Chapter 21 The River Remembers #3
Thalia stopped at the entrance and wouldn’t cross the threshold. When I turned back to her, I saw tears streaming down her face.
“I’m sorry, my Lady,” her voice broke. “I’m so sorry. He has my daughter, he said he wouldn’t hurt her if I—” A sob tore from her throat. “I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”
Then she was running, her footsteps echoing as she fled back toward the temple, leaving me alone. Shadows bled from the courtyard walls like ink spreading through water. They pooled and coalesced, becoming solid.
Becoming him.
Cyrus emerged from the darkness as though he’d been waiting there all along, patient and so certain I would come. His smile was almost kind, and something inside me recoiled.
“Goddess,” he said, bowing with false reverence. “Forgive the deception. But you’re difficult to reach through… conventional means.”
Cold crawled up my spine. I backed toward the entrance, but shadows rose like walls, blocking my escape.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I hissed, the authority of divinity crackling in my voice.
“I go where necessity leads me,” he replied. “And tonight, necessity has led me to you.”
He moved closer, circling me like a predator studying prey. “You are the Bridge, Persephone. The only one who can restore what is taken. The only one who can undo what I have worked tirelessly to build.” His eyes gleamed in the darkness. “And so, you must be… contained.”
“Contained?” Power surged through me, flowers bursting from cracks in the marble, vines erupting from walls. “You dare—”
“I do.” He raised one hand, and shadows wrapped around my wrists and ankles.
The vines around me withered into dust, my connection to the Earth winking off like a light.
“Your life will continue. You will live again and again. But you will never remember who you are. Never reclaim your throne. Never restore what I take.”
A blade appeared in his other hand, the blade forged of a metal that seemed to drink light, etched with symbols that hurt to look at.
“This is a kindness,” he said. “If I took your power now, it would hurt far more. But this—” The knife pressed against my throat. “This will simply lock you away. Keep you mortal and mine until I’m ready to collect you.”
“No—”
The blade cut deep. Fire and ice tore through me. Not just pain, but absence, like something essential was being carved out of me, locked away, sealed behind walls I’d never be able to breach.
I screamed, and Spring died with me.
“Sleep well, little goddess,” Cyrus whispered as the world went dark.
The memory shattered.
I slammed back into my body with a gasp. The ruin was cold again, dead for millennia.
But I still felt the knife, tasted blood and betrayal.
I had fallen to my knees, hands pressed to my throat, even though there was no wound. My whole body shook from fever, and memory, all crashing through me at once.
Kian knelt in front of me, hands on my shoulders.
“Melanie. Melanie. You’re here. You’re with me. It’s over. That’s not happening now. You’re safe.”
“S-she betrayed me,” I choked out. “Thalia. I t-trusted her and she… she gave me to him for her daughter.”
“I know.”
“He killed me.” The words felt impossible. “He killed me to lock me away. To keep me from—from what? What was I supposed to restore?”
Kian’s hands tightened on my shoulders. “Later. I’ll explain everything later. Right now—”
“You were there,” I interrupted, looking at him through tears. The pieces began to fall into place. “In my dreams. In every life. It was always you, wasn’t it?”
His face crumpled. “Yes.”
“Every death. Every time I—” My voice broke. “You’ve been there, watching. Unable to save me.”
“Nineteen times,” he whispered, and the number fell between us like a stone. “I have watched you live nineteen times. I have watched you die nineteen times.” His hands shook where they held me. “And every time, I failed. Every. Single. Time.”
He pulled back his sleeve, revealing six red ovals that marred his wrist in the exact pattern as my birthmark. My mouth went dry. The memory of that night in his flat, so many days ago, seeing something there on his wrist.
“Kian—”
“This is my penance,” he continued, words pouring out as though he’d held them back too long. “My curse. To love you across lifetimes, to find you again and again. And to lose you before you can remember who you were, what we were.”
I looked at him for the first time with eyes that could finally see.
A mark on his skin, identical to my own; six red ovals trailing down his wrist.
The way shadows moved around him, responsive to his emotions. The way his eyes caught the moonlight wrong, ancient and fathomless. The way he’d always appeared when I needed saving, like he could sense across any distance when I was in danger.
The power that thrummed beneath his skin when he was furious.
And the way he looked at me like I was his heart walking around outside his body.
“You’re—” My breath hitched, throat tightening with realization.
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Hades,” I breathed.
Relief, grief, and love so vast it seemed to fill the entire ruined temple crashed over his face.
The world tilted, my vision graying at the edges. The fever, the emotional devastation, all of it crashed down at once. It was overwhelming, too much for my body to handle anymore.
I felt myself falling and heard Kian’s voice calling my name from very far away. His arms caught me before I hit stone, cradling me against his chest as darkness crept in from all sides.
“This time will be different,” he was saying. “This time, I won’t fail you. I swear it.”
The last thing I felt was his hand cradling my face, his lips pressing against my forehead with desperate tenderness.
Then darkness swallowed everything, and I knew nothing at all.