Page 116 of Aïdes the Unseen
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” Yes, I had asked this before, but it was inescapably sad that Melinoë had been locked away, denied her true self to become that which another desired.
“Because it is not her story to release. It is yours.”
“But Mnemosyne?—”
“Guards memory, yes. Notaccess. You were buried too deep. I hid you. And you consented.” She sighed, a sympathetic sound as though she understood my pain. Of course she did, it wasourpain.
“Then why unlock for me now?” My voice trembled. If the others could only offer me fragments, I needed to know all of it. “Why let me become this again?”
Melinoë moved to me now, close enough that I could feel her actual warmth. She wasreal,not just spirit. She raised a hand and I thought she might touch my face, but she stopped justshort and her hand hovered there, close enough I could imagine the contact, the connection.
“Because you finally saidyourname. Not the one given to you. Not the ones written in myth. The one you buried. The one that will set you free”
The pressure behind my eyes increased, and it wasn’t just tears. There was a crack—a dam, finally splintering. Not breaking, but opening. Just as suddenly, I knew there were more names. More selves. More truths.
But this one—Melinoë—she was the root. The door we couldn’t find because it wasn’t built of symbols but of choice. And Graven… creation help me, I looked at him and the ache surged all over again.
As much as I had been Kore and then Persephone, I had always been Melinoë under it all. We hadn’t just left this world or fallen in love. We chose. We’d been drawn to Hades even then, before Demeter came.
We loved after because he asked us for nothing. Because he waited and waited and never stopped giving. He hadn’t known Melinoë, but we had known him.
The spiral beneath my feet pulsed again, brighter this time, like it knew I was ready to begin—but then, something inside the chambertilted.
Not visibly.
Not structurally.
It was like pressure changed—like the air remembered somethingitdidn’t want to carry.
I inhaled, then immediately stumbled.
Graven’s hand was at my elbow, steadying me. His voice was low. “What is it?”
My vision wavered, like heat rising from stone. I reached up, fingers brushing beneath my nose?—
Wet.
Warm.
I stared at the smear on my hand.
Blood.
Just a single drop.
But it shouldn’t have been there.
I pressed my wrist to my face. “It’s nothing. It’s—” A second drop fell.
Melinoë turned her head sharply. Her expression changed. Alert. No longer serene.
“You’re being pulled.”
“What?” I blinked, dizzy now. “By who?”
“Someone outside this place. One who isn’t meant to reach you here.” Her voice was clipped now. Grim.
Graven’s hand tightened on my arm. “Can it be stopped?”
