Page 12 of A Touch of Chaos

Darling, I win either way.

This time, she shivered.

Hermes grinned. “You got it, Queen.”

Everyone left, save Hecate, who approached and took her hands. “Will you rest, my dear?” she asked.

Persephone was not sure she could. She didn’t even wish to face their chamber, to face a night without Hades.

“I think…I should see my mother,” she said.

“Are you certain?”

It seemed like the better alternative. If she was alone, her thoughts would play in an endless cycle, reminding her of every way she’d failed and what she should have done differently—not only to save Hades but also her mother.

She had killed Demeter.

She could not even recall how it had happened. She only remembered how she’d felt—angry and desperate to end her mother’s assault on the world.

But neither thing was an excuse formurder.

It did not even seem real, and she was not sure yet how she was supposed to live with something so terrible, but perhaps seeing her in the Underworld would help.

“I will see her now.”

Hecate gave a solemn nod, and Persephone hada feeling she did not argue because she knew her thoughts.

She let Hecate teleport her.

Persephone had not considered where her mother might end up in the Underworld. When Tyche had died, Hades had told her gods come to him powerless, and he often gave them a role within his realm based on what challenged them in life.

Tyche had always wanted to be a mother, so she had become a caretaker in the Children’s Garden. Demeter had also wanted to be a mother, but granting her a role beside Tyche seemed too much of a reward for everything she had done. Still, Persephone wasn’t sure she wanted Demeter to face a sentence in Tartarus either, but perhaps that had more to do with the guilt she had in being responsible for her death.

She decided she would prepare for that, but when they appeared, it was in the golden grass of the Elysian Fields. She looked at Hecate and then out at the vast, open land, dotted with lush trees. Here, the sky was a bright blue. The souls who were scattered about the plains were dressed in white and wandered about in a near-aimless existence with no memories of the life they’d lived in the Upperworld.

“It is necessary,” Thanatos had said, “to heal the soul.”

Persephone had learned exactly what it meant when Lexa had come to the Underworld. She had been lucky to see her just as she’d crossed the Styx, and she cherished the few minutes she’d gotten with her best friend before she’d drunk from the Lethe and become someone else.

“Hecate,” she whispered, her throat full of an emotion she had not anticipated. “Why are we in Elysium?”

She asked and yet she knew.

“There are some traumas a soul cannot live with,” Hecate said. “Even in death, even as a god.”

Tears trailed down Persephone’s face. She couldn’t stop them, couldn’t even decide what they meant.

“What could she not live with?” Persephone asked, the taste of salt on her lips.

The version of her mother she had confronted at the Museum of Ancient Greece had no remorse for the harm she had caused. She did not care that her storm had killed hundreds, did not care that her magic was responsible for Tyche’s death.

“I will tear this world apart around you,” she had said.

Hecate did not answer, though Persephone supposed she did not need to. What either of them had to say about the life Demeter had lived was moot. The fact was that the judges recognized that her soul had withered beneath the guilt of her decisions.

Persephone wasn’t sure why, but knowing that somehow hurt worse. It showed just how lost Demeter had become.

Had her spiral begun with her rape by Poseidon? There was a part of Persephone that wished to know, that wanted vengeance for the mother she had lost and the one Demeter had become.

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