Chapter Thirty-Eight
Persephone
Taking my first solitary steps outside of my rooms felt like the first steps on a long march to the guillotine.
The first steps to accepting my fate here.
To accepting mother’s and father’s too. I could only map the exterior from my window so much, logging important things like when the portal area was the most empty throughout the day and the general schedule of the specters that labored here.
But eventually my curiosity won out over my spite, an impressive feat to be sure.
Four whole days went by as I explored House Hades, and not a word, not even a sighting of its master.
Or Hecate. My first glimpse of him was a chance encounter when I was strolling the domed corridors.
I could glimpse him from my place on the third-floor balcony, overlooking him sitting stiffly on his throne with his bident absorbing the light surrounding him, making him look steeped in darkness.
I tried to catch his eye, but he just looked through me before giving me a taste of his cold dismissal. My temper flared.
So that’s how it was going to be, was it?
Hades forcibly brought me to the Underworld apparently to leave me here to rot. Even my thoughts were a razor’s edge these days.
Audenth was only free to socialize during the evening hours when the light between clouds had dimmed and faded, leaving me to my own devices.
The way nymphs and specters had greeted me before, with an almost predatory interest, they ignored my presence completely, at least until my back was turned.
None would speak to me directly, but the hushed whispers sounded off the moment I left any room.
More often than not, I found myself alone, prodding along with Cerberus trotting by my side to where gardens should have grown near the rear lawn in sight of the green glow of the Styx.
I often found myself staring in a wistful daze at the very spot the underworld spat me out, flat on my backside.
I glowered. Even if I knew how to open a portal, my magic evaded me.
The trellis of brittle, dead ivy had once ascended the black stone walls from what could have been flower beds, given the correct tending.
Though try as I might, not even a trickle of my magic erupted from my palms. Even as I knelt, burying my hands into the gravelly soil, I couldn’t connect with it. I couldn’t grow it.
I was effectively trapped. I went from one kind of cage to another.
My head fell low.
I thought I’d been lonely before, but looking out into death only to see its entire realm closing in on you does wonders for your perspective.
Cerberus’s left head nudged my hand with a wet nose and a soft whine, greedy for scratches behind the ears. Mid snarled at me in warning as I moved to comply, though I noticed he never made a move to bite me.
“Why, Mid,” I mock scolded him as Left fell prey to the siren song of my long nails along the base of his ears, “are you all bark? Are you a big, blustery boy?”
Two tongues lolled out in time with a happy tail wag. Mid shook himself, glaring disdainfully at me with a canine eye roll before begrudgingly laying down at my feet. It was wan, but I couldn’t help my smile.
The Styx ebbed and flowed, its silence not entirely unpleasant.
There was something funny about House Hades, and for once, Cerberus didn’t shadow my every step as I explored.
Its dark architecture had a strange, almost addictive allure.
The specters that occasionally wandered the halls were terrifying even with them ignoring me, the ever-present mist unnerving.
It was painfully easy to mistake its winding halls for a labyrinth, but there was also a strange calm that I couldn’t understand.
Like everything in the world above that was fake had been washed away and the Underworld was what remained of it—raw, real, and unfiltered.
Peaceful. It was in the unhurried way everyone moved, as though death had erased their ability to feel urgency.
With so many rooms, nooks, and crannies to discover, I found myself actually smiling when meandering down the stone archways.
I lingered in the windows overlooking the misty waters of the Styx, even as I eyed the boat, even as my heart twisted in my chest for the souls crossing. How long had some of them been dead?
Were some evil? Sent to Tartarus? Maybe some had been so kind they went straight to Elysian Fields. It was strange to think all of those, and other possibilities, awaited their eternal fates on that boat.
Stranger still was that I’d begun to think of that boat as a ride towards possibility rather than finality or sentencing. At least for those not stuck in stasis.
Still, the other river, the one I could glimpse from the high-arched windows wreathed in old black stone, the river of Forgetting called to me. Like an energy twisting on the edge of my mind, whirling, whispering….
I turned the corner of the hall, clamoring to the window to seek a better view of the strange river. Air left my body with a whoosh as I slammed so abruptly into another body. Apologies dribbled from the other being’s mouth in a torrent until we glimpsed one another.
That nymph from my first day here. Minthe. The one who despised me. Her eyes narrowed in recognition. Disdain dripped between us, coated in tension.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t see you,” I said, hoping to offer an olive branch as she righted herself. “Are you alright?”
“It’s you.” Her scorn hadn’t lessened in the days I’d been here. If anything, she looked even more heated than before. Her sultry pout twisted into a sneer, “Hades’ shiny new toy.”
“I object to that. I’m nobody’s toy, but I’m certainly not his.” I made a show of examining my nails closely before crossing my arms. I refused to be intimidated by a being throwing a tantrum. “Maybe it’ll make you happy to know I’ve not seen him since I got here.”
