Page 58 of Hades and Persephone: Crown of Souls

It is my turn to refuse her question. “No.”

She sighs, but doesn’t look away from me as she says, “You know I’ll love you anyway, right? No matter the monster you keep under your skin, I’ll love him just as much.”

My eyes narrow on her a second time as I study my little goddess for memories she might very well possess of the monster I contain deep within. When I find no horror, no fear, I am convinced it is not so.

Not yet at least. For now, there is time.

She breaks my study to peer across the stretch of water toward the quiet island, a little frown playing heavy at the tips of her mouth. Maybe that’s why I am surprised when, after a long silence, she blurts, “I want you to take me to Uranus.”

“No.” For my insolence, I receive another sharp elbow. I growl. “Stop that.”

“Stop telling me, no,” she retorts stubbornly.

“Uranus is dangerous, Persephone.”

“That might be.” Her shoulders lift in a senseless shrug. “But Poseidon said that Atlantis felt when Uranus was castrated. Maybe—maybe he really did sire the sentient island with Chaos. Maybe he knows what happened to her. Maybe it was Gaia.”

“What was Gaia?”

“Poseidon said she was jealous of the island of Atlantis, and that she pulled Pangea from the seas in effort to best Chaos’ creation. Perhaps when she failed, her wrath was too much.”

I am a creature of heat, and yet it is ice that chases her words through my body. “You think, in a vengeful wrath, that Gaia destroyed Chaos?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I think we need to see Uranus.”

“It's too dangerous,” I tell her again. Her human mind can’t comprehend the creature Uranus is. Even stripped of his godly form, torn from his human flesh—he is a terrifying thing to behold.

I can't see her face, but I know she's rolling her eyes. Still, I smile. I just can’t help myself. Her ire is addictive.

There is something about riling up this tiny woman that fills me with undeniable pleasure. She gives me her weight as she looses a sigh. Then she pulls my arms tighter around her belly, cocooning herself within my body. The act steals my heart as stealthily as it steals my warmth.

She could steal the very last of my immortal soul, and I would not fight the possession.

“Please, Hades.” It’s emotional warfare. “For me. Please.”

“I’ll find a way to make visiting with him safe for you.” I tip my head and let my eyes close as I inhale the scent of her hair, my mind racing with yet another unpleasant conversation I must have with Hecate.

Chapter

Twenty-Five

Persephone

It feelslike a lifetime ago that I stood before this painting. It had hooked me then. Gripped me with those wicked talons that stretch from the starved limbs of a rootless tree, swimming in an eternity of nothing. I remember thinking I preferred a tragic kind of romance to the violent sweeps of paint across canvas. Remember thinking that although this piece wasn’t the kind that usually drew me in, that there was a depthless beauty to the agonizing torment of the gore each brushstroke depicted. A hypnotic kind of draw I was, and still am, helpless to resist.

I take a step closer, peering into the burst of pale flesh and ebony bone swirling in a galaxy of suffering.

Again, I feel watched by eyes that are without body. The impossible darkness appears to shift as though sentient, in a violent wind. It is faceless, and yet familiarity sparks within me.

It edges on recognition. A complex web of knowing far too intricate to untangle. It plucks at the chords deep within me, pulling at my own threads of ancient recognition.

And yet something inside me quivers, rejecting the thing that watches from the depths of the enchanted canvas. The prison in which the soul of a Primordial God is bound.

Pebbles of uncertain awareness rise on my skin. A quickening of dark foreboding flutters the organ inside my chest. I am divided. Torn by an impulse to move nearer even as I feel compelled to flee.

A dull shuffling breaks my trance. I whirl to find Hecate and Hades. They both watch me with equal wariness. In Hades’ eyes I see worry for me. But in Hecate’s I think I see something else. Something curious and touched with suspicion. She is not suspicious of me, I don’t think. Her suspicion is rather of the thread of familiarity that pulses between me and the Primordial being within the painting.

Drawing breath into my lungs, I ask the thought that has plagued me since I learned of the Titan’s prisons. “How is this possible? That something so massive—so powerful—is trapped within a canvas?”

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