Fallyn
Chapter sixty-eight
Hades.
I whipped my head to Ash, taking a step away from him, stricken. Panicked.
“Tell her your name is Ash!” I begged him, willing Hecate to be wrong.
A musical laugh penetrated my thoughts as I sidestepped out of his reach, closer to the door.
My eyes darted between Ash and Hecate in turn.
Ash turned his back to Hecate, eyes imploring me.
My mind raced as I backed up a step, putting distance between Ash and me. And another.
Ash’s penetrating gaze filled my vision even as the world slipped away from me. Even as Hecate’s voice naming him Hades resounded in my head, over and over, louder each time.
All the times I’d cursed Hades. All the times I’d thought Ash was something other.
His skeletal face, the one he’d said was his true form.
That he was simply Hades-blessed. The strength of his magic I’d chalked up to him being more recently blessed in his ancestry. It was Hades’ true form all along.
“Fallyn, please.” I didn’t hear him, just seeing his lips move. “You have nothing to fear from me. I swore that to you and I meant every word.”
Hecate rose an eyebrow, her gaze flitting from Ash to me, her expression unreadable.
Not angry. Exasperated perhaps. “You honestly didn’t tell her the truth of your identity, and you still expect her to believe in you now?
” Hecate taunted before turning to me with what could almost resemble sympathy.
“No harm will befall you from him while you’re in my domain.
This is my word as a goddess, Persephone. ”
“Persephone?” I croaked, shock invading my every thought.
This time, Ash looked confused at my name, a look that Hecate caught with a glance.
I hardly noticed. These new realities spiraling, coalescing in my mind.
I tried rejecting this information, but the weighted truth of it was there in Hecate’s eyes, and in Ash’s.
It was there in the fact that my magic made no sense. I was supposed to be magicless, as mother was. Hephaestus’s blessing had ended with my father. We’d thought magic from mother’s lineage had skipped generations to attach itself to me. I’d even thought it a curse when I was small.
How fucking ironic, I thought as I glanced at my ink touched hand.
Ash looked tormented, his eyes widening.
I’d never seen him look at me this way. In reverence, in fear.
Utterly devastated. My choice to come closer was taken from me with a flourish of Hecate’s hand defied gravity and space.
There was a twist of reality, of time, a strange pulling sensation, and suddenly I was standing directly before the mirror.
“Yes, Persephone. You are the goddess of spring, and I think on some level, you already know this to be true. Think of every time you’ve bended nature to your will, every time you’ve felt the rush of springtime flood its magic through you. Have you never wondered why that is?” Hecate explained.
I could barely keep up. Shock held my tongue, held me still as I took in her words.
“In another lifetime, you and Hades were cursed, banished to the moral realm, your bodies and souls to be revived for all eternity, or at least until the Morningstar remembered he had need of you,” Hecate continued. “And your curse is as dreadful as they come.”
My mind spun with the weight of Hecate’s words. Surely, I must have been hallucinating. Perhaps the curse touch had spread to my mind, altering my sense of reality. Or perhaps my subconscious had grown tired of the male in my nightmares and decided to invent a new terror instead.
Hecate shifted her gaze to Ash. “A general of the new god, Lilith as she calls herself, cursed you on the Morningstar’s behalf, as punishment for hiding from him.
For choosing the Underworld. Cursed you to kill her in every lifetime you’d share, to be reborn for all eternity with no recollection of your previous lives. ”
To kill me in every lifetime?
“My nightmares…” I didn’t mean to say the words.
I backed away from Ash. No, not Ash—Hades.
Tears ran down my cheeks, unchecked. I had started to trust him.
To care about him. I’d even—my mind replayed our time together, slowing down on our moments of intimacy, of our truly connecting.
When I saw his true face. When he’d saved me.
When I’d been beneath him in Greylark’s Rest. Hate mixed with grief was a dangerous concoction, burning hot and painfully in my chest. Hades himself looked stricken, looking between me and his hands, as if looking for my blood on them.
Every flare of familiarity I’d built with him was because he’d been the male from my nightmares, the one who violently brought me to my demise countless times.
I’d thought him my savior, not my murderer.
He opened his mouth to speak but it was Hecate who beat him to it. “Press your head to the mirror, child.”
Numbly and on shaky legs, I complied. The goddess of magic’s lips were freezing as they connected with my brow.
“Yes,” Hecate confirmed my greatest fear in the calmest of voices.
“In all of your dreams that haunt you, Hades is the one that hunts you. Your nightmares are your only remaining memories of the curse. You remember each of your deaths.”
The chalice on the altar behind us in view of the mirror suddenly smoked, both Ash and I whirling to see.
“Drink this elixir,” Hecate instructed. “It will slowly restore your memories. His will return quickly, because he’s an exiled god, but yours…
You are reincarnated into a mortal body.
Yours will return slowly, and over time.
But be warned, it often shows us the memories with the most emotional significance. ”
What a nice way to say I’d relive countless of my own deaths at the hands of the male I’d loved.
While I drowned in my thoughts in a vain attempt to understand them, Hades didn’t hesitate to drink what Hecate offered, gulping two large swallows before slamming the chalice down on the altar again.
A beat. Silence. For one more moment, nothing moved, but then he tensed, staggering, gripping his head, mouth open in a silent scream.
I could see the exact moment he saw his memories return, his eyes going wide as saucers, and the look of revulsion darkening them like shadows of death.
He stared aghast at his hands, as if wondering if they would ever come clean of my blood.
