Page 125 of Aïdes the Unseen
Not with swords. Not with death. But with truth. That was the only thing that could meet her now.
“I’ll shield the chamber,” I said, glancing over my shoulder at Irina. “If she comes through, I can’t stop her entry. But I can slow her reach.”
“Then?” Irina’s voice was low, steady, but her eyes glinted with something fierce.
“Then we hold our ground,” I said. “Together.”
Because if Demeter was still holding a piece of her—if she’d twisted the thread of Kore into a chain—then she’d come to reclaim what no longer belonged to her.
But this time, I wouldn’t let her walk away with Irina’s soul wrapped in vines and silence.
This time, I washere,and I had no intention of letting her be taken again.
Chapter
Twenty-Four
IRINA
It shouldn’t have felt like a decision, not after everything. Not after the memories, the lives, the stolen names, and the shadows pressed around each truth like barbed wire.
At the same time, itwas. Each breath. Each step. Each word from my mouth that sounded like mine and not mine, hers and not hers—Persephone, Kore, Élise, Leto—all of them—I had tochooseto keep going.
To stay.
To be here,now, in this skin and with this truth unraveling around me like vines gone wild.
I wasn’t built for this. Not really. I was mortal. Human. My body was bones and blood and memory pressed into a shape barely capable of containing all the lives waking up inside me.
Yet, there was Graven. He said,I will always choose you.
He tethered me. That single, resonant truth wrapped around my ribs and spine like armor. Not chains. Not vines. Not someone else’s dream of who I should be. Buta choice.
Mine.
When I looked at him, at the way he prepared, calm and certain and full of a kind of quiet fury forme, I understood something else:
I wasn’t alone in this anymore. I never had to be again. Something warm pressed against my leg.
The dog had circled back. His long limbs were a little too big for his body now, tail swishing slowly. His gaze was fixed on me, bright and strangely solemn. Not just a pet. Not just a creature born of instinct and loyalty.
No.
Heknew.
His eyes held the weight of too many doors. The knowledge of things old and unspoken. He had been waiting for me—not as an accident, but as part of something older than this body, this life.
I knelt in front of him, fingers curling into the soft scruff behind his ears.
“You’ve been guarding me,” I murmured. His nose bumped gently against my chin. “And now you’ll help me find the rest of it, won’t you?”
He sat straighter. His tail stilled.
Something passed between us—not words, not even images. Just understanding.
He was more than a companion. He was a guardian. One of the hounds. One of the gatewalkers.
I didn’t know his name.
