Page 129 of Where Darkness Bloomed
Her heart leapt, breath catching.
But then, in a voice heavy with resignation, he added, “Zeus will refuse.”
Tightness banded around her chest. “But why?” Persephone gasped.
Hermes grimaced, as if the words soured on his tongue. “The Fates have already foretold Troy’s fall, and Zeus has forbidden interference,” he replied tightly. “Nothing can be done from Olympus—”
“Enough!”
Demeter’s voice lashed the air, her glare slicing toward Hermes. “She is not an Olympian. This is not her affair.”
Bright defiance sparked in Hermes’s eyes. “She is the Underworld’s queen. Its burdens are her affair.”
Demeter’s face flushed hotly. “Her comings and goings are not your concern. Nor are they Hades’s—”
“Mother!”
The sharpness in Persephone’s voice startled even her. It sliced the air like a shard of glass, silencing even the wind.
Demeter turned slowly, her expression frostbound. “What, child?”
Persephone raised her chin. “I will speak to Hermes. Alone.”
Her mother’s face tightened, her hands bracing against her hips. “For what purpose?” she demanded.
“For whatever purpose I choose,” Persephone replied, her voice low as she met her mother’s glare.
The silence that followed was taut, humming. But Persephone stepped into it, unflinching.
“You may scorch the earth with famine. You may close your ears to the cries of their suffering. But I will not sit idly weaving garlands while crowds of innocents flood the Underworld.”
Demeter’s eyes widened, but Persephone didn’t wait for a response.
Turning on her heel, she strode toward the shade of an ancient oak, drawing a deep breath as she walked.
Hades valued neutrality. He held to it more fiercely than most Olympians held their thrones. Yet now, he had broken that steadfast silence, calling for aid on the mortals’ behalf.
A call for restraint. A petition for mercy. The thought chilled the air around her: a plea borne of desperation.
How much worse had the bloodshed become in the weeks since she’d been torn from the Underworld?
The memory of the Styx’s crowded banks surged, the endless tide of souls, waiting for judgment, for peace.
And there, at the heart of it all, stood Hades, shouldering the deluge alone. She could see his face—lined with strain, his eyes shadowed, broad shoulders rigid beneath the weight of a dying world.
Guilt burned through her. She had left him to bear it alone. And now Olympus, in all its distant splendor, would turn its back. Not just on the living, but onhim.
More lives would be lost. More souls would pour into the Underworld. Death would continue to spread like wildfire. Achilles’s fame was the spark, drawing warriors into the blaze like moths to a god-forged flame.
Achilles.
She halted mid-step, her feet rooting to the earth, mind reeling.
Hades had spoken of it before—his unease for the mortal who defied death. Of the bloodshed Achilles would bring, the trail of destruction that followed in his wake.
Now Hermes confirmed it again: Achilles, the head of the great Greek serpent coiled around Troy, poised to strike.
But without its head...