“I remember you.” His words were a garish, open wound. The exposed agony like that of bone beneath blood and flesh, but besides the gutting pain, there also lay a crushing sense of vulnerability I’d not previously seen in him.
“Persephone—”
The reverence with which he said my name was in direct contrast to my own returning memory.
Just one, but it was all I needed to know.
The faceless male who haunted my every step since before I could remember, the one who’d claimed my life in so many ways that left me bereft of breath every single night, the one who had carved my heart from my chest and crushed it, was Ash.
Not Ash, I reminded myself once again with grinding teeth and a flash of betrayal.
My ankle twisted on a rogue grinning skull as I stepped back, and something else clattered against the damp stone as I took another step to increase the distance between us.
“Stay back!” I warned, my hand going to my dagger again, tears streaming down my face at last.
“No.” Hades’ face was a grimace at my lament.
Hecate’s expression in the mirror remained carefully neutral as her attention flicked back and forth, witnessing the heartbreak unfolding before her.
“Persephone I—” His words cut off as I retreated further away from him, his face falling so far, he must have hit the depths of Tartarus. “—I swore I’d never be your nightmare.”
“My name is Fallyn!” I shouted, not willing to take ownership of the name belonging to the goddess of spring.
Even as some of my memories churned beneath the surface of conscious thought where that was my name.
Pomegranates and flowers, skulls and flames, and love beyond what words and weights could measure bubbled and stirred only just out of reach.
The chalice lay before me, an effervescent purple liquid bubbling inside.
It smelled like gardenias, and home. But not the home I remembered, Este Valnor.
Somewhere I hadn’t known yet deeply missed.
Scents I knew I’d have a name for once I drank this potion.
I snuck a look at Ash, who looked torn. He took a step towards me, freezing as I retreated.
“And it doesn’t look like you’ll have much choice in whether or not you keep your oath.
” My words were a lash, and I bared my teeth as I watched them land, resulting in his flinch.
I, Fallyn Ravenshade of Este Valnor, made the god of the dead flinch.
“I am indeed Hades, God of the Dead,” he solemnly declared when he found his voice again.
“Rightful ruler of the Underworld. On my honor as a god, this will not be your fate again.” The air trembled in his wake with the weight of his words, but I refused to look at him, even if I could have seen through my tears.
When the ink touch reached our hearts, when the curse triggered, I knew he’d be spelled to murder me. I remembered.
Hades’ expression fell into something dark, something grave, something chilling as he turned to Hecate, where she stood impassively waiting for us to remember her. “What must I do?”
“There is no breaking this curse. Not with magic from me.” Hecate’s words deflated me, fractured me. It was everything I could do not to fall to my knees. Hades reached for me, but a flourish of my blade reminded him to stay put.
“So, there’s nothing we can do?” My whisper echoed in my ears as the gravity of fate weighed down my very soul.
I could feel the Fates laughing at me. At us.
I couldn’t look at Ash—Hades. I just couldn’t do it.
After this, perhaps I’d try to put as much distance between myself and him as possible.
The thought cleaved my chest in half, leaving me raw and blistered inside.
When had I gotten so attached to him that my soul ached at the thought of leaving?
“I never said that. It’s possible the Rite of Libero could help,” she mused.
“But I can’t say with certainty. You were cursed by the new god’s magic, so I’m not sure how much effect our magic will have.
Witches born into the mortal realm can harness all forms of magic.
Mine,” Hecate looked between us, “and the filthy magic that infests it, like the Morningstar’s.
I cannot channel it, but they can. Perhaps the magic of this plane could make a difference, having been steeped in the magic of the old gods and the new.
Perhaps you’re in the perfect realm to break it. ”
“Libero,” Hades mused. “Freewill.”
“Yes,” Hecate affirmed the translation. “It’s possible that it will allow you to resist the call of the curse and avoid killing, though I don’t know the cost of such a rite.
” She looked over at me, quiet sympathy resting in her eyes.
“Drink from the chalice. It won’t restore all your memories, but it should restore a lot of them over time. ”
“What payment would you ask?” I deadpanned. Goddesses didn’t help mortals without a reason, but the one before me shook her head.
“We were friends in another lifetime, Persephone. Eons back for you, but I remember it well. Consider this an act of friendship. Drink,” Hecate commanded.
Ash watched me intently as I gripped the chalice with shaking hands, drinking the foul liquid down.
“You’re for all intents and purposes mortal.
This elixir will help you shed that mortality, and bring back your gifts as a goddess as well. ”
I gaped. “I’ll be immortal?”
“You will be once the curse is broken.” Hecate’s voice carried with it a warning again. Once the curse broke, I’d be restored as a goddess.
“Then that is our next step,” Ash said firmly, glowering into the ether.
“The Fates have no idea who they’re playing with.
” I thought I’d seen Ash angry previously.
When he’d torn apart those men for touching me.
But this was the look of someone about to start a warpath and not stop until he conquered whatever had begun the rampage.
“The Fates are not who you should be angry at. The Morningstar is. Turn your might towards him and you stand a chance.” Hecate’s voice was fading.
She turned to me once more. “Goodbye, Persephone. Hades. It cannot be overstated that I’m glad to see you well.
” A fractured sob left me, and Hecate looked despondent. “Persephone, I’m so sorry.”
One moment she was in the mirror, and in the space of time it took for me to blink, she and the flames were gone, leaving us staring at the cobweb-addled room for a heartbeat before the whole space disappeared into a bright, white light.
“Fallyn!” I heard Hades’ voice from far away, like calling to me from the other side of a pool of water. Gravity halted, the light dimmed, the room stretched before fading from view entirely.