I’m filled with anticipation that seems wild. Nearly uncontrollable. It is like fire in my veins. A sudden power I had not noticed before. It’s like the moment I saw light again after my long imprisonment. It’s like stepping foot in the Underworld and understanding, for the first time, that I had a realm to exist in—one that lived and breathed and turned in its cycles. It did not matter that life was for the mortal realm. This would be my life.
I inhale, and the air tastes the same as it did that day. Brimming with all the power of the souls who dwell here and the attendants who do the work of judging them and guiding them.
“Bring darkness over the world,” I order Minox. “Bring the fear of death. Unleash monsters in the dark.”
“Hades,” Hecate says urgently. Her eyes widen like I’ve never seen before.
“My Lord?” Minox questions. I expect this from him. He saw the depths of my grief and rage. He saw me tearing souls apart and causing carnage throughout the Underworld. He will want to be sure I am not repeating those actions.
“Do as I command,” I say, staring into his eyes. Then I look back at Hecate. “And let Zeus know—Olympus will be next.”
Hecate opens her mouth to speak, but there is nothing she can say to change my mind. There is nothing anyone can say. If she thought the pendulum had swung, she was wrong. The darkness has just begun.
The only person who could change my mind is Persephone, but Persephone is not here. This is what I must do to get her back. I have known it since I saw the lightning in the sky, glaring at me from Olympus. The mortals always pay the price of the gods. Demeter started this and I will finish it.
Hecate seems to realize what I am about to tell her before I can speak the words. I see the shock flash through her eyes, and then calculation.
Hecate is no fool. She will understand what must be done. She will not need to be convinced as Zeus needs to be convinced.
“The army of the dead will seek vengeance for violation of the laws,” I tell Hecate before she can speak. Before she can try to dissuade me. “I will bring them to his doorstep if he does not honor the law. She has had enough time. Four days and three nights. I must have her back.”
Persephone
With a simper on my lips, I stare at my upturned hand. There is no mistaking it. My powers have returned.
I am not sure exactly when I think to reach for them, but when I do, they are there at my fingertips. The spells and prayers come easily, with power flowing through me like water. I run to the nearest garden beds and press my fingertips into the earth, and there is life. Beautiful and vibrant. Whatever I imagine to grow.
Life!
I sit back on my heels on the flagstones next to the garden beds with fistfuls of dirt in my palms. I know I must look just as crazed as I did in those first days in the Underworld, but I cannot control my surprise. My delight? It is a bittersweet joy to be here on Olympus with all my powers restored.
Long are the days that I feared they’d leave me or that I did not deserve them. I earned this. This beautiful gift.
But then—they were never gone, were they? Because the powers were not what mattered. What mattered was how I practiced. How I believed in myself. How I learned.
The process is just the same on Olympus as it was in the Underworld, only here, I am not starting at the beginning. I was born with my powers. My mother taught me the ways of them when she taught me to speak.
I open my hands and look down at the dirt there, then put it back in the garden bed.
Then I spool a plant up from it, bringing life in the form of a blooming rose, straight from the earth. And with a snap, I can deliver it to the mortal realm and let them multiply. I give beauty. I give hope in the despair that still lingers. My mother’s grasp has slipped. Her pain subsiding.
I might not’ve trusted my own abilities if I had not gone to the Underworld. I might not’ve built that sure, strong feeling within me. How could I have? If I had stayed here?—
I do not know what might have happened. I might have lost my powers entirely. I might never have learned how to wield my own confidence no matter the realm I am standing in.
I grow flowers in the garden bed in a wild frenzy. If there are seeds, then they spring up at my call like they were waiting for me to summon them. If there are no seeds, I can create one by imagining what it might be like as a bloom. I practice this until I have to lie down at the edge of the garden bed, my body weak with how good it feels to be myself again.
The sky above me, and above Olympus, is a pale blue dotted with clouds. It has cleared, for the moment, but gray clouds in the distance make me wonder if something else is coming. A storm is brewing.
Something else is always coming. That is what it means to be a god, or a living mortal, and even a soul destined for new life in the Underworld. There will always be change. There will always be growth. There will always be death.
There will always be something to face.
I frown at that blue, the tingling enjoyment of bringing so much life to the garden bed fading from my hands.
Would I give it up, I wonder?
Would I give it up to be with Hades? I cannot stop thinking of my love. He’s in all my dreams, appearing there the moment I fall asleep.
