Chapter 39 What Remained
I didn’t register the room at first.
Soft light from sconces, the faint scent of cedar and smoke. I couldn’t stop scanning the flat, looking for something that wasn’t there.
Looking for him.
The walls I had always thought of as safe now felt suffocating, mocking me with their familiarity.
I didn’t remember arriving here. The fallout of Kian’s sacrifice was a blur.
I dimly remembered Hecate moving between us.
Leo on his knees, breath rattling. May’s hands were glowing as she worked over Candace’s wounds.
I remembered Leo’s weak grin, the one that didn’t reach his eyes.
I remembered voices speaking around me, soft and urgent, but the words slid off my brain like water off glass.
Everything else may as well have happened in a distant dream.
Candace made a sound as Hecate moved to fuss over her. Leo curled up against the wall, head in his hands. Luz sat near him, rubbing circles into his back, murmuring comfort. May pushed healing energy into my cracked knuckles, her magic warm against my shredded skin.
I didn’t look at them. I rose without a word and walked through the flat, drifting down the hall like a ghost, guided by muscle memory. My knees buckled when I reached the threshold of his bedroom. I caught myself on the door frame, fingers digging into the wood, and forced myself to breathe.
It didn’t help.
The door clicked shut behind me. The room was dim. There were no dramatic signs of absence. Just his books on the shelf, spine-creased and loved. His jacket was thrown over the back of his chair. His records were stacked in neat rows.
As though he might walk back in at any moment.
My legs gave out, and I collapsed onto the floor, hands splayed against the hardwood. The impact jarred through my palms.
“Hades…” I whispered.
No movement or shadows gathered. No Kian. Only empty air and the crushing weight of his absence. I slapped my hands against the ground, harder this time, reaching for the tether between us.
“Hades!” I said louder, voice cracking.
Nothing.
My heart shattered. I slammed my hands against the ground again, crying his name until my palms were bruised, and my voice gave out.
But he never came.
I crumpled in on myself, pressing my forehead to the floor as tears streamed from my eyes.
“Please come back…” I whimpered. “Please, Kian… Please.”
The words dissolved into sobs.
“I-I don’t know if you can hear me…” I rasped. “But I miss you. I miss you so much, I can’t breathe. Everything hurts.”
I slammed my fist into the ground again. “A-And I’m so m-mad at you! For leaving me like this, for thinking I could do this without you—”
My voice broke.
“I’m so scared,” I whispered, curling tighter. “I don’t know how to do this without you. I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if I’m strong enough.”
The words built in my chest, impossible to hold back.
“I love you,” I said, the sound little more than a gasp. It was the first time I’d ever spoken those words aloud. I’d thought them a thousand times, but I’d never said them.
And now he’s gone, and he may never know.
“I’ll make Cyrus pay,” I said. Heat flooded through me—an anger so profound, so other, that I had never experienced before filled every crevice of my mind. “I’ll make him pay for every second you’re suffering. I swear it.”
The quiet pressed back against me, indifferent. I don’t know how long I sat there, tapping my hands against the wood as though he might reach me if I just kept trying. I cried until my throat was raw and my chest hurt with every breath. My eyes burned, and my head pounded.
Eventually, I managed to sit up. My body felt heavy and disconnected.
My eyes spotted his sweater folded neatly at the edge of the bed.
I dragged it into my lap with shaking hands.
I tugged it on, drowning in the fabric, and the scent of him wrapped around me so completely I could almost pretend he was there.
Almost.
I climbed into his bed. The mattress dipped beneath me, and I reached for his pillow and buried my face in it. My fists clenched into the fabric, and the ugly sobs returned full force, tearing out of me in waves I couldn’t control.
I wept until there was no breath left in me, and I wasn’t sure if I was shaking from the cold or from the memory of his arms around me. His scent began to fade, and I panicked, crushing the pillow tighter, desperate to hold onto even this small piece of him.
I cried until sleep took me, wrapped in the ghost of him.
I woke to golden sunlight leaking through his curtains. Outside, the city went on as though nothing had happened; cars rumbling, horns beeping, people living their lives as though the man I loved hadn’t just vanished.
Inside the flat, there were footsteps. Murmurs. Luz, May, Hecate, maybe. Leo, his voice low and shaky. Life pressed forward because that’s what it did.
But not me.
I was fossilized in his bed, wrapped in the hollow of his scent, unable to move or face the reality waiting beyond this room. I lay there, waiting for my heart to remember how to beat without him.
The knock was soft and hesitant.
I didn’t answer.
The door creaked anyway. Careful footsteps echoed in the quiet. The mattress dipped as she sat.
“Hey, baby,” my mother’s voice said. It was hoarse in a way I’d never heard before, thick with emotion.
