"I'll find you," I murmured as my eyes started closing.
"No!"
"I'll find you in another life."
Raw pain rushed through my body as I tore myself away from Hades, barely breathing. Barely fucking existing.
These visions weren't a coincidence, they couldn't be. These visions… These… It was as if I was truly there. As if I was—her.
My head lifted, seeing the renewed pain on his face and the regrets he carried all these years in those eyes, and even without words, even without explanations, I knew. I knew what those dreams meant. I knew what those words he told me during mynightmares were. I knew what they were indicating, but I was too busy with other things to connect the dots. Or I was too ignorant, unable to face the truth staring right at me.
I was, somehow, Persephone.
I was the woman he lost.
The lost fragments of my soul unraveled, slowly filling in the gaps where I always felt something was missing. Where the hollowness took place over the years that I couldn't explain.
"You knew," I bit out, seeing the look on his face. "You fucking knew!" I roared. Maybe all of them did and they hid it from me.
Was I even my own person? Were my choices truly my own or just a reflection of the Ancient being I used to be? Was my entire life controlled by forces bigger than me, while I thought I had a choice?
"Kaira—"
"No." I stepped back as he tried coming closer. "Do. Not. Come. To. Me." I didn't want him near. I didn't want any of them near. "You lied to me. You fucking lied!"
"I didn't lie," he answered calmly. "I didn't think you were ready."
"So, you conveniently hid the truth from me, making me believe I was crazy. Making me go almost insane because I kept seeing you. I kept fucking seeing you on those same cliffs. I kept dying in those nightmares almost every. Single. Night!" The dam broke and every single emotion poured out of me. "Day after day, night after night, I tried understanding who you were, and then I saw you, standing there like an angel of fucking death, looking at me with dread and anger. And you knew!"
I was crucifying him, but I didn't care. My anger didn't fucking care, because all these people were lying to me. They were fucking lying.
"Who am I to you, Hades?" I asked, barely containing the fury in my gut. The power they spoke of, I could feel it now—fully. It was a living, breathing thing, existing deep inside my soul, and now it was free. It was out on the surface of my skin, crackling like fire, desperate to be released. "Who am I?!"
"Everything!" he roared, his own power flaring to the surface and that fucking thread I touched, lit up, illuminating between us. It traveled from his core, from his heart, all the way to me. It connected us in ways I didn't know was possible.
I wanted to fucking hate him for the nightmares and the dreams and the desperation clinging to both of us as we stood there in front of his home.
"You are everything to me," he said slowly, containing his own anger, or at least trying to. "In this life and in the thousand other lives, you were always my everything. My soul, my heart, my reason for existence and the reason I craved death more than life." He stood rooted to the spot, unmoving. "From the first moment I saw you, I knew you were mine, just like I was yours. But I didn't know why," he added quietly.
I wanted to hate him even more after those words erupted from him, but I couldn't. My soul recognized his even before my mind could catch up, but I wasn't the woman he loved. I wasn't the Persephone he knew.
We shared the soul, the tether to him, but I wasn't the soft-spoken Goddess they all mentioned. I wasn't the Goddess of Spring, with a gentle smile and caring hands. I was ruined, damaged, just a broken version of what she once was. I was me, but I was also her, and my Gods, I didn't even know anymore.
I didn't know who I was anymore.
The presence on my left made me look toward the house, seeing the three dogs standing there. And then it dawned on me.
The pomegranate, the night of the accident—Grimm knew.
"He was always there, wasn't he?" I asked. Even when I didn't believe it, even when I couldn't see the truth my mother was so desperately hiding from me, I could feel him.
Grimm was almost always there. Always on October 31st. I thought I was imagining things. I thought I had watched one too many horror movies, but this guardian of the Underworld was always there, watching over me. That's how he saved me. That's how he came so quickly.
"He found you on your tenth birthday," Hades said, but my eyes stayed focused on the massive dog that was slowly walking toward us. "He didn't tell me, and I didn't ask." He continued talking. "I couldn't ask because the pain of losing you over and over again was too much to bear. So I ignored it. I ignored his disappearances every time the veil thinned, unable to allow myself to hope that one day you'd be back in my arms."
My head swiveled back to the God that lied. The God that held the piece of my soul attached to his own, and I wished I was anywhere but here.
Everything I was, everything I at least thought I was, belonged to the woman that lived thousands of years ago. Every single decision, every single word—were they really mine or were they the projection of a Goddess that died?
