Chapter 9 - Ophelia
Ophelia
Hecate stuck around for the morning, and when noon comes, she starts cooking. I don't stop her, but I can't help but be surprised at how adept she is around the kitchen.
"Don't look so shocked," she says, reading me perfectly as she flips an omelet. "I've had a millennium to perfect my skills."
"I'm shocked that you eat butter," I say, looking at the half stick she used, then allowing my eyes to travel up and down her thin figure.
She laughs, head tilting back. "The beauty of the divine is that I'm stuck in this form until I fade, or someone learns how to kill me."
I grumble, popping a piece of cheese into my mouth. Hades has an incredible selection of gourmet goods, and I am determined to enjoy it while I can. Lord knows I can't afford this type of food on my own.
"Right. Because you're a goddess. You're perfect and immortal." I grumble. "Meanwhile, my ass is going to get huge."
This makes her laugh as she pulls up a chair. "You are skin and bones."
"Not for long," I say, eating another piece of expensive cheese. "Hard to care though. This cheese is orgasmic."
I expect another laugh, but Hecate frowns slightly. "I'm actually not sure if we are immortal. Some of the gods died, after all." Her gaze goes far away, lost in a memory that makes her sad. The moment passes, and before I can blink, she's smiling again. "But yes, I am perfect."
I stop mid-bite and laugh. I can't help it. Despite myself, I like Hecate. She's funny and kind, and a hell of a cook.
"So," I say, taking a bite. "Did Hades ask you to stay?"
"No," she tells me. "And even if he did, I don't listen to him unless I care to."
"So why do all this?" I ask. "I mean, I know you said you were friends with Persephone, but you don't know me."
"True, but you need guidance."
"I need a lot of things," I say, agreeing. "Guidance is pretty low on the list."
Hecate tilts her head, studying me with those too-dark eyes, and just like with Hades, I feel like she is seeing through me. I hate it. "What's higher?"
"A phone. My freedom. Answers that actually make sense." I slather a piece of baguette with butter. "In that order."
"I can't give you the first two," Hecate tells me. "But I can help with the third."
"Great. Start with telling me more about the supposed gods." Do I believe in all this? No. Not really. But I'm not stupid, and if Hecate is willing to give me information, who am I to ignore it.
Hecate leans forward, elbows on the counter, and for a moment, I wonder if she's going to tell me to fuck off. Thankfully, she doesn't. "What do you want to know?"
"You keep mentioning that some of you died. How? Why did some survive?"
"When worship died, when humans stopped believing, we had to find new sources of power. New ways to exist in a world that no longer needed us."
"And?"
"And we discovered that worship isn't the only form of energy we can consume. Human emotion works just as well. Fear. Greed. Lust. Ambition." She ticks them off on her fingers. "We feed on what humans produce in excess."
I think about that, chewing slowly. "So you're emotional vampires. Cool."
Hecate's lips quirk. "I suppose that's one way to put it, though we don't actually feed on anyone. It's more abstract than that." Her brows knit as she searches for words. "It's almost like an unwitting form of worship."
My head is spinning, and I don't know how to process this, so instead I ask another question.
"What does Hades feed on then? Death?"
"Death. Debt. Desperation." She says it matter-of-factly.
"He's built an empire on people owing things they can't repay.
Every contract signed in desperation, every deal made when someone's out of options — that sustains him.
" She shrugs. "Plus, death is one of the things that never really disappeared, obviously. "
"Jesus." I press the bump on my head, wincing as the pain grounds me.
"Zeus is the worst," Hecate continues. "He feeds on power. Control. Political machinations. He's quite good at it. Calls himself The Kingmaker in Washington." This time she rolls her eyes.
I take another bite, processing. "You're telling me the gods are just capitalists."
"We're survivors." Hecate's expression doesn't change. "We do what we must to exist."
I want to ask Hecate what sustains her, but I can't bring myself to.
I push my plate away, suddenly not hungry. This is all too much. Somehow, more than I ever expected. "And me? What am I supposed to feed on?"
