Chapter eighty
Persephone
Hades all but banished Zeus and my mother after that. Mother called my name, tears in her eyes and a string of apologies on her lips, but I was deaf to them all.
Once they had finally departed, the Underworld returned to a strange, unsettled quiet. Not the calm peace of death as it should have been, but the bated breath prey held when a predator stalked nearby—a quiet that could turn explosive in an instant.
I found myself wandering, no destination in mind.
No smoke curled, marring the air, but the clouds that blanketed the sky were thicker tonight and no light filtered down.
The air no longer crackled as I moved, the power that had thrummed having dissipated.
My feet carried me along the Styx, its glittering green waters doing nothing to settle my mind now that I knew the Scylla may watch from just beneath those gentle waves.
I walked on, past all the halls of House Hades, hating that the nooks and crannies and ornate architecture that had only recently dropped my jaw in awe held no appeal, nothing to soothe the ache that threatened to break me apart.
It was salt on my wounds to see the level of disarray—dust mixing with blood on the floors, remnants of monster gore smearing everywhere.
I dared not even glance in the library. To think of the books desecrated and tumbled from their shelves might finally bring me to my knees.
I kept going until I reached the front lawn.
It was there, at last, amongst the growth that shouldn’t have been possible that my legs finally gave out. The burdens, the fear, the guilt, that raw horror of the last hours had my knees in the dirt and tears pouring from me.
I was left with this guilt that I had left Mother.
But she betrayed me.
Titan blood. I had the potential of Titan power. And she never told me. The truth pressed achingly against my ribs, impossible to ignore. Because had I known…
Honestly what would have been different? Would I have trained more? Been stronger? More ready? Would I have been safer if I knew?
Or, the thought felt heavy in my mind, ripe with a truth I didn’t want to acknowledge, would the world have been safer from me?
The real reason she wanted me away from Olympus.
From other gods. From Hades. Why she wanted me to join the maidenhood like herself and Artemis and be forever unpartnered.
She wanted assurance that the cycle of life and death could never be closed, with either Hades or the Morningstar.
No wonder he coveted me so badly, why he risked everything to acquire me.
Should he have me, he could use me, my power.
I didn’t even want to imagine what he had in mind to force my hand.
My thoughts went to Hades, knowing there was nothing I wouldn’t do to protect him.
It was never about petty, grasping ambition as I had thought. Not about revenge. Not about distance.
It wasn’t ever about her. It was me.
A shadow shifted behind me, quiet and patient.
“Did you know?” My throat burned. I didn’t know if I wanted the answer, or if I wanted to beat it out of him.
“No.” He hesitated a beat before coming closer, bringing with him his unique scent of smoke and musk and something sharp that was entirely him. “But all gods carry the power of Olympus in us. You just happen to have been gifted a bit extra.”
“A gift?” I scoffed, my head hanging low until I found a word that fit better. My Father's word for it, “A curse.”
“Only if you let it be.” His eyes narrowed, focused on me. “You have power, yes. But there’s nothing to say what you do with that power. That choice remains yours.”
A bitter smile. “You sound like Hecate.”
His knees hit the dirt next to me, drawing my awareness. “I take that as a compliment,” he said as he settled next to me. “She’s usually right. And she’s insufferable about it.”
A hollow smile, faint, brief but existent, tugged at my lips. It was no wonder they were such good friends. “What am I supposed to do?”
Hades loosed a heavy breath.
“Start by breathing.”
“Everything is different now,” I whispered.
This time, Hades shifted so he knelt before me, rather than next to me, brushing away a stray curl from my face.
“Yes, but who says it has to be doom and gloom? As the reigning expert on the subject, I can assure you that while yes, your power may change things, it doesn’t have to be a terrible thing. Do you want to use your power to harm others? Any wild urges to overthrow Olympus?”
I balked at him, eyes wide. “No, of course not!”
“Then what is it you’re struggling with, little shadow?” His hand touched mine, gentle, present. “Don’t shut me out.”
I huffed, despite myself. “That’s bold coming from you.”
My heart skipped at his quiet, lopsided grin, the one I knew nobody else saw. “I prefer to call it character growth.”
I didn't smile, but the dread that coiled my ribs abated enough to allow me a breath.
“Everything just feels so different.” I sighed at last, staring at my hands.
Putting voice to the disquiet of my mind felt so strange, so foreign.
There was so much to ponder, to process, I didn’t even know where to start.
I could feel the danger lurking in my thoughts, but I couldn’t find it.
Like a fire pressing ever closer to me that I could feel but not see.
“Like the realm shifted beneath me, and when I looked up, I was standing alone on the edge of everything. It’s colder, but I’m the only one who’s cold. ”
Hades’ hands warmed through my hands then, thawing them from a chill I hadn’t realized I’d been afflicted with. After a beat, one hand abandoned mine so it could tip my chin up to look at him. “Then allow me to stand there with you.”
My chest broke open then. Hades was my anchor, steadying and bracing.
His warmth grounded me, tethering me to the precipice I found myself standing over, but not hustling down.
This time the shifting wasn’t towards peril, it was away from it.
The grief, the tension, the sorrow, the guilt, I saw it all reflected in Hades’ eyes, a quiet understanding hanging in a single heartbeat.
