Persephone
Chapter sixty-six
The Underworld demanded everything from Hades lately, more so than usual, and he gave it without hesitation, at least by day.
He worked tirelessly, longer into the evening than I’d seen him.
I stayed in the building where shades were made to forget, easing the fear and discordance of death where I could.
But at night—at night he belonged to me.
We stepped into a new routine, of him taking care of the realm, and my taking care of him and the shades in turn, pouring energy and love into him the same way I did with the flowers that blossomed beneath my touch.
And sometimes, when the quiet of the realm beckoned ever so invitingly, we took to the skies together, a brief reprieve that allowed us both to catch our breath together away from the pressures of House Hades.
The darkened bronze of the chariot echoed the green of the Styx as we soared leisurely over it.
House Hades was behind us, with mountains towering on either side of us as we followed the river.
Above us, the clouds churned in its cool, perpetual twilight, forever constant. It was solitude made beautiful.
And needed.
A low rumble like rough stones being forced together sounded overhead—hammering the giddiness bubbling between Hades and me.
I glanced upwards, hair raising along my nape.
“What was that?” Hades stiffened behind me, his knuckles on either side of me going white.
I turned my attention to him, to see the mask he always wore, that expression that was so carefully curated neutral.
Dread dripped in my gut like the melted wax of a candle forgotten in the woes of late hours—hot, heavy, and impossible to scrape away.
I placed my hand gingerly over his. “What’s wrong, Hades? ”
“The realm stretches sometimes.” His response came too quickly, his voice too rough. I glanced up again, unconvinced, when another sound echoed over the water, louder this time. Sharper. Jagged, like something heavy was being shorn away. It didn’t sound like thunder anymore.
It sounded like someone was knocking a wall down with a battering ram.
The horses shuddered, pinning their ears and training their gazes above. My heartbeat quickened. “What are you not telling me?”
The third sound wasn’t a rumble. It wasn’t tearing.
It was a scream.
Not a voice. Nor was it a recognizable being. A shriek born of rage, and fire, and toil, all combined and carved from agony. It was a sound that didn’t belong here in the land of soft shadows and the quiet peace of the dead. Even the screams in the field of punishment didn’t match what I heard.
“Hades—” The chariot lurched, sending me sideways. I held on tight to the railing, righting myself as the horses screamed.
“Impossible,” Hades cursed low under his breath.
Something blurry broke through the clouds overhead, something black and jagged—something unmistakably forged from an abyss I’d never seen but heard rumors of.
Its ribs were exposed through blackened flesh, eyes burning like the hottest forges.
The beast didn’t look recognizably mortal, with stretched limbs and talons resembling harpoons.
I wrinkled my nose against the sharp scent of sulfur.
“Hades….” My breath caught. “Tell me that’s a friend of yours.”
Hades’s voice was tight, as if whatever serpent had constricted my lungs had his as well. “I can’t tell you that.”
The monster charged through the air on wings that resembled molten lava, spotting us with a roar, and lunged.
The horses screamed, banking left, narrowly avoiding a collision course with the monstrosity of creation as it barreled by us with a sickening attempt at a laugh.
“Don’t let go of the railing!” Hades commanded as he called his bident to his hand from the ether. Shadows frothed and gathered around the black steel of his trademark weapon, converging between the two points before detonating.
Hades had shown me a softer, more tender side of shadows, of darkness, of death itself. This was the monster Mother had warned me of. Darkness hummed so loudly it dimmed other sounds, crackling savagely before launching at the beast born of fire and ruin on our tail.
It shrieked its fury, its agony, when the shadows hit their mark.
It swathed through the monster, taking a whole section of its body with it.
I had expected gore—blood, guts, flesh raining down over the Styx—but all we got was something that turned the blood in my veins to ice: a scream devolving into deranged, distorted laughter.
Hades was already regrouping, already moving. His shadows gathered again, this time forming a crackling ball of shadow, matching the rage of the monster in hot pursuit of us, its horrid, open maw within mere feet of the chariot.
I fluttered the reins in desperation. “Fly, steeds!” I begged. “Fly!”
Aethon whinnied and shot forward like a dart, showcasing why his named referenced speed, keeping us just out of reach. More apples for them both later.
