Page 79 of Hades and Persephone: Crown of Souls

It had been one thing in her first life, when she’d been a Goddess, not so easily killed or harmed by the souls.

But now—now she is human.

One blow can end her life. One act can ruin her future.

One trauma can haunt her for the rest of her days.

And the souls in the forest are unaware. Their dreams are being beat out of them time and again. Their psyche is wounded. Their sense of reality terribly distorted. It is the way of the forest after the Vale of Mourning. It is the path to letting go, if letting go of their earthly dreams is even possible.

For those who cling too long, the call of the Styx becomes louder than the call of the Grove of Persephone, and they will inevitably step back into the river which will guide them to The Lethe.

But I know who she’d gone to the Elms in search of. Her guilt had been eating at her in the days since we’d returned to the Underworld. She’s been obsessing over the idea that Adonis had sacrificed his life for hers. That she needs to make it right. That she needs to apologize and help him through whatever path he needed to walk to get to his new life here in the Underworld.

But his path is not so simple. His love for Persephone has spannedlifetimes.

If he cannot accept that she was never meant to be his, he will be one of those souls called back to the Styx. One of the souls led to The Lethe.

For his sake, I hope he can make it through the Elms. Hope he finds the strength to step beyond the forest of lost dreams and into the grove of healing.

Through the ringing of my anger, I glared through fire at my old friend. He’d simply said, “She was going to go alone. Minthe is with her and will not leave her. This experience is necessary for her to understand.”

Now, I wait at the base of the White Mountains in the Grove of Persephone. I’d already travelled on the back of Alastor to the Elms, already saw Adonis in the throes of rage and grief. Alone.

I’m not sure what I’d have done if I’d found him harming her. The way she had screamed for me, using her Gods’ bond to call for me, I’ll never forget the sound. Never forget the chill that had frozen over the magma of my blood.

I’ve never experienced anything like it. The fear. Raw and?—

I stiffen, the chill in my blood spreading out over my flesh.

Had she called for me like that when Demeter had been murdering her that first time so long ago? Had the power ofthe Garden of Silence been so strong that night as it invaded her body, that it had consumed the sound of her very thoughts? Obliterated the bond of a God?

The idea is a disturbing one. That the power in the stones can silence even the call of the mind.

The thought that she had called for me like that—with fear and hope—and I’d been unresponsive nearly guts me where I stand.

A prickle of sickly heat moves over my skin, at war with the frost of my fears. I rest my head against the bark of the tree. The weeping blooms have been harvested, but the forest remains a sight. Flashes of violet tinsel are woven through the rich brown of the wrinkled bark, and although the little white and violet blooms have died with the harvesting of their weeping threads, the tiny buttons, like tightly closed acorns, gleam under the starlight a muted metallic hue of deep violet.

They shimmer like fallen stars caught in the cradle of the needled pines. They will shimmer like that until the moment they bloom and begin to weep.

Alastor huffs, and a puff of white plumes from his nose. There is little about the Underworld in which makes true sense, when looked at through an earthly lens. Hot swirls with cold, warring for dominance seemingly in the same space. Borders are a physical thing, a crossing in which one can feel an immediate difference in the weight of the air, the shifting of the atmosphere.

The land here, like Atlantis, is sentient in a way that the living realm will never be. Sentient in the way Olympus was so very long ago. Before Chaos began to bleed her power from the home of the Gods who abused it. Sentient in a way that earth, crafted by the power of Gaia, will never be.

It takes strength not to seek her out, to wait here at the base of the White Mountains that stretch into the deep of the Grove of Persephone, glittering like moonstone under the starlight. Ihunger for just a glimpse of her. To know that she is safe and unharmed. Yet when I finally catch sight of her cresting the mountain top with Minthe close, the relief I feel is quickly smothered by something far, far darker.

Anger.

The need to punish flares deep inside me, unbidden. The beast of my God quivers under my skin, threatening an appearance I must fight to contain. An image—not entirely mine—flashes in my mind.

I am in my Gods’ form and my sneaky little goddess is thrown over Alastor’s back, ass bare and in full view for the twin moons that burn red. The sounds of her little cries with every strike of my Gods’ hand falling against the smooth skin of her plump ass brings a hum of pleasure rolling through me.

But such a thing cannot be. I could never touch her in such a form. Still, I want…

“Hades,” I snap out of the vision, out of the need to punish.

Persephone’s body slams into my own. Her arms close around my shoulders and her hands grip my neck as she buries her face into the crook between my neck and shoulder. I can feel the little puffs of warm air as she breathes raggedly against me, either from whatever experience she suffered, the climb down from the mountain, or seeing me now after she’d called for me. “You came.”

My arms close around her body. I am struck now as I’ve been struck many times before by how small she is against me. How delicate.

---