As my mind began to churn, plotting a new campaign to reclaim my mate and bring her back to her true home, her final warning circled like vultures in the dark.
The Fates lied. Remembering the past didn’t break the curse. You were never the threat. I am.
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
Persephone
Pink Ribbons and Poison
Iwalked the streets of the city of the gods with my mother at my side. Demeter chattered nonstop, a ceaseless stream of commentary on every shop we passed, every distant god we glimpsed, every architectural detail she insisted I admire.
She wore a deep green gown that drank the light, silk shot through with silver thread. Her wheat-colored hair was arranged in an elaborate crown of braids, woven through with fresh blossoms that never wilted. She was the picture of a harvest goddess—abundant, fertile, radiant.
She’d dressed me in a confection of pink. Not a soft blush but a bright hue. The corset shoved my breasts up until they threatened to spill over the neckline with every breath. My waist was cinched so tight my lungs fought for air.
The gown was heavy; layers of silk, lace, and tulle adorned with pearls. My hair had been tortured into equally elaborate curls and braids, piled high and threaded with pink ribbons and sapphires. I looked like a pretty doll meant to be seen, not heard.
“This is worse than the Victorian student uniform from Reaper Academy,” I complained. “That, at least, allowed me to breathe.”
“Stop it,” Demeter said. “It’s time we put the past behind us for good.”
It was like I’d traveled back to the past and nothing had changed—Mother deciding everything. What I wore, where I went, who I spoke to, what I was permitted to say.
It was stifling.
She still saw me as the Persephone from eons ago—the maiden who delighted in shopping and parties and shimmering, shallow pleasures. Who cared for hats and gossip and the admiring glances of strangers.
I was not that naïve, empty girl anymore.
Not after Hades.
Not after a hundred mortal lifetimes.
Not after being murdered over and over in different ways.
I was now a full goddess who had shed her mortal coil, raw power thrumming through my transformed veins. Yet the wounds I carried had not healed. They would not heal. Not unless?—
My mind drifted to Hades. My tormentor and my rock. The one being in all creation who truly knew me. Who’d seen me at my worst and loved me anyway. The only anchor in my eternal storm.
Mother’s hand closed around my arm, her grip tight enough to bruise, dragging me back to the present.
“Persephone,” she said sharply. “Lose that distant look. Stay here with me.”
She hated when I retreated into my thoughts. Hated anything she could not control.
We turned a corner, passing shiny shopfronts that blurred together. I gathered my heavy skirts as we climbed a flight of marble stairs, each step a labor under the weight of silk and tulle.
Mom was trying, with determined force, to re-acclimate me to my old life. Now she guided me toward a hat shop, its window displaying impossibly elaborate creations—towers of feathers, glittering jewels, and silk blooms all piled into splendor.
Once, I’d adored this. My closets had overflowed with thousands of hats and shoes in every fashion, every color. I’d collected them to fill a silent void.
Now, all I could see was the hollow girl I had been. How I had needed those trinkets to plug the emptiness where meaning should have lived.
Around us, noise buzzed—a constant hum of whispers trailing our every step.
I ignored them. The stares that followed my every move through this gleaming city were a weight I had learned to carry. I had been absent for an eon, and now I had returned. The prodigal daughter. The lost goddess found.
