Chapter 23 Hades
HADES
Life and death have coexisted since the beginning of time. Eternal companions, both equally important, equally heavy, but one had always been regarded as the villain of the story. As horror awaiting every single mortal being.
For me, death was one companion that had avoided me no matter how hard I tried.
It was the one wish always on the tip of my tongue as I begged to the cruel stars, pleading with them to take me to her.
To show me mercy, just a little bit of mercy, and to stop this bitter existence I was a part of.
Because if I couldn't have her, this air I breathed was not worth having.
For five millennia I had waited, prayed, for the ending every single time the versions of her ceased to exist, ripped away from me even before I had a chance to meet her. To touch her. To tell her everything and to get her to remember who we were. Who she used to be.
Hope didn't exist in this dark void I had called life. Not after I spent days and nights, letting them blend together, searching for her, begging her to hear me, visiting her in her dreams, only for her to die as a mortal woman, lost to my realm. Lost to my touch.
And now she was here, in my arms, looking up at me with equal amounts of apprehension and curiosity, because she felt it too. It was impossible not to feel it, this eternal tether between the two of us.
The Persephone I knew carried her strength quietly, too concerned about the feelings of others to ever show them who she truly was. Or what she truly was. She was the Goddess of my heart. The Goddess of the Underworld, but never did she carry the darkness like a cloak covering her shoulders.
She was my light, the one person I could go back to when the shadows of my own mind tried poisoning me against every single thing.
She was the only one able to pull me back, to show me with the softest of touches how beautiful life could be, no matter what it threw at us.
And I thought it was the only version I could ever fall for.
I thought she was as perfect as the dark skies just before the thunderstorms she loved to watch, but I never realized that Persephone wasn't just the soft breeze of a summer's night. She was thunderstorms and rage, and none of us were strong enough to allow her to show us who she could be.
But this version of her, this thunderstorm I held in my arms, didn't fear showing her emotions as they came.
This version of her, filled with rage, with a desperation so thick I could almost taste it on my tongue, made me see how wrong I was for trying to keep her in the ivory tower so many years ago, instead of letting her become the true Goddess she was meant to be.
Kaira was the reincarnation of the woman I loved so many years ago. The woman I lost. The woman I grieved. But she wasn't Persephone, no.
This fierce warrior glaring at me as I refused to let go of her arm was not someone that would allow any of us to push and pull until she relented to our constant nagging and requests.
This version of her was as loud and as proud as any other God, and the longer I stood there, holding her pressed to me, the more I could feel the decaying thread connecting our souls heal.
Even in her darkness she had the sunshine I craved. Even in her bitterness and pain, she still looked at me as if she wanted me but didn't know why.
My Persephone didn't ask questions. She didn't fight fate, letting it guide her where she needed to go. But Kaira—Kaira fought with everything she had, refusing to bow down just because something was written in the stars.
She had no idea who she was and that was another thing I needed to rectify. That was another secret I had to share. Another burden I had to pile on top of all the others she carried, but it wasn't something that could wait.
For almost thirty years, I felt her every breath, every heartbreak, every tear that fell on her cheeks, and I hated myself and the fate we were granted for keeping her from me.
And I could feel the darkness coiling around her heart the older she became, begging to be released, to show its true powers.
Kaira curled her fingers around my shirt, the material bunching under her touch, but she didn't step away.
"W-where," she stammered, her eyes flickering around us. "Where are we?" Her light hair was spilling out of her braid, begging me to touch it, to feel the soft silk underneath my fingers. "What just happened?"
The more she spoke, the more her power awakened, reacting to her emotions, to her fear of the unknown.
I had no idea how she was able to keep such a power under wraps for so long without destroying half of the planet with just her rage, but the more time I spent with her, the more I realized she wasn't like anything we thought she would be.
Generations on the island whispered of the prophecy and the God Slayer that would either save them all or imprison them forever, casting us all in darkness.
They spoke of the killer that would finally end the tyranny of my brother and allow the immortals to continue living in peace, without the need to constantly look over their shoulders, afraid the self-appointed dark queen, Hera, would come along, snatching them and manipulating them, turning them into their soldiers.
I knew the stories, the whispers—how could I not?
—but I didn't dare believing in them, because I knew what power Zeus wielded.
The same type of power that ran through Poseidon's and my veins.
And ever the paranoid one, he made us take an oath never to harm one another directly, for harming another brother meant harming yourself.
So we didn't, couldn't, not that I wasn't tempted.
But she could.
With twin storms in her eyes and shadows living in the depths of her soul.
The one that syphoned all the power her father had—the only God capable of destroying another with just a blink of his eye.
The only other God capable of destroying us, the Ancients, proving to be a threat for my dear brother, rather than an ally.
"Hades," she whispered, her hand landing just beneath the mark I carried on my throat with both pride and hurt.
Her mark, identical to the one Persephone used to have on her wrist. "I need to know where we are.
And what happened. And why is this happening?