I didn’t move. For a long time, she didn’t either. She sat there, her hand resting on the blanket by my hip, not touching me. Close enough to feel the warmth.
Finally, she whispered, “Some part of me always knew you were more than I could ever understand.”
I blinked, my eyes aching from crying.
“I was terrified,” she admitted. “When Reenie started having her dreams—when she remembered who she was—I told myself it was the cancer, that she was delirious. It was easier than facing the truth. But she wasn’t delusional.
She was Hestia. She was a goddess, and she was dying, and I pushed her away because I was afraid. ”
I turned my gaze to her, a lump forming in my throat.
“And when you started showing signs, I did the same thing. I tried to box you in, keep you small and safe. I told myself it was love, but it was fear.” Her voice hardened. “It strangled her. It nearly strangled you. I won’t let it strangle us again.”
Her hand finally moved, hesitant at first, before she pressed it to my back.
“You’re my daughter, and you’re Persephone. I love you. Every part of you. I always have and I always will. Even when I was too scared to show it, and when I tried to make you less than what you are.”
My voice came out in a whisper so thin I almost didn’t hear it myself. “It’s my fault.”
Candace’s inhale was sharp. “No. No, baby—”
“He gave himself up for me,” I choked. “If I’d been stronger, if I’d been enough, he wouldn’t be—”
The sob tore out of me before I could stop it. She pulled me against her chest. Her heartbeat thudded against my ear.
“Listen to me.” Her voice was fierce. “This isn’t your fault. Do you hear me? Not one single part of this is on you. He made his choice. His choice, Mel. He chose to save your life. That doesn’t make you weak—it makes him brave and human, god or not.”
I shook in her arms, sobs wrenching through me. She stroked my hair, whispering against my temple.
“And none of this would have happened if not for Cyrus. He did this.” She scowled. “Put the blame where it belongs.”
The vise around my chest loosened, just enough for air to scrape through. Just enough for me to believe that maybe I wasn’t the reason everything had fallen apart.
“We’ll get Kian back,” she murmured into my hair. “Whatever it takes. We’ll bring him home. I promise you, baby.”
I nodded against her chest. My voice wouldn’t work, but the promise in hers did. It settled somewhere deep in me, a seed waiting to grow.
I pulled back and looked at her. Her face was pale, worn down by everything she’d endured. Bruises shadowed her eyes, but her smile was soft, her eyes wet and kind in a way I hadn’t seen in years.
“I’m glad you’re here, Mom,” I rasped.
She brushed the hair from my damp cheeks. “I’m glad too.” Her lips twisted into something like a smile. “Thanks for rescuing me.”
I let out a weak, watery laugh that hurt my raw throat. “Don’t get used to it.”
“I won’t.” She kissed the crown of my head. “But I’m going to start acting like the mother you deserve. Starting now.”
And for the first time since Kian had been torn from me, I let myself lean into her, breathing in the warmth of a mother who finally saw me, fully and completely.
“I’m still not moving back home, though,” I muttered into her shoulder.
That got a genuine laugh out of her, the force of it shaking her body. “I wouldn’t dream of asking.”
I laughed with her, the sound rough and broken, but real.
And Gods, it felt good to laugh.
The door creaked as we stepped out of Kian’s room.
The flat was quiet, hushed in the way battlefields must be before the next charge.
Sunlight spilled soft gold through the curtains.
I inhaled slowly, steadying myself. Kian’s sweater hung low on my frame, sleeves bunched in my fists. I wore his scent like armor.
May looked up first. Her dark hair was braided back, and her expression flickered with cautious relief.
Leo was sprawled on the rug with a half-eaten bagel.
He gave me a lazy salute, then sat up straighter, his usual cocky facade slipping back into place.
But I could see the cracks in it, the fear still lingering in his eyes.
Luz watched me from her perch by the window, then offered a small smile.
“So what’s next, boss?” Leo asked.
I looked at each of them in turn. My pantheon, worn and grieving and still standing.
“We get him back,” I declared. “Whatever it takes.”
No one spoke; they didn’t have to. The resolve that settled over the room was answer enough.
Leo pushed aside old books and unrolled a larger map of Ekklesia’s facilities, marked and annotated.
Luz moved to his side, kneeling to examine the details.
May joined them, her fingers hovering above a location pinned in red ink.
I stepped forward and dropped to my knees in front of the map.
The others gathered with me, forming a circle.
And in the corner, half in shadow, Hecate stood with arms crossed.
Her face was unreadable, but her eyes shimmered like the edge of a blade.
Proud but grim, and expectant. I pressed my palms flat against the map, feeling the texture of paper beneath my fingertips, and let the determination settle into my bones.
They’d taken him from me, but I was going to take him back. And anyone who stood in my way would learn exactly what the Goddess of Spring and Death could do when pushed too far.