Chapter 17

Chapter

Seventeen

H ades

The work of the Fates truly is like no other. When they spin their wheel, weaving their threads, the crisscross of paths, the foresight, really, it is unparallelled. The webs are sticky and complex, and I should have known that when I was presented time and again with an option to sponsor the archeology program that brought Persephone here to Greece, to fund the passion that is the study of the ancient Gods, that this thread would be the one to lead her back to me.

I should have known, but I hadn't suspected a thing. I'd sponsored the program as a means to do what I've always done, bettering the lives of the people while raising awareness of the Gods they have forgotten. The Gods who hold the balance of their precious world in their palms. The Gods who are growing more and more tired, with every forgotten century that crawls by.

Imagine my surprise when I dug deep into what I know of Persephone's life, only to discover that she'd nearly emptied her personal savings in order to pay for this opportunity. The parents she speaks of so lovingly clearly hadn't supported her in this. If they had, they would have helped her to pay for this experience.

And how hadn't I noticed that a young woman named Persephone had registered? I had all the files here in my office the entire time. I could have been prepared for her—if I'd just read them.

But that's the thing about Fate. In all the webs she weaves, all the threads she pulls, there are still paths we can choose to take. There is still free will. And that is why Fate is ever-changing, always evolving.

"You won't believe who else is in the program." Minthe enters my office, dropping into the plush couch I keep in here for both her and Leuce. Invasive little nymphs.

I slide my eyes from the registration, where I've entered Minthe as a late entry even though she's been working the program close to Persephone for the last week.

"Don't keep me in suspense, Minthe," I say dryly.

"But I know you love suspense so much," she teases, the little nymph. I love her, though. Deeply.

I sit back in my chair, giving her my gaze. It's what she wants, and I get confirmation of that fact when a slow smile curls her lips.

"Adonis."

Every muscle in my body tightens. My pitch drops, the death of my realm slipping into my tone. "Is that so?"

"Oh, it's so."

"How can you be so certain?"

"Hades," Minthe deadpans, but there's a spark of offense in her green eyes. "I've been around a long time. I know what a reincarnated soul looks like. Adonis is here, and he's determined to have Persephone for his own." A delicate laugh chimes between us. "Dare I say, he's almost as smitten as you."

Fucking Fates. "He was always taken with her."

"He's more than taken with her." Minthe settles into the cushions, the teasing glint to her eyes washing away with something more serious. Grave, even. "Hades, I am aware Adonis was and is human. But I believe…" She shifts on the couch, her hesitation clear. "I believe his soul remembers her."

"If his soul remembers her?—"

She finishes when I pause. "Then his love for her was real. Pure and true."

"She is mine." The words sound on a growl. Low and fierce and bursting with a deadly protectiveness that stems from an ancient possessiveness. An ancient frustration that never healed from the centuries where I'd been forced to stand back and share her. For all the times I told myself it was what I wanted.

"I know," