Chapter seventy-nine
Persephone
Consciousness returned strangely. First in slow, uneven drips and then in a torrent of senses.
The quelling sounds of battle flickered—the roar of a lone, dying demon, Ares’s string of curses, lightning cleaving the sky.
Cerberus whined, torn between ripping demons apart that dared to get too close, and checking on me.
Even Mid, which made my heart twist. My beloved twisted himself into knots at my side, something I felt before my eyes even opened.
“Hades,” I smiled weakly, looking up at him. “I knew you’d catch me.”
“If you ever do that again, I’ll feed you to the Scylla,” he admonished me, though his hand whispering over my cheek said otherwise.
“Did we do it? Is the Underworld safe?”
A pulse ricocheted off every corner of the Underworld, as if all the ominous energy raged at us one final time before dissipating.
Like poison being withdrawn from a wound, the Morningstar’s presence, his influence, vanished.
He was nothing more than a discarded nightmare.
Smoke hung in the air, floating without a breeze.
The ground remained fractured beneath the gore.
The air hummed and sang with residual magic, like lightning trapped and warped.
Hecate had done it. She’d sealed the wards one final time. And this time, there was no corruption to dismantle them immediately.
Around us, all the gods were visibly shaken but alive. We survived. I sent a dizzy smile upwards at the God of the Dead.
Hades’ returned my smile, the weight of his relief sagging him forward around me. “For now, little shadow. Thanks to you.”
For an eternity, nobody spoke. Nobody moved.
We stood frozen together amidst the ocean of gore in shared fear laced in every breath.
Even the Styx was tinged red and black with the blood and ichor of the demons the Scylla laid waste to, bones and discarded limbs still bobbing on the surface, like morsels for later.
I heard nothing but the ringing in my ears distorting every thought.
The world came to a mirror-like stillness that was eerie even in the realm of the dead, as if the Underworld itself feared the silence left in the wake of the assault.
Slowly, almost hesitantly, sounds drifted back to us. Groans of the wounded, cries of the hopeless, the rattle of discarded armor all melding beneath the faint hiss of dying fires.
Ares released a wrath-fueled cry, slamming his axe at the nearest target, a door that swung uselessly on a single hinge.
The collision of his axe shattered what was left of it before biting deeply into the nearest wall, crudely embedding itself.
An entire wing of House Hades was just… gone.
Erased. Razed until only a mountain of rubble and ichor slicked stone remained.
And that was a triumph.
The barrier above shimmered where Hecate had begun reinforcing it, adding to the sealed and purified wards like a scab over a wound. Even as the light drained from her skin, making her paler, nearly mortal in appearance, she murmured her spells, ignoring the tremors of her hands.
When bones broke, it took time to knit them back together. Often the location of the break was reinforced by the body, making it stronger than it was previously, preventing the injury from reoccurring.
Somehow, I doubted this would be the case with the barrier.
I had cast out the corruption, but for how long?
There was no reason to think that the Morningstar wouldn’t just infect the wards again by whatever means he’d done before.
I swallowed thickly. We still lived on borrowed time.
Hades helped me to unsteady feet, a supportive arm around my waist should I sag.
My knees knocked together, but I remained upright.
I leaned into his warmth. His steadiness.
“He could have walked right in before Persephone purged the wards. Why didn’t he?
Why stay his hand when victory was in his grasp?
” Athena’s practiced calm finally broke through the battle haze.
Athena, for all her directness, was afraid.
What did you say when the most powerful beings in existence were rattled?
I saw it on each of their faces in turn. Fear—visceral and real.
Demeter snorted, looking to Athena snidely. “You can’t possibly be suggesting this was mercy.”
“We said it earlier. This began as a test. An amusement.” Ares snarled at the sky. “He mocked us and look how well it served him!”
“A test we nearly failed. And a test we will face again.” Hades agreed with Ares, staring intently at the sky, as if searching for an answer in the clouds.
“What was he waiting for? And one thing I don’t understand is how he corrupted the barrier.
” His fists shook with his exhaustion, his rage, and the feeling of inevitability.
“He has done the impossible, thwarted our every effort. We’ve managed to slow him down, but he’ll rattle our doors again.
” His head swung to Hecate, all lethal seriousness. “Any idea how long?”
