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“I did. You sat atop my back, between my wings. For the first time since I threw myself and my lake into the Underworld, sealing the portal into Tartarus, I crawled onto the amethyst shore. I was certain Hades would see you, but he couldn’t. He did not even sense you, though you screamed his name. The taste of your grief was like a blade to my own heart, and I dove you back into the deep. We remained there, together,for centuries. We travelled the underground pools and caves, mostly, with you on my back. I had become so accustomed to you there—when you left—I felt as though I lost another head. No.”She shakes her heads.“This loss was greater than a limb. It was as though I’d lost a piece of the very heart in my chest.”

“I am sorry.”

“Do not be. There is a purpose to your life, Persephone. A purpose not even I would dare stand between. You were fated, written into the threads that weave reality. Your story has only just begun. What comes now will test all that has come before, shaping all that will come after. You are the beginning of everything.”

Chapter

Two

Persephone

“All the timemy soul was missing—it was here?”

“Yes.”Hydra’s melodious voice is husky in my mind as she walks alongside me in the tunnels, illuminated by the rolling firestorm above us.

“How was I reborn?”

Magenta light flashes, throwing a collage of shimmering specks on the walls of the cave, reflecting the scales that shift with Hydra’s every move.“Your spirit began to feel a need. It pulled you deeper into the tunnels until we arrived below the Tree of Elysian, the Tree of Life.”Her heads slide sideways to take me in.“Come. There is much I must show you.”

We continue down the maze of halls, side by side. “Has Hades ever been down here?”

“Never.”

“Could he?”

“There is nowhere in the Underworld in which he is prohibited.”

“Why hasn’t he come down here?”

“Hades is a complex God. He not only possesses the ability to feel guilt, but he is haunted by it.”She continues forward, her pace slow to keep with my own.“Many of the other Gods do not suffer as Hades suffers. Perhaps it’s his responsibility to judge the sins of the living, but he has developed a keen sense of right and wrong. A sense the Gods of Olympus have not bothered to sharpen for themselves.”

“You think guilt has kept him from traveling here?”

She nods her heads.“Hades sent me to the living realm to guard the portal into Tartarus. It was he who bestowed upon me the honor of guarding the souls of the living, so that they would never suffer an unjust punishment in death.”

I inhale a sharp breath. “He blames himself for the way Hercules harmed you. For the way you continue to suffer.”

Her eyes snap to mine.“You remember my story?”

I blush. “Hades told me a little.”

She sighs.“I believe he carries the guilt of the pain I bear. He has tried to heal me, and he has failed.”

We enter another cave mouth where another inky pool glistens like still obsidian in the center under a high arched ceiling of rolling shades of magenta.

I watch Hydra move to the edge of the pool, dipping her heads and diving into the deep. I gasp, because she was there one moment and gone the next. In only a second, her massive body is entirely submerged, taking all evidence of her with it. The water doesn’t even ripple.

I wait for long moments, the sound of my heart a drum between my ears. Alone in these twisting caves, my fear returns. The silence is crushing.

I’m spiraling into terror’s quick descent when she crests the surface again. I don’t realize just how far gone I’ve slipped into my fear until I see her, and a little sob escapes between my lips.

She swims to the edge, the splash of her large wings lifting her from the water just as effortlessly as she’d entered. Her nostrils flare as she scents the air.“You are afraid?”

“You can—smell that?”

“I am sensitive to you.”

“I thought you left me,” I croak.