" She spoke fast, her chest rising and falling rapidly as the emotions started suffocating the light she was granting me with. "Was it me? Or was it you? Was it—"
"You teleported us," I interrupted. "Transported, call it whatever you want."
"Transpo—" She started, and then clamped her mouth shut, her eyes going comically wide.
"B-but how?" Her hand crawled to her throat, those sharp nails digging into her own skin.
The confusion laced with pain erupted from every pore in her body, suffocating the air until all I could smell and all I could taste was the debilitating fear gripping her in its clutches.
She stepped away from me, instantly leaving me in the cold clutches of the decay still spreading through my body, even with her so close.
She may have touched the frail thread connecting the two of us, but the sickness spreading through my body was still there.
A rot that took place the moment they extinguished Persephone's light, flared up, choking me momentarily.
"Kaira—"
"Where are we?" She looked to her right and then to her left, where the house that was anything but home stood in its dark glory, with a lone light turned on in the living room. I hated turning it off. It was my sick way of calling to her soul.
Calling her to come home.
I pressed closer, erasing the distance she had created. "We're at my home." Our home, I wanted to say.
"Your home?"
"Yes," I whispered, lifting my hand subconsciously and moving away the wayward strand of hair that fell on her face, tucking it behind her ear. "You transported us to my home."
Kaira looked up at me, her brow furrowing, and even without the ability to feel her mind, I could see the gears turning behind those silver eyes. I knew what she would ask even before the words slipped past her lips.
I understood her confusion when she looked at me back at Medusa's place, when I couldn't stand to stay there, listening to that fucking story one more time when I was the one that had to live it. I was the one who found her. I was the one who begged her not to leave me.
I was the one who had to tell her mother her daughter was no longer among us.
I was the one that was left behind, as a punishment from Demeter to live forever without the possibility of ever meeting her again.
And I was the one that realized she was born into a different body, far from me, unable to hear me.
Unable to sense me. Unable to love me because her soul was split in parts I couldn't touch.
"Persephone was your mate, wasn't she?" Kaira said, more as a statement than a question.
My entire body froze with my hand still on the side of her head, unable to move away even if I wanted to.
How could I tell her that once upon a time a God of the Dead fell in love with the Goddess of everything that was pure? Everything that was perfect, ruining her in the process? How could I tell her that I stole her, feeling the bond forming between us, even before she could feel it too?
How could I tell her I was the villain in every single one of her stories?
"She was," I answered, instead of letting the emotions choke me. I pushed down the regrets and grief, forcing myself to stay still. "And she died in the most horrible way, killed by those she trusted the most."
And it was all my fault.
Had I told her that Zeus couldn't be trusted, she never would've gone out to meet him and his soldiers.
She never would've left the safety of Elysian Fields, trying to bargain with the God who only ever wanted more power.
She never would've died had I stopped trying to protect her from every single thing, thinking she wasn't strong enough to deal with it.
I should've known better.
"I'm sorry, Hades," she murmured, her bright eyes swallowing the darkness coiling in my gut every time I remembered that night. "I cannot imagine how hard it must have been living all these years without the second half of you." She had no idea she'd been feeling it too.
She had no idea that each lifetime, each reincarnation left her soul marred with the black tar connecting to mine. Because the soulmate bond, even incomplete, could not be erased. Even death couldn't keep us apart, but it could keep destroying us.
Lifetime after lifetime, sucking out the life from both of us.
"When a soulmate dies, Kaira," I murmured, needing to tell her at least a part of the truth. "The second one does as well."
She breathed in quickly, the lines around her eyes deepening, as did her confusion. "But—"
"I didn't die," I added. "I didn't die physically, but my soul, my heart…
They are not what they used to be. And I wouldn't wish this decay to anyone.
Not even to my greatest enemy." My eyes closed, remembering that sunset, when the skies above these cliffs still allowed for the sun to break through and life didn't seem so harsh.
I remembered the pain, the destruction, even before it happened, and the whispers of the damned urging me to find her. To save her. And I was too late.
Her hand pressed against my cheek out of nowhere, slowly slipping down toward the mark.
And before I could stop her, before I could even open my eyes, she pressed against the rune on my neck, connecting her soul once more to mine.
And as my eyes flew open, as I looked down at her, I knew it was the biggest mistake right now.
Because Kaira was no longer here with me. Her eyes turned white, her lips parted, and those dark vines I'd been fighting for so long spread from my neck through her hand, reaching her neck, until they spanned over her face, contrasting against her porcelain skin.
"No, no, no," I cursed, trying to separate her. Trying to stop this from happening.
She wasn't ready. She couldn't be ready.
I saw what happened when that other vision slammed into her.
I saw how she reacted, how confused she was, and now…
Now she would see the truth. Now she would see who she truly was because there was no way of closing the doors in my mind.
I could already feel her slipping through, calling forth my memories, merging them with the memories her soul remembered.
Her shadows, her power, coiled around my arm, removing it from hers where I'd tried to separate us, and when a cacophony of voices exploded in my mind, I knew this time she wasn't the only one seeing the past.
I was too.