Chapter 29
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
Persephone
Pink Ribbons and Poison
Iwalked the streets of the city of the gods with my mother at my side. Demeter chattered nonstop, a ceaseless stream of commentary on every shop we passed, every distant god we glimpsed, every architectural detail she insisted I admire.
She wore a deep green gown that drank the light, silk shot through with silver thread. Her wheat-colored hair was arranged in an elaborate crown of braids, woven through with fresh blossoms that never wilted. She was the picture of a harvest goddess—abundant, fertile, radiant.
She’d dressed me in a confection of pink. Not a soft blush but a bright hue. The corset shoved my breasts up until they threatened to spill over the neckline with every breath. My waist was cinched so tight my lungs fought for air.
The gown was heavy; layers of silk, lace, and tulle adorned with pearls. My hair had been tortured into equally elaborate curls and braids, piled high and threaded with pink ribbons and sapphires. I looked like a pretty doll meant to be seen, not heard.
“This is worse than the Victorian student uniform from Reaper Academy,” I complained. “That, at least, allowed me to breathe.”
“Stop it,” Demeter said. “It’s time we put the past behind us for good.”
It was like I’d traveled back to the past and nothing had changed—Mother deciding everything. What I wore, where I went, who I spoke to, what I was permitted to say.
It was stifling.
She still saw me as the Persephone from eons ago—the maiden who delighted in shopping and parties and shimmering, shallow pleasures. Who cared for hats and gossip and the admiring glances of strangers.
I was not that na?ve, empty girl anymore.
Not after Hades.
Not after a hundred mortal lifetimes.
Not after being murdered over and over in different ways.
I was now a full goddess who had shed her mortal coil, raw power thrumming through my transformed veins. Yet the wounds I carried had not healed. They would not heal. Not unless—
My mind drifted to Hades. My tormentor and my rock. The one being in all creation who truly knew me. Who’d seen me at my worst and loved me anyway. The only anchor in my eternal storm.
Mother’s hand closed around my arm, her grip tight enough to bruise, dragging me back to the present.
“Persephone,” she said sharply. “Lose that distant look. Stay here with me.”
She hated when I retreated into my thoughts. Hated anything she could not control.
We turned a corner, passing shiny shopfronts that blurred together. I gathered my heavy skirts as we climbed a flight of marble stairs, each step a labor under the weight of silk and tulle.
Mom was trying, with determined force, to re-acclimate me to my old life. Now she guided me toward a hat shop, its window displaying impossibly elaborate creations—towers of feathers, glittering jewels, and silk blooms all piled into splendor.
Once, I’d adored this. My closets had overflowed with thousands of hats and shoes in every fashion, every color. I’d collected them to fill a silent void.
Now, all I could see was the hollow girl I had been. How I had needed those trinkets to plug the emptiness where meaning should have lived.
Around us, noise buzzed—a constant hum of whispers trailing our every step.
I ignored them. The stares that followed my every move through this gleaming city were a weight I had learned to carry. I had been absent for an eon, and now I had returned. The prodigal daughter. The lost goddess found.
The place felt alien. Foreign. Its splendor was a language I had forgotten how to speak.
“Mother, I don’t want any hats,” I said, turning on my heel before we reached the shop entrance.
“Persephone!” Her voice snapped after me, sharp with displeasure. But she followed.
The bystanders’ gawking intensified. Their whispers grew louder, shedding any pretense of discretion.
“That’s her! Persephone, that poor creature.”
“No wonder she fled that dark realm. What a dreadful fate.”
“Just think—spreading her legs for that monstrous King of the Underworld. It makes me shudder.”
“Didn’t you throw yourself at him once? Only to be rejected?” a voice chuckled.
“She’s spoiled now. Even here, she’ll never be pure again.”
“She’s not as radiant as the stories claimed. What does he even see in her?”
“A pity the game is over. We had such sport, betting on which lifetime would finally break him.”
Their bitterness was a living stain in the air. They resented my survival, my return to full divinity. I was no longer the bloody spectacle that had filled the hollow millenniums of their immortal lives.
They mourned their lost entertainment.
Shame on them. They’d lose far more before I was finished. I would make sure of it.
That was the true reason I was here, instead of riding my mate to Sunday now. Being apart from him was unbearable, a grinding agony that never ceased. But I would endure it, as I had always endured.
