7. Return #3
His voice comes out of my mouth.
“Where is she, Cerberus? Where is your queen?”
What? I have no idea what he’s saying, but just like always, the thrum of certainty that breaks up Hades’s gloom and gloom is reverberating throughout me. He still believes Persephone is near.
And you know what?
When Cerberus’s right head—the only one that hasn’t made a sound since his return to the Underworld—opens its mouth, spitting out a single purple wildflower onto the stone floor of the balcony, and the sweet magic coming off of it wraps itself around my cold heart, I have to admit he might be right.
There is no doubt. There is no can’t.
The Underworld has never let me escape it before, but as though it knows I’m only going to retrieve its queen at last, the fires of the Pit stay banked as I follow Cerberus out through the gate, toward the nearest river to my palace: the River Styx.
No need to bother Charon. Cerberus is as much a creature of the Underworld as I am.
The river rises beneath his paws, forming a black path over the water.
I step onto it with him, waiting for the magic to stop me.
But it doesn’t, and as though it’s rewarding my suspicions, the dead beneath the surface of Estige turn their ghastly, pale faces toward me.
Their whispers scrape against my thoughts.
The queen.
Spring is here.
She has returned.
The shadows carry me faster until, suddenly, a pitch-black portal appears, and both Cerberus and I push through it, landing in the dark, moonlit land of the Other.
For the first time in decades, the air is sweet and cool, but that’s nothing compared to the scent of Persephone’s brand of magic calling me like a moth to a flame.
I don’t need Cerberus to bring me to her. Now that I’ve left the confines of my palace, a whisper-thin bond that’s always existed between my bride and I makes it so that I could follow her anywhere.
And that’s what I do.
The hound of Hades stays at my side regardless. Cerberus shifts as he runs, his enormous form shrinking until only one head remains. His shoulders lower. His legs shorten. By the time we reach the far bank, he is back to being a puppy with oversized paws and fire burning in his eyes.
I almost stop.
“Why didja do that?” I ask.
His answer is to bark once, then scamper ahead. Shaking my head, lured by the vibrant, alive magic in the air, I glide after him, staying to the shadows so that I can approach Persephone without frightening her.
To my surprise, Hades is quiet. I can still sense how terribly he wants to be reunited with his queen, but it’s like he doesn’t want to do anything to fuck this up. Me, neither. I’ve waited so long—
“What? Oh, no. I’m sorry. I think you’ve got it wrong. I mean, I know this is some weird world where we’re all supposed to be Greek gods, but—”
“I am not Greek,” comes a thick, male voice, tinged with an accent that has Hades rising up again. I tighten my fists, shoving him back, so I can listen as the male says, “And what you think matters not. I found you. I claimed you. And you, woman… you shall be my bride.”
Is that so?
“Bride?” squeaks the woman. “But I don’t want to get married!”
A pang hits me deep in my dead heart. And, yet, the magic that controls us all propels me to think the same thought that Hades does: You already are.
It is not the voice from Hades’s memories. It couldn’t be. That woman lived thousands of years ago.
Still, recognition moves through me.
Not memory. Something deeper. Something all-consuming.
It’s instinct. I haven’t even seen her yet, and I know that she’s mine.
Cerberus darts through the brush. Taking a moment to compose myself, I step into the clearing after him.
The Roman stands near a dying fire, one hand wrapped around the hilt of a short sword. His armor is old-fashioned even by the Other’s standards, polished bronze, with a red cloak trailing down his back. He looks young, though age means little here.
I pay him almost no attention. Why, when he’s nothing, and the woman behind him… she’s everything.
For the first time in eighty years—for the first time since I enlisted and was shipped off to fight a war—I feel a deep-seated peace inside of me just getting my first look at her.
Every Persephone has been unique, but I’m fucking certain no one has been as beautiful as mine. Her fair hair is cut short, to her chin, and her big blue eyes are wide and afraid as she stares in shock at the Roman who has her…
How dare he!
For once, I’m in perfect agreement.
How dare he tie my queen to a tree?
She is terrified. Dirt streaks one of her pale cheeks.
Her clothes are strange. They’re much shorter than anything worn in the Other, and it’s nothing like the dresses that the women in Brooklyn once wore.
Her long, lean legs are visible, and if I thought I couldn’t want my bride more, that’s nothing compared to the way every part of me comes alive to look upon her.
I don’t know her name, but that’s all right. I know her.
And I know that she was born to belong to me.