Fallyn
Chapter ninety
“You know, I think I’m less in the mood for action and more in the mood for something dramatic.” Lilith smirked as she raised the bident high with a whispered spell that sounded like anger given verbal form.
A pulse boomed around the room. Panic took up residence in my chest as Lilith's grin gave way to a wicked laugh.
Hades looked to me in panic as he sank to his knees, lips parting on a dread-filled scream. With the look of pure devastation on his face, he begged me, “Run, Persephone! You have to run!”
I froze, unsure what was happening. I looked from Hades to Lilith in confusion. I took a step towards him, only for him to beg me to run again.
“Oh, pish.” Lilith swatted the air as if to swat down his warning.
The door we’d come from slammed shut, the iron slamming the stone hard enough that cracks formed.
“There’s no place for her to go, darling.
This time when you kill her, I’m going to let your mind stay awake.
I’m going to let you live the experience of killing her and trapping her soul for the Morningstar.
She can be reborn again, with her memories this time I think, so she knows who she serves. ”
Hades’ wrenched his sleeve up, finding no end of the ink stain.
Time slowed to a stop, gravity converging on this moment.
It had been halted halfway up his upper arm—why was there no end to it now?
Grunting in pain, Hades tossed every weapon he had in my direction hilt-first. “Take them. All of them. I can’t hurt you with them if I don’t have them. ”
“I don’t understand.” I shook my head as if I could shake away the truth. “The curse was stopped.”
Lilith tilted her head back and laughed, exposing her fangs, before making eye contact with both of us in turn. “It was. But you little ritual pales in comparison to my power.” She hoisted the bident and another sickening pulse flew around the room.
Its effect was immediate. I screamed as pain seared up my arm, starting from where the curse touch had stopped between my elbow and shoulder. I ripped my sleeve open to see the curse touch flying up to my shoulder.
Towards my heart.
Lilith forced the curse to trigger. But that meant—
Hades screamed as agony swept over him. I watched in horrified fascination as the curse touch shot upward.
The moment it touched his heart, his screams quieted, a wind picked up from somewhere, waving his raven hair about his head.
His eyes were as black as the void. Gone were the golden chips I loved so much, the shine that made him, him.
His face softened into complacency. He looked bored.
I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I couldn’t fight him and Lilith. I wouldn’t kill Hades. I refused.
I threw a dagger at Lilith as hard as I could, aiming for her head. She dodged it easily. It embedded itself in the wooden post behind her with a heavy thunk.
“Persephone.” The deep timbre of his voice carried with it a desperate plea that made our gazes collide in a moment that time stopped between two beats of my heart.
That moment felt like an eternity, seeing him holding the dagger Lilith had inched toward him.
I had traced the ornate golden hilt enough to see how worn the gold was from years of loyal duty.
I saw the strain in his jaw, in his shoulders, as he struggled to fight back the curse, the very will of an all-powerful, vengeful god. A battle he was slowly losing.
I backed up as far as I could go. Until my back hit the jagged stone wall. My dagger, my one line of safety, lay shattered at my feet, the useless hilt dropped next to it in quick succession.
“Persephone,” he whispered one last time, a sad smile appearing on his face with the dawn. “I said I’d never hurt you. I keep my oaths… to those I love.”
Hades’ eyes deadened entirely in that moment, and I closed my eyes, willing the end to come. I’d lost him.
“Make it quick.” My wavering voice was a strangled plea. A mouse caught in a trap by its tail, just found by the cat. “It’s okay. I forgive you. It's not your fault.”
When someone is stabbed, it’s a very particular sound. It’s wet and thick, and the scent of copper hits you stronger than you’d expect, so when I scented blood and felt no injury, I was confused. It was only when I looked up at Hades that I understood.
I only saw the dagger plunged into his abdomen for a second or two before my vision blurred from tears.
The one he carried, the one from the cave.
It hit me then—the blade must not be mortal made.
IT could actually kill him. The world narrowed to this moment, only to fissure around this single, impossibility.
For a moment, understanding eluded me. I’d prepared for my own death, but not his.
Never his.
“Hades!” I screamed as tears fell unchecked down my face. “What are you doing?”
“It’s okay,” he whispered as he fell to his knees. I fell with him, crawling towards him when he held his hands out. “No. I’m still dangerous. I can… feel it.” He removed the dagger with a wet grunt of effort before plunging it back in as I sobbed.
“Don’t do this. Don’t leave me!” My very soul was fracturing as the pool of blood beneath him steadily grew.