All around me, the society of gods and goddesses shimmered with silk and jewels, fluttering like butterflies. Beneath their beauty, they were rotten. Bored. Entitled. Never appreciating what they had. Never grateful for their immortality and comfort.
Their malicious judgment used to make me cry when I was young. The naive maiden Persephone would have fled home in tears.
But I was tempered now. Their words were nothing but the persistent buzz of flies.
I wheeled on them, my lips pulling back into a savage grin that showed too many teeth.
“Bitches,” I said, loud enough to slice through their whispers. “Enjoy your pretty, empty lives while you can.”
I’d been about to call them worse, but I just couldn’t say cunt. Some mortal habits, it seemed, still clung.
The minor goddesses gasped in theatrical unison, hands fluttering to their chests as if I’d struck them. It’d be hilarious if I weren’t in a bad mood.
They had no idea that I was no longer the pliant redhead they remembered. I hadn’t been anyone’s damsel for a very long time.
Mother leveled a glare at them, heavy with authority. They scattered with hurried bows, silks rustling like fleeing vermin.
“It seems I’m no longer the realm’s favorite sport,” I said to her. “What a disappointment.”
“Do not trouble yourself with them,” Mother replied with a dismissive shrug. “The gods will find another spectacle soon enough. And we will join them for it.”
Her casual acceptance turned my stomach.
I stopped at the corner of the iridescent main street and looked up at The Paramount—the tower of the gods—floating in the sky, defying gravity and physics.
A monument to pure power and ego. Below it stretched manicured lawns, gardens of eternal blooms, a lake of impossible clarity reflecting the golden light, and colonnades of white marble trimmed in gold.
No realm held luxury to match this.
“Isn’t our city magnificent, daughter?” Mother said, her voice laced with pride. “You are finally home. With me. As it was always meant to be.”
I had been born here. This had been my home for an eon. The place I had believed I belonged. Now, surrounded by thousands of immortals, I had never felt more alone.
An ache for my mate gnawed at my chest.
I understood now what I never had before. Home wasn’t a place of birth. It wasn’t where you grew up, or where your family dwelled.
Home was where your heart resided. Where your beloved waited. Where you could simply be, without pretense or performance.
And my home was in the Underworld. With Hades. In the comforting darkness that had once terrified me and now felt like my only sanctuary.
I let my gaze linger on The Paramount a moment longer, like a queen surveying the battlefield instead of a chastened girl returning home, picturing the infallible tower crumbling to dust. Imagined dropping the divine equivalent of a nuclear bomb upon it, watching the cloud of ruin swallow this golden city whole.
“Persephone? I am speaking to you.”
“Yes, Mother?” I turned to Demeter.
“I know this is a great deal to adjust to,” she sighed, her expression softening and annoyed at the same time. “But I am here for you. As always. Everything will be set right again.”
“Of course, Mother.” I watched a flock of minor gods from the lower courts stride past with pointed purpose.
“They’re preparing for a celebration in your honor,” Mother explained, her face alight. “It will be glorious. Our names will be inscribed in the Eternal Codex—an event they will speak of for millennia.”
“How kind,” I said, my voice flat.
“Zeus is in high spirits.” Demeter beamed.
“Your return is a supreme victory. You denied that barbarian in front of him.” She leaned closer, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.
“Did you see the devastation on Hades’s face?
That complete shattered look? No one could ever break him, but you did, my brilliant daughter. ”
I had missed nothing. Every detail of his anguish was scorched into my memory.
“It is a tremendous boost to our morale,” Demeter continued, “to see our greatest enemy brought so low. The King of the Underworld, reduced to begging.”
“If I had died in that last reincarnation,” I said slowly, meeting her gaze, “I’d have been erased forever.” I let the words hang. “That would have been the ultimate satisfaction for all the gods here, wouldn’t it? To watch Hades completely unravel from the fatal blow.”
That had been the plan, after all—the Fates’ and the gods’ final move. My permanent death. His ensuing self-destruction.
Demeter stopped short. Her smile faltered.
“Don’t be absurd, Persephone.” Her voice took on a familiar, scolding edge. “You know I love you. I wouldn’t have allowed that to happen.”
“My survival disappointed them,” I said. “But I suppose my public rejection of Hades softened the blow. As you said.”