Chapter Eighty-Two
Fallyn
An incessant howling clawed me from the dark place that held my mind prisoner, clawing on my consciousness with the tenacity of a demon chasing injured prey.
“Little shadow.” The voice was achingly familiar and more tender than I’d ever before heard, breaking the hold the darkness had over me. Warmth enveloped my hand. “Come back to me, Persephone.”
“Are we dead?” I didn’t expect my question to be given voice.
My croak gave way to a cough, sending me into a cringe at the fire burning through my throat before my eyes blinked open to see those stunning starlight eyes under a mess of dark hair.
A real smile, albeit small, glowed in the dim of the room.
My voice dropped to a whisper as my awareness slowly filtered back to me. “Because I feel like we’re dead.”
“No.” His other hand smoothed the hair from my face, tucking it tenderly behind my ear. “We borrowed it for a while I think, but death didn’t claim us.” He turned away for a moment, his warmth vanishing with him, before reappearing with a cup.
“Where are we?”
Hades smiled, lightening my chest. “We made it. We’re on the other side of the mist.”
“Tell me that’s water.” I hated the rasp of my voice. When I coughed, it felt like the Morningstar’s Hell lived within my airways, but that first sip of water was like being in the desert for days and at last finding an oasis.
“Slow down before you make yourself sick.” His admonishment had no bite to it, not when he looked at me like that. Like his world began and ended with me.
Flickers of fractured memories bombarded me, sending my mind reeling.
These memories—they chased the breath from my lungs and the sense from my head.
There was only me, the onslaught of memories, and Hades’ hand anchoring me against the heartbreak and relief that welled and spilled down my cheeks.
First glances, chariot rides and Hades' whisper. All of it.
“Fallyn?” Hades’ voice was hesitant in a way I’d not heard before. Uncertain, lost. Vulnerable, as pieces of us littered the air between us, jagged and sharp.
“I remember it all,” I whispered, sitting up. My hands grasped at him, pulling him closer, needing him closer as my lips found his. “Hades, I remember everything and I’m so sorry.”
“Persephone.” His voice was the brush of darkness, soft and final. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
“Hades,” I whispered, cupping his face, memorizing every line and recommitting him to my memory. He was really here, really with me. The storm of emotion playing in his eyes was cataclysmic, echoing in my own soul. “I love you. I didn't do it on purpose, I swear I didn't know."
His kiss came so suddenly, the words hadn’t fully parted from my lips.
It was a collision born not of desperation, but of longing, sorrow, and joy brought together in rapture.
A kiss we had shared a thousand times, but this was different.
This was a reclaiming in the face of all that had sought to tear us apart.
“The Morningstar.” I wrenched away from him as my premonition returned to me. Now with my memories intact, I realized it was more than an illusion conjured from shadows and fear. The mist was part of Hecate. She was trying to warn us. “He’s destroying Olympus. My mother—” I choked on the words.
“Show me.” Hades’ forehead touched my own as his magic wrapped around us to see through my eyes.
I let him. I let him see everything I saw in the mist, even as his hands tightened around me protectively.
But this time, when Lilith appeared, I couldn’t help the intense brand of fear that made itself a home in my chest, tightening it like a noose.
The bone saw. The pain. How long it took before my consciousness fled with my life.
Nobody should have to bear that fate. No sooner had those images come unbidden to my mind did Hades’s growl turn to a snarl before he pulled me to him.
“I’ll fucking end her, Persephone.” His words were a vow, laced with pure, undiluted venom.
“I’ll make her suffer. She will know nothing but pain before her end, and I swear on all we both hold dear, I’ll break her body first, so she can’t run when I break her mind and soul. ”
I never expected violence to comfort me.
I guessed that was Hades’ influence, or maybe I just wasn’t as gentle and sweet as I once thought I was.
My time as Fallyn showed me the darkest side of mortality, and there was a bitterness there that I would never unlearn.
Perhaps that was what seethed within me, a lust for revenge that would only be satiated when Hades made good on his promise.
“I will fight beside you,” I whispered. Only once had I fought in a serious battle.
Demeter had me trained for combat, of course.
All the gods required training, by Zeus’s decree, and for the first time in my immortal life, I wanted to throw myself into it.
Because for what he did to my mother, for what he did to Olympus, and for what I could only imagine Lilith did to the Underworld, I’d have a hand in destroying them both. “We end them together.”
“We need this curse taken care of first.” Hades sighed. “But one thing doesn’t make sense. He hid you away here under the curse, and now he suddenly wants you. Why? Why now?”
She will keep eluding you, even without my aid .
“My mother.” I whispered, pieces falling into place. Too few still, but enough that a picture began to take shape. “She did something. I’m not sure what, but she said she’s helping me elude him. What if he put us here, but couldn’t find us after?”
“That’s why the king wanted you, despite your lack of eligibility.” Hades murmured. “The king may have been his mortal eyes and ears on this plane.”
The king had become the Morningstar’s pawn, his reach in this realm. Perhaps he was too busy, or unable, to come to the mortal realm himself. Hecate couldn’t either, I realized; she’d had to meet us halfway. Was it possible he couldn’t track us? Hades didn’t look convinced when I asked him.
A creak shattered our conversation, killing it into a hushed silence as we both looked warily to the black-clad mortal woman who now stood in the threshold of the room, firelight dancing behind her in a stone corridor.
“I’m glad to see you’re both awake.” Her tone was neither kind, nor unkind, as if she had no feelings for our plight whatsoever. And given the circumstances, and what little she knew about us, I couldn’t say I blamed her. “The High Matriarch Minerva is expecting you.”
The High Matriarch, the coven leader, awaited an audience with us.
I tried not to show my excitement, thinking it would have been difficult to accomplish, but here we were being waltzed to her.
I steeled myself for whatever direction this conversation went, but for the first time since I saw my hand turn black, I had hope.
With one last disdainful glare at the ink touch rising towards my shoulder, and another at Hades’ own matching one, I shifted my weight to rise.
Hades aided me like a mother hen, completely at odds with Ash, the male I’d met in the cave.
Ash was harsh, with cruel lines etched into the plains of his face.
Hades had those same features, but I couldn’t help but smile when I saw them soften for me.
His hand was firmly behind my shoulders, helping me to sit up.
“Can you stand?” he asked. Weakness still plagued my body, though my mind felt clearer than it had in recent memory. Even if my body weren’t ready for whatever came next, it wouldn’t matter. To break this curse, I would send myself beyond the breaking point if I had to.
“I’ll manage, love.” I fought through the shrouds of exhaustion clinging to me but could finally not hold me back any longer.
I forced my way to my shaky feet, and with a steadying breath that was as much for my frayed, vibrating nerves as it was to center my body, I turned to face our guest, Hades’ arm draped supportively around my waist.
“If you’re quite finished.” Her tone betrayed her irritation with us this time, though what we’d done to offend, I had no idea.
We followed her down several dark corridors, our heels striking the stone beneath our feet in gentle thuds.
Those we encountered watched us with unnerving, unblinking eyes, some baleful, some menacing.
Nonfriendly. Our guide, whose name was Viveth, not that she’d told us—we’d heard it murmured almost with sympathy from passersby.
I tried not to let her abruptness chafe against me.
Hades’ hand gave mine a squeeze, and a direct tug on my heartstrings.
Viveth led us outside through heavy black doors, where I got my first glimpse at the world beyond the mist. Cold was the first thing to catch my notice, bringing my hands up to rub my arms in hopes of staving off the chill of the wind.
The snowcapped mountains towered over us, and just on the other side of them was the sea if the salty smell were anything to go by.
Our feet left footprints in the light dusting of snow over the road.
My eyes wandered to the black brick buildings that made up the small, bustling city, my heart cracking down the center with how much it reminded me of Este Valnor, the black city that no longer stood.