It was because of Silvie that I was able to enchant the bells on my door and light fires in the hearth. It was Silvie who gave me the confidence to walk on the path in Hades’s realm, speaking to those I met and learning from them, too.
I may be in Olympus, but I will be just as confident here. I will demand my magic. I will demand that my will be heard…but at what cost?
A soft knock at the door brings me out of those memories and back into the light.
“You may enter,” I call.
The doors to my chambers open, and Beatrice hurries across the threshold, her skirts in one hand and her eyes wide.
A well of emotion floods me once again. The damned emotions coming and going like a righteous storm commanded by Poseidon himself.
I rush for her and throw my arms around her as the door closes softly behind us. Beatrice embraces me back just as tightly, her face pressed to mine and her hands clutching at my back. Her warmth and relief are evident.
“You are here,” she breathes as if in prayer. “Persephone. You’re here. I could hardly believe the news when I heard. I thought?—”
“I should have come to you.” My heart aches with guilt. “When I arrived…I was not thinking, Beatrice, or I would have come to see you?—”
“Are you all right? Are you hurt? What happened? You were gone in the night, and by the time I realized—” Her questions come one after the other, each just as desperate to be answered.
“The Underworld,” I whisper. “I was in the Underworld with Hades.”
Beatrice pulls back, looking into my eyes with a shocked expression and something else in the depth of her gaze that I cannot place. “It is true, then?”
“Is that what was said? That I had gone to the Underworld?”
“Yes, but…” She lifts one of her hands to cover her mouth, then squeezes me again before she straightens. “I thought it could not be. You are a goddess of Olympus, and?—”
“It is true! And I…” I take her hands in mine, wishing I could tell her everything in a single breath while also wishing I did not have to say out loud the truth of how this reality came to be. “I don’t know how to describe it to you. It is a realm like—you can only imagine it, Beatrice. It is like the stories, but so much more.”
“I’ve heard the stories, but once you were gone…” She shakes her head, her chest heaving with a deep breath as her expression turns somber. “Once you were gone, Olympus became a hell of its own. Your mother’s grief and sorrow clouded the skies. Everyone had their say. So many whispers?—”
“But you knew. You thought I had gone to the Underworld. Why?”
“Because there was nowhere else you could be. And…and I had a dream from Hecate… she whispered to have faith and that you were well but trapped. You were not among the mortals. You were not with any of the other gods. You were lost to your mother, and when she realized she could not find you in any of the places she knew and guarded, I prayed and made offerings to the one goddess, the Titan who rules every crossroad…but how? How did you get there?”
I frown, remembering. “Someone did take me. Someone…brought me to him.”
“Who?”
“I do not know. I do not remember.” I remember the cold. I remember the dark, the chill that ran down my spine. But now, with Beatrice’s hands in mine, I am certain it could not have been Hades. If he had the power to come to Olympus, he would be here with me now. He would not have let Hecate bring me here without staying at my side.
He cannot come to Olympus. It must be beyond his power. Someone did though. Someone broke the law of the gods.
“But you did not choose to go?” Beatrice searches my eyes. “There were some who thought you slipped away, intending to disappear. I told them you would never. Tell me I know you well enough to?—”
“I would not do that to my mother,” I answer solemnly. “Never would have left without telling you either.”
“That is what I said!” Beatrice exhales. “That is exactly what I said to anyone who would listen. But it was not my place…”
She squeezes my hands and then releases them quickly, bowing her head slightly, seeming to remember that I am a goddess, and she is a companion. This closeness between us is not our usual habit, even if she knew all my darkest secrets before I went to the Underworld. I grab her hands again. I do not care what our old habits used to be. I’m not my old habits anymore. Beatrice smiles, glancing down at our hands, then brings her gaze back to mine.
“That is what I said,” she repeats, quieter this time. “I didn’t think it was like you to run away.”
“I would not.”
Beatrice’s expression softens, yet becomes more serious. She presses her lips together. “It was…difficult. While you were gone.”
“Tell me please. You have my confidence.”
