by Aimee Carter
“I would rather fade than spend a moment longer in your presence,” said Calliope with eerie calm, as if she were in complete control. As if Henry and Walter and Phillip weren’t even in the room with us. “If that is what it takes to see you all dead, then so be it. That’s a cause I’m willing to fade for.”
Words swarmed my mind, angry and stinging every inch of me, and I tried in vain to find the right ones to say. Nothing in the world was going to convince Calliope to relent though. Nothing except—
“Then kill me,” I said quickly, before the brothers could protest. “Do it now. I want you to, if it’ll mean you’ll help them recapture Cronus.”
“No,” said Henry sharply. His grip on my shoulder tightened like a vise, but I ignored him. This was between me and Calliope.
She laughed, a dark, muted sound that was empty of any real humor. “Do you really think that’s all I want?” she said in a sickly sweet voice. “Perfect Kate. So willing to martyr herself for nothing. But of course, if the offer’s still open—”
A flash of lightning sizzled through her. Her body went rigid, and after a tense moment, she slumped in her seat. Beside her, Walter crackled with electricity.
I expected her to be unconscious—no one could possibly withstand that sort of attack—but seconds later, her icy blue eyes opened, and she stared directly at me. It was as if she could see every secret, every thought, every little piece of me that made me who I was, and her lips curled into a cruel smile.
“Kate,” said Henry. “We need to go now.”
The moment I broke eye contact, Calliope hissed. The sound of her voice slithered through the room, creeping under my skin and gluing me to the floor. “You have my word, Kate Winters,” she said, and a wisp of smoke escaped from her mouth. “I will do to you what you have done to me, and I will take what you love most from you while you are helpless to stop me.”
A strange prickling heat filled me, and there was something menacing about it, as if it were a degree away from being sharp and unyielding pain. “What—” I started, but before I could say anything else, Henry stepped between us, and the feeling was gone as soon as it came.
“Get her to Theo,” said Walter, and without giving me a choice, Henry pushed me out of the room and slammed the door behind him. Taking my arm, he hurried along the hallway, and I had to run to keep up.
“What’s going on?” I said, my heart pounding. “What was that?”
“I don’t know,” said Henry, and he swore. “I am sorry, Kate. I told Walter it was not a good idea, but he does not listen, and Phillip took his side.”
“It’s not your fault.” I frowned, and as he rushed me wherever it was we were going, I took inventory. I didn’t feel any different. “She can’t really kill me, right? We can’t kill each other?”
“She cannot kill you, but there are several things she can do to you to make you wish you were dead.”
That wasn’t exactly reassuring. We turned a corner, and I sped up to match his stride. “What can she do? I don’t feel any different now. Nothing hurts.”
“It may not be physical,” said Henry. “In many ways, she is the most powerful of us all. Do not tell your mother or Sofia I said so, but my sisters are more powerful than my brothers. We have the advantage of brute force, but their abilities center around life itself.”
My mother loved nature, I knew that, and she had an uncanny ability to grow anything anywhere. It made sense for who she was, and if growing a tree in the middle of Manhattan counted as a power, it was a nice one to have. “What are you not telling me?”
I recognized where we were now: the hallway that led into the antechamber of the throne room. “It is no one thing,” he said, holding the door open for me. “Merely what she is capable of. Why her gift is so important to capturing Cronus, and perhaps why she is so convinced that he will not harm her, is because she has the ability to control loyalty and commitment.”
She was Hera, I remembered. Hera was the goddess of marriage and women. If those were the things she could control, then—
“Do you think she did something to make me disloyal?” I said. How could she possibly make me cheat on Henry? Was that what she meant by saying she would take away what I loved the most?
“I don’t know,” said Henry grimly, ushering me into the throne room and through the aisle of pillars. “There is a chance she did not have enough time to do whatever it is she wanted to do, but it will not hurt to check. The good news is that she did not turn you into an animal.”
“She does that?”
“All the time. She favors cows in particular.”
Well, that was a relief, then. I didn’t exactly like the idea of having an udder.
He stopped at the end of the aisle. The other council members milled around, speaking in whispers saturated with worry, and only a few glanced our way. “Theo, if you would.”
Theo broke from the crowd, letting Ella’s hand go in the process. While I’d been in Eden, I hadn’t realized how close they were, but now I rarely saw one without the other. No wonder Ella had been in such a terrible mood while she’d been with me and Calliope.
“Are you hurt?” said Theo to me, and I shook my head.
“It is possible Calliope did something to her,” said Henry before I could explain. “Would you mind looking her over?”
Theo gestured for me to sit on the nearby bench. I did so and waited as he held his hands out, and this time golden warmth washed over me. Several seconds passed, and finally Theo pulled away, a line forming between his eyebrows. “There is some superficial damage from the cavern, but other than that, there is nothing else. She is fine.”
“Are you certain?” said Henry, and Theo nodded. Henry turned away from me and gripped the back of the bench so hard that the wood splintered beneath his fingers.
