Chapter eighteen Persephone
Chapter eighteen
Persephone
One month later…
The home I’d grown up in felt like it was made of fracturing glass when I returned to it.
Mother’s temper was a tempest, rattling the walls until they threatened to cave in over our heads, so I kept my head down, keeping to myself.
I dutifully did my chores. I humbly helped the mortals near our village.
I lovingly tended to the necropolis, restoring flowers to our dearly departed who now rested with Hades.
My gut twisted thinking of him. Mother always had a knack for knowing when my thoughts turned to him because she always found extra work for me to do.
Mother watched over me, would slip away as quietly as she could when she thought I wasn’t looking, to where I’ve no idea.
It gave me blessed reprieve. Reprieve to slip somewhere myself.
Somewhere I’d found just for me. Somewhere I could rekindle the passion, the thrill of that one moment in the garden with Hades.
But anchoring myself to the good moments in Olympus was the only way to block out the worst.
The new god’s breath, his hands on my body blocking my escape—
—I clung to the memories of Hades, of the garden, the dance desperately.
To let that go would be to fall into the void of what almost happened.
Of what I desperately try to keep my mind from remembering.
If I think about it too long, the memory of his icy touch ghosts over my skin and turns my stomach.
Sometimes, when the memory returns full force, I can smell him like starlight and clamoring shadows. And in those moments, when I’m gripped by fear, all I can do is ride it out while tears fall down my cheeks until the pain ebbs.
With the rift growing between my mother and me, my favorite solace was found in the meadow.
It was close enough to home that running off to it was easy, but not so close that Mother knew immediately where to find me.
It had been such a lovely blank canvas before.
Tall grasses blowing on the breeze, a rippling waterfall casting its cool spray about giving a blessed respite from the unseasonably hot spring day.
Now the meadow bloomed with tremendous and vivid color—larkspur in hues of blue and pink, hyacinths and wisteria casting a purple wave over the meadow, lightly scenting it.
Just the scent calmed me, allowing my shoulders to drop and my jaw to unclench.
Safety. From prying eyes. From this battle of wits with mother.
From him. Taking a deep breath, I glanced over my canvas, set to add some more touches of pink with some splotches of greenery.
Allowing my magic to fill me up, to warm me, to burst from me into the ground, it was the closest I’d felt to freedom since I came back from Olympus.
A butterfly fluttered around my head, landing on a nearby flower, its black wings catching the sunlight.
The garden Hades had let me leave my mark on flashed in my mind. The messing of perfect rows as they slid into chaos and overgrowth, muted colors morphing and turning vibrant. A wilder kind of beauty. This meadow would be my echo of that garden in the mortal realm.
The pleasantness of the meadow was violated by a grand shattering thunderclap, despite the sun high and no clouds.
Lightning thrashed overhead, something the mortals would undoubtedly fear.
The air itself turned wan, as if the sunlight itself had recoiled, leaving the scent of desiccation in its wake.
“Little Persephone...”
My stomach fell through my frozen body. Even my heart didn’t dare move, nor did my lungs care to ease the burn that grew. I knew that voice.
“You’re dead,” I snarled into the darkening sky. “Hades has you.”
Laughter sounded from somewhere behind me. A single glance saw a disheveled male dressed solely in black. Even more recognizable was the feeling of dread that poured off the Morningstar in waves.
“Does he now? I told you, little goddess, you belong to me.”
We stared at each other a long time, as if daring the other to move. Sweat dripped down my spine as the seconds stretched on and his grin grew wider. How was this possible? Mother said she saw him reduced to ashes.
His legs broke the barrier of the brambles to the meadow and in turn broke my reverie. I sent a deep wave of magic in his direction, thorny vines holding him, impeding him. It would buy me moments only, but perhaps it was enough.
“You’re mine, little Persephone.”
I turned, fleeing into a forest hoping against hope I could make it home.
Fates help me, I didn’t know what to do.
I steeled myself as I ran, my hands forming thin wooden daggers.
Sharp enough to hurt, they were better than the nothing I had before.
If he caught me, I wouldn’t let him hurt me this time.
“I’m coming for you. You cannot escape me.”
I was torn from sleep like thread torn from a freshly healed wound.
My chest pounded in time with the thunder booming outside just as the shadows vanished from my sight, the last vestiges of the nightmares banished from my space.
Lightning provided a glimpse into my bedroom.
My muscles didn’t unfurl to find me alone.
Instead, I felt as if I’d just lost a spider in my room, one that could kill you with a single bite.
The hollowness in my chest threatened to cave me in when I heard my mother’s voice over the storm.
“She’s fine, as far as I can tell. It’s not like last time.
