Chapter Seventy-Four
Persephone
It was strange how two moments equally heavy in their gravity could feel entirely different.
Several gods and goddesses looked up from their places at the circular table of obsidian and bone, quickly blinking away their disorientation. One of which stood, the stone seat scraping against the floor as she cried out my name.
My knees weakened.
For weeks, I’d imagined seeing my mother again. I’d imagined the feel of her arms around me, as warm as a summer evening, the scent of freshly fallen rain after a storm had passed. But what met me in her gaze was the storm. Zeus was quiet behind her, but lightning flashed in her eyes all the same.
“Persephone.” Her voice broke in a familiar way.
It was how her tone always shifted into a warning when I asked too many questions about my father.
Or why she hated Zeus. Or anything else that bothered her.
Her eyes missed nothing, flicking between Hades and me, searing at our closeness.
I reached for his hand, giving a reassuring squeeze, watching her face redden with a jab of dismay.
“Mother.” Discarding Hades’s hand, I ignored the other gods watching with raised brows and hushed whispers and took a tentative step forward, hardly breathing.
Zeus watched on with his vague interest, Ares with a sharp smile, Athena who looked intently at the nearest sconce with keen interest, as if she’d rather be anywhere else.
Poseidon scratched the back of his neck, following Athena’s lead and looking anywhere but at us.
Hecate watched with a sharp focus and keen interest, like the gossip enthusiast she pretended not to be.
Mother closed the distance, seizing my hands, my arms, inspecting me for signs of illness or injury like she was afraid I’d vanish from her sight, like a shadow chased by the rising sun. Her gaze was a myriad of emotions as she scanned me—desperate, fearful, relieved.
“You’re okay. Thank the Fates.” She tugged me into her warm embrace, and I buried my face in her neck, breathing in the familiar scent of her.
“I was so worried he’d destroy you as he destroys everything he touches.
” Hades didn’t flinch at the accusation.
If it bothered him, he didn’t show it. Just stood quietly as a shadow at my back, protective, watchful.
“He saved my life, Mother.” I tried hard to keep my voice on the fine line between kind and unyielding, for her sake. “He’d never harm me.”
“Save you?” Mother snapped with the fury of a lightning strike.
“Your chains are not your salvation, daughter. He stole you from me. From the mortal realm that still mourns your loss. They will rejoice when I bring you home today.” Another quick glare at Hades over my shoulder where I felt his power crackle in the air.
The room silenced. Zeus shifted uncomfortably while Ares bit his lip to keep from laughing.
“My chains, Mother?” My throat tightened. “I have never been freer. I choose this.” Hardening my tone against my mother for the first time in my life, I left no room for argument. “I choose Hades. I choose the Underworld.”
The silence was thick as Mother dropped my hands, as if repulsed.
The silence stretched until it was oppressive.
Even Ares’s snide grin faltered. The tension in the room was like that of an overstrung harp, just a breath from snapping.
Mother’s eyebrow ticked, a certain sign she was ready to fight.
My hands itched to reach out to my mother again.
Tears welled in my eyes. This was the closest we’d been in several weeks, yet we couldn’t be further apart.
When Mother spoke, her voice shook from the weight of her bitterness, her grief. “My only child, my only joy the Fates allowed me to have—and you choose him. This undead wretch. This cretin!” She seethed, her jaw grinding, “He would see you as his whore for eternity.”
“Hold your tongue, Demeter.” Hades’ warning burned through the air in the room, making it rattle with unease.
“That will be your only warning. Say what you will about me, but I’ll not stand by while you insult Persephone.
” Mother glared once again over my shoulder at him, but I spoke, bringing her eye back to me.
I withered to see her hate turned on me.
My tears burned down my cheeks as I watched her face harden.
“I’m where I belong, Mother. Does it not matter to you that I’ve found happiness here?”
“You find happiness in a crypt?” She spat as the other gods whispered. “A cesspool of death! My blossom buried beneath the surface of the living!”
“I love him.” Three words silenced the room.
Even Hades sucked in a breath behind me.
Not a soul stirred, the air standing on ceremony.
The only movement came from the shivering fires.
Demeter stiffened, railing against my proclamation.
Her stoicism was edged in timeless hate that I could see burning in the chasm between us. “I love you as well, Mother.”
“Lies!” she cried out, her steps retreating from me as if she’d been burned.
