Page 40 of Aïdes the Unseen
“If you desire me,” she said to him, calm and unbothered, “then desire what Iam. Not what you remember. And know that you will not touch what belongs tono one but myself.”
Ares blinked. Then grinned—wolfish and wanting. But he said nothing more. Because even he knew, this was not a girl trembling in the spring bloom.
This was aqueenwho had fed the roots of herself to the dark, and come back crowned in it.
Zeus raised his voice again, desperate now. “You endanger thebalance!You sever the seasons!”
To that,shespoke. Low, clear, devastating. “Then perhaps the balance was never mine to hold alone.” She turned her gaze on the gathered host. “You demand I return to the field. You speak of crops and famine, but when have any of you knelt in a field andsowed? When have you wept for the dead, whose names aren’t etched in temple stone?”
Silence.
Not even Hera interrupted.
Hermes muttered, “Well, that’s a fair point,” before being elbowed by Hephaestus.
And then,shestepped close, and slipped her hand into mine.“There will be no more summoning,” she said, voice soft but final. “No more pleading for my return. No more stories of abduction.”
I stared at her, heart aching in ways I had no name for. She looked to the gods.
“I am not Kore anymore,” she said. “And I never truly was. That name was chosenforme. Maiden. Bloom. Innocence.”
She lifted her chin, crown gleaming with root and coal.
“I amPersephonenow. I am what you cannot bind. And what I choose… ishim.”
My name never passed her lips. She didn’t need to speak it. The word was in her eyes. In the way she stepped closer, not for protection, but forcompanionship.
In the stunned silence that followed, all I could hear was the pulse of eternity stretching out, hers, mine,ours.
Zeus growled. Poseidon turned away. Athena looked thoughtful. Artemis, almost proud. As for Aphrodite? She simply smiled. Hera’s reaction surprised me more than any other. She nodded her head, not in approval or acquiescence, but acceptance and acknowledgement. One queen to another.
Then the Queen of the Dead turned from Olympus. And I—God of Silence, of Ends, of Shadow—followed her. Not to lead. Not to claim. But to walk with her, wherever she went.
The world had watched her rise, and now, it would have to reckon with the goddess she had become.
All about had just begun to hush when the true storm broke.
Demeter came not as a goddess, but asgrief incarnate. Beside her, cloaked in ash and smoke, Hecate moved like an omen with eyes that saw too much.
They did not announce themselves. They did not need to. The air grew heavy, thick with the scent of wilted wheat and soil long denied the kiss of rain. The sky above Olympus, eternal and golden,dimmed.
From the shadow of the marble, Demeter emerged. Gaunt. Weathered. Once the earth made flesh—now a mother made ruin. Her gaze fell first on her daughter. Then her mouth parted with the sound of something breaking inside.
“Kore.”
The name was both a plea and an accusation. Persephone, no longer the maiden, no longer the girl who needed her mother to shape her name, stood tall. “You don’t get to call me that,” she said, not unkindly. “Not anymore.”
Demeter’s lips trembled. Her fingers clenched around the hilt of her sickle. “You… you are not this. You arespring, child. You aregreen and bloom and breath.Not this—” Her eyes snapped to me, venom rising like frost. “—thisthing of rot!”
She lunged.
I moved before I thought, the Underworld coiling around my fists, shadows surging to meet her, but Persephone stepped between us.
“Enough.” Her voice stopped us both.
Demeter reeled back as if struck.
“You blame him?” Persephone said, fire licking the edges of her. “You blamehimwhen it wasIwho chose. I went. Iwalkedinto his world.”
