It is smaller now, or I have depleted myself enough to find some semblance of calm. My arms ache. My hands are calloused and sore.
Minox stands silently at my side, waiting for me to gather myself, his robe is obscenely still as he stands. Not daring to give away that he may breathe. Cerberus sleeps at my feet, snoring. I reach down and pet each of his heads. He did not come after me last night, and I am grateful of that.
“When?” I ask finally. I know not what to say to Zeus given his power in this situation seems to be limited. It is Demeter who wages war. Demeter who has won. And Demeter who wishes for me to suffer still. The little birds have said as much. Although their sightings of Persephone are limited, Demeter has made her wishes known.
Zeus has Persephone. She’s on Olympus. She is with him, so if he wants a meeting, I have no choice but to take it. I am too hungry for information. I am starved for it, and it has only been one night.
“At your convenience,” Minox answers smoothly.
I scoff and heave myself out of the chair. It’s not meant for sleeping or for having visions of my queen. My feet ache underneath me. My clothes fit strangely on my body, as if they suffered under my rage.
“That’s not what he means, and you know it,” I tell Minox. “He means to meet within the hour.”
Minox smirks. He looks drawn as well. I do not know how long he has stood guard in this room, waiting for me to wake up—or toss myself out of my vision. I cannot have slept. I do not feel restored.
I doubt I will feel restored until Persephone is back. How can I feel life within me when the very goddess of life has been ripped from me?
“Zeus is not a man known for his patience,” he says. “When should I communicate that you will be ready?”
Another flare of anger. I want to keep Zeus waiting. I want to show him how very little I think of him. I want to crush him under my foot. God of the gods. It is what he is supposed to be and he made a promise. I swallow thickly, knowing Demeter’s hold on Persephone. Knowing the promise Zeus made and what it required of me. The simmering anger dulls as guilt overwhelms me.
But Persephone is with him, and the longer I toy with him, the longer I feel self-pity…the longer it will be until I have news of her.
“An hour,” I say to Minox. “I will meet with him in an hour. We will scry.”
An hour is too short a time. Bathing and dressing are both slow and painful, but I push myself through it. The agony exists because I have no control over how she returns to me…or if she does at all.
How quickly I got used to her presence here. How quickly I came to love her.
I brace my hand against the wall and breathe through my clenched teeth for quite some time. My fear is that she will not come back to me. I remember the seeds.
Then I haul myself up again and leave for my andron.
Cerberus is awake. He stretches and pads after me, keeping me company as I walk along the garden path. Crushed obsidian crunches under my boots, just as it has every other time I have made this journey.
It is impossible to make it now without thinking of another conversation I had with Zeus.
That was the day I ordered Minox to bring Persephone to me.
That was the night everything began.
I knew some things would change when Persephone came to the Underworld. I did not know she would shift my being so entirely. That she would control this much of me. I knew not how devastating love was to have and then lose.
I didn’t know I would fall for her with such depth. I didn’t know I would come to need her more than I have ever needed anything.
When I was trapped in the dark, I didn’t need the light as much as I need Persephone now.
I thought I would possess her. I didn’t realize how much she would possess all of me in return.
It’s deathly quiet as I stalk toward the andron, as gleaming and black as ever, and it is as empty as it was during that meeting with Zeus. My boots click on the floor. The cold air draws close to me as I cross the opulent space, getting closer to the mirror with every step.
My dead heart ticks in my chest with a heaviness that seems to beat from the crown of my head to the bottom of my soles.
I’m torn between the need to hear about my queen and the need to spit in Zeus’s face. I would rather smash the mirror into a thousand pieces than speak to him. The war still wages and it is on him to end it.
I wave a hand at the enormous grate in the wall, calling the flames for light. Fire in the grate reminds me of Persephone’s sweet body in the firelight. Her image flashes before me.
I stop a few paces away from the mirror, bow my head, and gather as much self-restraint as I can summon.
