Page 49

Chapter

Forty-Two

H ades

On their thirteenth hour, the number of the divine feminine, of Chaos, my daughters took their final breath together.

My own breath stalled in my lungs, the burn unlike anything I’ve suffered in all my millennia. I feared for a long moment, perhaps minutes, that they took my final breath with them when they took theirs.

That I would never breathe again.

Never speak again.

And then a sob cut the silence that was too silent.

I still am not certain if was mine or hers. Persephone’s.

So in tuned to the daughters she birthed thirteen hours prior, the absence of the little breaths ripped her from the peace of sleep with the violence of a terrible grief.

She screamed. And she screamed again and again. She screamed until Hydra came and the Underworld fell painfully silent in the echoing quakes of her grief.

I later learned that the sea rioted against sand and cliff.

The land tremored as though sobbing, shaking the Marsh and nearly toppling Charon for the first time in the history of his sailing the dark water.

In the Grove of Persephone, the weeping pines wept, and in the Elm of False Dreams, the whispering leaves bowed to silence.

The black mountain where the Moirai reside shook with the grief of our loss.

The realm grieved with us then, and the realm hadn’t stopped grieving since.

Now our girls lay in a basket woven by the threads of the weeping pines on a bed of asphodel petals. Their skin, not long ago flushed pink with the color of new birth is now pale with death.

I can close my eyes and feel the echo of their hearts beating in my own. As though the realm will forever remember, and my ties to the sentient land endeavor never to let me forget.

Beside me, her delicate hand trembling in mine, Persephone stands. Surrounding us are those who have stood beside us in this war that is not yet complete, even as our story has mostly come to an end, our battle passed onto the innocence we birthed. The innocence we are forced to sacrifice.

Behind them, blanketing the Elysian Fields and stretching over the meadows of Asphodel, are the souls of the Underworld. They stand in grief, offering their strength and support in the wreckage of these despairing times.

Waves of love pulse along the meadows and fields, surging into the loss we suffer in a collision so fierce, the tree of life trembles. The Elysian Tree in which my daughters have been placed in their basket quivers, the branches trembling, leaves fluttering.

But it is the collective gasp that draws our attention from our daughters to the three that soar in the sky. Fear and reverence prickle my flesh, and Persephone’s hand pulses in mine.

In the history of the realms, never once have the Moirai left their cauldron of souls and the black mountain from which the cauldron was birthed. The source which ties our galaxy to that which they hail in a dimension that vibrates far higher than our own.

I realise then that perhaps they were once sacrificed as we now sacrifice our beloved daughters. Perhaps they were called to this duty, to guide a galaxy of realms in which otherwise would collapse under the misguided whims of Gods and men.

The Moirai hover in the void above the Elysian tree.

From them, an ethereal light I’ve only ever seen thread the souls inside the cauldron expands to caress the tree.

And moments later the leaves glow a bright and yet subtle teal.

The color is calming even as it’s enchanting, and Persephone looses a sharp sob beside me as she falls to her knees before the basket that holds our girls.

I think only once about pulling her into my arms before I drop to my own knees behind her.

I cage her body with my own, wishing I could pull every ounce of her grief into me, suffer every moment of pain, even though I know she would not wish it.

She would not wish it because she needs to feel it.

She needs to feel it so that she can heal.

But Tartarus , watching her break apart is killing me.

I wrap her in my arms and hold the pieces of her together as she shatters, her arms outstretched, fingers curled around the silken fabric of the basket.

The sound of three voices I’ve only ever heard in my mind resounds from the Tree of Life, echoing into the ether of the Underworld for all to hear.

“The prophecy of the twins of death and fleeting life, the daughters of the Underworld and the fragility of human life, was scribed onto the cauldron of souls from the dawn of time. The fate of them is sewn into the threads of all souls that have ever been or will ever be. They are the promise of unity and growth.”

The Moirai continue speaking through the tree.

“True power has never been in the worshiping of Gods, but in the God’s ability to nourish the souls they create.

To guide humanity to a higher vibration, a point of unity that can come only when the divide between man and God is abolished.

For this to occur, the sacrifice of the twins that prophecy has seen connect the Gods of the realms, is necessary.

