Page 73 of Hades and Persephone: Crown of Souls

“I’m not dead.” I don’t realize I’m crying until now.

But I am crying. I’m crying hard. I’m mourning the life I lost as I may have mourned it if I really were dead. Because even though my heart continues to beat, Ihavelost my life. I’ve lost everything I’ve ever known—everyone I’ve ever loved.

It’s all just gone.

“You are not dead, but you can’t continue in this life.” His words confirm what I already know but hearing them aloud only serves to shove the blade of this painful reality that much deeper. “You must let those you loved go. You must let them live their life. You must let them heal from the grief of losing you.”

I don’t know how long I cry in his arms, mourning a life I never really got the chance to live. It’s a while, though. Perhaps I slip in and out of sleep. Perhaps I simply lose consciousness.

Before I know it, it’s night, and the stars are bright in a dark sky.

I feel beaten and bruised by a grief I never expected to feel, but I also feel acceptance.

I may not be dead, but I’m not of this world anymore.

Tipping my head back, I look up into dark eyes that are filled with worry. My throat feels raw, and my heart is still achy with pain, but I’ve made my peace with my reality.

“Take me home, Hades.”

“Home?”

Wrapping my arms around his torso, I cling tightly to him as I listen to the rapid melody of his pulse. “Home is wherever you are, Hades. Home is the Underworld.”

Chapter

Thirty

Persephone

“Why is he here?”I ask from my seat high on the stone lookout of a pale white mountain that borders the colder parts of Tartarus. The chilling wind of the white mountains that sprout from the Grove of Persephone, blows down to collide with the prickly heat that radiates off the burning River Phlegethon which borders Tartarus, crafting a storm of vicious weather that taunts the Elm of False Dreams, where Thanatos has explained Addison’s—Adonis’—soul currently resides.

Thinking of him as Adonis feels wrong, even though I know it’s right. HeisAdonis, even if I know him as Addison.

“When a soul enters Souls Landing and they either drink from the Acheron or enter the Acheron, either way, they pass first through the House of Cerberus, where the truly evil or truly pure are plucked. The evil are dragged by the jaws of Cerberus into The Pit, while the truly pure are granted passage through the Blessed Mountains to the Isle of the Blessed. All the rest continue along the Acheron, whether in the river or along it. They are stopped again at the House of Judgement, where theyare judged by the Crown of Souls.” There is tension in Thanatos’ face as he pulls in breath, his eyes cast out over the vast lands of the Underworld. “After judgement has been passed, those worthy of direct passage to Asphodel City or Elysian Fields will be carried across the Marsh by Charon, provided they carry passage. Those without passage will either wait at the banks of the Marsh, or they will ride the Styx. The Styx will release them as per the judgement cast by the Crown of Souls.”

I look beyond Thanatos to where Minthe sits on his other side. She’s brought her legs up so her thighs are pressed to her chest, and her ankles are crossed. She’s hugging her legs as she peers over her knees to the land far below, as though searching for the soul we both know.

“You’re saying the Crown of Souls judged him worthy of The Elm of False Dreams?”

Minthe slides her pretty green eyes to me. The sadness I see there is infectious. The prick of it steals my next breath.

“The River Styx first spit him into the River Cocytus,” Minthe explains. “He spent a few weeks in the Vale of Mourning.”

“Why?”

She tears her eyes from mine to look back down at the Elm of False Dreams. She points a long, green painted nail down the steep path carved into the White Mountains. “I think you should ask him. He’s there.”

My heart kicks in my chest, but I stand. Nerves needle inside me, threatening to expel the breakfast Maya served this morning. By a miracle, I keep it down as I begin the descent down the mountain. After a time, I look back to find I’m alone.

Thanatos is no longer where I left him, as though he’s vanished into thin air. But Minthe is still sitting with her ankles crossed, her eyes holding mine. She says nothing at all, and yet I understand that I am to do this alone.

With nothing for it, I turn around to continue my downward climb. By the time I’ve found myself at the bottom, I am both cold and hot. My skin is covered in a sheen of sweat and my heart thunders with exertion. The white mountain isn’t covered in snow, but it seems to radiate a kind of cold I’d expect from a frozen, snowy mountain. It’s a dizzying combination to then be met by the hot heat from the red river which spits little bubbles filled with the echoes of the tormented into this treacherous land.

The Elm of False Dreams feels nothing like the Grove of Persephone, which borders it. The Grove radiates a feeling of soothing healing. A place of quiet thoughts and gentle reflections. This land is something other.

Trees dot a spread of rolling green, and there is beauty here, but it’s a harrowing kind of beauty that makes me think of how I might feel if I were walking through a haunted forest. A swirl of hot and cold air commands the long-limbed branches to dance, casting ghostly shadows.

I continue to walk, deeper and deeper into the forest of lost dreams. The leaves stroke and whisper in the wind to the composition of an eerie lullaby. It’s an opus of misery. A masterpiece of traumatic ends and dreams just out of reach.

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