Fallyn
Chapter sixty-nine
When the shadows spat us out, Hades and I were both outside Moonfall where we started at the beginning phases of dusk, the towering castle a beacon of my distress in the rising moon.
I knew the dangers of the evening. I knew the monsters that patrolled within its afforded shadows, but I didn’t care.
I ran.
My heart cleaved. The Fates were cruel, the one person in the world who made me feel safe was the same one who hunted me every night.
Maybe it was a bad idea to run from a predator, but sometimes there was simply no other option.
Even as the wind carried his plea to me, I didn't stop.
My heart stayed behind, but my feet carried me forward without it.
I broke my promise to him, that I wouldn't run again.
Maybe he could find solace in the face that he broke something in me too.
“Fallyn!” I heard Hades’ shout as he took a few steps in my direction.
I didn’t stop. I didn’t think I could. I ran until my breath left me and then I still refused to stop. I would’ve noticed his calls for me had quieted if I could contain my panic. Hades. Ash was fucking Hades. Ash was the god of the dead. The King of the Underworld.
How did I not see? As much as nobody expected to encounter into a god—much less the God of the dead—in the mortal realm, the signs were there.
The way he spoke of the gods as if he knew them.
Because he did. The smirks he would toss.
The blazing wrath that someone had defiled that temple.
That made so much sense now. What else had he lied about?
He could’ve guessed my nightmares because I woke in front of him with one.
I was so hasty to believe, and I so wanted a cure to my nightmares that I trusted him. What was wrong with me?
But I couldn’t deny the curse touch. The slow blackening of my arm.
I couldn’t feel it. Not really. It was cold if I touched it though, like when I moved to scratch my nose or rub my eyes, the temperature of my arm was drastically colder.
That felt solid amidst the chaos. Who would have thought that a curse would be something to hold to?
Flickers of fractured memories bombarded my mind now that it was quiet, layers of a chaotic mosaic rather than one portrait to examine.
Death. I saw death in each one. He was the male from my nightmares.
The one I’d been running from my entire life.
As the filaments of memory threatened to implode my too-full mind like an overstuffed cushion, two things became abundantly, tragically clear.
Ash, the male I cared for, was my soulmate.
And all my life, I’d been running from him.
Lifetimes flitted by with no particular vision, but the feeling, the emotion in those memories I could achingly feel—so much love, an overwhelming abundance of it, and even more pain.
But the visions didn’t stop there. Tears ran unchecked and I choked on a sob.
How could there be more? Ash wasn’t just Ash.
I once thought his head begged for a crown, and how far off I wasn’t felt like the biting lash of the Fate’s amusement.
Ash wasn’t just any usurped monarch. He was Hades, the rightful King of the Underworld.
So it begged the question; what was he doing here?
I ran until my body threatened to collapse to exhaustion, finding myself at the edge of a meadow. I didn’t even see the disappearance of the city, of the trees, until the clearing took even my panic by surprise, oddly snapping me back to reality in a form of whiplash.
As dark as my thoughts were, the meadow before me was its opposite: the definition of serenity in the coming sunset.
Birds soared high above, their familiar melody calming me as my gaze snagged on the waving reeds and sunflowers, and daisies, and lilac bushes before me.
An entire field of flowers of all colors.
This put my little bucket I called a garden at home to shame.
The flowers were bright with a light scent that further grounded me.
Stepping in, feeling the grasses tickling my legs, I soaked and basked in the comfort of the beauty around me.
I breathed deep, luxuriating in this unexpected calm.
Though my panic was still there, churning underneath like a riptide below a calm surface, I could process it.
Be detached from it as I examined this new revelation.
Ash was Hades. When I said, “gods above and below,” or worse, “Hades take me” I was praying to, or cursing, him.
And his family. But the other revelation had me spinning.
Persephone. I am Persephone, Hades’ mate.
A mate that haunted me, hunted me, and would without a doubt be the death of me.
Hot tears spilled from me as my knees met the soft, grassy earth that was as much exhaustion as it was my body giving out under the strain of today, unable to withstand any more.
The tension had shattered, and me with it.
Fuck the fates. Fuck the fates so much. I imagined the three of them howling with laughter at their own cleverness at casting two mates into being star-crossed for eternity.
“Fallyn!” I heard Hades call my name from somewhere behind me.
I laid further into the tall grass, hoping he didn’t spot me.
Another tear fell as my heart shattered.
Memory hadn’t yet returned to me so much as feeling had, yet Persephone’s love for Hades was as pure as the snow on the top of the Grim Hollow Mountains, and mine…
My feelings for Ash had grown a lot in a short amount of time.
But that was what happened with those who were fated, wasn’t? They’d fall, they’d collide, they’d find one another regardless of fate’s design.
Would I lose myself as Fallyn? Would I be a different person when my memories came back to me? I wasn’t sure I could face Hades until I knew who I was. Would I cease to exist, succumbing to Persephone?
My laying in the grass didn’t stop Hades from finding me. His wary gaze caught mine from the clearing's edge where I lay in the reeds and daisies. How very Persephone of me. The thought tasted bitter on my tongue. He stood on the edge of the clearing, his expression frantic.
“Fallyn.” His voice was quiet as he peered around in suspicion. “I need you to come here. Quietly and quickly. Can you do that for me?”
“Was me running from you not enough of a hint?” I deadpanned. His jaw tightened. Inside, some part of me sobbed, knowing I’d broken my promise of never running from him again. I flourished my dagger. “Fuck off.”
“I need you to trust me. Just one more time.” Hades glanced around the meadow, still not stepping foot in it. “Hurry! Before—”
A monstrous shriek pierced the air. Suddenly, the calm of the sunset felt more like a countdown, and to what I knew I didn’t want to find out.
I stood quickly, making my way to where Hades waited with an outstretched hand.
A glimmer smeared the air before me, and beneath the serene meadow lay something red. Blood red.
It was an illusion.
And a very intricate one too. I could touch the grasses, smell the flowers.
But as if my knowledge was enough, the glamour began to slip before my eyes until I wasn’t in a meadow anymore.
I didn’t know where I was, but it resembled the worst pits of the Underworld.
Corpses that addled with the sun for too long lay scattered in various stages of desiccation, reminding me far too much of that grotesque garden in Moonfall.
Only this was unfortunately very real. The ground squelched with every step and my pants and boots were painted red. Every breath tasted of rust.
This wasn’t a meadow. It was a feeding ground. A nightmare without end. The ground shook violently, forcing Hades and me to our knees. I was only twenty feet from him.
“Fallyn, run! Get out of the clearing!”