Chapter 33 The Fire She Left Behind #3
My voice rose with frustration and grief.
“She was only fifty-two. She should have had thirty more years at least. Should’ve retired, traveled to Greece like she always talked about.
But someday never came, and it’s not fucking fair.
And it’s worse now because I know—I know—it didn’t have to happen. ”
“No,” he agreed, without platitudes or false comfort. “It wasn’t fair or natural. You’re right to be angry.”
I expected that to be the end of it, but then his thumb swept away another tear, and he leaned closer.
“Death doesn’t erase her,” he said. “Not really. I know that sounds like empty comfort when you’re hurting this much, but I’ve seen it, Melanie.
I’ve walked with the dead for millennia.
The body fails, the life ends, but the person—the essence of who they were—survives in the memories of the living. ”
He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “You carry her voice. Her stubbornness and fire. Her laugh. Every time you ask questions nobody else thinks to ask, or argue for what’s right, even when you refuse to back down when something is dangerous… that’s her living through you.”
Something in my chest cracked at his words, the ache softening under their weight. It didn’t disappear, but it was easing enough that I could breathe instead of drowning in it. He pressed a kiss to my head, and I soaked in the comfort of his presence, feeling the weight of his words.
The King of the Underworld, telling me about survival in the face of the end.
“Tell me more about her,” he encouraged. “Not how she died, how she lived. What would she do if she were sitting here right now?”
I let out a shaky laugh, wiping my eyes. “She’d be interrogating you.”
His lips curved at that. “About?”
“Everything. She’d want to know what made you choose to teach mythology, whether you actually believed in the gods.
She’d ask about your childhood, your family, your intentions toward me, everything.
She’d decide within five minutes whether you were worth my time, and she’d make sure you knew her assessment. ”
“And?” he asked, amused. “Would I pass inspection?”
“Eventually,” I chuckled. “After making you work for it. She wouldn’t make it easy. But she’d definitely argue with you about something first just to see how you handled being challenged.”
I laughed again. “She once got into a shouting match with my high school history teacher because he called mythology ‘primitive superstition.’ She’d come out for career day.
When she heard him say that, she cornered him after class and lectured him for twenty minutes about cultural significance and oral tradition.
She made him apologize the next day in front of all his students. ”
“I wish I’d known her longer in this life. She was as argumentative as she was when she was Hestia,” he chuckled. His hand squeezed mine.
He gestured to her journal. I studied him for a beat, watching the way his expression stayed open and present. There was something beneath his calm exterior, though, that gave me pause.
I reached up and brushed my fingers against his jaw. “Tell me what it’s like for you. You’ve seen so many people die. A millennium of death and grief that isn’t even yours, but you have to witness anyway. How do you bear it?”
He drew in a slow breath. For a second, I thought he might deflect. Then his eyes darkened with a kind of gravity I felt down to my bones.
“I bear it because of moments like this,” he murmured.
“When someone laughs through tears and shares memories. When someone holds a journal like it’s sacred because it contains pieces of a person who’s gone.
Every time you speak of her, she breathes again in this world. Mortals carry eternity in memory.”
My chest tightened, my emotions tangling into something fierce and tender.
“Most fear me. They think death is only an ending. But you—” His eyes met mine.
“You’ve always reminded me that it’s also a continuation.
The love doesn’t end, the impact doesn’t fade, and the person doesn’t disappear as long as someone remembers them.
You give me perspective. A reminder that what I do matters, that guiding souls isn’t just ferrying them to oblivion but helping them transition while their essence remains in the living. ”
I climbed into his lap and curled against his chest. My arms circled him tight as I pressed my face into the crook of his neck.
“I don’t want you to carry it all alone,” I murmured. “You shouldn’t have to hold it by yourself.”
“You already helped me carry it,” he said, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “Just by being here and understanding.”
I closed my eyes, sinking deeper into him. Duska padded over from her spot and rested her massive head on the couch beside us. For the first time in a long time, the grief didn’t feel crushing.
We stayed like that as the afternoon light shifted and the shadows grew longer. Remembering and being present with grief, love, and the strange, bittersweet comfort of sharing both.