assures kindly.
I sniffle. “I’m a living human in a realm of Gods and the dead.”
“Weirder things have happened.”
I snort, pulling back to look into his face. “Like what?”
“I don’t know, but I’m certain they have.”
I shove against his chest. “You’re just trying to make me feel better.”
He asks seriously, “Is it working?”
I consider and nod. “A little, yeah.”
“Good.” He peers out to the sea again, untangling his body from mine before offering me his hand. “Come swimming with me?”
Wariness floods my belly. “I don’t know.”
“Not to Atlantis. Just,” he pulls in breath. “Swimming.”
My eyes drop to his powerful legs. Legs that will turn into a deadly fin.
I stutter, “I—I’m not the best s—swimmer.”
“I would never let you drown.”
My eyes scan the midnight blue sea. “I’m still alive, Poseidon.”
He chuckles. “I am aware, Persephone.”
“So, you know that I’m vulnerable to the bends, right?”
His face changes. Scores of pain flash in the lines of tension. He dips his chin to his chest. Quietly, he says, “I know all about decompression sickness in humans.”
It comes to me then. His pained confession that he’d tried desperately to bring with him a companion into the sea. That each one had died.
I stand, touching his arm. “I’m sorry. I—I forgot.”
He offers me a pained smile that really is more of a grimace than anything. “I would forgive you anything.”
I blush, dip my head to sever contact with his intense eyes, and breathe, “All right. Let’s swim.”
Poseidon doesn’t allow me a moment to change my mind. One moment my feet are in the sand and the next I’m swept up in strong arms. A peal of laughter spills from my lips as Poseidon races into the waves.
When he dives us into the deep, I hold my breath. The light of the nearly full twin moons spills over the glassy water to beam into the surface, igniting the quick transformation from man into merman. His tailfin is enormous and silver with just the faintest hue of blue. It has to be at least triple the length of his legs, thick, and frighteningly powerful.
As I kick my legs in the water to propel myself to the surface, I feel the powerful swipe of his tailfin beneath my feet. The impossible power in that single swipe is jarring, and I crest the surface with a harsh inhale of breath.
Poseidon is already there. His hair, unaffected by the water with some merman magic, is dry and shining silver white under the moons. He is beautiful, while I must look like a drowned kitten.
Scowling at him, I turn onto my back to semi-float. “How doesn’t your hair get wet?”
“It does.” My nose wrinkles in reply and he adds, “It simply dries exceptionally fast. As does my body. It allows me to move in and out of the water with little detection.”
“Well, that’s just not fair.”
“Such is life.”
I harrumph but continue my relaxing wade in the water. Poseidon joins me, his torso floating entirely effortlessly in the water. When my bottom begins to sink, exhaustion beginning to set in, I feel a flicker of fear as my eyes drift to the very far away shore.
How did we get so far out to sea?
The thought is met with a tiny burst of panic, and that panic is met with a firm pressure under my bottom.
My eyes shoot to Poseidon, who is still lounging in the water. But now, his tailfin is positioned under my bottom, holding me up as though I’m sitting on a floaty.
“Easy.”
“How are you just lying there? You’re hardly moving.”
He slides his eyes to me. “Are you honestly asking me, God of the Sea, a merman, how I’m able to swim?”
I blush. “Silly question.”
“Mmm.”
I peer over the side into a bottomless blue that bleeds into black, and shiver. “Aren’t you afraid of being eaten by something—you know—bigger than you?”
He arches a brow. “Are you trying to beat your silly question with another, sillier question?”
“No.”
“There is nothing bigger than me in the sea, Persephone.”
“Surely that’s—I mean—there’s whales.” I whisper in horror, “Orcas.”
He studies me. “You don’t like Orcas?”
“They’re mean.”
“They are the human equivalent of life in the sea.”
I shrug. “Explains why I’m not a fan, then.”
“They are highly intelligent.”
“And cruel.”
A smile twists his lips. “Are you afraid of orcas, Persephone?”
“Absolutely. I’ve seen what they do to penguins.”
Poseidon laughs, deep and low and deadly. “There is nothing an entire pod of Orcas could do to me. Or to you when you’re with me.”
I eye his tailfin, which, as impressive as it is, can’t possibly be enough to protect him from an entire pod. Maybe he swims faster?
His voice drops in pitch. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
“Well, I mean…” I shift on his tail. “You’re a merman, Poseidon.”
“I’m a God, Persephone. The God of the Seas to be specific.”
“I just don’t see how you can fight a whole pod of the most vicious creatures in the sea.”
“This is not my Gods’ Form,” he says, sounding almost offended.
I frown, because I’ve heard this term. Slowly, I say, “Demeter changed into—into a monster—um—bird.”
Poseidon nods, as though it’s no big thing. Though, it really is.
“Yes, her Gods’ Form is what modern legend calls a Harpy.”
I swallow hard. Surrounded by black water, I’m not sure if it’s a question I should ask—and yet I can’t help myself. “And yours is?”
Poseidon smiles, but there’s danger in it. “Have you heard of the Leviathan?”