Page 128 of Aïdes the Unseen
I stepped forward, chest tight with something ancient and furious. “You took me before anyone else ever could, didn’t you? Not Graven. Not even the ones who came before.Youtook me first.”
“Isavedyou!” Her voice cracked like thunder over a dry field. “You don’t understand what the gods do to those they hunger for. You were a child—mychild—and Isavedyou!”
“No,” I said, shaking. “Youclaimedme. You shaped me. Hid me in mortal skins again and again, tearing me out of the lives I chose because you couldn’t stand that I didn’t want to stay yours.”
Tears sparked in her eyes, but they didn’t fall. Demeter’s jaw clenched as she flexed her white-knuckled fists.
“Youleft me,” she said. “You left me, Kore. Over and over. You chose darkness. Him.This.” Her voice broke now, softer. “You chose death.”
“No,” I said gently, stepping closer. “I chose love.”
A pause. Heavy as harvest. Demeter looked at me as if she might break apart and explode all at once.
Then, slowly, the façade of divine serenity erupted—just enough for me to glimpse the grief beneath. The mother. Not the goddess. The one who had carried me before I had a name, and who had never once known how to let go.
I wanted to reach for her, but I didn’t.
Some things weren’t mine to fix. Some truths had to rot before they could bloom. I was not here to soothe her sorrow.
I was here to reclaim my soul.
“I’m not yours,” I said softly. “Not anymore. I was. I will alwaysloveyou. But you can’t keep me.”
Demeter stared at me for a long time. “Do you remember the olive tree?” Her voice held a ragged note.
I did, so I nodded.
“I planted it for you,” Demeter whispered. “So the roots would always find you. Even if I couldn’t.”
The memory unfolded inside me like a blossom forced open in winter. The spiral. The tree. The buried name. She hadn’t just left a piece of herself behind. She had embedded herclaim.
“I remember,” I said, and it hurt.
Demeter took a step forward, expression hardening, that divine storm rising again behind her eyes. “Then you know. If you go further, if you press into what was sealed, you could unmake everything. The balance. The tether. The cycle.You.”
“And if I don’t?” I asked softly. “I stay in your garden forever?”
Her mouth twitched, wounded and furious.
“You can’t stop this,” I added, steady now. “You can’tkeepme.”
Her jaw clenched. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I think that’s the first true thing you’ve said,” I replied. “I don’t know. Not fully. But I know I’mdonebeing broken up and replanted like a damn herb.”
The dog growled, low and warning. Demeter’s eyes flicked to Graven, and for a breath, the airfractured.
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t step in front of me. He just held his ground. But when he smiled, it was all teeth.
“Please,” Graven said, his voice quiet and terrifying. “Idareyou to try.”
Demeter’s lips parted, startled.
“She is not alone,” he went on. “You are not ambushing her. And I will not hold back. You might be the earth—yes. But I am the devastation that will erase you. The land might recover eventually.” A pause. “You won’t.”
Even I shivered.
But I didn’t pull away.