“That doesn’t mean it was something mental, right?” I said, my voice hitching with fear. “Or am I going to go crazy?”
Henry didn’t move. Beside me, Theo shuffled his feet. “It is more likely that she simply didn’t have time to finish,” he said, eyeing Henry. “There’s nothing to worry about until something happens.”
“And when it does?” said Henry dangerously.
Theo frowned, and Ella moved to his side to take his hand. He seemed to relax at her touch. “Then we will deal with it as best we can. However, until we know there is a problem, there is nothing we can do about it.”
“No,” said Henry. “I suppose there is not.”
Without warning, he stormed back toward the door. I scrambled to my feet and mumbled an apology as I pushed past Theo and Ella, and I hurried after him. “Henry, please—wait for me.”
Before I could reach him, he slipped into the antechamber and slammed the door behind him. The murmuring in the throne room grew quiet, and once everyone realized what was going on, curious buzzing replaced their whispers, but I didn’t stick around to hear it.
I dashed into the hallway, but when I turned the corner, there was no sign of Henry in the long corridor. I spun around, wondering if I’d somehow missed him in the antechamber, but it was empty.
He was gone.
Chapter Fifteen
The Weed and the Rose
I spent the afternoon searching the entire wing for Henry, but no one had seen him. Several of the doors were locked, and I made a point of avoiding the one Calliope was behind, but unless he was in there or had purposely locked the door behind him, he wasn’t in the part of the palace I was familiar with.
By the time I returned to the bedroom, I half expected to see him on the bed, waiting for me. Instead it was Pogo who greeted me with an excited yip and wagging tail. As terrible as I felt, I scooped my puppy up and cuddled him, and he licked my cheek. It wasn’t enough to completely chase away my fears and worries,
but it was good enough to hold them at bay for now.
“I missed you,” I said, giving him a good scratch behind the ears. My mother wasn’t there anymore, undoubtedly having joined the others, and I sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed I was supposed to share with Henry. “Wait until you hear about the month I’ve had.”
But before I could get another word in, a familiar sensation washed over me, and I once again plunged into darkness. This time, instead of reappearing in the cavern where Cronus worked to escape his prison, I found myself standing in the middle of a dimly lit room that stretched for twenty feet in either direction.
One side of the room was nothing but a continuous window that looked out across the vast cavern, and a fire crackled in a marble fireplace opposite the view. There were no curtains, and the sole piece of furniture was a white armchair. Henry sat in it, clutching the armrests so hard I feared they would break.
“Henry?” I whispered, unsure if he could hear me or not. For a moment at the entrance to Tartarus, I’d thought he could, but now when I tried to brush my ghostly fingers against his, he didn’t so much as blink.
The door on the far side of the room opened and shut. Persephone padded across the marble floor, barefoot and wearing a simple cotton dress. In the soft light, she looked breathtakingly beautiful, and I bit my lip. With the possible exception of Ava, I’d never met anyone in my life who had the power to make me feel like a weed beside a rose.
“I thought I’d find you in here,” said Persephone.
“I come here to think,” said Henry distantly. “I thought you were on your way back.”
“I decided to stick around for a little while. You lot need all the help you can get. Especially you.” She took Henry’s hand, the same one I’d tried to touch moments before. “Mother told me what happened. Kate is looking all over for you.”
Henry shrugged, and he didn’t pull away. “I would rather not face her yet.”
“Why’s that?” said Persephone, perching on the armrest. Exactly the question I’d been dying to know.
For a long moment, he didn’t answer. “She could have died because I was foolish enough to put her in harm’s way,” he finally said, his words heavy as they fell from his lips. “I have done nothing but put her in danger since the moment we met. I cannot do it anymore.”
That was why he’d run? Because he thought he was a danger to me? Something inside of me uncoiled. That was ridiculous, and now that I knew, we could talk about it. I could set things right.
Persephone rolled her eyes, and for once I agreed with her. “What Calliope tried to do isn’t your fault, and Theo said the tests were clear. Nothing happened to her.”
The cords in Henry’s neck stood out from the tension in his body. “We don’t know for certain. Even if everything turns out all right, I agreed to put her in that position.”
And I’d agreed to go. I wasn’t completely helpless; didn’t Henry understand that? I wasn’t mortal anymore. Calliope couldn’t kill me, and eventually he had to acknowledge that I wasn’t going to break if someone breathed wrong around me.
Persephone ran her fingers through Henry’s dark hair, and a lump formed in my throat. I didn’t want to be there watching this, but I couldn’t look away, and I had no idea how to get back to my body. Seeing them act so close despite being separated for a thousand years—I ached. It was as if Persephone had never left, and Henry was simply confiding in his wife about something that had happened during the day.
That was supposed to be my job, but I couldn’t do it when he was hiding from me. My sister knew him well enough not to need to search for hours in the wrong places though.
“She’s been through much worse over the past few weeks,” said Persephone. “Your new girl’s tough, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” said Henry. “When she decides to do something, it is impossible to change her mind, consequences be damned.”
