Page 207 of A Touch of Chaos

“I am not angry,” she said. “But it is hard to think of you walking into Theseus’s territory. It is like the labyrinth all over again.”

“If I felt there was another way, I would take it,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

There was a quiet pause, and then Hades spoke. “I wish to show you something, but I do not know if you are ready to return to the arsenal.”

She shivered as she took a deep breath. “I suppose that depends on what you wish to show me,” she answered. “Is it a memory that will overshadow what happened there before?”

“I’m not sure anything can do that,” said Hades. He pressed his forehead to hers. “There is no wrong answer here, Persephone.”

“I will go,” she said. “If I cannot face what I have done, do I really deserve to heal?”

Hades tilted her head back. “Everyone deserves to heal, if not in life, then in death. It is the only way the world evolves when souls are reborn.” He paused. “If it is too much, you will tell me?”

She nodded, and then he cradled her in his magic and took her to the Underworld.

He did not appear inside the arsenal, hoping that entering it from the hallway would prove to be far less overwhelming. He pressed his hand to the pad beside the door, and it opened.

“You repaired it,” said Persephone, standing at the threshold.

“Yes,” he said. He had done so when he had brought Hephaestus’s weapons to the Underworld.

He watched her as her eyes scanned the room, halting when she spotted the armor at the center. Without a word, she left his side and went to it. He had displayed it beside his own, a smaller version of what he wore on the battlefield—layers of black metal, embellished with gold. Elaborate details decorated the breastplate. She traced the design with her fingertips.

“It is beautiful,” she said and then met his gaze. “Thank you.”

“I have something else for you,” he said and produced the bident Hephaestus had made for her.

It had been his weapon for centuries, a symbol of his rule over the Underworld, and now she would have one too.

“Hades,” Persephone whispered, wrapping herfingers around the handle. “I…but I don’t know how to use it.”

“I will teach you,” he said. “It is not for this battle.”

She met his gaze. “Not for this battle but for others?”

“If we have lifetimes ahead of us,” he said, “there is sure to be another.”

“When I think of our future, I do not want to think of war,” she said.

“What do you want to think of then?” he asked, tilting her head back.

“I would like to think of all the things we will celebrate with our people and our friends,” she said. “Endless ascensions, the opening of Halcyon, your first birthday.”

“My first birthday?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “You’ve never celebrated, have you?”

“I don’t exactly know when I was born,” he said. “Even if I did, it isn’t a day I would wish to celebrate.”

“That is why I have chosen a new day of birth for you,” she said.

“Oh? And what day is that?”

“November first,” she said.

He stared down at her, curious. “What made you think of this?”

---