Page 1

Chapter

One

P ersephone

Fear screams in my mind.

Pressure squeezes my body, threatening to crush me.

Awareness is hazy.

The Hydra pulls me deeper. I am not sure if my eyes are open or closed. Everything is dark. Everything is cold.

The pressure is almost unbearable. Sickness swirls in my belly, bubbling in my chest. I’d scream if I could. Maybe I do, if only in an attempt to release just a fraction of this pressure. Not that it matters. The crushing weight of the inky water swallows any sound I hope to make.

It floods my lungs. The cold is so cold, like the frost of a dark winter night on bare skin. It burns.

When I think this is it, the moment of my end, the pressure changes. I’m no longer being pulled into a depthless deep, but I think we’re going sideways now.

Or I’ve lost awareness.

I’ve probably lost awareness.

Maybe I’m finally dead. Maybe this is my purgatory. An endless eternity in which I will suffer the torment of being pulled through these dark waters.

The Hydra jerks and my body jerks with her. And then I’m tossed from the water onto the rocky shore of a— cave?

The sound of my cough echoes loudly in the space.

Inky water drips from my hair. It splashes drops that roll off my hands to puddle on the dark stone floor.

I’m not sure how long I hack water from my lungs, only that when I am done, I want nothing more than to collapse in a heap of boneless girl onto the floor.

I freeze when movement catches my eye. I’m afraid to look but dare a peek anyway. Awe and a touch of terror has my jaw falling.

Hydra stands tall against the far wall, watching me from—gosh, there are so many sets of deep mauve eyes.

Sangria scales shimmer under the burning glow of a magenta ceiling.

It’s as though an eternal storm lives within the stone of the ceiling.

It rolls in waves of full-bellied dark doom before emitting flashes of magenta light that catch the prisms of her metallic scales to cast the glittery glow on the wall.

She is a beautiful beast. A terrifying monster of exquisite wonder even as she drips with the devastation of a brutal deceit she has carried for too long.

The headless limbs severed by Hercules’ cursed blade drift aimlessly where they branch from her torso, dripping inky black blood to the floor. I shift slowly from my hands and knees onto my behind, careful not to tumble into the glass-like black of a pool.

“Wh—where are we?” I feel incredibly silly speaking to—well—to the Hydra. But I know she can speak.

“This is my home.” I realize this time her voice sounds in my head. I’m not sure that it didn’t the first time she spoke. I only know I heard her. Loud and clear.

She takes a slow step toward me. Pebbles of awareness rise on my skin.

She has four legs, a massive torso, and too many heads—or necks? On her back, tucked in close to her large body that shimmers under the flashes of a magenta storm, are wings.

I think the Hydra is a dragon. Perhaps not in the typical sense, what with her many heads. But still a dragon.

New fear swells and I do my best to swallow it down as she closes the distance between us. I don’t move. I’m not sure I even breathe. Finally, with little more than an arm length between me and her closest head, she lowers to her rump.

She is incredibly regal, and I am struck by a kind of sadness I don’t expect as I again take in the sight of her unhealing wounds. The evidence of her ancient sacrifice for a people who never knew or respected that it was made.

To the texts and myth that survive today, she is a monster. Her tormentor is a hero.

My heart clenches in my chest.

“You’re beautiful.” The words are a whisper that fall from between my lips, entirely unexpected. Raw.

She blinks, a slow and lovely motion that catches in the overhead storm. But there is a deep sadness that echoes from within her when she sighs. “Perhaps once. Long ago.” Her heads shift at once to look toward the pool of inky black that swallows even the bright flashes overhead. “Not now.”

I want to touch her. To hug her. To thank her for her sacrifice.

I want to offer her justice. I am surprised by the thought. I am surprised, for I’ve never thought of my heart as vengeful. But seeing her now, sensing her ancient pain—I want exactly that. Vengeance.

I want to destroy Hercules.

I ask instead, “Why am I here?”

Her heads drift slowly back to me. Her mauve eyes, so deep and so yearning, pin onto mine.

Her voice is an ancient lullaby in my mind.

