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“The Underworld will not survive another loss. And we all know what happens if the Underworld dies.”

“The Underworld will not die.” Alecto stands firm. Her voice is as hard as her sister’s. “All the realms will live.”

“She called to me from here.” Even I can’t miss the desperate ring to my voice. It dies, however, when the Hydra crests the water.

It is not as all the times before, when she would rise from the treacherous depths slowly—so slowly you may not even notice her presence.

This time, she bursts from the waters as a prisoner might flee the restraints in which they’ve been eternally bound. Gone are the many heads that dripped inky black blood. In their place she is a beast as she once was. Whole. Magnificent. A thing of ancient legend and timeless myth.

She spirals into the air, shedding drops of inky water to showcase scales that catch in the prisms of the amethyst daggers that spear from the crystal shore.

And on her back is my mate.

The sight takes my breath away. I am not the only one, for each of the Erinyes stands silent and unmoving. Unblinking. Caught in the magic of the impossible.

The sight is thrilling as it is shocking. From the conception of the flames of the Pit, Hydra had been born. Not a soul dared touch her, not ever. She loved from afar and slayed those who dared come near.

The Erinyes and I are the only ones who can pull from the waters of the sinkhole without being torn to shreds.

I had touched her once, when I’d asked if I could try to heal her. When I’d failed her, she’d dove back into her inky abyss, and I’d not seen her for nearly a century.

Now, my mate rides on her back between wine red wings. In her dark red gown, with her deep red hair whipping in the wind of Hydra’s celebratory spiral, they look as though they were made for one another. Bound by an ancient fate foretold in the whispers of a promise older than time itself.

“There is reason in everything, young God.” The tongueless words of the three sisters responds to the thoughts in my mind. I am instantly alert even as I scoff.A young God, I am not.

I think I hear the echoing tails of ageless amusement before Hydra looses a roar that reverberates throughout the Underworld. Flames burst from the deep of her to spear high into the everlasting night before she soars into the flame.

My heart stops in my chest. Beside me, the Erinyes inhale sharp breaths of horror.

Hydra is engulfed in flames born of the Pit. Her wings drenched in the rolling flicker of deadly fire to cast an imagereminiscent to the burning phoenix rising—taking Persephone with her.

The seconds they are submerged in the flame stretches before me like an eternity. I’m not sure my heart beats even once. I don’t think I breathe. Time simply stops.

Then they burst from the flames as one. Hydra’s flames dance on the tips of her wings, but Persephone rides proud between those deep wine-red wings, impossibly unscathed.

They fly high together, above the tips of the white mountain. I think Hydra aims to touch the very stars that wink in the perpetual night of the sky. Together, they dance a dance of flight and freedom I have no doubt the entirety of the realm watches, for together they glow like fireworks in the sky.

As for me, I am breathless. Enraptured. Caught in the magic of the woman who was born to mother an entire realm. Of a Goddess who was born to correct ancient wrongs.

A Goddess with a soul tethered to my own, and the beast whose heart she won within.

Finally, I smile as Hydra swoops low before bursting high into the stars again. There is another burst of flame, another plunge into the eternal heat of it—and this time I do not fear, but revel. I revel in the magic of this moment. A new era of the Underworld, where ancient curses are lifted, and hope ignites in the stars that have felt so impossibly heavy for so impossibly long.

For the first time in all the centuries I have lived, Alecto sighs a sound ofhappiness. Tisiphone’s hands come together and Megaerasmiles!

They, too, feel the same sense of hope that rains down over the land in a shimmer of sparks that die like glitter in the wind.

That’s when Hydra soars toward the black mountain in a show this land will not soon forget. Even from here where I stand, I hear the cheers of Asphodel City. And then I hear theprayers of wonder and thanks and hope in my mind from the Isle of the Blessed, where even though I cannot see it live, a vision of Hydra and Persephone plays in my mind.

My smile widens as they soar away again, across the realm in speeds known to none.

Their show lasts for hours.

As for me and the rage I’d felt when I’d woken to find her gone, only to hear her shouted prayer turn silent in my mind, I leave the Erinyes to return to my palace with a sense that everything is about to change.

There is hope in the air, fire in the sky, and cheer in the song that weaves its melody through the land.

But as I near the black mountain from which my palace sprouted so long ago, I cannot ignore the sense of something other—something darker that lurks.