Page 41 of Aïdes the Unseen
“You… were taken,” Demeter hissed, almost desperate.
“Ikept my promise,” Persephone said. “He did not take me. Hewaited.And Iwent.”
All of Olympus seemed to suck in a shocked breath. Hecate’s eyes glimmered, watching not like a judge, but like a witness. A guardian.
“So that’s it, then?” Demeter’s mouth curled, and then came the blade—not her sickle, but the sharper edge of her tongue as she whispered, “You’ve left me. Abandoned your mother for a lover made of shadow. Does this mean—” Her voice broke,cracked. “—does this mean your love for me hasdied?”
Persephone flinched. The words struck deeper than any weapon I could summon. In that moment, I wanted to strikeDemeter. Not for rage. But for the wound she carvedknowinglyinto her daughter’s heart.
My beautiful queen did not cry. Shebreathed. One sharp breath. One tremble in her jaw. “I have never stopped loving you,” she said. “But must I becut in twoto prove it?”
Demeter opened her mouth, but Persephone surged forward, voice rising now—still beautiful, still fierce. “Am I not allowed tochange? To grow into something you didn’t plant in me? I loved you then. I love you now. But that love does noterasethe rest of me. I am not your spring to harvest, Mother. I am not your crown to place. I ammine.”
The hall echoed with all that was unspoken. Not even the wind dared stir.
“I love you,” she said again, softer now, “but I love him, too. You don’t get to call that betrayal.”
Her mother’s face twisted, grief and pride and confusion in equal measure. Her hands trembled, but her power had ebbed. The frost she’d carried, the blight she’d cast, began to crack at the edges. Still Hecate stood behind her, a veiled presence at her back, eyes unreadable.
My queen stepped toward me. Her mother watched. As if every step was a nail in the coffin of the child she once knew.
Persephone said one last thing. “I am not what you lost, Mother. I am what you helped create. I amso much more than what you dreamed.Can you not be happy for me?”
Demeter didn’t speak again. She turned and this time… she wept. The gods said nothing as the earth goddess left, her sorrow trailing like roots torn from the soil.
And I—Aïdes—God of the Underworld, keeper of silence, watched the only soul who had ever chosen me lift her chin beneath the weight of divine judgment and not falter. Later, I would hold Persephone. Later, I would press my hand to the place where her mother’s words had struck and try, without magic, to make it whole.
But for now, I stood beside my queen as Olympus finallysaw herandtrembled.
Olympus, already reeling from the storm Persephone had unleashed, fell into stunned quiet when Thanatos and Hypnos, twin gods who rarely left the veil between wakefulness and death, stepped forward together.
Their steps made no sound.
Their presence drew mist and memory like trailing cloaks behind them, one wreathed in the hush of eternal sleep, the other veiled in the finality of ends. Though neither were given to meddling, they approached the thrones of the high gods with solemn purpose.
It was Thanatos who spoke first, voice like steel cooled in quiet water.
“She cannot be severed,” he said, nodding once toward Persephone. “Not from us. Not from below. The moment she took the Underworld into herself… itchangedher.”
“She is no longer just Kore,” Hypnos finished, his voice soft, warm, almost melodic. “She cannot become her again. Not fully.”
The Olympians stirred. Even Zeus seemed momentarily quieted by the eerie grace of the brothers.
“She is now the pulse between breath and silence,” Thanatos continued. “Between the bloom and the fall. She walks where no other goddess has ever dared, aboveandbelow.”
“She brings life to death and death to life,” said Hypnos. “But the world… the world above still needs her. As much as the one below now sings in her presence.”
Persephone’s fingers brushed mine. She didn’t speak. Not yet.
The twin gods turned to her, and this time Hypnos drew closer than the rest had dared come. “Goddess of Two Worlds,” he said, eyes glimmering as if dreaming. “You cannot be divided. But you maychoose.”
Persephone’s brow furrowed.
“You may choose,” Hypnos said again, gently, “when to rise. When to descend. When to unfurl your spring among mortals, and when to bring solace to the dead.”
“And when she rises, the earth shall warm,” Thanatos said, his voice resonating with quiet finality. “Demeter will see to the harvest, Dionysus will celebrate, and life will know joy again.”
“Then when she returns,” Hypnos continued, “the Underworld shall not mourn. For she bringslight, not its absence. She is needed above and she is lovedbelow.”
