Page 81 of A Kingdom of Sand and Ice (Kingdom of Gods #2)

It may seem as though Hades is the only one playing games, but he isn’t.

Every single god is a player.

Our kingdoms are the board.

And we are merely their pawns.

Tabitha Wysteria

‘I need to reach my brother’s army,’ Kage said for what felt like the hundredth time, his voice clipped with impatience. ‘I haven’t time for your schemes.’

‘First, you must understand,’ Freya replied calmly. ‘I need to show you the truth and then…’ Her attention drifted towards the horizon, as though seeking something far beyond their sight. ‘Then we must journey to the Kingdom of Fire.’

Kage gave no reaction, his face an unreadable mask. ‘Why the Kingdom of Fire?’

‘Because…’ Freya sighed, her expression laced with something quiet and sorrowful. ‘You’ll have to trust me. We cannot go to your land, to your army. Our path lies elsewhere. Towards fire, not darkness.’

‘That journey will take days, if not weeks,’ Kage said, gesturing to the wolf at his side. ‘Bryn’s wolf is likely near its limit already.’

‘You needn’t worry about that,’ Freya said softly. ‘I have other ways of getting us there. But first, you must let me explain.’

She reached out, offering her hand to him.

Kage looked down at it, sceptical. ‘You need to hold my hand to explain?’

Freya shook her head. ‘The forest listens, Kage. I’ll be explaining elsewhere, in another realm.’

He looked to Spirox, hoping his shadowed bird would offer him clarity.

The creature landed at his feet, promptly pecking his ankle with sharp annoyance.

Kage sighed. He did put too much faith in that bird sometimes.

But what did he have to lose? Freya claimed divinity.

The world was already falling apart. Perhaps listening wouldn’t break it any further.

‘Fine,’ he muttered, placing his hand in hers.

The world immediately shifted, colours melting and bending like wet paint on a ruined canvas. One moment he was standing in a forest that marked the divide between the Kingdom of Ice and his own, and the next, he stood somewhere else entirely.

Somewhere that did not belong to any world he knew.

‘Where am I?’ he asked, his voice steady despite the unease beginning to stir within him.

The landscape stretched out in every direction, vast and boundless, as though the world itself had no edges.

Behind him enormous statues lay half-buried in the tall grass.

Colossal visages of ancient gods whose stone eyes watched in eternal stillness, as though they knew things he had yet to understand.

And before them, beyond the jagged cliffs on which they stood, stretched a vast, storm-dark sea.

Endless, churning, and brooding beneath a bruised sky.

Kage noticed with a ripple of unease that neither the wolf nor Spirox had followed him here.

‘This is a place untouched by gods,’ Freya said, her voice calm as she looked skyward, to the silver clouds shifting across a muted sky.

‘A realm safe from their influence. It resembles one of the places they dwell, where they’ve been confined for this century.

I must admit,’ she added with a sly smile, ‘I’ve become rather good at recreating it. ’

‘Why bring me here?’ he asked, tone clipped, not missing a beat.

Freya’s smile widened. ‘I knew I’d like you, Kage Blackburn. So direct. When I first saw you in the drakonian castle, trying to unravel that curse, I couldn’t take my eyes off you. Even then, I knew it would be you I’d one day have this conversation with.’

Kage straightened his spine, though his expression remained unreadable. Stillness became his shield.

‘Who are you?’ he asked, certain this time she would give him the truth.

‘Have you not guessed?’ she asked, her tone lilting. ‘You, who devours books, who lives inside ink and parchment. Did none of those dusty old tomes offer you a clue?’

‘You’re not valkyrian,’ he said.

‘I am now,’ she replied softly. ‘But I am also something more.’

‘A goddess,’ he said.

Freya inclined her head. ‘Yes. One who chose to remain apart from the others. To walk among mortals, not above them.’

‘Why?’

‘You’ve clearly never met a god.’ She chuckled, a sound so light, so startlingly ordinary, that Kage found himself pausing.

‘They’re insufferable.’ Her smile faded, replaced by something far more solemn.

‘But there’s more to it than that. When Tabitha cast the curse, those gods caught in the mortal realm became trapped, unable to return to their own.

I have walked this world ever since, in the guise of Freya, a valkyrian warrior of the skies.

But long before I pledged myself to the Kingdom of Air… I was someone else.’

She paused, blue eyes glinting with the ghosts of memory.

