Page 115 of Where Darkness Bloomed
His roar split the heavens, and the world shuddered beneath it. Lightning tore jagged streaks through the sky, scarring dark clouds. The air quivered, the force of his wrath a tangible, suffocating weight.
“She isPersephone,” he thundered. “The Fates decreed her path at her first breath. And yet you”—his eyes burned with the weight of judgment—“you would steal it from her. Twist her destiny to your will and rob your own daughter of what is hers by right.”
Charged silence followed. Demeter’s rage didn’t wane. It thickened, coiling dangerously beneath her stillness, like a serpent readying to strike.
Zeus drew a long breath through his nose, smoothing a hand over his beard as he tempered himself. “If you hate me for choosing Hera,” he said, quieter now, but no less commanding, “so be it. Curse me. But Persephone has no place in this between us.”
Demeter’s gaze was frigid as the wasteland she had wrought. A monument to grief, rage, and resolve.
“She is a queen now.” Zeus pressed the words firmly in the space between them. “With a husband suited to have her. You must let her be what the Fates ordain.”
For a heartbeat, the world held still.
Demeter’s eyes snapped to his, her wrath glittering within them. “I will see every mortal on this earth perish,” she hissed. “I will fill the Underworld with their souls before I abandon her to Hades.”
The wind screamed.
It rose, a maelstrom of grief and defiance tearing through the air, spiraling in a furious storm of chaff. In a breath—she was gone, vanishing into the howling gale.
Zeus’s rage answered.
A jagged bolt of lightning ripped through the sky, slamming mercilessly into the ground, thunder shaking the distant mountains. The land ignited in a ravenous rush, fire devouring the brittle husks as it rolled hungrily across the desiccated earth.
Stone-faced, Zeus watched the blaze rip across the land, an inferno consuming every remnant of life.
“Hermes,” he called.
A flash of silver lit the air above him. In an instant, the messenger was there—winged sandals beating softly against the smoke-tinged air.
“My lord.” Hermes’s keen eyes shifted from Zeus to the spreading wildfire.
“Go to Hades,” Zeus commanded. The fire’s reflection lit the depths of his dark-blue eyes. “Tell him I come to him.”
With a crisp nod, Hermes was gone, a streak of silver slicing through the ash-thick sky.
Above, the heavens churned, roiling in uneasy tumult.
Then the first flake fell. A single, fat drop of snow, tumbling from the ashen sky. It landed with a whispered hiss against the scorched earth, melting instantly.
Another followed.
Then another.
The first omen of a bitter winter.
***
“No.”
The word rang through the Underworld’s throne room. Shadows stirred and the torchlight flickered, recoiling. Hades’s eyes were dark as the void, flashing with fury that swallowed the firelight.
Across from him, Zeus met his hard glare with one of his own. “If you refuse, mankind will not recover,” he said. “This is a solution for now, one that will be remedied. This, I swear to you.”
Hades’s fury rose like a tide. “Demeter will never release her,” he bit out coldly. “You know this.”
Zeus’s nostrils flared. “It is not Demeter’s decision,” he snapped. “Persephone is your wife, and she belongs at your side. But the mortals are destroying themselves, and now Demeter’s wrath pushes them to oblivion. They will cease to exist if nothing is done.”
Shadows rippled at his heels as Hades took a rigid step forward. “Then chain her to a rock and send another eagle!” he hissed. “You’ve done it before.”