Firelight danced with the tempest in her eyes, highlighting her scarcely restrained wrath.
“He will hollow you out as he did me. He will choose law over mercy as he did with the man who was supposed to be your father. He will choose himself in the end, Persephone. You would choose him even knowing this?”
“I would choose him in every lifetime,” I declared, my shoulders straight and my head held high.
“I wish to see that you live, my daughter!” Mother’s snarl loosed as she narrowed her eyes back on Hades, her gaze full of disdain.
“Live in the light and flowers and all that is golden and good. Not down here in the filth of the damned. You have the magic of spring, of renewal. Nothing of the like exists here. Your magic, your talent, is wasted.”
“This place isn’t filthy, Mother. It’s the dark side of beautiful.
It’s haunting. It’s beseeching. It’s the quiet in the dead of night, when all is peaceful.
” I reached for her once more, rejoicing when she didn’t pull away.
She didn’t hold my hands in turn, but it was something.
“I don’t ask that you bless our union. But Mother, I beg of you,” I broke at last, a sob thickening my throat, “please don’t hate me for loving him. ”
Mother was stricken in the long silence that followed. Her cold grip was nonexistent, limp in mine. I rubbed her hands, eager to put warmth in them. Her eyes were bright with tears she refused to let fall.
“You are all I have, daughter.” Her voice was raw in the quiet.
Resigned. Defeated. Forlorn. “You are my joy. My purpose. My beautiful bloom. My everything. I could not hate you, but don’t ask that I stop hating him.
” She offered Hades one last withering stare over my shoulder.
Her eyes were hard, unyielding when they returned to me, gutting me from the inside.
“Forgiveness is not a virtue that I hold dear.”
Zeus’s eyebrows shot skywards, but he remained uncomfortably silent.
Hades stepped forward beside me, his hand finding mine effortlessly, and my heart along with it. Mother hissed, stepping back. Hades paid her no mind, instead leaning down to whisper in my ear.
“Do not mistake her hatred of me for shame in you. You are her pride, even if she forgets it right this moment.” I squeezed his hand in thanks as he led me gently towards our thrones.
“If her gaze wounds you, let mine heal. I’ll hold your hand so it can’t hold on to her judgement. At least for now.”
That was how we ascended our thrones—hand in hand.
It didn’t occur to me to be nervous about the council before us until I was staring at them all.
And they at me. The room thickened with a crackling tension, stringing the rigidity in my body until I practically vibrated with anxiety.
Mother sat as far from us as she could, sulking at the end of the table, refusing to look at me or Hades.
Ares’s chair grated on the stone as he leaned back, twirling his axe lazily.
“Well, that was touching. I almost had feelings for a second there. Way too close for comfort.” His grin widened as he watched Mother’s glare.
“Shall we commence with the council or does anyone else have some family drama to let loose? I came for blood, not tears, though I can’t say I’m not entertained. ”
Zeus chortled. “Odd. I swear you cried every time your mother ignored you.”
“At least I don’t hide from a fight, Zeus.” Ares’ snort was derisive. Pointed. I watched as Zeus’s smugness cracked under the lightest touch to his ego, the ire of Ares’s dismissal inflaming the King of the Gods. “I bet you disappear and make others fight your battles when the Morningstar comes.”
Poseidon’s fist met the table in a resounding boom, commanding all eyes to him before Zeus could respond.
“If you two are done measuring cock sizes, perhaps we can discuss this issue. The one where the Morningstar is actively stealing souls of the dead from the mortals and rattling the gates of the Underworld? Or the fact he is stealing our mortal followers? We can’t live without mortals worshipping us, and he’s siphoning an overwhelming number. What’s his end game?”
It was Hades that spoke this time, deadpan, though that mischief was back in his eye. “A reasonable suggestion from the god who drowned half of Attica? Things must be dire, indeed.”
Poseidon guffawed bitterly, his mouth falling into a grim line. “His attacks are worsening. Waters in the mortal realm froth black in places. It is not just your gates he tries to break. He is busy in the mortal realm as well. His influence bleeds everywhere.”
“He is not only influencing.” Hecate’s voice was smooth as it was certain. “He’s hunting. Feeding. Gathering his strength. Each time a mortal’s soul is pledged to his realm and follows through, his strength increases. If he harvests all those souls…”