Page 10

Chapter

Ten

P ersephone

Somehow, I crest the mouth of the cave as Hades does.

The magma in the veins of his God’s Form moves as fast as the fire that flares in his eyes.

Impossible heat caresses my skin even as it turns the stone beneath his feet the color of burning coals, leaving his footprints to cool in the wake of every step.

Seeing that mark of his heat now—it’s the first time I’ve truly realized how hot he burns. I don’t know how I am able to withstand his heat. It should incinerate me. I am only human.

“You are so much more than human. You are what has never walked before but will walk again.”

I shudder at the power of the voices in my mind and reach out for Hades’ hand. He curls his monstrous fingers around my hand, turning to face me. His heavy breaths are hot on my face as his fiery eyes scan me for injuries, settling on the single cut on my forehead.

“I’m fine,” I promise him.

“You are hurt.”

“Hades.” I pull my hand from his to reach up to catch his face between my palms. “I’m okay.

” I scan the length of him, knowing I will see no injuries even as they are there.

The climb isn’t a physical battle so much as it is mental.

Still, it is harrowing. And the cuts of the journey are deep. “How are you?”

He shakes his head. Through the fire in his eyes, I read the burning emotion that lies there. My own heart responds, and I fall into his chest.

“Oh, Hades.” He’s so big in this form, I can’t circle my arms around his frame to touch my fingertips. I hold him anyway.

“I’ve always wanted them,” he finally admits to me what he hasn’t been able to admit aloud. “Children.” When I stay quiet, he continues, “I thought my seed was dead.”

Those words strike a place so deep inside me, I can’t help but flinch. “No, Hades.” I tip my head back to peer up at him. “Nothing about you is dead.”

“I am the God of the Dead.”

“You are the God of Afterlife.”

He cracks a sad smile. “Yes, because of you, little goddess.”

“No,” I argue. “You’ve always been the God of Afterlife.” I try to push light into the darkness with a smile and a tease, “But every King needs a Queen.”

A sad sound escapes the confines of his chest. His arms come around me tighter. “We don’t have a choice, little goddess.”

I know what he’s referring to. I nod through the aching of my heart. “I know.”

“They are the final piece of this war.”

He saw what I saw. Maybe more to put that look in his flaming eyes.

I blink back tears. “I know.”

“I am so sorry.”

“Me too.” I pull back, because I need for this to be over. I need to be with him. I need—time to lick my wounds. “Which way do we go?”

The cave at the mouth of the black mountain is enormous, and from it multiple arms stretch into the blackness of the deep.

There are too many paths to choose from, and I sense that not all of them lead to the Moirai.

That if we choose wrong, we will forever be lost to the bones of those who have tried before us and failed.

“The path will become clear when they are ready,” Hades confirms my fear. “We must wait until then.”

I snort a little huff. “They’re a tricky lot, the Moirai.”

Hades barks in amusement. “I can’t imagine anyone has thought of them like that in all their existence.”

I shrug. “It’s true, is it not?”

He grows serious. “The Laws of the Universe are not so clear to the living. Not even to Gods, Persephone.”

“How can that be? You’re a God . All powerful.” Hades studies the pinch of my brow, his own responding in kind.

Finally, he admits, “I don’t know.”

“This is what you have come for. The answers to your questions, to the truth you seek, will be revealed at the end of your journey. But know, King and Queen of Gods, that such knowing is heavy. It is the weight of the Universe, and not all are crafted to carry such burden.”

The sound of the three voices seems to crawl from the very walls, leaching into my mind. I look, wide-eyed at Hades. “Did you hear that?”

He nods gravely.

And then the pathways before us begin to shift and merge until there is only one that remains. Hades pulls in a breath. “This is our path, little goddess.”

I slide my hand into his, and we walk together, side by side, into the darkness.

We are guided by nothing but intuition. There is no light in this darkness. Beside me, Hades glows. The magma in his veins blazes. His eyes are twin flames in the pitch black, but he does not light our way.

The darkness feasts on him, containing his glow to the presence of him.

I am not sure how long we walk in this darkness, but there is a foreboding that settles in the presence of great power, and this is the greatest power of them all.

I can sense the truth of that just as deeply as I sense that there is more to this place. This universe. This world and the realms that we consist of. There is more.

