There was a gathering of the gods in the throne room, and I gaped at them on either side. There had been some sort of ongoing argument. Alec reluctantly stood aside, not on his throne. Hades sat there instead, holding court, stoically watching over arguments.
Arguments about me.
Alec’s face was paler than usual, a shadow clinging to his feline features. He’d been…weakened somehow. As if in battle, but perhaps it was something else.
Even as angry as I was, I wanted to rush over. He wasn’t even standing straight. It was as if someone had bested him in a fight or used their power to undo him. He wasn’t looking at me however, he was glaring at Hades with hatred, who returned his loathing stare with one of compassion…?
And then the kindness was gone. Hades watched me now, his usual features of glass in place and sharp enough to cut. The pointed chin lifted a hair and the room quieted in answer.
Dryads and demi-gods, nymphs and heroes, and more held one collective breath, and I tasted their bloodlust. They’d come to see me finally punished. The ones who wanted more were the slyest of the few. They wished for Hades to banish me to the underworld for all of time, that was clear.
And they hoped that my death would be gory, and the leaving of my immortal soul, painful.
I was…I was their entertainment.
I glanced at Alec again, but also again, he avoided my gaze.
Apollo strode forward, his steps sure, his golden hair flowing behind his usually proud shoulders, but he too, like Alec, was dimmed. What had I missed all this time? There obviously had been long debate, maybe even more, over me, and…it would soon become clear.
“I have decided to rule on your fate, Freya,” Hades said.
“But—”
“Silence.”
Persephone moved next to my sister, her expression one of encouragement. Cenia’s swollen and red eyes told me she’d tried her best and failed at being a witness for me. But she was safe. The queen of the underworld had her arm.
I met Milos’ gaze filled with regret and apology, and that was when the terror took root.
He seemed almost as if I had died already.
Hades said, “Freya the Fallen, you have been charged with plotting against the rulers of Olympus, the underworld, and the deep. It has been claimed that you are in league with your predecessors and wish to rule the sky, the land, and the nether for yourself. What is your plea?”
I gaped at him. “My plea?” My hands and voice shook with rage. “My plea! I have no plea to such ridiculous claims, your majesty. I have no plea when nothing but lies have been spread since before I was even born, and now you have held court…for many days it seems, without the accused, even able to speak for herself.”
Even as weakened as he seemed, I turned my fury on Alec. How dare he keep me from my own trial! How dare he spur my judgement into action with his own actions. What had occurred? What caused Hades to move so hastily?
Surely this was Alec’s fault.
“Look at me!” I shouted at Alec and the room erupted with angry calls for my head.
I spun a circle, and their evil faces blurred together. If not for Hades, they’d tear me apart.
But if not for Hades and his brothers, they’d not wish me dead in the first place.
Hades’ dark eyes watched the melee without expression. Alec watched Hades and would not tear his solemn wrath away from the king of the underworld.
The darkest lord’s deep voice shook me to my core as it boomed over the assembly and once again quiet reigned. “Apollo has asked for you to come to his palace in the sky. To join with him in the ceremony of the torches. He has asked that you be his torch there ever after, but Ascalaphus holds you now and has not relinquished that hold, he has argued quite vehemently that you remain here.”
“For revenge!” The assembly shouted agreement with me. “For his own personal gain.” Tears clogged my throat. “You..you have decided what is to be done with me then, is that it?” I snapped.
I lifted my hands and like magic, shackles appeared around my wrists. My eyes widened as I watched Thanatos mist into form at a spot near my elbow and soon after, Hypnos appeared on my other side from blackened shadows. Chains coiled around my middle. “But there are much more pressing matters at hand,” Hades said.
