Hades’s power was immense and ancient, forged in the first darkness and borne with ease by the broad shoulders it cloaked. Pure and dark as a mantle of onyx, it was vast enough to crush mountains, to chain Titans.
This was different, softer. Wilder somehow.
“Not his,” Persephone said, soft but sure. “Mine.”
The earth rumbled its assent beneath her, a rolling growl of stone and soil. And in it, she felt him—Hades.
Cool silver touched her brow, the weight of her crown settling there. Called forth, not by her command. By his.
For a moment, she was breathless.
He was the iron at her back. The stronghold of patience and formidable strength that had stood beside her, waiting—waiting until she rose into her own. Fierce warmth surged in her chest, steadying her like his hand pressed between her shoulder blades.
Apollo said nothing. His gaze flicked from the circlet on her brow to the goddess who wore it, and she met his eyes.
“I am Persephone.” The words were cut from stone. “For the sake of my kingdom, I seek to help the mortals.Allof them.” Her eyes narrowed, cold, clear anger rising in her. “And you are standing in my way,lord.”
The final word was a soft snarl.
For all his blinding radiance, the sun god flinched.
Silence followed, long and weighty. Only the crackle of fire and the restless stir of horses filled the space between them.
Finally, Apollo cleared his throat. “Even if I wished to aid you, Achilles cannot be killed. He’s proven that much.”
“How fortunate for you, then, that I know the source of his immortality.”
The words hung between them, gleaming and dangerous. A blade drawn, waiting.
Apollo stiffened. “Do you speak the truth?”
“I swear it on the River Styx.”
He waited, the air between them taut, expectant. A moment ticked by.
“What will you do?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
“I will kill him.”
Though she had expected it—sought it—the finality in his words was stark. She suppressed a wince, pulling a slow breath through her nose.
Apollo, as if seeing her inner turmoil, only shrugged. “If what you say is true,” he said coolly, “his death will spare others. How many has he already sent to the river?”
Countless.
The answer clanged through her mind.
Speaking the secret felt no different than pressing the blade to Achilles’s throat herself. But she had walked the crowded shores of the Styx. She had seen them, warriors, widows, the old and the innocent. At the memory, her resolve sharpened to iron.
“His mother dipped him into the River Styx asan infant.”
Of all the answers Apollo might have expected, it wasn’t that. His brow arched, a flicker of disbelief crossing his face. “What say you?”
“Thetis held him by the heel,” Persephone said steadily. “That one place never touched the water. If you strike his heel—he will fall.”
The truth struck. His expression darkened. “How do you know this?”
“I saw it in the Pool of Mnemosyne,” she replied softly, Hades’s furious face rising in her memory.