He’s letting me leave.
Cyane gripped him tight. This was happening too fast, all of it was. From Hades lecturing her on her existence, the hopelessness, and now this. The loss.
Why couldn’t she have remained unconscious?
“I can’t change,” he said, “Not like that.”
She turned from the moonlight. “Of course you can change, we can all change. With every day that passes, change is happening.”
He cupped her face within his palm. “Someday you will die, Cyane, and if I’m above who will be here to await your soul’s final journey? Who will stop Hades from pursuing you when he finds out you’re gone? Mortals don’t belong here, they never have, and they never will. This place isn’t for the living. It’s for those who created it.”
“But you belong with me.” She blinked back tears and leaned into his hand. Freedom was before her, everything she knew lay just beyond.He did this for me. Despite his loyalty to Hades.It hurt her heart. Her life hadn’t been great before, but it hadn’t been terrible.It’d been mine, and no one else's.Now that life was being offered back to her, she didn’t know how to take the first step.
“And you belong with me.”
“Then ask me to stay,” she pleaded. “Tell me to stay. Tell me it will all be okay.” Cyane insides crumbled when all he did was look down at her with removed emotion.
He’s not going to tell me it’ll be okay...
He’s not going to ask me to stay, and he won’t come with me.
She bit back tears.
She reached up and pulled Cerberus’s helmet off, needing to see him, aching for something from him. His dark, curly, shoulder-length hair tumbled out like tussled silk, his deep, red eyes, swirling with a myriad of color, stared at her, and his mouth parted slightly.
She leaned up to kiss him.
A soft, sad goodbye. Warm and cold collided for a lingering second, neutralizing each other one last time.
Cerberus pulled away from her far too soon.
“Wait here,” he said, and before she could ask why, he disappeared into the darkness.
Cyane curled her arms around her middle and shook, glancing behind her where the tunnel led deeper back into the Underworld. Only a few yards could be seen before the darkness consumed everything. She shivered. It still frightened her, yet at the same time, she didn’t want it to go away. After being within it for so long, it wasn’t all that bad… It was justdifferent. Another part of life. One that everyone would eventually belong to.
She turned back to the light, and for the first time since she’d fallen, she wondered about her few friends and foster parents. The people that were still in her life above. The social workers that cared for her wellbeing, the professors that taught her, even the nuns. They returned to her like a beaconing, warm aura of familiarity.
I like to swim.The moonlight slowly brightened.I like chocolate-chip cookies. Books. Trees, the forest.
A noise sounded, and she pivoted to see Cerberus appear with Hermes. Her shoulders dropped. The golden-esque god greeted her with a smile she couldn’t return. His winged adornments fluttered.
“Hermes will lead you where you want to go,” Cerberus said.
Pain.“Where I want to go?”
“When you reach the top.”
Cyane glanced between the two men, having no idea where she wanted to go.
“The deal you made?” she asked, softly.
“Yes, the deal.”
Hermes lifted into the air. “I will hold up my end of the bargain.”
“I made a deal, too, with Melinoe,” she said, having forgotten until that moment. Both men’s faces shuttered at the mention of the goddess’s name. “I haven’t kept it.” Will Melinoe come for her?
“You made a deal with...that?” Hermes spat.