I struggled against my bindings as they were bitter cold and biting, my surprised gasps echoes in the throne room. Hypnos and Thanatos shackled me all the harder, their skeletons pressed against the skin as their powers flowed over me. Their drawn mouths twisted into cruel grins as the skin melted away. I fell backwards, crying out. I was not immune to the terrifying feeling of the guardians of souls claiming me. The chains that held me were the god of death’s, created for immortals, to ensnare us while running, and the more I fought, the tighter they seemed. They would drag me away to Tartarus at any moment but first…first I had to die.
I choked on my own wrath. At the injustice. Mentally though, I was calm as I burst through the sneers and jeering and faces. I pressed into Hades with my power, his cloak like before, the darkness soothing, enticing. And I found him there on the other side of the veil, waiting for me in a quiet place.
I moved my hands, free again, in our minds. We had returned to where he’d stolen his wife. The wheat fields. This time it was night.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Because I saw what happened? I won’t tell anyone, I won’t. They all know you stole her so why should you care if I actually saw the taking?”
If his frozen face could scoff, I sensed that it would. “Have you bewitched the King of the Seven Islands?” Hades asked and my rage made me hiccup, but I held my tongue. Anything I let loose would be so vile, it would only be worse than it was. “Have you plotted against me and my brothers? Have you even only in your heart wished ill upon us?”
“Is it so different from you and Persephone? Alec wishes to keep me, like you kept her. Like all gods take what they will without asking. Were you bewitched, oh King of the Nether, when you did not free her and bed her and wed her and—”
“You have not answered my question.”
“Yes,” I said in defeat. There are no lies here, only visions and truths. “Yes. I have hated all of you more than you will ever know.”
“Then you should expect no mercy,” he said lifting his hand.
The world flickered, and we swiftly returned to the palace room while Apollo was speaking, and I’d missed some of the discussion. Hades and I shared a long look while Apollo spoke from what sounded like a raw throat. Again, I realized that my days away had been with ignorance of all that had occurred in the palace.
“I will vouch for her,” Apollo promised. “She will be under my protection if she partakes of the ceremony. Let the titan-blood be my burden.” He turned to me. “Leave this place, Freya. There is a foul will here for you.”
Apollo’s expression was stricken with grief.
It was another arrow to my heart, piercing me with fear.
I frowned at him, at his earnestness. I was still confused about what it all meant. It was like looking at a riddle without all of the words. One of doom.
Hades stood and again there was silence. “Daughter of Titus, do you wish to go to the kingdom in the sky?” Slyly he added, “Nearer to Olympus.”
This was a trial that I could not win. I touched my chest as if to stop my heart that beat too quickly.
If I said I wanted to stay, I would be perhaps bewitching Alec, and if I said I wanted to go, I would be trying to get closer to Zeus for a plot. Instead, I bowed my chin in resignation. “Your will, Hades, is my command. What you decide for me, I shall obey.”
His mouth curved wryly, but I could tell it impressed him that I would not give away what secrets he thought I held.
“I will let the titan-blood take her place as torch to you in your kingdom, nephew,” he said to Apollo and the golden headed god’s shoulders fell in relief, “But she will decide for herself if she should partake of the ceremony once sh
e arrives. If she does not, she is still your responsibility either way. But first, there is the matter of your travels.”
Alec finally glanced at me. His eyes were too full to read. Sorrow crowded the green into black pupils that were large, and strange with swirls of power in their depths.
The room swayed, and I realized that I wasn’t the only one being affected. Pain.
Black mist spread and then eddied around us. His power was leaking out of him like a ship run aground and punched with holes.
What is it? I willed him to say but Hades continued. “The young titan-blood has gone through the Hollows.”
The room gasped and several people slapped their hands over their mouths in surprise.
Hades stood stiffly, and I could tell that Alec’s power was bothering him, too. He turned on Alec who visibly strained to keep it locked inside.
“The Hollows?” I asked, choking on the raw feeling of the black mist touching my chest and neck. The needles stabbing invisibly at my arms.
Nymphs and Dryads murmured, and a few fell over in a dead faint. The least powerful were harmed first.