This connection will lead to the ultimate power, a connection in consciousness that will finally see the realms come alive.

The power of Chaos, the Mother Goddess, will unite within the three.

And the three will sustain the realms that sustain the universe. ”

They raise their hands high above their heads, the blue light arching into the everlasting night and the sky tears .

It’s as though the sky is opened, torn at the seams to display a galaxy beyond. From the abyss of stars and color woven with the powers of the universe emerge two orbs. One impossibly dark, alight with the embers of the night. One burning bright in all the colors of the heart.

As they lower, the orbs take physical form. A woman and a man. Dark and the Light of Love. Nyx and Eros.

A sea of shocked gasps plays a symphony of breathless awe as the two primordial deities who have not been seen in all the time I’ve been alive, lower to the ground on either side of the basket.

They are close enough to touch, and yet we remain perilously still as the ancient deities focus on our daughters.

Eros, a Primordial Deity of so much light, exuding love in its purest form, cups his hands beneath the Elysian Tree.

A single glowing teal leaf flutters into his palm.

The veins ignite with the light of love—a pure pink—that he carries tenderly to lay on Sophia’s chest. The leaf molds to her cool flesh until it is one with her, burning bright before it is gone.

Persephone gasps a sob that wracks her body as Sophia’s lovely red curls fade to a golden strawberry blonde tinged pink.

Eros says nothing as he presses a blessed kiss to her little forehead and stands.

From the tree a glowing teal leaf falls into Nyx’s cupped hands.

The veins in the leaf transform under the tendrils of an obsidian night that she carries tenderly, with all the mystery and quiet of an eternal night, to Lilith’s chest. The leaf absorbs itself into her chest and just as the sweet red curls that colored Sophia’s head changed, Lilith’s curls darken until they are a black that is so black, it’s almost blue.

A kiss from black painted lips on Lilith’s forehead, before Nyx stands as Eros stands beside the basket.

And the three voices spill once again from the Tree of Life.

“The daughters of the Underworld and humanity possess the gifts of their mother, from which the essence of Chaos and Aether have now been divided into three, no less powerful than when whole. Sophia, daughter of the Underworld and humanity has been blessed by Eros, God of Love. She is destined to heal with affection the one who carries the weight of the fallen. Lilith, daughter of the Underworld and humanity has been blessed by Nyx, Goddess of Night. She is destined to walk in the light while offering the understanding of night to the one who carries shadows in his soul, for only darkness can welcome darkness.”

The Moirai are silent as the tear in the sky widens. From it spills the sounds of birth pains. Two women crying out together until the cries turn to the sounds of tiny, familiar cries.

Persephone shudders in my arms, her head tipped back, face to the sky. For the first time, I am thankful that I am on my knees. I do not know that I would have had the strength to keep my feet.

A soft laugh, filled with a mother’s love whispers a familiar name, “Sophia.”

Persephone sobs. And from another place far away, another couple coos over the daughter that is theirs and ours . “She’s beautiful,” a man whispers. “Just like you.” The sound of a tender kiss shreds me as he says softly, “Lilith.”

I didn’t see it happen, but Eros and Nyx disappear through the tear in the moments before it closes, and we are cut off from the sounds of our daughters entering the living realm.

“No.” Persephone shakes her head, her hands clawing at the roots of the tree which devour the basket, and our daughters, until there is nothing but grass where they once lay.

Persephone stiffens in my arms, turning to face me with those tears shimmering in glasslike lines down her cheeks.

“Do you hear them?”

I nod soberly. The Moirai no longer speak from the Tree, but within our minds. The tongueless cadence of their timeless voices eerie as it is beautiful.

She wipes at her face. “It’s time, Hades.”

Finally, I understand why it had to be now. Why I ever felt the desire to take her soul for my own. It’s not about keeping her safe, as I’d always thought. It’s not about keeping her in the Underworld, where she could never be taken from me.

It’s about unity. The connecting of God and humanity. The abolishing of the division that dirtied the lands of the living realm in the beginning of a ritual that would take place over the grave of our daughters. The place of their sacrifice.

“The echo of this union will live in the spirit of the twins, and when it is their time to offer their souls in connection to their Gods, they will do so with love that will unite the realms and all consciousness for eternity.”