Page 76 of Hades and Persephone: Crown of Souls

“Don’t go,” Adonis pleads to the whispering elms who dance for him hungrily now. “Don’t let her go.”

I shriek as he leaps to his feet, but he doesn’t try to chase me. Instead, his hand arcs high and he rips a leaf from the tree.

Whatever he sees behind the eyes that glass over brings first bliss and then terrible grief to his face. I hear the moans and sighs and whispered words of love that are met with only silence and loss as the elm feasts.

I hear his pleas, his devastation, and I swear I hear the cracking of a porcelain heart crafted under the wrathful pressure of a vengeful Goddess as Adonis falls to the forest floor.

“Come, Persephone,” Minthe calls as she drags me away, back through the forest toward the White Mountain.

I am unable to stop the tears that fall as I finally lose sight of my broken friend. And as I climb, I cry tears of lost love. For I had loved Adonis, I just couldn’t love him in the way he needed. And the tricks of my mother weaved threads of pain throughout so much more than simply me and Hades, alone.

For Adonis, for Hades, and for myself, I vow to destroy the Goddess who schemed to give me life.

Chapter

Thirty-One

Persephone

“I shouldn’t have goneto him.” Minthe says nothing where she sits close, her arm heavy where it rests around my shoulders. “Hades told me not to and I didn’t listen.” I laugh bitterly. “I asked you and Thanatos to take me instead. I thought I could help him. Felt I needed to apologize.”

“I know.”

“Why didn’t you reject me?” I sniffle, still shaken by the experience.

“If you didn’t listen to Hades, I wasn’t sure you would listen to us. Thanatos agreed, because I promised I would not leave you without help.”

“He’s not the Addison—the Adonis—I remember.”

She sighs a heavy sigh. “The souls in the Vale of Mourning never are. Neither are the souls lost to the Elm of Lost Dreams. They are there because they must overcome that which they can’t let go of from their living lives. Some souls spend only a short time there. Some spend years. Some never make it out and require a sip from The Lethe to finally find release.”

“That doesn’t seem fair.”

She shrugs her shoulder. “The souls know. The Elms speak to them, words we can’t hear. But they know they need to overcome the dreams they lost, to accept those dreams are gone, so that they can move forward. So that they can again live.”

“Why can’t they just cling to their dreams? What harm can it really do to them?”

Minthe’s brows furrow. “If the souls are unable to release their lost dreams, they will carry them into the afterlife and then into any lives they choose to live again. There was once a time when Souls were released from the Elms into the Grove of Persephone if they simply found their way to the border. The Elms have learned, and no longer release the souls even if they make it to the border. They are not released into the healing grove until they take those first healing steps for themselves, or until they are pulled back into the Styx and offered a sip of The Lethe instead.”

“It just seems so cruel.”

“We all suffer cruelty. It is how we choose to overcome it that counts.”

She’s not wrong, so I nod. We stay in silence for a while on our perch on the White Mountain. In that silence, my anger toward Demeter only grows, as though it is fed by the very stars that overlook us, and the pain that drifts up from the forest of Lost Dreams.

“I hurt so many people.” I don’t mean for the words to escape, but there’s no bringing them back once they do.

“What do you mean?” Minthe asks gently.

“I was such a silly young thing. It’s hard to reconcile her with who I am now. I never would have fallen for the insanity that I fell for then, now.”

Minthe and everyone else in the Underworld had been briefed about our conversation with Uranus. It was widelyknown now, how Demeter had manipulated me into being with others in a play to break Hades. To shatter the bonds of the truly mated.

“You were conditioned, Persephone.” Minthe’s lip curls in hateful disgust. “You would be surprised what people will do, who they will become, under the pressure of manipulations the like that Demeter directed over you. It was a deep manipulation of a psychological nature. One you had no hope of rising above.” Shame heats her cheeks. “I’m only sorry that I didn’t see it for the manipulation it was. I didn’t know that when you invited me and Leuce to your bed with Hades—that it was because of Demeter.” Emotion rattles in her voice. “I thought we were close. Closer than so many others. I—I felt your love for us. I just didn’t realize until now that it wasn’t the same love I felt—” She pushes hair behind her ear. “The love I feel for you. You’re our family. You always will be.”

I can’t make myself meet my friend’s eyes. I have no memory of sharing her or Leuce with Hades, and for that I am so grateful. Still, I know it happened. I also know Demeter was livid that I’d done it. I recall that much from the vision of my first death.

“Demeter didn’t make me include you and Leuce. That was—that was all me.”

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