” Last time? What happened last time? Wishing for the shadow bident—not for the first time—my hand hesitated over the dagger I kept beneath my pillow every night since Olympus, but my mind rebelled against leaving the one weapon at my disposal that made me feel safe, even if it were an illusion.
Was my dream an illusion? Or a warning?
I gripped my dagger until my knuckles turned white and tiptoed forward slowly, carefully treading over the safe boards and avoiding the ones that would give me away. I had crept silently to the top of the stairs where Mother was whispering just out of my sight with someone I couldn’t see.
“Hades hasn’t seen him, Demeter.”
I knew that voice, though it took me a moment to place it.
Zeus. I grit my teeth. He almost never visited.
I vaguely remember him visiting a number of years ago, in my twentieth year.
He and mother stood over me, peering at me with ripe concern as I woke.
He panicked, and even before my vision fully sharpened, there was a flash of lightning and he was gone.
Mother never said why they were staring at me, and only made my chore list longer if I asked about it.
And now suddenly he cared? But his words pulled me back to the present.
Hades hadn’t seen him.
The words felt oily against my mind as they slithered over it.
The dream came back to me, tightening my grip on my dagger until it shook in my hand like a glass window in a windstorm.
“Hades has you!”
“Does he now?”
My dream. It might have truly been a warning. I strained my ears listening to every word I could, but they spoke just quietly enough I wasn’t getting much for several beats.
“She deserves the truth, Demeter!” Zeus’s shout rose above the hush to echo about the cavernous room, his fury all balled fists and a voice like thunder, shattering glass and ceramic, rattling metal and stone.
“What would you have me do, oh wise king?” Demeter’s own wrath rose up to meet her ex-husband as wind whirled around them, whipping her long dark hair about.
His white beard floated in tandem, reflecting another lightning strike overhead.
“She deserves normalcy. She deserves a life away from you and the harm you would do her.”
“I would not harm our daughter!” he roared. “I’ve only ever done as you asked of me, but my need for her safety outweighs my desire to respect your wishes. She’ll be safer in Olympus where the pantheon can protect her.”
My mind froze, hung up on a single phrase—the pantheon can protect her.
My mind flashed to the garden in terror. How my fingers itched for the bident, for the thorns around my body.
They can’t find the Morningstar and he’s coming after me.
The weight of the revelation hit me hard enough that my knees buckled.
Only through my white-knuckled grip on the banister did I stay semi-upright.
Mother’s eyes sparked with outrage but whether it was at Zeus claiming ownership of me as his daughter, at his attempt to steal me away, or something else entirely I wasn’t sure.
It could just be as simple as his defying her.
“You destroy everything you lay your hands on,” Her tone was vicious. Cutting. Her nostrils flared, her chin lilted upwards in a show of superiority. “Our daughter will be no different.”
“I killed your mortal lover, Demeter, yes. I was jealous.” Zeus placated,“I said I was sorry, what more can I do?”
“Lasion was more than just my lover and you know it,” Mother seethed, her anger pulsing through the room as if alive in its own right. “If the Fates were just, they’d throw you into the abyss for what you did! And I will not let you take the only good thing in my life! Not now, not ever.”
“You trying to punish me by keeping our daughter from me has gone on long enough. You’re welcome to come with us. Or stay. I don’t care. But I’m leaving today with Persephone, Demeter.” His voice dropped to that of a dangerous warning, reminding me of the town’s warning bells. “One way or another.”
“Over my dead body!”
Zeus snorted, lightning breaking over his body in veins of light, casting the room in flickering, fractured brilliance. “That can be arranged.”
“Do I not get a say in any of this?” I hadn’t meant to shout.
Both of my parents froze, staring at me with wide-eyed horror realizing I had witnessed their conversation.
But if I’m being honest, I was more surprised they hadn’t woken me sooner with their squabbling.
Softening my expression, I bade them an imploring look as I moved swiftly down the stairs into the same room.
“I’m not a child. Tell me what’s happening. ”
“Nothing— ” My mother’s hands came up to rub warmth into my shoulders. I stepped back, out of her reach with a hard stare that flecked between the two of them. I refused the guilt that stirred in my gut when her face fell before she donned her mask of composure once more.
“The Morningstar is somehow back,” Zeus interrupted Mother like a king interrupts a peasant. “I have communed with the Fates and they have foretold his return. You need to return to Olympus. You’re not safe in the mortal world.”
His words fell away. The room followed. Then all sound turned into a high-pitched whine in my ears all screaming out danger.
The trees. The smirk.
He was back, alright. The Morningstar knew where I was and he was toying with me like a cat toying with a mouse before slaughter.