She watches me carefully, wrinkling her nose. "Persephone was the Goddess of Spring. Of things blooming, being born, coming back from death. That's considerable power, Ophelia. Especially now."
"Why especially now?"
"People are desperate for new life. For children. For hope." Hecate's voice is quiet. "You could flourish. Open a fertility clinic or something."
I wrinkle my nose at the suggestion. "No thanks." I barely graduated from high school. I have zero business opening anything outside of a flower shop.
Hecate shrugs. "You will need to figure out something. Your powers will grow, and you'll want to control them."
I inhale deeply, looking out the window. "Can't I just let these powers, or whatever... I don't know... fade away or something?"
She stops and looks at me with serious black eyes. "No," she says, sternly. "Not being able to control your powers will make you a target. It'll make you weak."
"I'm not weak," I snap. "I've survived my entire life without magic powers or divine intervention. I've kept myself alive."
"I didn't call you weak," Hecate says calmly. "I said not having control of your powers will make you weak. There's a difference."
"Semantics."
"Strategy." She leans forward again. "You have power, Ophelia. Raw, uncontrolled, dangerous power. Right now, it manifests when you're terrified or furious. That makes you vulnerable. It makes you a liability to yourself and the people around you."
I want to argue, but I think of the vines erupting from my hands, the way they'd attacked Hades without my conscious thought. The way I'd felt them die when he shattered them, and how that had rattled the fuck out of me.
"Fine," I say, conceding. "Say I believe you. Say I want to learn. Why you? Why not Hades?"
"Because Hades will be too gentle with you."
I almost laugh. "Have you met him? Gentle isn't exactly his vibe."
"With you, it is." Hecate's expression softens slightly. "He's waited millennia for you to come back. He's not going to push you. Not going to challenge you the way you need to be challenged."
"And you will?"
"I don't have a personal stake in keeping you comfortable." She says it without malice. "I care about you surviving. That requires honesty, not coddling."
I sit with that for a moment. "What's the truth?"
"The truth?"
I nod. "Persephone and Hades. What really happened?"
"I thought you didn't believe?" She's challenging me.
"Let's pretend."
Hecate raises an eyebrow. "You don't know the myth?"
"I know Hades kidnapped some girl and dragged her to hell or something." I shrug. "Mythology wasn't exactly high on my reading list when I was trying to keep the lights on."
Hecate is quiet for a moment, then nods. "Hades did take Persephone to the Underworld," she begins. "The earth opened, he emerged from the chasm, and he brought her below."
"Seems he likes kidnapping."
I expect her to snap at me. She doesn't. She simply continues.
"Persephone wasn't some innocent maiden stolen away. She was powerful. Brilliant. And deeply, profoundly unhappy."
I wasn't expecting that, and it catches me off guard. "Why?"
Hecate's voice hardens slightly. "Her mother. Demeter was controlling and possessive. She saw Persephone not as a daughter but as an extension of herself. A possession to be kept close and perfect."
Something twists in my chest. "So Hades took her away from that?"
"Yes. But not against her will." Hecate meets my eyes. "Persephone loved him. Wildly. Completely. And when he offered her a choice — stay in the world above and be her mother's prisoner, or come below and be free — she chose him."
"The pomegranate seeds?" I remember that from the myth. They were a trap. At least, that's what was said. "Didn't he trick her?"
Hecate shakes her head. "No," she says. "She ate them willingly. She had agency, and Hades didn't take that away from her."
"Why though?" I ask. "I can't imagine wanting to go from being controlled by my mother to some guy."
Hecate smiles tightly. "It was her choice," she reiterates. "Demeter was furious. She tore the world apart looking for Persephone. When she found out about the pomegranate seeds, she raged. Caused winter. Forced Zeus to intervene."
"The seasons myth."
"Yes. Persephone agreed to spend part of the year above ground to appease her mother. But it was a compromise, not a rescue."
I don't want to think about how that makes me feel. About the vision I had touching the comb. The memory of being happy with him.
