Chapter seventeen Hades
Chapter seventeen
Hades
Lightning flashed overhead, highlighting the matted blood on the side of the Morningstar’s head. Thunder deafened the region, pairing with blackened skies, the only sound that rumbled Zeus’s wrath. The ground trembled in the wake of his steps, but it was Demeter whose wrath tightened my chest.
If Zeus’s anger were a tempest, then Demeter’s was the coldest day in winter. Still. Frigid. Lethal. Winds stormed around her in violent gusts with the oncoming storm in the backdrop. Her feet levitated off the ground, her eyes flaring green in her rage.
“You dare put your hands on my daughter?” Her rage was punctuated by another deafening beat of thunder. “You forget your place, new god.” She spat his title like the farce that it was, poison dripping from her words.
The new god spat, a wad of blood plopping on the ground between them.
“You who squander her very existence. Her potential. She’s never even seen Olympus, let alone seen what she’s capable of.
” The Morningstar sneered at Demeter as he rose to his feet, the very picture of defiance.
I snarled, as if Persephone’s potential were the issue at hand.
His hands roaming her body, smothering her cries for help emerged in my mind.
The line he would have crossed had I not been there, and he wouldn’t even acknowledge it.
“If anyone has forgotten their place, suffice to say it is not me.”
“Silence!” Zeus’s voice boomed loud enough the ground beneath my feet shook with fear, and the air thickened with tension.
I had seen my friend like this before, when his lightning crackled and foxtrotted at his fingertips.
The space between us and the new god braced for impact, and the hair on my arms stood on end.
The calamity I saw in the King of the God’s eyes was nothing compared to what he would unleash on the Morningstar.
I faded into the shadows, knowing the King of the Gods and his vengeful previous wife, had a disturbing end for the Morningstar indeed.
Demeter’s grin was sick, something that even I feared.
As much as I wanted to revel in his screams, Persephone needed someone, and she’d been alone long enough.
My smile wasn’t of joy, but vengeance. Vengeance that lanced through me like the crack of a whip, painful and insistent when I saw that sweet goddess curled up on her side hugging herself as she sobbed on the cobblestone ground.
Blooms with long, vicious thorns sprouted around her like a shield, offering a glimpse of the silently crying goddess through an impenetrable wall, a threat to stab anyone who got too close.
The shadows I’d given her to hide her weren’t warranted, I was glad to see, but with what she’d been through, there was no layer of safety that felt too much.
I’d only been gone a moment—the span of a few simple heartbeats—but seeing her I know I was gone far too long.
I never should have left her, but I find it difficult to fully regret knowing I had delivered the new god at last to his demise.
An agonized scream fractured the air, stilling her in her thorny cage.
The Morningstar would suffer for putting his hands on Zeus’s daughter. He deserved it. And worse.
It’s been so long since a god truly perished.
Had gone into the abyss. The only way a god could enter the Underworld without my invitation was through the true death.
My snarl loosened to a manic grin as I realized what his punishment would be.
That I would be the one to dispense it. And perhaps Persephone herself, should she wish to do so.
I might even exact a bit of my own brand of vengeance for all the souls he’d stolen from me, and he’d just given me every reason.
The abyss would serve him right. He came into the pantheon in chaos, and he would cease to exist in silence. Cease to have ever existed, erased from history and memory alike.
I do love balance.
I knelt as close to Persephone as the spiny thorns would allow, a few grazing my skin. I glanced in awe, watching as blood bloomed and welled, like a bud all its own. So sharp I didn’t even feel the bite of pain until the wound was seconds old.
“Persephone,” I crooned, keeping my voice low. The practiced one I reserved for the more tender of shades, the most terrified who didn’t know they were dead. “He’s gone. Zeus and Demeter are dealing with him.”
If she heard me, she didn’t respond. Her eyes were glazed, unfocused. All I wanted, all I ached to do, was pull her into my arms, arm her with the shadows so that nothing could harm her again.
It’s justice I wanted for her. Someone that innocent, that kind, deserved justice. Deserved peace. I was only offering her that.
Even as the thought tasted bitter as I shoved it away.
“Little shadow, come into the light.” I tried once more, braving the thorns to try to reach her. They embedded in my skin, the stinging bite forcing my advance to stop just before I could reach her. “You’re safe. I will keep you safe. Let me in, Persephone.”
“Safe?” Her voice was a welcome sound, even if it were cold and detached. “You were right, Hades. And so was mother. Nowhere is safe.” The bitter laugh that tumbled from her lips made my lungs ache to claw their way from my chest. “Not even here in the home I’ve wanted for so long.”
The longing on her face was something I understood. The loneliness. She wanted a home, something no deity could find in the mortal realm. To belong. To be safe. My shriveled heart squeezed, ignoring the echoes clanging for attention in my chest.
“Hold that thought.” Summoning my bident, I didn’t think twice about it. The black steel of my signature weapon, the thing that controlled my shadows, the Underworld itself, appeared in my hands. And without another thought, I split it apart.
The space around us crackled and pulsed violently as my bident and its shadow separated, and I held one in each hand, relishing the thrum of power. “Let the thorns come down. I have something that will keep you safe. Even from me, no matter what realm you’re in.”
The first genuine reaction from her. Her narrowed eyes focused on the bident and then back to me. “Even from you?”
I nodded. “From everyone. Me, the King of the Gods himself, the Morningstar, anyone. Nobody can harm you unless you allow it, I swear it.”
Her eyes narrowed into slits, hunting for my deception. “Show me.”
Persephone
Looking at him, I didn’t see malice, but that didn’t stop the warning thrumming loudly through my body.
The way my muscles tensed against his request. There was no lie in his eyes when he held the shadow bident to me, just on the other side of my thorns—the very thorns that lengthened into his skin, yet he didn’t retreat.
Even as they drew blood, even as he flinched, he didn’t back away.
He held my gaze steady with a patience I’d never seen from anyone before.
“I’m not going anywhere, little shadow, until you realize I won’t harm you.”
I deadpanned, “What happened to ‘nobody is safe, not even you?’”
“I don’t mind being proven wrong on occasion.” He winked at me. I stared at him, unblinking. “He should have listened to you when you said no, and I’ll personally see to his agony in the Underworld. Choice is a right, not a privilege, and that will be a lesson he won’t soon forget.”
“You can do that?” I asked after several long moments.
“I can and I will. Demeter and Zeus are currently punishing him in this lifetime, but it’ll be my honor to punish him in the next.”
Two things happened in the span of seconds: my thorns retreated from whence they came, and I grabbed hold of the shadow bident. Hades’ smile wasn’t kind nor sweet. It was victorious. Proud. It was the dark kind of smile you give when you see justice at hand, even when it’s ugly.
“There she is." He whispered to me, "Welcome back, little shadow.”
My mother found Hades and I sitting together in a comfortable silence.
He was distant, respectful, and didn’t push me.
He didn’t balk when I wrapped thorns around myself; he let me hold the shadow bident.
He reminded me of a guard dog, sitting protectively next to me, eying the source of every sound with a quiet rage that could decimate a mortal city in a blink.
He didn’t jump when I heard a noise behind me and the bident in my hands flew between the noise and me.
It was hard to look defeated when splattered with the blood of a vanquished immortal god, but Mother did. Her eyes slid between us, to the bident, and narrowed on us both in turn, first on Hades with anger, and then on me with disappointment.
She couldn’t force the bident out of my hands fast enough. She couldn’t get me home fast enough. Couldn’t tuck me into bed fast enough. Though she dutifully cared for me, the strain on our relationship under the weight of her disappointment made my eyes water.
Anger would have gutted me less.