The goddess pulled away and circled around to face him. Patrick’s fuzzy memory of her sharpened into focus. Persephone hadn’t changed at all, not in the years since he’d seen her when he was a child. Immortals never aged, not really, but that didn’t stop him from trying to find some differences in her face, some hint of the years he’d lived reflected back at him. But the immortal was as ageless and untouched as she had been when she’d saved him from dying beneath his father’s hands all those years ago.
In hindsight, it hadn’t been much of a rescue.
Patrick flashed back to that night in Salem, to the dark, bloody basement Persephone had pulled him out of. The memory only lasted the length of a heartbeat, but it felt like a lifetime.
He took a step toward her, ignoring the aches in his body from Cerberus’ hit. “Take me back right the fuck now. I can’t leave Jono behind. He’s supposed tostaywith me.”
Persephone arched one dark eyebrow. “I am aware of what the Norns decreed, but I could not reach the wolf through Cerberus.”
“Bullshit. That mutt would’ve listened to you.”
She shrugged in the face of his anger. The wind tugged at the T-shirt she wore, the ragged threads of her denim cutoff shorts fluttering in the air. She wore sandals, but unlike Patrick, her feet weren’t sinking into the wet ground. Persephone’s golden-brown skin seemed to glow against the darkness surrounding them, as if she were the only bright spot in the realm of the dead.
Freckles dotted the bridge of her nose and cheeks, her curly, dark brown hair like a halo around her face. She didn’t seem bothered at all by the wind or the bone-deep chill that called this place home.
“You are who I wish to speak with, and only you,” Persephone said.
Patrick tried to still the rabbit-fast beating of his heart, but the rage and fear he felt wasn’t dying down anytime soon. “Take meback.”
“In due time.”
Which was a fucking riot of a joke because immortals had more time to spare than anyone. Patrick was stuck here behind the veil in the Greek Underworld where time ran slower than it did on Earth. Depending on the plane, time could also run faster, as in Underhill. Either way, Patrick couldn’t afford to lose even a single second. The quicker he got this reunion over with, the sooner he could get back to the mortal plane and the fight waiting for him.
The quicker he’d get back to Jono.
“Just let me go back.Please.”
“I see you still desire the same thing as when you were here as a child. Do you think this time you will find something different on the mortal plane when you return?”
Patrick flinched, thinking of Jono, thinking bleakly,Don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.
He’d begged for the same result when it came to his twin sister years ago. Only when he came out of the veil into Ashanti’s waiting arms in Washington, DC, his life in Salem was forever lost to him.
“You don’t care about what I think, Persephone. Say what you want to say so I can get out of here.”
Persephone’s gaze was heavy-lidded and knowing. “My husband has always been a single-minded bastard. I love him, I always will, but I do not appreciate him attempting to do to me what he allowed to happen to his daughter. Zeus will not forgive him this time.”
“It wasn’t just your husband last time.”
“And it is not him alone now.”
Patrick chewed on his bottom lip until he tasted blood. Persephone’s statement was all the confirmation he needed to know that when he made it back through the veil, Ethan would be waiting for him.
And so would Hannah.
Persephone settled her hands on her hips, cocking her head to the side as she studied him. “I will not apologize for saving you.”
“I waseight,” Patrick bit out. “I wasdying.”
“I healed you.”
He let out a bitter laugh. “You offered life to a dying child, but you never said you wouldownme when I begged for your help. That’s not healing, Persephone. That’s enslavement.”
“Your father and his ilk stole Macaria’s godhead when they had no right to take what they can never own.”
“Owning me won’t bring her back as she was.”
Persephone stepped closer and pressed her hands to his chest, right over the scars. “Who better to stop your father than his own son? The magic the Dominion Sect covets is old, Patrick. It is primordial. It isours, but they use it against us when they can find us. So we will use you to break the ones perpetuating this blasphemy through blood.”