“Yes,” Hades said, ignoring the suffering. “Between realms of this world, minds, and memories. There are only a few who have been able to travel as such and even then, it is forbidden.”
“Forbidden,” the nymphs hissed, their eyes narrowed, though their hatred was being shredded away by Alec’s power that continued to bloom like a flower under the rain.
Or like blood in water, rather.
I gazed at the faces in the room and before they’d wanted me abused, but now, they seemed nearly afraid. Of what I could do. Of what Alec was already doing. “I had no idea,” I said, rubbing the feeling away, forcing myself not to check to see if I was bleeding from the invisible cuts that burned all over my body.
The twins at my elbows shifted uncomfortably while Apollo backed away from us all, but not noticeably.
“Ignorance is not innocence,” someone called from the back.
A voice that I cared never to know rang with familiarity. I turned to find Hermes smiling in bliss at the vision of me held as a prisoner in shackles. The exact depiction he’d performed last I saw of him. The messenger of the gods strode forward. “I have traveled all this way to make sure that a penance is paid and paid it shall be.”
Alec braced himself, ready for battle, but Milos and Ares crowded him on either side. They were checking him and though I expected it from Milos, Heracles maybe, but Ares?
I had no time to think on it.
Hermes strode to the front to stand before Hades. “Those who travel the Hollows are held in Tartarus, are they not?”
Hades stared at Hermes until the latter remembered and bowed before he offered, “I meant to say, if you see fit, my lord.”
“I thought he was below,” I said, my voice so deep that I felt as if I were speaking from a well. “I thought you were imprisoned in the underworld?”
“I was,” Hermes said with a smile, turning to face me with confidence. “Thanks to you, I should have rotted there forever.” His face turned then, uglier and spiteful. “But as you can see. I am free. And you….are not.”
“Should not the Fates decide, my lord?” Another much friendlier voice called from the back and in strode Charon. My heart leapt in my chest with joy to see his dark robes sliding across the floor, though his legs did not visibly move.
He came to my left to face me where Hermes now stood on my right. Charon said, “Punishment for the Hollows before, well it was the old way. Certainly, some died and went to the underworld, I gave them a ride in my boat, but the choice was up to the Fates. My Lord, the Fates have long since traveled in the Hollows, should this not be their decision and perhaps we all would be seeking their ire if not asked?”
When no one spoke he said it again, “As was the old way.”
“Yes,” Hermes drawled, stroking his chin. “The Ferryman is right. The Fates. What was it they did for the wraith that had walked among the Hollows last?”
“The cliffs.” The words cut through the quiet and it was Alec who had spoken this time.
His voice sounded as if it came from another creature, and I wouldn’t have known it had I not seen his lips moving.
Hushed whispers followed in his statement’s wake and the black mist had receded. He’d gathered it to him like the folds of cloth. No snake or animal, just a man of mist and darkness. An immortal cloaked in shadows.
From the mist, his voice was dead enough that I flinched to hear it. “The wraith did indeed receive the cliffs as her testing, and she did not make…she failed. I…I saw her in there near my hole where I dwelled. She was the one who told Persephone of my plight.”
Still, he would not look at me.
The soul, the hag, that had helped him, she’d done what they claimed I have been doing?
Questions scattered my thoughts. Was this “Hollow” where I went when I saw immortal thoughts and memories?
Hades nodded slowly as if I had asked out loud. “The cliffs,” he said to Charon who bowed stiffly. “See that it is done.” With a wave of his hands, the chains fell from me, and the twins let me go.
My legs would not hardly hold me and so Charon grabbed my arm and held me up, giving me dignity as I walked from the room.
Why did I get the sense that I had no reprieve? “What…what are the cliffs?” I asked him, glancing wildly over my shoulder for Alec who was still nothing but a black spot in the throne room now, a smudge of smoke.
The doors closed and the room burst into shouts and arguments.
