CHAPTER TEN
"A Soul's Plea"
In the perpetuity of the abyss of the Netherworld, Tao stood in the throne room awaiting a chance to talk to Hades. Her mind kept wandering back to the Elysian fields, and she let it, because there were worse things to think about and the warmth of the memory often brough her comfort.
She had been thinking carefully about Monica.
Not with the blind fury of the first hours after remembering, but with a cooler, more purposeful focus.
Monica was walking free. Monica was reaping the sweet fruits of her labor.
And somewhere in the living world, Taron and Priya were walking in circles trying to reach out to her.
"Tao," Hades called out, his dark eyes moving over her as she settled into her usual seat. His voice warm and milky, soothing her tense emotions.
"Death," Tao replied, sitting straight and folding her hands. "Can we talk about Monica?"
Anubis had been expecting her to bring the topic up again. Tao was like a dog with a bone, and he didn’t expect her or anyone in her situation for that matter, to just let it go.
"And what about her? She's alive, isn't she?" Anubis said, watching almost in pleasure at the fire he’d set ablaze in her eyes.
"Hades, she cannot be free. She cannot go on walking around carrying what she did like it cost her nothing."
"No one said anything about her freedom. Her penance will come in due time. Her path is woven with the tapestry of her own actions and she must walk every thread of it," He replied.
Tao hated the diplomatic cadence of that answer. "That sounds like a very elegant way of saying there is nothing to be done."
"It is a way of saying that fate is not slow," he replied. "It only appears that way because you sit on the outside."
Tao's face softened for a moment, the hard composure dropping just enough to show what was underneath.
"I only want justice," she said, her voice quieter now and carrying something raw in it.
"Monica took my life. Before I had gotten the chance to live.
She took my family's peace. This is more than revenge.
It is an end to the cycle of suffering she has set in motion, and someone has to stop it. "
A lone tear slid down her cheek. She let it go.
Down here she had stopped pretending those didn't happen.
Ever since that evening at Elysium, she had been feeing more in tune with her emotions.
She had brushed it off at first but as the days passed in the Netherworld, she could feel herself slowly changing.
She was more vulnerable, a tad bit kinder and considerably more social. She even surprised Hades with how much time she had been spending getting to know the creatures in his realm.
Hades looked at her for a long time. Then he closed the distance between them and pulled her gently to his chest, surprising Tao who eventually gave in, resting her head against the warmth of him.
"This path you wish to walk will shape your destiny as well as hers," Anubis said, his fingers moving through her curls. "You understand that."
She nodded.
"Then walk it carefully," he said. "And trust that justice, when it arrives, will be complete."
Tao looked up at him. Something in his expression told her that he had already made a decision about how much he was and was not going to intervene, and that the decision had been made in her favour.
The door opened. An unamused member of the council stood in the frame, taking in the scene with an expression of studied disapproval. Tao stepped back smoothly and flashed the council member her most polished public smile before walking out of the throne room without acknowledging them further.
Her mind was already moving through the possibilities, arranging and rearranging the pieces. She was going to find a way to make Monica pay. She did not yet know the shape of it, but she had always been better at this kind of thing than people expected, and death had not changed that.
?
"I see you are smiling," Sidius said from the corner of her room, which she had not checked upon entering.
"Some warning before the heart attack would be considerate," she said, pressing a hand to her chest.
"Tao," Sidius said, not unkindly, "you are already dead."
She stared at him for a moment and then sat on the edge of the bed, her smile returning despite itself.
She wouldn't call Sidius her friend, but she had found herself enjoying his company.
He was far less robotic since her initial arrival, and outside of being her guide, he had taken the time to answer much of her questions along with teaching her the ways of the creatures here.
"Come," Sidius said, pulling the door open.
"Where are we going?"
"Where is your spirit for adventure?" he said, already moving.
She followed. She had learned not to argue with Sidius about destinations.
The sound of water reached her first, faint and musical, before the smell arrived: fresh pine and jasmine together, a combination that had no earthly equivalent.
The corridor opened into a space she had not been brought to before, a river cutting through crystal formations that refracted its light into a thousand shifting colours, the sand along its bank a shifting marbling of colour and depth.
"What is this?" Tao asked, kneeling at the bank. Her fingers itched to feel the water.
"Pathana," Sidius replied.
"The study of scriptures?" she asked, frowning at the etymology.
"Something like that. But more accurately, a river of happiness. Of true memory." He sat beside her and let his own fingers drift in the water. "The moments that made you exactly who you are."
She looked into the water and the images came gently, without force, without the violence of the Lethe.
A slideshow of her truest self, the self that existed before she had crafted her public persona.
Herself and Priya at twelve, bent over the journal list, making each other laugh in between the solemn entries.
Her mother's hands braiding her hair. Her father reading to her when she was very small.
Taron at fifteen, showing her something on his phone, and both of them laughing until neither of them could breathe.
She watched these memories, feeling like they were being given back to her.
"How is this place hidden from the stories?" she asked.
Sidius smiled, his eyes going somewhere distant.
"Humans have a powerful instinct for making the beautiful into the threatening.
Hell became nine circles of torture in the telling.
The real treasures of this realm became lost beneath the stories people needed to tell about it.
Fear is a more compelling narrative than beauty. " He paused.
"No one would believe in a beautiful place that is simply away from the ones you love."
Tao thought about that for a while, watching the light move in the water.
"Is there a torture chamber?" she asked.
"What is hell without one?" Sidius replied, closing his eyes in the river's warmth.
Tao smiled. She reached forward and let her fingers trail through the water, feeling calm as the harsh emotions from before drifted away.