Persephone
The Heir
Olympus had fallen for the first time since Hades and his brothers overthrew their father.
My mate had led the slaughter of the tyrant Titan king. Afterward, his brothers, envious and afraid of his power, tricked him. They banished him to the Underworld.
It was a long, bloody history—eons of betrayal, of suffering.
Hades would have let it go. He would have remained in his realm and allowed his brothers to rule their golden city.
If they hadn’t come for me. His most treasured love.
That was their fatal mistake.
When my mate and I returned to our realm after conquering Olympus, Dante still led our army in looting the city of the gods. The riches they hauled back would fund our reconstruction.Gold and gems would be scattered among our citizens. Even the slums would be remade into something beautiful.
The gods understood neither justice nor mercy, so we spoke to them in the only language they knew—power. The powerful ruled. Now, we held that power. We stripped their golden city bare and reduced its splendor to rubble and memory.
My husband and I forever held the keys to Olympus, though neither of us wished to cross its golden bridge again. That place promised nothing but pain.
Zeus, Poseidon, and the other elite gods now resided in our dungeons. They were sentenced to hard labor, rebuilding the Underworld’s most brutal regions. They’d be released after two thousand years—the same span of time they’d treated my mortal reincarnations as blood sport.
And every week, they would fight each other or the arena’s most bloodthirsty creatures, clad in rags and half-starved. Let them learn how it felt to be entertainment. To be prey.
My mother was spared. She would live in the ruins of Olympus, forbidden from ever seeing me again.
My thoughts no longer dwelled on the gods, who were history now. I looked toward the horizon, toward the future.
Thousands of years living among mortals had taught me more than I ever learned as a sheltered goddess. Immortality is a burden if you do not evolve. I learned to embrace the human world’s rapid changes, to adapt with each shift, so we would never grow stagnant like other immortals.
Every first quarter of the year, I left the Underworld to teach at Reaper Academy. My specialties were plants, potions, and spells. I would have loved to teach weaving, but that gift was mine alone—no one else could learn it.
Hades had no interest in teaching or mingling with students, but he paced the hall outside my classroom, overprotective as ever.
Most days, Cerberus stayed with me in his true form. The massive three-headed hellhound dozed beneath my workbench, where I kept my tools: mortar and pestle, athame, copper cauldron, glass vials, brass scales, and leather-bound grimoires filled with eons of knowledge. One of his heads always watched, even as the others slept.
The students were fascinated by my hellhound but wise enough to give him a wide berth.
Dante had vanished from our circle after the conquest, hunting Morrigan as she fled. I knew he would find her eventually.
The students were in awe, sharing a campus with actual gods. Of course, anyone with sense feared the God of Death.
Word had spread to every corner of the earth that true gods now taught and led the academy. Gifted students from across the world applied to Reaper Academy—the most prestigious supernatural school in the mortal realm.
Apollo had joined as a guest professor, teaching magic and music. His classes were always full, with half of the school on the waiting list.
We allowed Stardust, Goddess of Witchcraft and Magic, to remain as headmistress. She’d earned her place by holding the school together in our absence, and she wanted Reaper Academy to be a true place of learning for gifted humans and supernaturals alike.
I insisted on eradicating every old rule. The former laws were part of a pact between Zeus, the Fates, and Hades, and now the Fates were trapped in their scorched cave, and Zeus labored in our camp. Headmistress Stardust gladly abolished the barbaric practices.
Everyone deserved a measure of kindness. That was my motto as the Queen of Death, strange as it may sound.
Today’s class was held in the botanical conservatory. Sunlight fell through the glass ceiling, warming the rows of plants I’d cultivated, nightshade beside healing herbs, wolfsbane next to lavender. Poison and cure, side by side.
Students sat at long wooden tables, notebooks open, attention fixed on me.
Sindy occupied the front row as always. My best friend still hadn’t fully grasped that she’d befriended the Queen of the Underworld—Goddess of Death, Weaving, and Life. But as Bloom’s friend, Sindy now had access to everything she’d ever wanted here.