It took four days to rid House Hades of the wounds that had been inflicted upon it.
The walls that had tumbled, rebuilt. The blood on the stone scrubbed away.
The scars had faded, but one only had to look up to see them still there.
The fear that still shadowed everyone’s gaze.
The way everyone jumped at the slightest sound.
A nymph dropped a book in the library and everyone leapt to their feet in terror.
Guilt haunted my every step, hollowing me slowly from the inside out.
Even my magic had deserted me. Ever since Hecate and I cleansed and sealed the wards, my magic responded to me no more, just like when I first arrived here.
I felt it, a churning tide of power just beneath my skin, but to my frustration, I couldn’t access it any more than I could access Tartarus.
During those four days, Hades didn’t sleep.
Didn’t eat. He and the judges sorted as many shades into their afterlives as possible until he all but collapsed from exhaustion, citing that the wards were still strong as ever in each afterlife.
A silver lining. A safe haven for every shade we could usher across the border.
Even across the Acheron had been warded off.
Charon, for the first time, did not bring new souls to this side of the banks.
He wandered listlessly, silently, through the halls, reminding me so much of when I first got here.
Hecate and I monitored the wards at every hour, even going in shifts so that the wards were under constant surveillance. Every waking moment, poured into watching the wards, feeling them, searching for even the slightest flicker of corruption.
None came.
Hades said the Underworld felt more settled, but my soul still rattled uncomfortably inside my body like an angry apparition raging within a haunted house.
Especially when I summoned my magic, nothing answered.
Like shouting inside an echoing, empty house, my magic didn’t respond.
If the Underworld had accepted me, why did my magic desert me?
Three more days passed, and the Underworld still shivered, though whether from trauma or fear, or warning, was beyond me.
I ached to calm it, if only for a moment.
I sat beneath the tree by the Styx with a grunting Cerberus happily rolling in the freshly grown grass, watching from a distance as Charon shipped the souls across, eerily and without sound.
It felt strange now to watch something so everyday, so normal, after all that had happened.
The Underworld trembled still. I lay my hand to the ground, letting my will, my intentions, be known to her.
“I won’t let you fall.” My vow was ironclad. I would protect this realm, my home, and all within it with my life. The realm didn’t stop, as if nothing could quell the fear in it.
The wards hummed beneath my fingers, a warmth pulsing through me down to my bones. Sturdy. Strong. Unyielding now.
It was only weeks ago they’d felt wan and within moments of breaking.
Only weeks ago, did Hecate and I cleanse and seal them.
She and I had touched them, assessed them thousands of times since then to the point of obsession, and each time I was surprised to see them holding.
My fingers whispered over the wards, constantly searching for any sign of the corruption, of the rot returning.
“One month,” I said softly, my hands tracing the warm light that protected us, unwilling to leave them.
The fear spiked every time I took my hands away, anxiety squeezing my ribs.
“It’s been a month, and nothing. No changes.
” Hecate’s hand covered mine, warmer than I’d anticipated, before roaming over the wards herself as if to confirm.
“You say this like it’s a bad thing, spring goddess,” Hecate commented. Her eyes flicked over the wards, reading what could not be read by any other being.
“After everything…” I paused in the wake of memory. Of the blood. Of Mother being injured. Of Hades fighting with everything he had. Innocent shades that lost their afterlife, and the fates that would await every shade here should these wards fail again. “How sure are we?”
“If the Underworld is breached again, House Hades will fall.” Every word Hecate spoke landed like the strike of a hammer to an anvil.
“The surrounding lands will be unmoored, but afloat. Adrift. Protected. Hades made sure of it.” I eyed the obsidian walls and wrought iron I loved so dearly.
The ground we stood on would be the final stand.
“So believe me when I say this: you saved us all. Every time I patched the wards, the rot came back within days. You purged them once, and the rot is gone. You worried that your potential is detrimental, but I think you used it to save the realm you now call home.” Hecate’s eyes fell to me, warmer than I’d ever seen them.
“You’ve truly risen from a refugee to the queen the Underworld deserves. ”
I blinked, a tight ball in my chest easing at her words.
Not undone, I suspected it would take many months of steadfastness from the wards before it would fully unknot itself, but I took my first deep breath in weeks.
Her stoic mask was in place, but there was a softness around her eyes.
Where they were normally pinched under the weight of a permanent furrow, a lightness existed. “Hecate—”
“If you get sentimental on me, we’ll both regret the words I just said,” she said stiffly. “Your seals are strong. Complete. There is absolutely nothing for the corruption to anchor itself to now.”
“Say it once more,” I asked, taking her hands against her will. She glared at me, and I smiled unflinchingly at her. “I need to hear it once more.”
“The Morningstar has a long memory,” Hecate mused her warning.
“He won’t stop. But we’ve bought ourselves time until he can come up with his next plan.
” She could roll her eyes all she wanted, but she hadn’t withdrawn her hands from mine.
It might have been my imagination, but I could have sworn she squeezed my hands in a rare show of affection.
“But yes, Persephone. Unwind yourself. There will be no battles in the immediate future.”
Relief like nothing I’d ever known swallowed me, leaving me slightly unsteady on my feet.