I had been born here. This had been my home for an eon. The place I had believed I belonged. Now, surrounded by thousands of immortals, I had never felt more alone.
An ache for my mate gnawed at my chest.
I understood now what I never had before. Home wasn’t a place of birth. It wasn’t where you grew up, or where your family dwelled.
Home was where your heart resided. Where your beloved waited. Where you could simplybe, without pretense or performance.
And my home was in the Underworld. With Hades. In the comforting darkness that had once terrified me and now felt like my only sanctuary.
I let my gaze linger on The Paramount a moment longer, like a queen surveying the battlefield instead of a chastened girl returning home, picturing the infallible tower crumbling to dust. Imagined dropping the divine equivalent of a nuclear bomb upon it, watching the cloud of ruin swallow this golden city whole.
“Persephone? I am speaking to you.”
“Yes, Mother?” I turned to Demeter.
“I know this is a great deal to adjust to,” she sighed, her expression softening and annoyed at the same time. “But I am here for you. As always. Everything will be set right again.”
“Of course, Mother.” I watched a flock of minor gods from the lower courts stride past with pointed purpose.
“They’re preparing for a celebration in your honor,” Mother explained, her face alight. “It will be glorious. Our names will be inscribed in the Eternal Codex—an event they will speak of for millennia.”
“How kind,” I said, my voice flat.
“Zeus is in high spirits.” Demeter beamed. “Your return is a supreme victory. You denied that barbarian in front of him.” She leaned closer, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Did you see the devastation on Hades’s face? That complete shattered look? No one could ever break him, but you did, my brilliant daughter.”
I had missed nothing. Every detail of his anguish was scorched into my memory.
“It is a tremendous boost to our morale,” Demeter continued, “to see our greatest enemy brought so low. The King of the Underworld, reduced to begging.”
“If I had died in that last reincarnation,” I said slowly, meeting her gaze, “I’d have been erased forever.” I let the words hang. “That would have been the ultimate satisfaction for all the gods here, wouldn’t it? To watch Hades completely unravel from the fatal blow.”
That had been the plan, after all—the Fates’ and the gods’ final move. My permanent death. His ensuing self-destruction.
Demeter stopped short. Her smile faltered.
“Don’t be absurd, Persephone.” Her voice took on a familiar, scolding edge. “You know I love you. I wouldn’t have allowed that to happen.”
“My survival disappointed them,” I said. “But I suppose my public rejection of Hades softened the blow. As you said.”
“Why must you always twist things?” Mother pressed her fingers to her temple as if I were the source of a migraine. Then she sighed. “I don’t blame you for this attitude. It isn’t your fault.Hecorrupted you. Tainted even the purest of goddesses—my own daughter.”
She had never tolerated contradiction. Never welcomed any challenge to her neatly constructed version of reality.
Her expression shifted then, hardening into a block of ice.
My stomach dropped. I knew that look. I’d seen it eons ago, when she made the decisions that would chain my existence.
It was that same resolve that had led her to aid the Fates, Zeus, and Poseidon in dooming me. Mother had always been the primary force prohibiting the union between Hades and me. Her life’s passion had become his destruction.
To defeat him, she went so far as to let the curse fall upon her own daughter.
The blood magic required every god to contribute their essence, to make the curse unbreakable. And they also needed my blood for the ritual since Hades’s own was beyond their reach.
Mother had given them mine. Her own daughter’s blood.
Hades had tried everything to break the curse. He gathered the most gifted magic-wielders, commissioned counter-spells and serums for us to drink. Until one such potion killed one of my reincarnations. After that, he stopped all experimentation.
Every one of my deaths had carved another wound into his heart, scar layering upon scar until his soul was more ruin than whole.
