“I am so very, very alive right now.” She let her head fall back, and Aeëtes’s lips traced down, nipping along her jaw, down her neck, so, so close to her chest…
“Say it again.” His voice was raspy as he sat up a little straighter, kissing behind her ear and nipping at her sweet spot. “I have to hear it.”
“I love you, Aeëtes.” Hecate smiled, and there was no hesitation in her voice. Her chest was rising and falling with each breath, her thoughts a delicious, scattered mess that she never wanted to clean up.
“Oh gods,” Aeëtes cursed, keeping an arm around Hecate’s waist. He effortlessly lifted them both up in an impressive bout of strength that made Hecate’s insides clench. She made a little squeak at the sudden movement, tightening her legs around him, but he didn’t drop her. She knew that he never would. He started moving, and she had no idea where to, but she didn’t care. Her arms were haphazardly tossed around his neck as she stared at him, both of them smiling like children, who only had eyes for each other.
“Take me upstairs,” Hecate whispered, leaning forward and pressing kisses of her own to Aeëtes’s chest.
“Anything. Anything you fucking want,” Aeëtes grunted with a huff, and she could tell that neither of them was going to last long once they got behind closed doors.
It took a disturbingly long time for them to make it to the door to Aeëtes’s chambers. Hecate unhooked her legs from around him and stood gracefully, but as soon as her legs touched the ground, the entire palace shook. There were a myriad of sharp, breaking sounds and shouts from the servants, and the couple watched as a statue toppled over a few feet away.
The mood vanished instantly, both Hecate and Aeëtes spinning around and evaluating the hallway as if they could identify the source of the threat. It stopped as soon as it started, but they held on through the aftershocks as tremors shook the stone walls.
“As much as I would want to take credit for that,” Aeëtes grunted, “I don’t think we literally made the ground shake.”
“Not yet, anyway,” Hecate whined, both of them now feeling the edges of their madness slip away as they focused on the chaos surrounding them. Aeëtes made a frustrated noise and a not-so-subtle move to adjust himself.
“What do you think that was?” Aeëtes assessed some of the damage in the hall, but the shaking had stopped as if it had never happened. Hecate felt her power bubbling to the surface, evaluating everything from the sunlight to the breeze. No sooner did she step away from Aeëtes than a thick, cloying scent came in on the wind. It was one that they both recognized, full of rotting flowers and sickly-sweet fruit.
“Fuck,” Aeëtes growled, shivering once.
Hecate felt her blood beginning to boil, her face contorting into a mask of rage. She started to surrender her mortal body, red sparks jumping from her fingers and her hair beginning to stick up at the ends. The heads of the maiden and the crone began flickering on her shoulders like fire, and great columns of black smoke appeared on her right and her left. Aeëtes hardly reacted, but he did step away from the smoke just in time, and two dogs emerged from it. Hecate bit her lip and made a sharp whistle, snapping her fingers and sending the dogs in opposite directions. They went off down the hall, baying like hounds, thick on the scent of Hera and trying to detect her presence in the palace.
Aeëtes turned to Hecate, looking nervous for the first time. “My mother… Hecate, I don’t want anything to happen to her.”
She nodded in agreement, neither of them commenting on the fact that he only mentioned his mother. There was another tremor that rocked the palace, and Hecate sent a wave of power out through the foundations to meet it. The walls and floorboards were covered in a sheen of red magic, fortifying the building and fighting off the ricochets of Hera’s threats on the palace.
“Follow me,” Hecate demanded, but she held her hand out behind herself as she walked. Aeëtes grabbed it and pulled her closer to him, intertwining their fingers as they ran outside. “That conniving—” Hecate fought to keep herself from cursing as they hit the tiled steps.
They walked out into chaos. The entire sky had turned a disgusting shade of pink, covered in green and blueish clouds like a decomposing bruise. Even in the distance, the sea seemed rough and choppy. The air was thick and humid, the scent of rotting flowers on the breeze. There were people running in every direction, guards shouting orders and servants running for their lives. Aeëtes grabbed the sleeve of a passing man, stopping him as he tried to run past.
“Have you seen the queen?” he barked, his voice full of concern.
The man shook his head, prying Aeëtes’s hands off him and disappearing. There was a shrieking sound that echoed on the wind, getting Hecate and Aeëtes’s attention as they stepped off the palace steps. A vortex was taking shape in the heavens above them, the beginnings of a whirlwind making its way down to the earth.
“Hecate,” Aeëtes cautioned.
She barely heard him as her eyes glazed over, glowing red, the faces of the maiden and the crone staring out at the crowd around them. She left red footprints as she walked away from the palace and into the chaos, Aeëtes trailing after her. Smoke gathered around her ankles, spinning in a circle that killed the grass where she was standing. She was muttering words under her breath that Aeëtes didn’t catch, and he didn’t know if he would understand them if he did hear them. Scrolling, red text appeared written all over her arms and legs, and a glowing triple moon was emblazoned on her forehead.
“Hecate!” Aeëtes called out to her again, the wind escalating around them.
The trees were nearly bent to the crowd, leaves and pieces of rubble whipping around their heads. Most of the people around them had run for cover, leaving Hecate and Aeëtes standing alone as they waited to face Hera as she descended from the sky.
“Grab a hold of me!” Hecate screamed, her voice barely carrying over the wind. She dug her heels into the ground, and Aeëtes leapt forward, holding onto her elbow tightly and gluing himself to her side. He watched as the dead grass beneath them withered away to dust before his eyes, the earth cracking in a nearly perfect, concentric circle.
“What’s happening?!” Aeëtes was shouting, squinting as he tried to see through the storm unleashing around them. Hecate turned to him, her mouth twisted up into a grim smile.
“We’re dragging this bitch down to hell.”
33
As soon as Hecate said it, everything went black. Aeëtes felt the ground give out from underneath him, and they were falling. The air was knocked from his lungs as he tumbled through the air, no longer able to see Hecate or even the light above him. It seemed to go on forever, as if time and space had been pulled and twisted into another dimension. He spun aimlessly, clawing at anything that he could find purchase on, but came up with nothing. Aeëtes yelled out for Hecate’s name in the darkness, feeling tension building behind his eyes as he cried out into the abyss.
No response.
He did it again, screaming with everything that he had left, the disillusioning feeling of falling head over foot nearly wiping him out. He didn’t know how long he had been falling when he resolved himself to some sort of inevitable end, not even entirely sure what that would be. He had only one thought as he tossed over his control to the darkness.