Persephone snorted. “Sounds like someone else I know. She loves you, you know. More than I ever did.”
Pain flickered across Henry’s face, but it was gone as soon as it came. “She does not know me. When she learns who I really am, she will go.”
“Just like me?”
He stared silently out the window.
Persephone slid off the armrest and into his lap, and she looped her arms around his neck as if she’d never left him. My throat tightened, and I dug my nails into my palms. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to see this. I didn’t care how little Persephone loved him, and it didn’t matter what my mother or James or Ava said. Henry was still in love with her, and he would always choose her over me.
When he embraced her in return, a sob bubbled up inside of me, and I turned toward the window. Even then I could see their reflection, and try as I might, I couldn’t look away. This was it. Our relationship—our marriage—was dying before he’d so much as given it a chance.
“Sometimes I wonder what things would have been like if I’d stayed,” she said. “How our life together would have been different if we’d taken our time instead of jumping into things.”
“Happier,” said Henry quietly. “Full.”
“Maybe,” she whispered. “Maybe not.”
They were both silent for the space of several heartbeats, and when Persephone spoke again, she leaned in toward him until her lips were inches from his. I closed my eyes.
“You deserve someone who matches you,” she said. “What happened between us wasn’t your fault. We’re two different people, and no matter how strongly you’ve convinced yourself that I’m your one and only, it means nothing when you’re not mine.”
I held my breath. She was doing this on purpose. She was ripping him apart so— Why? So he wouldn’t be hung up on her anymore? To make room for me? His heart was broken enough as it was. How was I supposed to find all the pieces and put them back together if she shattered it?
“Stop,” I begged, knowing it was useless. Didn’t she know what she was doing to him? Of course she did. I’d known Henry for a year, and it was excruciatingly obvious to me. She’d known him for eons.
“Are you truly happy with Adonis?” said Henry at last.
Persephone smiled faintly. “When I wake up and the first thing I see is his face, I know it’s going to be a great day. That isn’t going to change no matter how much time passes.”
Henry threaded his fingers through her hair, and Persephone made no move to stop him. “Do you ever regret leaving?”
She didn’t answer right away. Instead she found his free hand and laced her fingers in his. “Sometimes. I miss the sun—the real thing, not the one in my afterlife. I miss my mother. I miss our family. I miss the seasons. I miss change.” She pressed her lips to his knuckles. “Sometimes I even miss you. Adonis is lucky. He’s like every other soul—he doesn’t fully realize what’s going on or that the world around him is fake. I do, and sometimes that’s enough to make a difference.”
Henry stroked her cheek with the back of his hand, and his eyes shifted from the window to her. He looked at her the way he’d looked at me the night we’d slept together, and my chest ached. Why couldn’t I wake up? “You could come back.”
Persephone gave him a sad smile. “What about Kate? You wouldn’t do that to her. I know you better than that. You might have her fooled, but I can tell how you feel about her.”
Henry was silent, and my heart beat so hard that I thought it might explode. Would he? Was he asking her to return as his queen or as his wife? Could she even do that?
Dizzy, I leaned against the window and wished with every fiber of my being that the glass would disappear and let me fall. At least then I wouldn’t have to hear this. I thought about leaving through the door, but if I couldn’t go through the window, I wouldn’t be able to walk through that, either.
; “Kate is many things to me,” said Henry finally. “But she is not you.”
I sank to the floor and hugged my knees. I’d done so well fooling myself that this might work, that with time and a little effort, everything would be okay. But it couldn’t be. Would he have said those things if he’d known there was a chance I might be listening? Of course not. He wasn’t cruel, but I’d heard them anyway.
“Hades…” Persephone leaned forward and closed the gap between them, touching her lips to his.
My stomach lurched, and I hid my face in my hands. This couldn’t be happening. This was a nightmare, not the real thing. I’d fallen asleep without remembering, that was all. I would wake up soon, and when I did, Henry would be watching me sleep, and he would apologize for storming off. We would talk, he would kiss me, and everything would be all right again.
I didn’t know how long it lasted. I didn’t want to know, and by the time Persephone spoke again, I was all but tearing my hair out. Why couldn’t I go back? What part of me wanted to see this so badly that I was willing to put myself through this kind of agony?
“The thing is, I’m not me, either,” she said softly. “I’m not the person you love. That person never existed, and turning me into her in your mind—it’s destroying you. We had one good day together, and the rest of it was awful. I was miserable, and by the time I knew I didn’t want to be married to you anymore, you’d convinced yourself that you were in love with me. But you never were. You fell in love with a person who never existed.”
Tears splashed on the knees of my jeans. In a fit of desperation, I pinched the inside of my elbow hard, but I felt no pain. I was stuck.
“Tell me,” said Persephone. “Was that the kind of kiss you’ve spent the past thousand years imagining? Did your heart stop? Did the room spin and did everything else fade away?”
