Demeter threw herself forward, arms wide, straining to embrace me.
Hades blocked her.
“Don’t you dare come near her,” he snarled.
“She is my precious daughter!” Demeter shouted. “How dare you keep her from me?”
“Precious daughter?” Hades’s laugh was bitter, cruel. “So precious that you condemned her to die ninety-nine times? You wanted her caged as your eternal child who never grew up, never came into her own!”
“And did you not cage her?” Demeter sneered. “Did you not steal her? Force her into marriage? Keep her prisoner in your sunless realm?”
“She is the love of my life!” Hades roared. “I would die for her. What have you ever sacrificed but her happiness?”
“Stop!” My icy voice cut through their argument. “Not this shit again!”
They froze. Silence blanketed the stadium. Everyone was watching us like this was a fucking live show for them.
I stepped back, putting space between myself and them both.
“For once,” I said, “you will hearme. What I want. Not what you’ve decided for me. You have treated me as a pawn in your games for eons.”
I turned to Demeter, my voice hardening. “You charted my path before I could walk. I was the maiden, kept pure and locked away. Even after I became a queen, Zeus split my life between realms.” My hands clenched at my sides. “And you, Mother, you excluded me. You met with them and decided my fate. Did anyone ask what I wanted? Did anyone care that being torn in two was its own torment? My opinions and needs never mattered to you.”
“You are my only daughter,” Demeter protested, her voice fraying. “My most precious child. Everything I did was to protect you.”
“You called it protection. It was control.”
She opened her mouth, but I lifted a hand, stopping her. Then I turned to Hades.
The pain in his eyes was already raw, but I pressed on.
“And you,” I said, quieter. “My husband. You stole me as a prize. I begged to see the sun, to have friends, to live outside your shadow. But you could never see past your own obsession.”
His face went ashen. “I wanted to give you everything, but I was… I am still deeply flawed.”
My heart ached, but I did not let myself soften.
“You took my freedom,” I said.
His expression crumbled—joy draining into horror. His hand lifted, then fell. He was beginning to understand what came next, and he was powerless to stop it.
I wouldn’t return to the Underworld.
I’d deal him a final blow.
I would reject my mate before them all—gods, students, immortals, and every witness who would carry this story across the realms.
“I suffered because of you,” I said, each word like ground glass in my throat. “Every wrong began the day you decided you had to have me. You seduced me into darkness. You made me a target. If you had left me alone, I wouldn’t have died screaming ninety-nine times. I would not have endured an eon of curses and pain.”
His knees wavered. His hands trembled. His eyes held a devastation that would never heal.
I shattered inside.
“I failed you.” His breath came ragged. Shadows writhed around him like wounded things.
I could not watch him break any longer.
I turned away, my gaze sweeping the balconies, my finger lifting in accusation. Power coiled deep within, restless and full of fury, hungry to tear it all down.