Hecate paused, glancing up at the sky with narrowing, calculating eyes. “Weeks. Perhaps little more than a month if he reinfects the wards right now.”
Alarm sounded, rattling my spine, making tears prickle my eyes.
I’d given every ounce of my power to the wards, to dispel the rot. And all I had done was buy us a measly month?
Hades squeezed me, sensing the direction of my thoughts. “It’s better than we had. We can prepare.” Hades mused to all, but the words were directed at me. He straightened, turning to the King of the Gods. “Has anything strange happened in Olympus of late?”
Lightning flickered over Zeus, his eyes still blazing white, the tells of his fury.
Despite his white hair, Zeus had always looked youthful.
In every portrait of him, in every passing glimpse, I’d always admired that about him.
Somehow looking so wise and yet retaining his youth.
Right now, covered in the blood and ash of his victims, he looked haggard and aged.
“No. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t already march on Olympus. ”
“What was he looking for though? Our strength? Our readiness?” Athena murmured, more to herself than anyone else. “Was it a distraction for something else?”
Zeus growled at the insinuation.
It was Hades who answered, his mouth a grim line. “A test of who we are when darkness falls.”
There was a grave pause.
“And what did we show him today?” Athena asked.
Hades’ response was as devastating as the ground we stood on.
“We showed him we’re fallible.” A collective sigh, a deep breath before drowning.
“But his test gave us insight into his capabilities as well. He too has weaknesses.” Hades glanced down at me.
My breath left me at the fierce protectiveness I saw swirling in those gold-flecked onyx eyes.
“We study him as much as he studies us.”
“He’s a fast learner,” Athena mused.
“He studies not just us.” Hecate spoke at last, in a tone that gravitated all attention. Demanded it. “He studies the Underworld. What makes it bend… and what makes it break.”
“What does he even want? We gave him position as one of us. He had everything.” Zeus’s lament was haunting in its regret. Its sorrow.
“He doesn’t want to share,” Ares sneered.
“He has his two echo realms.” Hecate’s voice was a dark whisper winding between us all. “Temporary structures that long should have dissipated. What if he wants the Underworld as a permeant residence for Hell?”
A hush like that of a fresh grave swept over us all. Athena, ever the strategist, spoke with an uncharacteristic wavering in her voice.
“Two echo realms, two permanent realms. Which means Olympus is no safer than the Underworld.”
“He wants to know what must fall before he can rise,” Hades agreed, his expression darkening. The words landed like a prophecy. As if the Fates themselves had spoken.
Ares, Poseidon, and Athena didn’t say goodbye. They didn’t acknowledge us further as they disappeared, presumably back to Olympus.
Zeus summoned his magic to vanish within a storm of lightning.
The storm cleared. I blinked.
He was still there.
The confusion was as evident on his face as Hades’ smug amusement was on his. Zeus and Demeter both whirled on him angrily.
“Release us,” Demeter snarled.
“What do you want, brother?” Zeus’s voice thundered, not in volume but in weight. In reverberation.
Hades was only too happy to answer. “The Morningstar came here not just to gauge us, but to find Persephone.” He stepped up beside me protectively when all eyes slid to me.
Demeter stood rigid and cold, her icy composure chipping but not falling.
You could throw her in an inferno and she’d still be as frozen.
Zeus was the opposite, smoldering with barely harnessed fury.
Hecate watched from the sidelines, a silent witness.
“You both know why.” Hades’ words weren’t a question.
They were a command. “He didn’t come to conquer.
Not yet. But he had the opportunity and he was about to take it.
He came to see Persephone. And had she—your daughter—not intervened, Things would look very different right now. ”
“And he ensured he had a stage,” Hecate agreed with venom, stalking up beside us, wisps of her shadows notably absent. “And we were all his unaware audience.”
“Why?” I asked, my tone not solely angry but beseeching. My gaze turned to my mother, hot emotion restless beneath my skin. The call of the Lethe, the Morningstar’s words. What did they know? A flicker passed between the King of the Gods and my mother. Not ignorance.
Avoidance.
“A goddess of life demands attention.” Zeus dismissed us with a turn of his head before pinning Hades with a loaded expression. Not quite disdainful, but close. “It would seem those long bound to death have an obsession with such a magic.”