Chapter Seventy-Two
I remained behind to tend to my son. Yet, in truth, it was not only for him that I stayed.
It was for Mal. To watch. To ensure the truth lay buried where it could not reach her.
As she grew, I fed her my blood, each drop binding her power and keeping it asleep.
I stood at a distance and watched her become a wyverian princess.
And yet, I never felt like her mother. I knew her father would claw his way back to her, no matter the cost. So I cursed the lands themselves to keep him at bay.
But Hades has never been a creature bound by barriers. He always finds a way.
Tabitha Wysteria
Mal moved slowly through the snow, her grip tight around the hilt of her sword. She did not allow herself to wander; her eyes remained fixed upon the solitary figure waiting on the far side of the frozen lake.
When she reached the edge of the ice, she stopped.
Her eyes dropped to her boots as she studied the frozen surface, wondering whether it was thick enough to bear her weight.
For a moment she considered the distance ahead, then lifted her gaze again towards the figure across the lake, hoping for some signal, some gesture that might guide her. But the man offered nothing.
Only silence.
Carefully, Mal placed one foot upon the ice and waited, listening for the ominous crack that might signal disaster. None came. The ice held firm beneath her weight, and so she began to cross, step by cautious step.
This ring was unlike any she had encountered before.
The sky above was dark and utterly empty, devoid of stars. Around the lake rose forests so dense and shadowed that it was impossible to see beyond their tangled edges, as though the world itself ended within those black walls of trees.
The man waiting on the opposite shore was stranger still.
In some ways he resembled a wolverian—his skin pale, his hair the colour of silvered frost. Yet his eyes were not the familiar blue of the wolverian people.
They were white.
Even his clothing was white, blending almost eerily with the frozen landscape.
He was neither old nor young. Instead, he seemed caught in an ageless stillness, as though time itself had forgotten how to move around him.
If her father Hades embodied the darkness so beloved by the wyverian people, this man was its perfect opposite.
Not light. But something emptier still.
The absence of everything.
‘Lucifer,’ Mal said once she reached the far shore.
‘Melinoe.’ The demon smiled, revealing canines that gleamed sharp and dangerous in the pale gloom. ‘It has been a very long time since I last enjoyed your company.’
‘You recognise me?’ she asked. ‘Even though I do not wear that face anymore?’
Lucifer gave a careless shrug.
‘How could I not? We spent a rather… memorable amount of time together.’ His pale glare lingered on her with unsettling familiarity. ‘No matter what flesh you wear—goddess, mortal, princess—I will always know my son’s wife.’
Mal stiffened.
Lucifer laughed softly at her reaction.
‘So it is true then?’ she asked. ‘You are Thanatos’ father?’
Lucifer tilted his head slightly, studying her.
‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Would you prefer a different answer? Does it change your feelings towards him?’
Mal said nothing.
She refused to play games with the demon.
‘Why are you here, Melinoe?’ Lucifer continued after a moment, realising she would not indulge him further.
‘I want to make a deal,’ she said plainly. ‘I want Persephone gone.’
Lucifer burst into laughter.
Mal did not understand what was so amusing about her request, but she decided not to react. Silence was sometimes the sharpest weapon she possessed.
‘How curious it is,’ he said eventually.
‘What?’ she asked, her patience thinning.
‘How history always finds a way to repeat itself.’
Mal frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
Lucifer gave another idle shrug.
‘Well, consider your curse,’ he said. ‘Cursed to fall in love with one and trapped in a rather unfortunate triangle. One kills the other, and then all three are reborn.’
When Mal remained silent, Lucifer chuckled again.
‘I see it worked.’
‘What worked?’
‘You forgetting everything.’ His smile sharpened. ‘That was the bargain I struck with Thanatos to free you from this ring. You were allowed to return but you would be reborn as a wyverian with no memory of what came before.’
Mal’s grip tightened around her sword.
‘Then help me remember,’ she said. ‘Tell me the truth.’
‘Which truth?’ Lucifer replied lazily. ‘There are quite a few.’
Mal lifted her sword and pointed the blade directly at him.
Lucifer only seemed more amused.
He tilted his head slightly, then casually brushed the weapon aside as though it were nothing more than an inconvenience.
‘Then start from the very beginning, Lucifer.’
The demon regarded her with quiet amusement. ‘Are you certain you wish to know the truth of everything?’
Mal hesitated.
Of course she wanted the truth. For far too long the people around her had hidden it, whether to protect her or to protect themselves hardly mattered now.
