Page 10 of A Touch of Chaos

Five or six men just to capture Sybil. Persephone had known from Theseus that they had not anticipated Harmonia’s presence in the apartment, and her resistance was why she’d been hurt so badly.

“They came to wound, Persephone,” Sybil said. “Not only me but you too.”

Persephone knew, and it made her feel sick. It was hard to imagine that while she had walked down the aisle toward the love of her life, her friends had suffered at the hands of a deranged demigod.

“Did you see Helen?” she asked.

She asked because she wanted to know just how entwined her former friend had become with Theseus. What plans was she helping him execute, and did she feel anything as she watched them suffer?

In some ways, Persephone blamed herself. She was the one who had encouraged Helen to get close to Triad after she expressed interest in writing about the organization, though it was evident now the kind of person she was. She had no real sense of loyalty to anything, save herself.

“No,” Sybil whispered.

Persephone’s jaw tightened. She had only felt inclined toward vengeance a few times in her life, and this was one. With the way she felt right now—with the rage that simmered inside her—she could not say what she would do when she saw Helen again, but the reality was that Persephone had already crossed a line. She had killed her mother, even if it was not what she had intended.

Would she kill Helen if given the chance?

“She isn’t healing,” Sybil said after a beat of silence.

Persephone’s head whipped to the side. “What do you mean?”

“Hecate said whatever she was stabbed with is preventing her from healing. When I asked her why, she said she didn’t know.”

Persephone’s stomach turned.

Hecate always knew.

“What about you?” Persephone asked, her eyes falling to Sybil’s hand, which had been heavily bandaged after two of her fingers were cut off by Theseus. The demigod had mutilated her without hesitation, which illustrated just how dangerous he was.

“I will heal,” Sybil said and paused. “Hecate said she couldrestoremy fingers, but I told her no.”

Persephone’s eyes misted and she swallowed, trying to clear the thickness from her throat.

“I’m so sorry, Sybil.”

“You have nothing to apologize for, Persephone,” Sybil said. “It’s hard to know what evil exists in the world until it finds you.”

Persephone remembered when she thought she knew evil, when her mother had convinced her that Hades’s darkness was what seeped into the world from below, an influence on every terror, plague, and sin.

But evil had no effect without a master, and in the last few hours, she had learned true evil. It did not look like her husband or even her mother. It was not darkness, and it was not death.

It was the pleasure Theseus received from his cruelty, and she hated how it had invaded her life and would soon invade the world.

“We’ll find a way to heal Harmonia, Sybil. I promise,” she said.

Sybil smiled. “I know you will.”

And though she’d said it and she’d promised it, Persephone wished she felt the same certainty.

She left them to rest, still worried. It was likely that Harmonia had been stabbed with a blade tipped with venom from the Hydra. Hades had said it slowed healing, and too many wounds could kill a god as it had killed Tyche.

Perhaps Harmonia only needed more time to recover before healing herself.

Or maybe that was only wishful thinking.

Dread pooled in Persephone’s chest as she made her way to Hades’s office. There was a part of her that hoped she would find him waiting, sitting behind his desk or standing near the fire, but when she opened the door, she found her friends—Hermes and Ilias, Charon and Thanatos, and Apollo and Hecate.

As much as she loved them, they were not Hades.

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