Page 134 of Aïdes the Unseen
Zeus lowered his hand. Poseidon exhaled. “This will not end here.”
“No,” I agreed. “But it endswith her.Not you.”
They vanished with a crack of thunder and salt and fury. Silence rushed in behind them. I turned. She was already falling. I caught her—light as breath, radiant as the sunrise—and she looked up at me with tears spilling down her face.
“I can’t hold it,” she whispered.
“You don’t have to,” I said. “I’ve got you.”
Her body shivered once—then stilled, but her light didn’t go out.
Itflared.
The mortal shell fractured, and the god-soul rose. She was Persephone now. And more. Not a title. Not a myth. Atruth,fully formed. The rebirth had come. She chose her shape, herform, and her name. Shebecamewhat she should have always been.
I kept my promise. I stayed with her. I held her through it. I was the god who waited no more, because we were together.
Chapter
Twenty-Six
PERSEPHONE
It was not the end. Not death. Not undoing. Not even silence. The pain as soul-fire burned away the mortal shell, and it cracked open to let me emerge, a seed given life finally.
When I opened my eyes, I was standing at the Gates. Not the cold steel security door of Thanatek’s simulation rooms. Not the hall of data. This was the real place. The First Threshold.
Ancient stone. Skyless black above. An arch chiseled from obsidian and veined with silver memory. Symbols shimmered in the air—some I remembered, some Ihad written.
The Gates of the Underworld had always recognized me. This time, however, they bowed. The air vibrated. Then, he was there.
Graven was gone—no,shed. Unmasked. The illusion peeled away like twilight fading into dusk.
Aïdes. Lord of the Dead. My once-husband. My only constant.
His shadow-cloak rippled behind him like smoke caught in slow wind. His hair longer, black threaded with gold, his eyes molten obsidian rimmed in pale fire. A god returned to form,but so much more than that.The one who waited.The soul who chose.
With him, the dog. No longer soft-pawed and gangly. No longer “puppy.”
Kerberos surged forward—three heads now, each different, each remembering me. One barked with joy. One whined, low and protective. One simplywatched, tail sweeping a slow, thunderous rhythm against the stone.
I fell to my knees.
Not from weakness.
From awe. From gravity. Fromrecognition.
Aïdes crossed to me without hesitation, the storm of his form gentling as he reached out. He knelt with me, his hand pressing against my back, warm through the thin folds of my robe.
“You’re home,” he said.
My hands trembled. The words trembled with me. “Then why does it still hurt?”
He exhaled, forehead touching mine. “Because you remembereverything.”
I did.
The field. The tree. The first name. The stolen years. The gentle lies. The angry ones. The mothers who refused to let go. The brothers who tried to own me. And him—always him.Whoneverforced. Whonevertook.