I almost couldn’t hear the quiet voice next to my ear. Steadily, Charon forced me to keep walking. I felt that I was in a nightmare and not at all awake. “A test,” he said.
“What kind?” My voice was empty. “I have done nothing wrong. You must know that…”
“Of course, Freya,” he said gently, as if speaking to a child. “You never have and might never will, but the three brothers do see you as a threat and let us hope that we can assuage their fears by this trial, eh?”
My limbs shook because he would not meet my gaze. “Tell me, please.”
“It is very simple. You climb to the heavens…and then you come back down.”
“Come…back…down…?”
Aphrodite and Eros stood near my old rooms where we arrived. Cenia was still in the throne room, but the goddess of beauty and love waited for me with her friend. She was pale and unsmiling when she said, “You leap. From the cliffs, Freya. You have to leap and fall all the way back to earth.”
“What?” I spooked like a horse, rearing back away from them all, horrified. “I did nothing wrong! It will kill me! I don’t have my power!”
I turned as if to run back to Hades. To beg Persephone for my release, but Charon gripped my arm with one of iron. “You will jump. You will do this and perhaps you will see nothing further from their wrath.”
“I can’t.” I glanced from face to face, but they were a wall of unfeeling. “Please.”
“Get inside,” Eros said, as the hallway filled with shouting voices. A fight had erupted through the palace, a war by the sound of it.
Power sliced through the hall like wind and we barely shut my door before it struck.
Charon, Aphrodite, and Eros all held the door with their powers and even physically. Some called for me through the door, allies, friends…or so I had thought.
Alec was the only voice among them that I could not hear.
Chapter 16
The quiet ascended, and I waited on the balcony, hoping to see the owl. I knew that Alec would be gazing through its eyes. He only came once Persephone found me and she smiled and called the owl to her. The bird landed on her arm and she stroked his feathers. “This is not actually Alec,” she said softly, “but he can see us now if he chooses and then join us through the owl once he is allowed.”
“Allowed?”
“I am going to ask him to wait.” She turned her charming smile up into the owl’s
eyes. “Brother,” she said, and I felt my spine stiffen. “Would you please leave us for a moment, I should like to speak with your charge alone.”
The bird watched me until I reached my shaky hand out to touch his chest. “It’s okay,” I said. “Truly.”
I meant it. I stopped hating Alec the moment I thought I’d left him in that room and in peril. Over me. He was weakened already. How many others dared to stand up to Hades for me? Very few, I supposed. The owl did not immediately leave, however, it hopped along the ledge until it was close enough that my breath stirred the feathers around its beak and then I nodded to assure him that I was all right. He spread his wings and left me then.
Persephone took my hand. “Leave us,” she told the room, and everyone did so, though Charon made it clear that he would remain right outside of my door.
The childlike stature of the queen did not diminish her power. She was small, yes, and compared to me quite short, but her gaze was as old as the stars. She let me look my fill until I saw it clearly now as I did not before. Alec and Persephone shared the same stoic expressions. Though she was much more likely to smile, and happily in love, I saw the similarities now.
“Your….” I squinted trying to picture them as full siblings and could not.
“Mother,” she finished. “Demeter as you might know her. Alec and I share the same mother. Acheron is a giant in stature, hence why Alec is so much taller than I am. He is also darker, while my father and mother are fair. My father was a sweet dryad of no consequence. Our mother was softer once upon a time, after Alec had been born and she’d…well…what I am going to show you will explain it all.”
I nodded and she took my hand. “Come,” she said and when I hesitated. “They cannot punish you anymore than they are for venturing into the Hollows.”
“Yes, but what does that mean?”
“Well, the humans have the afterlife as do we, but, when a human is between realms, they are with us, but when we are between realms there is a space that few know well.”
“The Hollows.”
“Yes. And anyone who can travel them and see, can see all, Freya. Do you understand?”
Beware the Fallen: Young Adult Mythology (Banished Divinity Book 1) Page 18
