Page 25 of Aïdes the Unseen
It was a season I had never touched. Not truly.
Ripe things made me nervous. They are one breath from rot. One shadow from surrender. I know that moment too well. I live there.
“I don’t belong here,” I said, quieter than I meant to.
Kore glanced at me, a secret smile teasing over her lips. “Then why do you keep coming back?”
“I don’t come forhere.”
Her smile grew like that of a blossom in spring. “No. You come for me.”
I said nothing. I didn’t have to. She led me to the edge of the granary grove where the plums hung low and bruised with ripeness. The air was heavy with sweetness—almost too sweet.The kind that turned the stomach if you lingered too long.
“This is where things tip,” she said softly, her hand trailing across the bark. “Where everything starts to ache from fullness. Where life begins to bend toward ending.”
I looked at her then. Her throat. Her hands. The way the shadows clung to the hollows of her collarbone, deeper than they had in spring. “You feel it too,” I said.
She nodded. “I always do. The world knows. It just doesn’t want to say it out loud yet.”
A silence fell between us again. But this one wasn’t empty. It wasthickwith knowing. With the grief that came with knowing and longing.
I reached for her hand. Not suddenly. Just gently, like I was returning something I had borrowed. She let me take it. She always did. At that moment, the most horrifying thought struck me:She might choose me.
Not because I claimed her.
But because she wanted to. Becauseshe trusted me. She saw what I didn’t show anyone else. And that—blessed Gaia have you forsaken me?—was what frightened me most.
I didn’t deserve it. If Itookit, I made it real. If I lost it… lost her, it would destroy me. I held her hand and said nothing for a long time.
Until at last, I whispered, “I don’t want you to regret it.” She looked up at me. Steady. Clear-eyed. No blush. No girlish shimmer. Just truth.
“Then don’t give me a reason to.”
The wind changed then. A warning. A ripple through the ripe stalks. A shift in the gold. Her mother wasn’there. The world remembered her. She wasn’t here. Yet. Still, Kore didn’t step away from me. She let me hold her hand.
The harvest would come. So would endings. For now—she stayed. I waited. Again.
They litthe fires as the last of the sun fell.
Piles of wheat stalks and dried laurel, cracked olive wood and old garlands, each fed to the flame in offering of hunger and joy. The smoke curled skyward like a promise no one meant to keep. Gold flickered against the dark. Below it, they danced.
Shedanced.
I shouldn’t have come. I always did. Each spring and harvest since we met. I cannot stay away.
This time, I wore a different face. Not fully glamoured—justdimmed. Enough shadow to be mistaken for one of the lesser spirits. A forgotten demigod. A handsome ghost. No one would look too closely.
Not tonight.
The wine had already been poured heavily. Dionysus was in rare form, half-dressed and howling laughter from atop a barrel, his cup perpetually overflowing. Mortals pressed around him like bees, caught in the sweetness of his madness.
Hermes darted through the crowd with winged glee, flicking grapes into mouths and stealing kisses from anyone bold enough to meet his eye. He tugged on Kore’s hand like a child one moment and spun her like lightning the next.
She wasradiant. Not serene. Not quiet. Wild.
Her hair was tangled with olive leaves, skin lit by firelight, and her eyes bright and fierce. No longer only maiden or bloom. She was the essence of abundance, the heavens made visible upon the earth. Her laugh danced like a flame set loose—reckless, warm, and alive.
I was nothing in the face of it. Just a shadow at the edge of gold.
