Chapter Eighty-One
Ash
“Fallyn!” My hands wound around her as her mind fled her body, seeking refuge that would no doubt elude her in here.
Her body was hot, sweat accumulating on her brow.
I ignored the way my breathing labored, the way my chest tightened against it, as I stood, pulling her into my arms. “We’re getting out of here,” I vowed. “Together.”
The air grew heavier with each determined step, turning staler, sourer, like that of the oldest mortal tombs. Endless mist surrounded me, eroding things like direction, time, and space.
“I’ve got you, little shadow. Don’t you let go. Fight with me.” Her brow pitched in response, her head lolled on my shoulder, but she remained silent.
The exiled king.
My feet didn’t stop their steady march forward even as my head pivoted searching for the source of the voice but failing to find anything but more wisps of mist.
This place will be your tomb.
King of nothing.
I bristled, wondering if they were right. I looked to Fallyn—Persephone—her usually flawless ivory skin was turning ashy with each passing step. Her shut eyes fluttered, her brows coming together in a collision of pain and fear. I snarled into the mist, “Who are you?”
You know who we are. Are you not acutely familiar with the damned?
I pursed my lips and upped my pace. The souls of those that succumbed to the mist. Persephone’s fate if I failed to get her out in time. My fate.
You can ignore us all you want, but prey cannot ignore the predator for long.
“You’re damned,” I snarled. I could see vague shapes in the mist now.
Not quite humanoid, but close. There was an army of them, all watching.
Waiting for me to falter. Their power comes from the fear.
I almost laughed. “You can do nothing but instill fear. I am Hades, King of the Underworld, and I do not fear you.”
The hand under Persephone’s knees rotated so to summon the shadow bident to me.
It hovered next to Persephone, a small protection that caused my breathing to labor further, turning the damned’s shrieks to rattled laughter.
The soul’s magic flowed over my skin, tentatively for now, but once my magic gave way, they’d delve into the depths of my soul, violently ripping it from me.
It is not just fear of us that sustains us, oh mighty king. Are you not afraid of your beloved’s fate?
My stomach dropped. My face stayed neutral, my feet kept moving, but I could hear the glee in their voices. The triumph, as if our fates were already decided.
How long can you hold us off, King of Nothing?
Long enough. That was all I could hope for. Persephone was burning up in my arms. Until I got her out of this mist, I feared she may combust.
She would not die here.
She’s been through too much for this to be her fate.
Fuck the Fates’ design, I’d redesign her fate.
I forged ahead, pouring my magic into keeping the all too eager souls at bay as they struggled to reach us.
I could see them now. Hideous skeletal forms, bleeding apparitions, emaciated corpses, blackened, charred to the bone.
Blackened. Burned.
I looked to Persephone as a moan left her. She wasn’t just burning. Her humanity was burning away. As a god, my fate in here would be different, but her? She was technically mortal. If her humanity burned away, what would be left?
With a heightened sense of urgency, I broke into as much of a sprint as I could manage, my chest tightening as it searched for air. I begged my body to stay strong, linger just long enough to get her out of here, regardless of what became of me.
“I can feel your magic,” I sneered at the nearest ghostly corpse, its eyes long empty and filled with dust and decay.
“If you’re looking for my soul, you must know she holds it.
She owns every part of me, and I will protect her until the moment I no longer draw breath.
And if I’m to join you in this waking nightmare, I’ll spend eternity fighting you off.
You’ll never lay a hand on her.” I growled. “She’s mine.”
I received no answer other than their magic continue to rake over me, weakening me. A plight for which I had no answer for either. This was a game of inevitability. One that I was running out of time to win.
I scanned the horizon, looking for any sign we were almost through. Mountains ahead, a new smell in the air, anything, but if there were something, it refused to show itself.
I cradled Persephone close as my knees met the ground in a soundless thud. I had failed. We were both going to die in here.
“Persephone,” I sobbed into her neck, “I’m so sorry.