“Keep building your shadow ball with your pitchfork!” I cried. I kept one hand melded to the rail while I turned to face down the monstrosity head on. “I have an idea.”
“I told you, it’s a bident!” he ground out through teeth clenched in effort.
Something welled deep within me—old, dormant, persistent—and answered this threat.
My magic rushed to my aid in the forms of thorns and vines.
They erupted from me like the precise strike of coiled serpents.
They snapped around the monster’s wings, staggering it in the air above the waiting, green glow of the Styx.
It roared with rage as it flared its wings in a vain attempt to shake them.
Blood welled where thorns punctured, spraying with every sluggish, restricted beat of its wings.
“Now!” I beckoned to the King of the Underworld.
But he was already in motion, launching his attack, sensing the direction my plan had taken.
In one sweeping arc, the blast shot towards the beast. Shadows ripped like a tide, tearing the beast apart, but it wasn’t until it sank into the murky, acidic depths of the Styx that its screams quieted at last.
I stood trembling, my magic still tingling my hands.
I glanced at Hades, who stepped beside me with a clenched jaw, for answers.
He wasn’t looking at me. I followed his gaze upwards as the horses broke for higher ground.
Wisps of clouds strolled by until we were fully immersed in grey.
Up here, it was easy to forget the violence we just endured. The fear. Until I saw it.
A tear in the sky. An angry, red streak that wept like infection in a wound.
“What in the Fate’s names is that?” My lips parted on a horrified gasp.
“It’s new.” Hades’ jaw ground so hard, it audibly clicked. “And impossible.”
“You keep saying impossible, but I’m thinking we have different definitions of the word.”
He ignored me, his eyes going white. “Hecate.” Hades’s voice wasn’t loud, but it echoed off the surrounding mountains in a quiet roar. A thunder of his own making. “I summon you.”
A beat.
Two.
Then the wind swirled. Howled, turning violent enough that the chariot shuddered and teetered beneath our feet.
I clutched the railing as my feet slid, seeking purchase on the metal.
A churning of black fabric and fire, and brimming darkness announced the goddess’s arrival.
In a way so like Hades, she stepped from the shadows, taking up what little space was left in the chariot.
Hecate hadn’t even oriented herself yet when Hades spoke.
“The barrier,” His words were a lick of exhausted devastation. “It’s happening faster than we thought.”
Hecate looked up where our chariot hovered precariously beneath the tear in the sky with a string of colorful curses. This close, the smell of sulfur and smoke was cloying, reaching into my throat to choke me. “How long?”
“It opened moments ago.” Hades looked anxious. No, he looked like he was staving off defeat. Like he’d been battling inevitability for an age and was succumbing to the crushing weight of his exhaustion. “Can you knit it back together?”
Hecate fingered the tattered fringes of reality weeping through the seam.
Darkness and starlight, and the scent of scorched gore bled from it as she did, making bile rise within my stomach.
“I can, but it’s not a long-term solution.
This corruption, it spreads like an infection.
And it’s hastening like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s changing, adapting to my magic.”
Corruption? Was the Underworld in danger? What happened to the wards? The Phlegethon?
“Like drops of water on thick paper, it’s bled a hole through—”
I stopped hearing words, their voices dimming.
I fixated on them, on the rigidity in their stances, his shoulders, her jaw.
I watched as he took a thin, frayed breath only for it to shakily leave him, a quiet, reluctant moment of shame.
And one thing that had my pulse skittering like spiders across a crypt floor—fear.
“Hades,” I whispered. “What’s happening? What are you not telling me?”
He didn’t answer.
Though his face turned ashen as it fell, his eyes hidden by his black hair.
I tiptoed closer with trepidation I felt echoing on his face. Placing my hand on his cheek, I bade him to look at me.
He resisted a moment too long.
When he at last met my eyes, my heart sank as I saw it.
Not anger.
Not mourning.
A myriad of grief and dread swirling within those dark eyes.
“Please, Hades. I can’t help you if you don’t let me in.”
He exhaled like it hurt. “The wards are weakening. Something that was supposed to be impossible.”
The world tilted, shifted, until I could no longer distinguish direction. There was only the dread that crackled thickly between us as Hecate quietly, grimly sutured the gash in the sky, narrowed eyes fixed on her task.