Page 103 of Aïdes the Unseen
“Demeter,” I whispered and it tasted like ash in my mouth. Of course, the goddess of the harvest, of the earth—themother.
Irina jerked as though she’d been struck. “That’s not—she’s Persephone’s, I mean Kore’s mother. My mother, right? She mourned me? She searched…”
“She mourned what she feared to lose,” the crone corrected. “Not you. Never you.What you represent. The cycle. The freedom. The capacity to move between.”
“I know she raised you,” I began, desperate to comfort the hurt in Irina’s eyes. This was so much to take in. I struggled with it myself. She’d always been Demeter’s child. Or so I had always believed.
“Shehidher,” Hecate snapped. “Wrapped her in spring, in sweetness, in safety. Only it had nothing to do with safety. It wascontainment.”
“Stop,” Irina ordered, her voice cracking as she pulled away from both of this. She pressed her hands to her head like covering her ears would keep the truth out. “You’re twisting it.”
“I kept this secret,” Hecate said gently, “because you weren’t ready. Not in the Underworld. Not the first spring you returned. Not in Thessaloniki. Not in Paris. Not in Berlin.”
Irina turned to me, eyes wide and pleading. “Did you know?”
I shook my head. No. I’d never suspected Demeter. Yet, my love had been stolentwice. I pocketed that for the moment and focused on Irina. She needed comfort not fury.
“No,” I swore. “There’s no record…”
“There wouldn’t be,” Hecate said, waving off my concern even as she solidified the fact that I couldn’t have known. “It happened before there were records. Before names had edges. Before you claimed the Underworld as your dominion.”
“You were notbornof Demeter.” Hecate looked only at Irina, the weight of lifetimes passing in her breath. “Shetookyou. Created the idea of you, the shell of a daughter to bind a prophecy she could no longer fulfill herself. Zeus lent his name and some of his power, but it was her will. You came into being as Kore, because sheneededyou to be Kore. Gentle. Contained. Obedient. A thing that bloomedonlyfor her.”
“She loved me?” Pain filled those words, pain that turned the statement into a question. Her eyes begged me to confirm it for her.
“She wanted you,” Hecate corrected, unrelenting. “Love? Love allows you to choose. When you did, when you stayed in the Underworld for part of the year, when yourefusedto belong only to her—she took you again.”
Raw fury spiraled out of me. I’d never suspected Demeter. Not once. She’dgrievedor so I thought. She’d grieved when Persephone first came to me. Then accepted the deal, only when Persephone disappeared the second time, she’dgrievedagainand thenragedat me. Blamed me. I kept my distance to keep from hurting her with my presence while I hunted.
And all this time…
“Over and over,” Hecate said, this time as much to me as to my love. “In every life since. She has found you, reshaped you, rewrote the script. She couldn’t stop you from returning, she couldn’t bind you utterly to herself, but she could make you forget why you ever left.”
My breath caught. The anger, a living fire, burned ice cold in my being. That was why I could never catch her. Why the tether frayed each time she bloomed and why death passed her but did not claim her.
“She hid the moment,” I said quietly, as furious with myself for having allowed my sympathy to blind me to the danger as anything else.
“The true one,” Hecate said on a sigh. I could almostfeelthe apology she didn’t offer under the words. “The moment Irina—Kore—stepped into shadow not out of fear, but of desire. Not because she was taken, but because she chose to go. For knowledge. For power. For love.”
“The moment she left,” I whispered. “That wasn’t forced either.”
“No,” the crone said. “It never was. The descent, the return, the balance. None of that was theft. It was Persephone’s consent. Demeter couldn’t accept that. Because it meant you had outgrown her.”
Irina’s breath came in sharp, hard pants like she couldn’t get enough air. Her hands clenched at her sides. She turned away, then back again. The short, staccato steps did not take her far before she came back. “You’re saying that my mother?—”
“She was never your mother.” Hecate gave no quarter here. No softness. No allowance to ascribe other motives to Demeter’s actions. “She is and has onlyeverbeen, your captor.”
Irina’s tears froze on her cheeks. She didn’t fall. She stood straighter. For the first time in thousands of years, I saw her eyes glow with that same impossible light we’d only managed to glimpse in the Paris fragment.
Not Kore. Not Persephone.
Both.
All.
“I want to remember.” It was a command. A demand. She would not be denied.
If the crone took issue with her tone, she did not show it, for all she did was incline her head. “Then go to the place she first found you. The place she took you.”
