Page 127 of Where Darkness Bloomed
“Do not fear,” he murmured. “I came for you once.” His thumb caught her tear, sweeping it away. “And I will come for you again.”
His voice carried a vow etched in the bedrock of his kingdom. An oath that no god, no fate, nor war could unmake.
Nothing—nothing—would keep him from her.
Chapter 48
Breath billowed into vapor, curling in the cold. The goddess drew the infant tighter to her chest.
“We’re almost there, my love,” she whispered, her voice a fragile thread of warmth in the endless dark.
The earthen tunnel opened into a wild mountain landscape beneath a dark, glittering sky of stone. She moved swiftly, her eyes locked on the distant temple rising high in the distance above the thundering river.
At the edge of a laurel grove, the goddess paused. Her eyes swept the horizon, worry lining her face.
“Where do we go, little one?” she murmured, pressing her cheek to the drowsy baby’s head. Her breath hitched. “My little Achilles.”
“Kore!”
A shout shattered the dream.
Persephone startled awake, breath ragged, heart pounding a frantic drumbeat. The vision tangled like smoke, fading swiftly. The dark goddess cradling her child. The desperation in her voice.
One name echoed through Persephone like a cry in a cavern, reverberating deep—Achilles.
The child was Achilles. The warrior revered among the Greeks. And the dark goddess, his mother, had taken him to the Underworld.
Her fingers curled into the moss beneath her, soft and damp with dew. She tried to hold the dream together, to call back its fleeing images. There had been purpose in the goddess’s descent, anguish tempered with hope. A cost. A cause. A matter of life and death.
Shakily, Persephone pushed herself to her feet. Overhead, a canopy of morning glories trembled, indigo blooms unfurling in the rising dawn.
Far off, atop a sunlit hill, Demeter stood. Her figure was stark against the brightening sky, one arm lifted in a sharp summons.
“Come along, Kore!”
Persephone flinched, the name striking like a lash.
A name that no longer fit—too soft, too small. It grated against her skin like an ill-fitting garment.
Still, she stepped forward, leaving behind the moss-lined bed beneath the pergola’s shade. Flowering vines brushed against her shoulders as she passed, clinging gently, reluctant to let her go.
Ahead, green fields of wheat rippled in the wind. She reached out as she walked, trailing her fingers over the ripening heads of grain.At her touch, the field brightened, surging with new life. The stalks flushed green, bending toward her in silent worship.
Her return to Eleusis had been less than joyous.
In the weeks that had followed, Demeter’s silence had only deepened. She did not speak of the Underworld. Did not utter Hades’s name, as if denying it could unmake the truth. As if silence might sever what had become rooted in Persephone’s soul.
Life resumed without change.
Bless the fields. Accept the sacrifices. Guide the mortal women in childbirth. Day after day, the same ritual. The same invisible chains shackling her to that role.
Kore. Eternal maiden. Goddess of spring.
There was only one solace: the mortals no longer suffered Demeter’s wrath. The earth flourished once more, warm and green.
Yet everything had changed. She felt it in every breath. In every heartbeat.
Demeter clung to Kore, but she might as well have clung to shadows—Kore had not returned from the Underworld. The wild maiden of wildflowers and sunlight was gone, lost to the darkness that had shaped someone else entirely.
