And I waited.
Listened.
No movement. No footfall. Not even a breath.
She was trying to hold. Trying not to give me the satisfaction.
But silence?
Oh, that was my favorite sound.
Silence meant her thoughts were turning against her.
Silence meant she was running out of places to hide inside her own head.
Because here was the thing about Persephone: she was born in a house of marble and glass, trained to play the good girl, the dutiful daughter, the second-best shadow.
But no one ever taught her how to survive a god.
She wasn’t just locked in that room.
She was marinating in it.
In the silence.
In me.
And I could wait.
Hell, I’d been waiting years for this.
I tilted my head toward the closed hallway, raised my glass like a toast to the air.
“Your move, Persephone.”
And I meant it.
Because this wasn’t a battle anymore.
It was a war.
And I always—always—won.
I set the table for one.
A single plate. Knife on the right. Napkin folded with military precision. Steak—medium rare, like I’d read she preferred—rested beside a flawless line of roasted vegetables. A glass of red, full to the halfway mark, bled dark against the stark white marble countertop.
Not a gesture of kindness.
Not an olive branch.
Just a message.
An invitation to reality.
I left it all there. Right outside her door.
Close enough to smell. Far enough to remind her what she’d forfeited.
