Page 102 of Aïdes the Unseen
No, I would not playthisgame with the crone. I stepped in front of Irina then. Protective. Useless.
“She’s notyours,” I reminded her. No matter what she hadbeen, she was not hers now.
“She’s not yours either.” Hecate replied, eyes burning and voice tart. “She belongs toherself. Which means she needs the full truth—now.”
Irina exhaled an almost steadying breath. Her courage and confidence humbled me. “Then give it to me. Both of you.”
My mouth went dry. My thoughts were a warzone.
“She’s the reason the gates stayed open,” I said slowly. “Every version of her. Every life that ended wrong. I’ve searched across the centuries not because I was chasing a myth, but because the Underworld itself began to starve without her.”
Much as I had. A shell of who I had been when she was there.
“And each time she tried to descend,” Hecate added. “Something intercepted her. Not fate. Not error. Will. Yours. Others’. Even mine. We’ve all interfered.”
“Why?” Irina blinked.
“Because you’re not just one of us,” Hecate said softly. “You’re the balance. The fulcrum between bloom and decay. Life and death. You’re what makes the cycle bearable. What makes the veil between worlds possible.”
My mirror. It was what she’d called herself all those ages ago. As much as I didn’t want to agree with the crone, I nodded. “That balance is fracturing.”
“You don’t remember all of it,” Hecate said to Irina. “But when you do, you’ll have to choose where youstand. Not who you love. Not which name to wear. But which world to anchor.”
Irina didn’t move. Her body was stone, but her eyes flickered with thought, fire, and something else—grief maybe.
“And if I don’t choose?” Her voice might have been small, but it was still sharp. Hush blanketed the room. Even the torches in Hecate’s shadow stopped flickering.
“You will,” Hecate said as if there were no other options. “Or everything begins to unravel.”
Irina stared at both of us, fury rising like a tide. “You speak like I’m a prize. A pedestal for gods and monsters to prop their empires on. I’m not yours. I’m not hers. I’m?—”
“You’ve never been your own,” Hecate said, while her voice was not unkind, I wanted to destroy her for saying it aloud.
It was worse, because it was true. Irina flinched.
“Not yet,” Hecate added “But you could be. If you canrememberthe first time.”
What? That revelation tangled around me. I had traced Irina through every incarnation from Kore to Persephone to Élise, Louisa, and every other name she’d borne across centuries. Followed her soul prints, anchored nodes, rebuilt Thanatek from ashes just to catch the glint of her light again.
But this? This didn’t match any tale or tether I knew or had seen. Before Kore? Before she wasborn?
“What do you mean, the first time?” Irina asked even as her hand found mine again. The feel of her gripping me grounded me, draining away some of the fear and the loathing. “The descent? The Underworld.”
Hecate focused on her folly. Her hands were empty of the torch and the dagger. The gravity in her gaze was enough to seal the truth of her words.
“No,” she said softly. “I mean the first time you weretaken.”
Silence fell.
My heart kicked once.Wrong.
Irina blinked and there was no mistaking the cloud of confusion wreathing her. “You mean you? You took me—back then—at the gates?”
“No,” Hecate said once more. “Shedid.”
Reality cracked around me at the revelation.
“I don’t understand,” Irina said, tears coating the anger in her voice even as she shook her head. “Who?”