He fixed me with another sad smile, further blurring my vision. “I promised… I would… never be your nightmare.”
“You’re my dream, not my nightmare!” I whimpered as he fell facedown to the blood-soaked floor. And then my heart shattered in a way that I didn’t think could be ever whole again. My ears rung with the tension-filled quiet—the only sound his heartbeat fading, slowing with each passing breath.
I stopped caring. I would not let him die alone.
If he somehow took me with him, I would welcome it.
I crawled to him, my knees splitting on the frosty, unforgiving floor.
I didn’t feel it. I turned him over, face up, and hauled him into my lap, tenderly brushing his dampened hair out of his slowly blinking eyes.
“I love you.” I’d only said it a handful of times, and now now this was supposed to be the final time?
My heart was trying to beat double time, trying to beat for the both of us.
With my other hand, I held his wounds closed, my vision blurring as hot blood continued seeping out despite my every effort.
“Tell me what to do. Tell me how to fix this.”
He didn’t respond in words. His hand tightened briefly over mine before falling far too still.
I screamed. I think the word “no” crossed my lips, but screaming was all I could manage. I tapped his face, begging him to open his eyes, to come back to me. “Tell me you love me again. Or yell at me. Roll your eyes at me. Something, Hades. Please! I don’t want to be without you.”
This time, there was nothing. He was silent. His heart had stopped, his eyes half-lidded in what I knew to be death.
It was all white noise for me then. I broke; pieces of my soul scattered on the wind as I rocked him mournfully.
I couldn’t think of anything other than him.
What was I to do now? My fate had been to either kill this male or to die by him.
Over and over again, fate had stood between us, cruelly bringing us together only for the curse to tear us apart.
We existed only for that torment for the last however many hundreds of lifetimes.
Fate owed me.
Hades changed our fate. My fate.
I would change his in turn.
I turned to Lilith who cackled in the corner.
Though she laughed, I could see a crack in her confidence.
Lightning crashed outside, lighting the room in shades of black and white.
And I could see for a moment what she’d been hiding—Hades had done more than scratch her.
He’d stabbed her and she was bleeding out. This was my chance.
“You know, I think it’s time we left. I’m supposed to bring you to the Morningstar, but I think I have a better idea.”
I had never seen a soul before in this lifetime, so I was woefully unprepared for it to drift from my mate’s body, brilliant enough to illuminate the room. I knew they were real from my time in the Underworld, but nothing prepares you for seeing one up close like this.
Run, Persephone. You have to run.
I didn’t know how his voice was in my head, whether it was real or imagined. I held to it like a drowning person holds to a raft.
Using my magic, thorny vines erupted, winding and climbing around Lilith’s legs, enveloping her with huge spikes, this time gouging them into a bloody mess. Lilith laughed even as blood dripped down her chin in a frightening smile.
“It’s too late, little girl,” Lilith taunted, erupting from my vines.
She speared me just as I reached Hades’ soul, the bident finding a home in my flesh.
I screamed as the shadows lanced my shoulder and pinned me to the wall behind me.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but watch as she took hold of the shimmering white orb that shrieked when she touched it.
“I’m taking Hades to the pit of Hell. Want him back?
Come and claim him. I’ll even leave the door open for a moment.
The Morningstar has been dying to see you again.
And Hades?” She winked at me. “Between us girls, I’ll make sure to pay him back in kind for everything he did to you.
” With talons of shadow erupting from her hands and spearing the shimmering light that was left of Hades, she called back her bident, freeing me and disappearing into the sucking void between realms, leaving me bereft and alone with the broken body of my beloved.
With a wailing sob, I dropped to my knees, taking Hades into my lap and crying into his shoulder. I didn’t even have the comfort of crying with his soul inside. Hades was gone.
The chasm yawned before me, darkness and the red light of embers swirling a dizzying depth down. Just like the one that had been opening throughout Inithilia, killing hundreds—no, thousands—of mortals. Nothing came out of it, but I meant to descend.
The Morningstar’s followers had a saying for those who looked to enter Hell. “Abandon all hope.” I refused to let this desolate place be my grave, let alone Hades’. I refused to let the Fates weave this thread for Hades and me. After all we’ve done, all we’ve suffered, this would not be our end.
I didn’t have any second thoughts. I didn’t question it. The curse may have been broken, but so was I. I didn't want this realm or its safety if Hades wasn't here with me in it. I followed the echo of Lilith’s laughter.
Clinging to hope, I leapt into the chasm, free falling into flame and sulfur.