If she was to win this war, if she was ever to break the curse that clung to her life like a shadow, then she needed to understand every piece of it.
‘Do you know how to break the curse?’ she asked.
Lucifer shook his head slowly.
‘No. No one truly knows.’ His pale eyes flashed with something thoughtful. ‘Your other husband, Ash Acheron, believed he had found a way. He thought your daughter might be able to kill Thanatos.’
Mal’s brows knit together.
‘But?’ she prompted.
‘But if Thanatos dies… then Ash dies as well.’
Mal frowned. ‘Why?’
Lucifer chuckled softly. ‘Because they are one and the same.’
The words struck her like ice.
Mal stiffened, though she could not yet grasp the full meaning behind them.
‘Explain yourself,’ she said.
Lucifer folded his arms loosely.
‘A thousand years ago,’ he began, ‘you were determined to destroy your mother Hecate. You and your father searched endlessly for a way to accomplish it. The obsession consumed you. You grew… unstable because of it.’ He tilted his head slightly.
‘Hecate, however, was clever. She used your desperation against you. She convinced the others that you had become too dangerous, that the world needed protection from what you might become.’ Lucifer’s voice lowered.
‘So she persuaded them to imprison you here. Persephone, Themis and…Thanatos brought you down into these rings.’
Mal froze.
‘Themis?’ Her voice faltered. ‘Thanatos?’
Mal had always known that Persephone had aided Hecate in the betrayal. But she had never known that Themis had helped as well.
The revelation struck her harder than she expected.
Mal did not remember Themis from that other life Lucifer spoke of, yet she had known her in the mortal world under another name. Adriana. The woman who had been her sister Haven’s closest friend.
Haven and Adriana had grown up together, inseparable as two shadows cast by the same flame. They had spent nearly every waking hour side by side, laughing, training, whispering secrets that Mal had been too young to understand.
Mal had followed them everywhere.
A small girl trailing after her older sister and her brilliant friend, watching them with wide, adoring eyes. She had wanted to be like them. But now the memories twisted into something darker.
Mal knew Adriana had befriended Haven to keep watch over her, to keep an eye on Mal herself, fearing that one day she might still become the God-Killer. Yet she had never imagined the betrayal went deeper than that. That because of her… Mal had lost everything.
Her memories. Her past.
And Thanatos?
The thought of him made her blood boil.
How could he claim to love her, claim he would do anything for her, when he had been part of the betrayal that had condemned her to this prison and stripped her of her life?
The anger rose like fire through her veins.
‘Do not be too harsh on the poor boy,’ Lucifer said mockingly.
‘He truly believed he was watching his wife slip into madness. In his mind, this was the only way to save you.’ His pale gaze drifted across the frozen lake.
‘However, when your father discovered what they had done… he punished them all.’
Mal’s voice came out colder than the snow beneath her boots. ‘How?’
Lucifer’s lips curved into a thin, satisfied smile.
‘Persephone was banished from the Underworld, kept far from the children she had with Hades.’
Mal’s fingers tightened around the hilt of her sword.
‘And Themis,’ Lucifer continued smoothly, ‘lost her daughters. All three were taken by Hades and bound to the Underworld forever. They were remade into the Moirai, condemned to weave the threads of fate for eternity.’
Mal stared at him in astonishment.
She had seen the Moirai countless times within Hades’ castle—three silent figures seated beside their endless loom, weaving the fragile threads of mortal lives.
Their faces changed constantly, shifting from young to old, from one stranger’s features to another’s. But she had never once wondered where they had come from. She had always assumed they had existed that way since the beginning of time. That they had always been the weavers of fate.
‘And Thanatos?’ she asked quietly.
Lucifer’s expression grew almost amused.
‘Thanatos was also forced into service,’ he said. ‘He became Death itself.’
Mal should have felt pity.
She knew that.
But the anger still surged through her veins like a storm that refused to calm.
‘However,’ Lucifer continued, his voice smooth as falling snow, ‘before he became Death, Thanatos did something rather clever.’
Mal said nothing. She only watched him.
‘Thanatos took a fragment of himself and hid it,’ Lucifer explained.
‘He did not know what becoming Death would truly do to him. He feared what he might become. So he chose to preserve the purest part of his soul… and keep it safe for you.’ Lucifer’s pale eyes gleamed faintly.
‘He hoped that one day he might offer it to you. As a gift. As a plea for forgiveness.’