‘My name was once Persephone. Wife to Hades. I created the Kingdom of Fauna, gave life to the Fae as a gift for him. To win his admiration. But…’ Her gaze drifted.

‘It was never quite enough. We had our moments, some good years, not all bitter. We were blessed with two children: Makaria and Zagreus.’ Her voice hardened, laced with an ache centuries old.

‘And he has kept them from me ever since. But that, Kage Blackburn, is a tale for another time.’

‘That’s why you’re able to wield magic…’ Kage said, more to himself than to her. ‘You created Fae magic. You can craft illusions.’ His eyes wandered across the realm around them, this strange mirror of another world.

‘I thought that if I created something truly beautiful…’ Freya’s voice trailed off, her eyes turning away.

There was a trace of fury and hurt in their blue depths.

‘Perhaps then Hades might see me, might admire me. The Fae have always been the fairest of the gods’ creations. I gave them magic because…’

‘Because Hecate had magic,’ Kage finished gently.

‘I thought I could make something more beautiful.’ She glanced down at the intricate armour adorning her—white, silver, and gold.

Her hands lifted, palms turning as she studied the pale tattoos that curled like vines across nearly every inch of her skin.

Kage said nothing, though questions stirred at the edge of his tongue.

He knew better than to speak. Silence, he had long ago learnt, could draw more truth than a thousand questions. And Kage was very good at waiting.

‘It never mattered,’ Freya said at last, her voice quiet, distant.

‘No matter what I created. No matter how fiercely I loved him. Hades could never truly love me in return.’ She gave a small, helpless shrug.

‘I do believe he felt something for me… but it was never like with her. It was never what he felt for her.’

Kage remained silent, though curiosity coiled tightly in his chest.

‘Hecate,’ Freya finally said. ‘He loved her long before he ever laid eyes on me. And I think, for a time, she may have loved him too.’

Her focus drifted to the sky as if it might hold memories too heavy for the earth.

‘Hades built the Kingdom of Darkness for her. Created the wyverians and the wyverns as a gift. Hecate had already brought forth the witches and warlocks, and Hades saw how deeply she adored them. She would vanish for years, living among them in the mortal realm. He used his creations as a tether, hoping she might return to him again and again. He knew how much she longed to remain among the living… but gods are not meant to linger. Not forever.’

Freya's voice grew softer, tinged with sorrow.

‘Hecate fell in love with a wyverian. Over the centuries, he’s worn many names. I no longer recall the first one. But I have never seen two souls fall so completely into one another. It stirred envy in all of us, even the gods.’

She looked to Kage then, her expression shadowed.

‘But Hades…Hades changed. The love turned bitter, festering into something cold and cruel. He could not bear that she had chosen a mortal over him. He tried, I think, to move on. He loved her deeply enough to want her happiness.’ Freya snorted, the sound tinged with scorn and something more fragile beneath it.

‘But perhaps,’ she whispered, ‘he didn’t try hard enough. ’

‘Why are you telling me this?’ Kage asked quietly.

‘Because it matters,’ Freya replied, her blue eyes avoiding his as she laced her fingers together.

Her lips parted, tongue briefly brushing them before she continued.

‘Hades found them. I don’t believe he ever intended to kill the wyverian man, not truly.

But when he discovered that Hecate had borne him a child… the moment he struck the mortal down…’

She paused, tilting her head slightly as though sifting through centuries of memory.

‘Let us call him Hadrian,’ she said at last. ‘He’s gone by many names, and I can no longer remember the first. After Hades killed him, Hecate was inconsolable.

She told him she would never forgive him.

Never forget. And then she did something no god should ever do.

She brought Hadrian back from the dead.’ Freya’s voice softened, shadowed by the weight of the tale.

‘But Hecate didn’t realise that in doing so, a terrible price would be exacted. ’

She turned slightly now, eyes reflecting the pale light of the illusionary realm.

‘She cursed them all, unknowingly, to an endless loop. An eternity condemned to repeat itself. Every time Hadrian died at Hades’ hand, and every time Hecate, driven to despair, took her own life in an attempt to punish Hades…

the cycle would begin anew. Sometimes, it was Hades who dealt the fatal blow to Hecate.

I believe there was even a time when Hecate and Hadrian slew one another in a desperate bid to break the cycle.

Yet nothing ever holds. They always return, bound by fate, and they always die.