CHAPTER NINETEEN
"Hades' Inferno"
Hell had not looked this bad in a very long time.
In the abyss of the Netherworld, the whispers of mutiny that had been building since Tao's arrival had finally crested into something structural.
The walls of Hel were shaking with a frequency that had no earthly equivalent, a vibration that moved through stone and gold and crystal alike, and the souls who had been gathering in the lower corridors had moved from gathering to pressing, their collective discontent finding its shape at last in organised movement toward Tartarus.
Erebus came to the throne room at a pace that was as close to running as his ancient dignity would permit, and Hades, who had not left his throne in some time, looked up at the uncharacteristic urgency in the old one's bearing and understood immediately that something had changed.
"Anubis," Erebus said. The worry in his voice was not the managed, administrative worry of someone reporting a minor disruption.
It was the worry of someone who had seen this before and knows where it leads.
"The souls have reached the outer gate of Tartarus.
If it is breached, what is contained within will not stay contained. "
The council sat around the long table in various states of alarm, murmuring to each other with scrolls pressed against their chests as though the parchment might protect them from whatever was coming.
"Anubia," Erebus said, slamming his fist on the table. The room fell silent. Even the walls seemed to pause. "The girl is gone. The realm is unravelling. Do you want to lose your kingdom too?"
The question hung in the air. It was the most direct any member of the council had ever been with the ruler of the Netherworld, and the fact that it had been asked at all was a measure of how far things had gone.
Hades rose from his throne. "Take me to Tartarus."
?
The lower corridors were nothing like the halls Tao had been shown on her first days in the realm.
These were older, rougher, the gold-infused walls giving way to raw dark stone that had been here since before the Netherworld had been made beautiful.
Sounds of protest and movement came through the walls from every direction as Hades walked with Erebus and the inner council toward the outer gate.
The gate came into view and Hades stopped.
The crowd that had assembled before it was enormous.
Souls of every kind, from every era, pressing forward with collective urgency.
Their voices were not a mob's voices. They were the voices of people with a grievance they believed was legitimate, and in the part of him that had governed this realm for longer than most things had existed, Hades understood that this was the more difficult kind of crowd.
"I don't think we can push through this," a council member said, taking in the scale of the assembly.
"I am Death," Hades said, with a quiet certainty that was not arrogance but simply fact. "Ruler of this plane. I have walked this realm since before any soul present was alive to cross it. Nothing stands in my way."
He walked toward the crowd and the crowd parted.
Not because they were afraid exactly, though fear was present, but because the presence of their king at full attention was a thing that reorganised the physics of any space it entered.
Souls stepped back and lowered their eyes and fell quiet as he moved through them, his obsidian eyes scanning the assembly.
He stopped at the outer gate of Tartarus and turned to face them all.
"For eons of years, Hel has been a home of eternal rest," he said.
His voice moved through the crowd like current through water, finding every soul simultaneously.
"I have governed this realm with order and intention.
I have heard your grievances before this moment, and I hear them now.
You seek what has been promised. You seek completion.
" He paused. "I do not disagree with you. "
A murmur moved through the crowd. This was not the response they had expected.
"It's been eons, Hades," a voice called from somewhere near the centre. "Hel is meant to be ruled by Death and Lilith both. The realm cannot hold its balance otherwise. You know this."
"Yes," the crowd took up the word. "Yes."
"You had her," another voice called with bitterness. They felt as if they’d watched an opportunity be mishandled. "And you let her go."
The words landed. Hades stood with them.
"I do not control fate," he said. "No one who governs this realm has ever controlled fate. I can receive what arrives at my threshold. I cannot compel it." He looked out at the assembly. "But I will tell you this, she is coming back. Not because a covenant compels her. Because she chooses to."
The silence that followed was the particular silence of a crowd deciding whether to believe something.
"What about giving them Lilith?"
The voice was different from the others. Lighter. With a particular quality of dryness that had no business being present in the middle of a potential uprising at the gates of Tartarus.
Heads turned.
Tao-Lee Montgomery stood at the far edge of the crowd with her arms loosely crossed, looking at the assembled souls of the Netherworld with the same expression she had perfected over years of walking into rooms where everyone was watching her and choosing, deliberately, to be the most relaxed person in it.
Sidius stood one half-step behind her, watching everything unfold.
"Well?" she said, moving through the crowd, which parted for her with the same instinct it had parted for Hades, though for entirely different reasons. "Is this the right gathering? I've been away a bit. I may have missed some context."
Hades was moving toward her before he had decided to move, and he had enough self-awareness to note this and enough honesty to not try to stop it.
"You're back," he said. The two words carried considerably more than two words could usually carry.
"I said I'd find you after," she said, standing before him now, the crowd forming a loose circle around them without anyone directing it to do so. "This is after."
He took her face in his hands, and she stood on her toes and closed the small remaining distance between them.
He tasted like cinnamon, Tao noted as their tongues danced, exploring every inch of each other.
He was addictive and as she pulled him closer to deepen the kiss, she decided that she wanted more, she wanted all of him.
The response of the Netherworld to it was immediate and overwhelming.
A wave of sound moved through the crowd, not quite a cheer and not quite the release of something long held, but containing both, moving from soul to soul until the whole assembly was vibrating with it, and above them the skies swayed in a way that had no physical explanation, and the shaking of the walls near Tartarus went still.
"Lilith!" the crowd began, the word moving through them like a current finding its direction. "Lilith!"
Tao pressed her face into Hades's chest and felt completely overwhelmed, which she decided she was allowed to feel before getting herself together.
"I see you are still causing scenes wherever you go," Sidius observed from a discreet distance.
"Who would I be if I didn’t?" she replied, her voice muffled by Hades's collar.
Hades smiled over her head at Sidius, silently thanking him for her safe return. Sidius returned the smile and began moving the crowd gently back with authority.
The gates of Tartarus went quiet. The pressure that had been building for weeks lifted from the walls of the realm like a held breath finally released. The council exchanged glances of profound relief and began quietly dispersing before anyone could find additional things for them to weigh in on.
Erebus stood near the corridor entrance and watched the scene with his ancient, weathered expression, and something moved through it that was not quite a smile but occupied the same territory.
?
Later, in the Elysian fields, in the warm and inexplicable light that had no adequate explanation, they sat together in the gold-lit air. Tao leaning against him, his arm around her, the field quiet and vast, entirely their own in this particular moment.
"You chose to come back," he said. Not a question. A careful acknowledgement.
"I chose to come back," she confirmed. She was quiet for a moment.
"I stood outside my old home and watched my mother's silhouette in the window for a long time.
I watched my father's shadow in the study upstairs.
They had each other. They were going to be alright, or as alright as they could be, and they didn't need me there to do it.
" She paused again. "And I had things here that were mine.
You. Sidius. All of this, which took me an embarrassingly long time to accept was actually magnificent. "
"You are more than a covenant," he said. "A promise as old as time. The covenant was merely a means to an end. What you are to this realm is real."
"I know," she said. "I decided to believe you."
"When?"
"About six seconds before I walked into that crowd," she said. "But it still counts."
He laughed, and she felt the sound of it through her whole body, and she tucked it away safely alongside the obsidian marble and the memory of them dancing in the rain of fire and the look on his face when she had walked through the crowd toward him, all the small moments that belonged entirely to her.