Hades said nothing, and in that silence was the weight of an unspoken truth.
Mal took a step closer, her presence a blade all its own.
‘Will the curse end when I kill you or will it linger still?’ she pressed, eyes narrowing to flint-edged slits.
Hades’ tongue darted across his lips, slow and deliberate, his gaze drawn not to her blade but to the rotting apple on the table, as though its decaying flesh held answers she could not see. Mal’s eyes followed his for the briefest moment, confusion shining, before his sigh fractured the silence. Then, with a fluid, almost resigned motion, he sank to his knees.
‘Yes,’ he said, those crimson eyes fixing upon her with unnerving calm. ‘It will end.’
A chill slithered along Mal’s spine, a whisper of suspicion she had felt before, his lies cloaked as truths, his silences heavy with secrets. Yet she forced herself to bury it. There was no turning back now. This had to end, once and for all.
She would forever be the God-Killer, her hands stained with divinity’s blood, but Ash… Ash could be safe.
Her stare did not falter from those infernal red eyes, eyes that had deceived, manipulated, wielded her like a weaponforged for his will. She would end them all, every god who played their cruel games. Hades was but the first.
Her fingers tightened around the hilt of her sword until the leather creaked in protest.
‘Thank you,’ Hades said softly, and a smile, a genuine, startling in its warmth smile broke across his face, something she had never seen before.
‘For what?’ she asked, the question edged with suspicion.
‘For keeping your promise.’
She didn’t understand, not truly, but it no longer mattered. If she hesitated, her resolve might waver.
Hades closed his eyes.
And Mal drove the blade home, piercing through heart and bone, her free hand resting on his shoulder to steady him on his knees. His eyes snapped open for one fleeting instant, crimson orbs meeting hers, and there was no fury within them, no grief.
Only peace.
She drew the sword free, watched him crumble, collapse, his body breaking apart, disintegrating into fine ash that curled skyward, stolen by an invisible wind, until there was nothing left of the god at all.
Thunder rolled across the heavens, the skies shattering open with a growl as if the world itself cried out that the king of the Underworld was gone, truly gone.
And Mal stood silent, blade dripping, as a bitter thought clawed at her mind.
The thought that, perhaps, her father had lied to her yet again.
Freya felt it, the moment the Underworld whispered for her return. She froze, her fingers clenching tighter around the reins of her winged horse. Lightning split the heavens in a silver scream, and then the earth beneath her feet gaped open, swallowing her whole.
A laugh tore from her throat as the gates of the Underworld yawned wide for her once more. With a delighted cackle, she was pulled from the mortal vessel, finally returning to her true godly form. She ripped away the valkyrian garments that bound her and let a black gown unfurl along her form like living shadow. Her chestnut hair darkened, spilling down her back like ink, and her antlers, the ones shorn from her when she had been forced to wear a mortal shell, sprouted anew, vast and regal. They were not the warm brown of the Faes but obsidian, cold and terrible.
Her once-gentle mortal blue eyes were stripped away the moment she abandoned her mortal body. Now, now her eyes were black as night, and they sharpened as she regarded her hands, hands that no longer belonged to Freya, but to Persephone, true queen of the Underworld, reborn.
Home.
At last.
Persephone strode through the silent fields of the dead, and the shades halted in their endless wandering, turning hollow eyes towards their queen. Her long black gown flowed like a river of night, trailing behind as she made her way to the black citadel. The towering doors of the castle groaned open before her, and she stepped inside, feet carrying her unerring to the throne room, a place Hades had always disdained, but she would claim.
Well.
Persephone flung the massive doors open with a forceful crack, a sharp smile cutting her face as her gaze fell upon the throne. Without hesitation, she climbed the three obsidian steps and seated herself, the weight of her presence sinking into the chamber like iron.
Her smile widened further when she saw Thanatos approach, his expression carved in disapproval.
‘Welcome back,’ he said, his voice low, clipped, and far from warm.
