Page 101 of Aïdes the Unseen
“Who is that?” Irina whispered.
I didn’t answer because the figure in red, the crone, was already answering herself.
“I’m the one who remembers herbeforeyou did,” Hecate said. “I’ve come to collect what was never yours to keep.”
Irina stepped forward, unflinchingly leaving the safety of my arms. I wanted to grab her wrist and drag her backwards. I didn’t. Instead, I faced the ancient goddess with her.
Hecate hadn’t changed. She never did. Her robes flickered between time-worn velvet and smoke. In one hand, she held a lamp, unlit yet humming with old flame. The other rested lightly on a dagger secured at her waist. It was more symbolic than violent. For now, at least. Her hair was black as the deepest shadows and her eyes far too old.
In pure ferocious audacity, Irina stared at her with her jaw set. “You know me.” It wasn’t a question.
The crone who never chose sides merely smiled, soft as a storm approaching. “Iknewyou. Once. When your name was darker and your will stronger. Before love broke you.”
That landed.
Irina stiffened and flicked her gaze toward me. I held it, saying nothing.
“You’ve both been stealing time,” Hecate continued, walking the edge of the bed, dragging one fingertip across the footboard like it was a boundary she was measuring. “Pretending this moment can last. Pretending choice can shield you.”
“Shechose,” I snapped. “You heard her.” Why else would the goddess of the crossroads appear?
“Of course she did.” Hecate’s bottomless gaze returned to Irina. “But choice without truth isn’t choice. It’s just longing dressed in silk.”
“Then tell me the truth,” Irina challenged, her voice dropping low and dangerous.
That stopped the room.
The dog whined again.
Head tilted, Hecate studied her. “Are you sure you want it? It will cost you.”
“I’m sick of fragments,” Irina told her, absolutely uncowed. She raised her chin, every inch the queen she had always been. “I’m tired of dreams and men who think they know me, of gods who talk in riddles, slipping in and around my life like it’s their playground. You both want something from me. Then start with telling mewhy.”
I could have stopped her right there. Redirected. Protected. I chose neither. Irina was right. She deserved the truth, and Hecate recognized it, too.
She sighed, not with weariness but rather with the weight of inevitability. Finally, she turned to face us fully. The shadows behind her shifted and changed. For a heartbeat, the old crossroads appeared. The three paths, the torches and the old altars buried beneath time.
“You were never just Kore,” Hecate said. “Not the stolen bride or spring maiden. That was an interpretation. A story told to bring comfort. A softened version. It gave the poets something to talk about and the priests something to summon and the people?”
At the last, Hecate just shrugged.
“It gave them a reason to celebrate.” She shook her head. “Nor were you just Persephone, the goddess of the Underworld, a dark queen who dispensed mercy, judgment, and—hope.”
The last one seemed incongruous with the rest, but my love was all of those things.
“No, the original you, the one that camebeforeyou descended…”
Irina’s breath caught.
“You wereKore, yes,” Hecate continued, waving a hand as if dismissing an unspoken interruption. “But you were also something else even before the maiden, something older. Something... twice stolen.”
This part of the story I learned far too late. Long after my love had disappeared—taken again.
“You were the one who walked between worlds before there were doors. Before the Underworld had a king to claim it. You wereminebefore you were anyone else’s.”
“That’s not entirely true,” I reminded her. “She came to me.”
“She fell,Graven.Because you made a place for her to fall to. That is not the same as being chosen.”
