Chapter seventy-eight
Hades
She didn’t even know she was falling.
One moment, Persephone was adhered to the wards, breathing life into them in a myriad of light and a string of curses. The next, just as she triumphed, her body sagged and the sky spat her out.
I didn’t think.
Didn’t breathe.
I couldn’t even call her name. There was no time.
Instinct flared. I collapsed into shadow, darkness prevailing in a moment of destruction and recreation, a blink where all I was became smoke over water and my visceral fear had become my pace.
A beat.
I formed beneath her. I ensnared her, clutching her to me as she trembled like a leaf in wind.
“I’ve got you, little shadow,” I whispered into her ear, fighting the rising horror when she didn’t respond.
She didn’t even stir; the only tether to sanity I had was the shallow rise and fall of her chest.
Falling together into the darkness, we emerged on the banks of the Styx, whole. I held her tighter, as if I could stop her trembling if I just held her broken pieces altogether. She was so frail. So fragile. So blanched. Her breath was as thin as the specters that haunted this place.
It hollowed me to my core, making something ancient, unyielding, and protective bare its teeth at anyone who even looked at her. Even Demeter, in her urgency and fear over her daughter, eyed me cautiously, sensing the monster within me.
Perhaps she had some semblance of wisdom after all.