“I have.” Her lips curled contemptuously. She twirled a lock of her hair, feigning innocence. “I see him most nights, in case you were thinking of looking for him then.”
The insinuation was as clear as it was irritating, which I suppose was the point.
I held my hands up, slightly in appeasement, slightly in impatient exasperation.
Maybe it was the boredom, or the restlessness in my bones, or my bitterness, but I couldn’t help the sly look I gave her, just to watch her blood boil.
“Then it sounds like you have no need to be threatened by me.”
“Threatened by you? Me?” She laughed again, the sound ricocheting off the halls.
“You think you’re so special because you’re a goddess,” she seethed, stepping closer to me.
Too close. My temper flared. I didn’t back down, refusing to give her even an inch despite her face being now only a breath away.
She was taller than me, and I suppose that made her disillusioned about her strength compared to mine.
“You think you’re the first pretty flower that’s turned his head?
You haven’t seen him because he’s already bored of you. ”
“I may be a flower, Minthe, just know that this flower has thorns and you’re getting dangerously close to being stuck by them.” Big words for someone without magic or any form of protection. I didn’t even have a weapon.
Minthe’s cadence lowered dramatically. Dangerously. “Did you just threaten me?”
I shrugged, not breaking eye contact. I offered a dry smile. “No more than you did.”
“Notice how there are no flowers here?” Minthe turned to gesture to where gardens should be, but nothing grew.
I could see no ivy cascading down the stone in another realm that allowed life.
No greenery, no shrubs lining the courtyards, no flowers brightening doorways or window boxes.
“Flowers die here, Persephone.” She enunciated each syllable of my name, spitting each one out like an insult. “Maybe you’ll be next.”
I didn’t have time to think before her fist came up to collide with my cheek.
My head snapped back from the force, her disdainful smile widening with glee.
I narrowed my eyes at her, a rebuttal already barreling to meet her.
My fist met her face hard enough that my hand crumpled beneath the weight of it and I had to force myself not to shake the pain out in front of her.
This was a being who could not see weakness lest she exploit it.
So instead, even as my hand shrieked, I pumped my fist, ready for her next assault.
Something glinted in the firelight of the sconces on the walls, something that dragged my notice to her right hand.
A knife.
A rather cruel-looking one too, a curved blade perfect for slashing rather than stabbing. I froze. This had now gone far beyond minced words and flying fists. She meant to murder me.
My breath paused on in intake, my ribs refusing to allow the movement. If I die here, I’d never see mother again. Never see the sun. I’d never have a chance of leaving this place.
Minthe, in a smug show of her expertise, twirled the dagger in her hand. “Looks like I get to be the one to pick the pretty flower and throw it in the Phlegethon.”
The river of fire. The river of punishment. The ice crawling down my spine might’ve been the last chill I’d ever have if I didn’t figure out a way to disarm her. I plunged into the place within me where my magic dwelled, hoping, desperately fighting for my magic to come.
My magic stirred, but as predicted, did not rise to come to my aid.
A vicious swoop came at my midsection, partnered with a conniving laugh as I leapt backwards.
“What? All out of things to say, Persephone?” She slashed again, higher this time.
I ducked, this time the arc of the blade soared above my head.
Instinct tingled at the edge of my awareness, and I dove forward, tackling her to the ground.
A clatter of steel against stone signaled that I’d successfully bought myself time, a relief that was short-lived.
The dagger was out of her hands, but that didn’t mean out of reach.
We grappled, hair pulling, screaming, when at last I gained the upper hand.
Straddling her, I held her hands down on either side of her head, struggling to hold on as she thrashed against me.
“You yourself said you’re a thorn. On that we can agree.” She raged against me, “You’re a thorn in my side, and I shall pluck you from existence!”
“I’m not interested in fighting you,” I warned her.
I still didn’t have a weapon, though from the glinting to the side of my vision, the dagger waited to be picked up.
I don’t even know if I could do something with it even if it did become necessary, but my voice didn’t waver, a small mercy, “This is your last chance.”
“Before what?” she spat at me. “Your magic doesn’t work here, does it, spring goddess?
” I gave her nothing, but the victorious gleam in her eye said it all.
She knew. “And you carry no weapons.” Her voice changed, lapsing into a strange, unsettling singsong tone. “You’re going to die, thorny bitch.”
With a feat of strength and rage, she threw me off her, turning to lunge for the knife. I had no time to do anything other than try to dodge, but with the wall only a foot away on my right side and her converging on me quickly from the left, my options were minimal.
When her arm came down, Minthe’s entire body weight came with it. With an enraged cry rattling the air between us, my leg shot out, stomping her balance away. She screeched, plummeting to the ground, her control of her knife now in jeopardy.
Her knife found me anyway.