“When you first walked the Underworld, I sensed you. My home stretches deep in the underbelly of the realm.” She gestures with her heads to dark pits cast in shadows, tunnels in the walls that I hadn’t noticed before.

“I guarded The Lernaean Lake, but it was one of the most powerful portals into this realm, of which I moved between frequently. I remember the moment you were pulled between the folds of the realms. The waters of my lake quivered. Pulsed. I was compelled deep below the surface. When I pulled the whole of my lake into the Underworld, into Tartarus, I would pace the length of these twisting halls, swimming the deepest deep of the trenches where the pressure is so great that not even the souls stripped of their flesh can suffer. I have felt you, Persephone. Only you. I have walked with you through your grief, your wonder, your love. And I was there, deep beneath the surface, when you met your tragic end.”

I gasp.

Her heads twist back to mine and I swear her entire body sinks into a deep sadness she is helpless to battle.

“I fought to save you.” Her voice, so deep and husky and yet so feminine, rings with vicious strength.

“I charged the pitch black of the stone again and again, before I called upon the flames of the pit in which I was born. For the first time in my life, I roared those flames into the ceiling of this prison I sequestered myself to after Hercules—” She breaks off, blinks, and continues, “Those flames spread throughout the entirety of my prison. They burn to this day, a storm of my rage and failed desperation to save you.”

I glace up at the magenta storm in the ceiling, realizing for the first time that the waves aren’t storm clouds , but a firestorm trapped in stone. A thunderous rolling rage of flame.

“I am sorry I could not save you. I felt your soul leave your body. The snap of your life band breaking—untethering. And then you were here with me, in the caves where you remained for far, far too long.”

“I was—” Breath rushes from my lungs as I find my feet on shaky legs. “I was here—the whole time—with you?”

Her heads nod. “Yes.”

“Why—why didn’t you tell Hades?” I’m horrified by the magnitude of this secret. “He looked for my soul for centuries !”

“I brought you to him. Your soul, I mean.” Her heads tip to the side in a gesture that feels like a frown.

“You were not like the others who come to Tartarus. They have bodies, physical bodies. They are stripped of their skin again and again in a cycle of torment their souls are helpless to escape. You were simply spirit. I could see you, but I could also see through you.”

She scoots a little closer, and my hurt heart softens.

Deep inside the consciousness that makes me who I am, I can’t ignore the familiarity that stretches between me and Hydra. My soul knows her. Loves her.

“I don’t understand,” I admit softly.

Her heads bow before lifting to meet my eyes.

“At first, I could not convince you to leave my caves, and I refused to leave you. For hundreds of years, we existed together deep in the underbelly of the Underworld. The need I’d always felt to protect you, to be with you, only grew the more time we spent together.

You became my greatest friend, my dearest love.

The way I imagine a mother might care for her child. ”

The truth of her words strums the chords of my heart in the melody of its ancient song. My heart bleeds for her, exposed.

She continues, “When you first arrived to me, it was in the deep of the earth where the secrets of the Lethe are forever kept. A cavern of whispers so devastating, too long spent there could make even me, mad. But above us, the Underworld grieved. I could feel, that, too. Knew it grieved the loss of you.”

“I don’t remember this…”

“Do you remember your life? Before?”

“Pieces of it, yes,” I admit.

“When you first came to me, you were confused. You had little knowledge of the life you’d lived—or even who you were.” She settles, a long, thick tail scaled in shades of metallic purple curling around her body.

I meet Hydra’s eyes. “You helped me remember, didn’t you?”

I don’t know how I know. I just know.

“I did my best.” She heaves a sigh that warms the chilled air. I realize then that I am shivering. “You were terribly confused in the beginning. With time, you settled into your afterlife with me. But I always knew—always sensed—that one day you would leave me.”

“You said you took me to Hades?”

“I did, yes. When I could finally convince you to travel with me to the surface, through the pools. Hades comes to my shores often. But even he cannot converse with me, cannot decipher the words in which I speak, and I have tried. Such an experience appears to be yours alone. To most, I am simply monster. Beast. You, Persephone, understand me.”

“But you brought me to him?”

She nods her heads in sync, but it clings to a wariness that tells me I won’t like this tale.

“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.”