I’ve failed you.” I turned my attention to anyone alive who may be within earshot.
I yelled into the void one final plea. “I don’t care what becomes of me.
My life became hers the day she walked into my life.
All of me is hers. Just save her. If you’re there, save her.
” My eyes drifted closed, and we fell together.
I was gone before the ground rushed to meet us.
Fallyn
A massive stone throne sat beneath a caved-in ceiling of the pantheon, exposing it to the stormy sky above.
Torn scraps of fabric snagged on sharp bits of pottery or smeared in dried blood and adhered to the ruined, cracked stone below.
I recognized it, from a time eons before this one.
This was once Olympus. A male sat atop it with silver hair like starlight, reflecting in the light of his white robe that billowed around him.
Flames erupted around the crumbling structure, an obelisk falling with a horrendous crash behind him.
His chest rattled with laughter at the wailing that resulted, yanking on a chain. Another groan this time, from the female forced to kneel at his feet. A female chained at his side. My heart thundered in my chest in recognition. Mother.
Not the human mother I knew in my life as Fallyn. This was my mother in Olympus. The mother I’d only recently remembered, the mother who’d raised me in the mortal realm to keep me from the danger of the Olympians. Demeter.
Bloody welts had worn well into her skin by the spiked chain that hung around her neck like a perpetual noose she couldn’t remove. I knew this magic. It was barbaric. Every time she tried, it mercilessly dug further into her skin, leaving her despondent and hopeless at his feet.
The male whose name I now recognized. A male who once instilled nothing but fear, now had rage humming in my veins, screaming for release.
Though he sat on Zeus’s throne, I remembered him for who he was.
The one who waged war against the Underworld.
The one who sought to destroy those who still prayed to them and gave them power and respite.
The Morningstar.
He turned his head, a sharply worded order bringing someone, a female swathed in black, up the dais to kneel before him.
“Rise.” He rumbled by way of greeting. “You say you know where she is, at last?” he asked her with rapt attention. The female nodded, her wild hair spilling over her shoulder like an ink spill. Recognition simmered along my thoughts. I knew her. I scrounged for her name.
Lilith. The one who cursed me. Cursed Hades.
Recognition bled into wrath as I shrieked my rage, but no sound came from me.
My limbs didn’t move, though I thrashed against the magic that bound me.
This was no normal nightmare. It was evident in the sharpness of every detail but it left me to wonder, if not a nightmare, what was this?
A premonition? A warning?
Someone’s memory?
“Yes, my lord." She gave a subdued grin, "There’s no hiding now.”
“This time, don’t lose her. The mortal realm is vast, thanks to this bitch.” He tugged the chain, cruelly digging the barbs into my mother’s neck, eliciting a weak wail from her. “She’s impossible to search for.”
“You’ll never have her,” Demeter spat in her combination of fury and smugness. “She’s so much stronger, so much smarter, than you give her credit for. She will keep eluding you, even without my aid.”
Her aid? What did mother do?
“Keep talking like that, and your head is liable to fall off. Wouldn’t want that, would we, Demeter?”
I screamed as the one who called himself a god tightened her barbed noose once again.
As Demeter cringed inwardly, unable to even scream.
The light I remembered in her eyes, the first spark of a storm, was dulled, breaking my heart.
“Leave her alone!” I thrashed against the magic that held me still and silent, but nothing budged.
I was helpless to watch the scene unfold.
“Don’t you fucking touch my daughter, you snake!” Demeter’s voice warbled, not from fear, but from exhaustion. Yet even in her weakened state, the ground gave a slight tremor.
“Oh Demeter, I do love when you fight back, but if you keep up this pace, there won’t be enough of you to do so.” His voice was sickly sweet, oozing with false concern that made me nauseous. And then the scene blackened, pieces falling away like petals on the wind.
“No!” I tried to scream, anything to cling to this vision, “Please!”
But the world faded into the void, leaving me deftly, finally, perfectly alone in the shadows with not even a lack of consciousness or awareness to give me respite.