Page 35 of Hades and Persephone: Threads of Fate

My question is answered as a gathering of red flowers is painted into the side of the small white home. A garden of blood red. A sliver of purgatory in bliss.

I frown, uncertain where the thought came from or why it formed at all. Purgatory in bliss?What the Hell, Persephone.

Again, I’m struck. Not only by my unexplainable thoughts, but the fact I’m thinking of myself as Persephone and not Annie, as I’ve always thought of myself.

The man before me is changing me. Altering me.

He stands, dropping his brush to the table as he wipes his hands with a rag. My eyes can’t help but drop to the small rise where the already healing sliceacross his palm sits. My poor brain still can’t make sense of that. How, when he cuts into his flesh, it heals so quickly.

“Any news on the new temple?” Hades asks gruffly, and I blink up from the closed wound to dark eyes that study me intently. He always looks at me with such intensity.

Sometimes, it feels—it feels like he could devour me and still be unsated.

I swallow. “We’re getting there. It’s not easy to uncover this while maintaining the structure and integrity of the temple. It—it is built into the ground, and some time long ago, someone filled it with a lot of earth. That earth solidified over the centuries,” I explain. “But we’re getting there.”

His eyes continue to study me. “Why do you think the temple was filled?”

I shrug. “The people probably stopped believing in the Gods. Probably came to realize that they weren’t all that they once thought, and in anger or maybe even grief, they closed the temple.”

“Any theories on who this temple belongs to?”

“You mean which God?” Hades nods and I tell him, “Beth thinks it could be another temple for Demeter. There seems to be so many already. She’s considered that it could potentially be a passageway for Persephone to travel between the realms.”

“That is an unexpectedly interesting and intelligentobservation,” Hades observes. “And what do you think?”

I frown. Quietly, I say, “Taking my obvious insanity into consideration here, I feel oddly connected to it. With every step we uncover I feel more and more drawn to the descent. Like I am being pulled deeper into…”

“Into?”

I blink, blushing. “I feel like the stone is trying to guide me from this world into something darker. Somewhere darker. I—I—” I laugh. “Well, we know I’m a couple marbles short of sane, but I feel like if I kept on going, I’d eventually walk right into the arms of the God of the Underworld.”

Hades is silent for a long moment. I fear I’ve said too much, revealed too much of my insanity, when he finally asks, “Have you had any more visions?”

I had, in fact. I’d had one just today. The experience was out of body. As though a spirit hovering over my body, I’d seen myself walking from the depths of the tunnel my team worked to uncover. I wore a gown of revealing gauzy white that slit straight to my hip. Although I recognized myself asmyself, I looked notably different. Gone were the freckles that dotted my skin. My green eyes were darker, the emerald veined with the dark green of a malachite crystal, and my blonde hair was a deep, shocking fall of rich red, the color of a red maple under cover of moonlight. My lips have always beenrose-pink, but in the vision, they looked kissed by blood—or stained the red of a forbidden fruit. A pomegranate.

I’d been hauntingly, dangerously beautiful. So beautiful that, if I hadn’t watched the transformation as I stepped from the dark of the tunnel into the light of the day where a regally clothed woman waited, I might have argued that she wasn’t, in fact, me.

But as sunlight touched my leg, bared by the high slit in my gown to travel the length of my body, I watched as the sunlight washed away the paint of the darkness. It started first with the tendrils of my hair that swept the small of my back. Maple red under the fall of night faded into the white blonde of the hair I have today. My skin, drenched of the freckles I am so familiar with bloomed gold under the warm glow of the sun, and my lips paled from the shine of blood red to a pink I have known all my life. Last to change were my eyes, as I tipped them to the high sun, the veins of dark malachite swallowed by bright emerald.

Then I dipped my eyes to the regal woman and said, “Mother.”

I shake myself from the vision, rattled, as I stare up at a waiting Hades. I could swear the man isn’t breathing.

I swallow hard and lie, “No. No other visions.”

I can see he doesn’t believe me, but I hold my ground all the same. I’m not ready to share further proof of my slipping mind, instead, I am hoping thatthis isn’t a slip, but instead the fanciful daydream of a very average girl.

Hades says nothing as he leans into me. My heart drums in my chest as he stretches an arm around me to nab the phone that sits on his desk. I blow a breath of relief that wars with disappointment from between my lips as I watch him touch the screen and lift his phone to his ear. I’d thought he would touch me, force me in a way that only he can, to reveal all my secrets.

He speaks deep and gruff, “Leuce.” His eyes never break from mine. “Bring me the painting from the gallery.” There is a pause and he says, “The unrelenting storm, yes.” Another pause before, “Hyperion.”

Leuce appears notlong after his call with the painting in hand. Hades takes it from her and, giving us his back, says, “Join us for dinner. I’ll meet you in the kitchen soon.”

He’s dismissing us, I realize, on another swell of disappointment I hide with a pinched smile I flash at Leuce. Straightening my shoulders, I try for unbothered as I say, “I have a bottle of red open and waiting.”

Leuce’s smile widens. “I like red.”

The sound of her heels follows me as I move from Hades’ office and down a long, wide hall. The kitchen smells of grilled chicken and herbs with grilled veggies and rice. It’s a simple, but wholesome dinner.After a long week, even though I’d had the first couple days off, I’m exhausted. My mind is exhausted and my body is—it’s humming with an energy I can’t explain while simultaneously feeling, well, exhausted.

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