I have never felt such a sense of knowing as I do here in this black mountain, under the presence of this great power.

Inside my body, my very soul hums. As though it is aware that it is close to that which it comes from.

The heavy weight continues to press on me from every direction with every step that I take. I wonder if Hades has been here. I think that he has. I want to ask, but I cannot force the words to the surface. Silence for this walk is demanded. I sense that, too.

I cannot tell if we walk at an incline or a decline. I do not know if our path winds or is straight. I cannot tell up from down.

I have never felt so small as I feel now. So insignificant, like a speck of dust floating in the wind. I am simply a piece of the puzzle that is the universe in which I live.

We are all but pieces, small and insignificant when alone. But when one is missing, the whole picture is distorted.

We are meant, as souls, to exist together. This, I sense, is truth as well. It comes to me as plainly and honestly as any other thought. I am surprised that I have not had it until now.

I doubt that it is my own, but rather theirs , a thought they feed me in preparation for what is to come.

And that's when it happens. In the distance, there is a flicker.

A hue of light. I imagine it's what one might see on the bed of the sea as the moon spills its glow through clear waters.

It is not overwhelming or overpowering, and yet it is abundant.

It commands that same foreboding that caresses the presence of this great power.

The light grows as we grow nearer, but it does not intensify. It is soft, like the wings of a butterfly or fingertips drifting across naked skin. It is gentle, calling goose flesh to the surface, a whisper of a feather that promises touch and never truly delivers.

Hades’ hand tightens around mine. I move closer to him, seeking the comfort of his strength, sensing that we are more powerful together. That we have always been more powerful together, and that is why we are so targeted. Hunted, as power often is.

Our pathway comes to an end as the room before us expands. I gape.

For all that I have seen since travelling to the Underworld, this is beyond my most wild imaginings.

There is a dais in the center of the room, the cave, the hollow of this mountain . It is massive, and in the center of the dais is a cauldron. It is not like any cauldron.

It is not charbroiled or black, or anything that you might imagine.

It is not small or convenient. It is massive.

It looks like the moon plucked from the very sky.

It is white, crystalline, burning bright. Mottling the bright white are chunky shadows and shallow craters.

I do not have to be told to know that it is the place of souls. The beginning of souls. Where they are sourced and plucked and planted. Where they begin. Where they are crafted— spun from the threads of the universe.

This place, this cauldron, is the tether in which our world is bound to universal consciousness.

This, too, comes to my mind unbidden. A thought, not my own. An answer to a question I did not realize I asked.

The cauldron swirls: I suspect it never stops.

The ceiling is a ceiling of crystal mirrors and stars. And from it, I can see inside the cauldron where souls glow, pure, and beautiful, and the softest shade of pink in a sun lit bed. As though they've been touched by just a hint of lifeblood.

Mixed in to these pink souls are those of a pure and beautiful, bright white. They look like feathers, the way they move. Illuminated by moonlight, soft and graceful.

Gods and mankind together, crafted within the same cauldron. We are closer than I ever thought we could be—humans and Gods.

From the sea of souls in the cauldron, one rises to the surface. No, not one. It’s two souls. Two bright white feathered souls connected together as though sewn by a thread of gold and ribboned together by the softest pink of humanity.

Our souls. Mine and Hades’, bound by Fate.

I’m looking at my own soul.

Gooseflesh rises over every inch of my body, prickling my skin. I shiver, my teeth knocking under the shock of it all.

Hades moves closer, enveloping me in his eternal warmth.

I sink into the comfort of it, and watch as two more souls, both bright white, rise to the surface of the cauldron.

They glow with an ancient presence that demands reverence, and from high above, in the mirrored ceiling of crystals that somehow depict sea and sky—stars of shimmering gold begin to burn in a bed of sun.

The walls of the cave around us quiver with gentle reflections like the soft waves of a sun-lit sea casting tendrils of life on the walls.

Beneath our feet, the gentle moon-white of the stone floor begins to crackle and vein with threads of black and gold.

I gasp as, from the shadows, the three appear. The Fates. The Moirai.

Air lodges in my lungs as they move, their motions eerily fluid like spilled water or the roll of the waves. They come from three separate corners, and yet they move as one toward the cauldron.