"Life and death go together, Ophelia," Hecate says quietly. "Spring and the Underworld. Growth and decay. You and Hades. You balance each other. You always have."
"That sounds like fate," I say. "And I'm not big on fate."
"It's nature." She tilts her head. "You feel it, don't you? The pull toward him?"
I want to lie. But I can't, because I do feel it.
I've barely spent an hour in the man's presence, and he has somehow become someone I'm wildly aware of.
I want to chalk it up to him being attractive, but I can't. The more I'm here, the longer I talk to Hecate, the harder it is getting to convince myself this is all bullshit.
"I don't want to be someone who only exists in relation to someone else.
" I press my hand against my chest, feeling the scar beneath the fabric.
"I didn't know my mother well, not really.
My father raised me. So I can't comment on Demeter or mothers or any of that. But I know I don't want to be owned."
"Persephone wasn't owned," Hecate says firmly. "She was loved. There's a difference."
"Is there? When someone loves you so much they'd burn the world for you?"
"Yes." Hecate's expression is unreadable. "Because being owned means you have no choice. Being loved means someone will fight for your right to choose. Even if you don't choose them."
I don't have an answer for that.
We sit in silence for a moment. Then Hecate pulls something from her pocket — a deck of cards.
"What are those?"
"Tarot." She shuffles them with practiced ease. "Give me your hand."
"Why?" I clench my fingers together, as if she's going to harm me. It's my core response, and Hecate clearly knows it, because she gingerly reaches for me.
"I want to read you."
I hesitate, then offer my hand, palm open. Hecate studies it for a moment, then lays out three cards. I have no idea where they came from.
"Past. Present. Future." She taps the first card. "The Tower. Destruction. Upheaval. Everything you thought was stable came crashing down."
I look at the card — a tower being struck by lightning, people falling. "Yeah. That tracks."
She taps the second card. "The Lovers. Present. But reversed. Choice. Temptation. A relationship complicated by external forces."
I hold my breath.
The third card makes her pause. "The Empress. Future. Creation. Fertility. Power." She looks up at me. "You're going to be more powerful than you can imagine, Ophelia. The question is whether you'll accept it or fight it."
"I'm going to guess fighting it isn't the recommended option?"
"Fighting what you are only makes you suffer." Hecate gathers the cards. "I'm not saying you have to be Persephone. I'm saying you can't pretend you're just Ophelia anymore. You would be denying yourself your full potential."
"That's dramatic."
"It's truth."
I pull my hand back, crossing my arms. "So what. I'm supposed to just... accept that I'm a goddess? That I have powers? That I'm fated to be with some crime lord who thinks he's the god of death?"
"He doesn't think he's the God of Death. He is." Hecate stands. "And you don't have to accept anything. But you should at least listen. Learn. Give yourself the tools to survive what's coming."
"What's coming?"
"I don't know yet." She places her dish in the sink and starts for the door. "But something is. And when it does, you'll want to be ready."
She's almost gone when I speak. "Hecate?"
She turns back.
"I'll listen," I say quietly. "To the training stuff. I'll... I'll try." After all, it can't hurt. I'm not sure if gods and goddesses exist, but I can't ignore that I produced vines. Even I'm not that delusional.
Her smile is genuine this time. "That's all I ask."
And then she's gone, and I'm alone in the kitchen with the echo of her words and the image of those tarot cards burned into my mind.
The Empress. Creation. Power.
I press my hand against my chest again, feeling my heartbeat, feeling the scar.
Feeling something else.
A pull. Warm and insistent. Coming from somewhere else in the penthouse.
From him.
I close my eyes, trying to ignore it. But it's there. Undeniable.
And I hate that part of me doesn't want to fight it. Part of me wants to follow that pull, find him, see if being near him feels like—
"Stop," I whisper to myself. "Stop it."
But the pull doesn't stop. It only grows stronger.
And then I hear footsteps.
I open my eyes.
Hades is standing in the kitchen doorway, and the moment I see him, that flutter in my gut intensifies. Like my body recognizes him in a way my mind refuses to.
Fuck.