The place felt alien. Foreign. Its splendor was a language I had forgotten how to speak.
“Mother, I don’t want any hats,” I said, turning on my heel before we reached the shop entrance.
“Persephone!” Her voice snapped after me, sharp with displeasure. But she followed.
The bystanders’ gawking intensified. Their whispers grew louder, shedding any pretense of discretion.
“That’s her! Persephone, that poor creature.”
“No wonder she fled that dark realm. What a dreadful fate.”
“Just think—spreading her legs for that monstrous King of the Underworld. It makes me shudder.”
“Didn’t you throw yourself at him once? Only to be rejected?” a voice chuckled.
“She’s spoiled now. Even here, she’ll never be pure again.”
“She’s not as radiant as the stories claimed. What does he even see in her?”
“A pity the game is over. We had such sport, betting on which lifetime would finally break him.”
Their bitterness was a living stain in the air. They resented my survival, my return to full divinity. I was no longer the bloody spectacle that had filled the hollow millenniums of their immortal lives.
They mourned their lost entertainment.
Shame on them. They’d lose far more before I was finished. I would make sure of it.
That was the true reason I was here, instead of riding my mate to Sunday now. Being apart from him was unbearable, a grinding agony that never ceased. But I would endure it, as I had always endured.
All around me, the society of gods and goddesses shimmered with silk and jewels, fluttering like butterflies. Beneath their beauty, they were rotten. Bored. Entitled. Never appreciating what they had. Never grateful for their immortality and comfort.
Their malicious judgment used to make me cry when I was young. The naive maiden Persephone would have fled home in tears.
But I was tempered now. Their words were nothing but the persistent buzz of flies.
I wheeled on them, my lips pulling back into a savage grin that showed too many teeth.
“Bitches,” I said, loud enough to slice through their whispers. “Enjoy your pretty, empty lives while you can.”
I’d been about to call them worse, but I just couldn’t say cunt. Some mortal habits, it seemed, still clung.
The minor goddesses gasped in theatrical unison, hands fluttering to their chests as if I’d struck them. It’d be hilarious if I weren’t in a bad mood.
They had no idea that I was no longer the pliant redhead they remembered. I hadn’t been anyone’s damsel for a very long time.
Mother leveled a glare at them, heavy with authority. They scattered with hurried bows, silks rustling like fleeing vermin.
“It seems I’m no longer the realm’s favorite sport,” I said to her. “What a disappointment.”
“Do not trouble yourself with them,” Mother replied with a dismissive shrug. “The gods will find another spectacle soon enough. And we will join them for it.”
Her casual acceptance turned my stomach.
I stopped at the corner of the iridescent main street and looked up at The Paramount—the tower of the gods—floating in the sky, defying gravity and physics. A monument to pure power and ego. Below it stretched manicured lawns, gardens of eternal blooms, a lake of impossible clarity reflecting the golden light, and colonnades of white marble trimmed in gold.
No realm held luxury to match this.
“Isn’t our city magnificent, daughter?” Mother said, her voice laced with pride. “You are finally home. With me. As it was always meant to be.”
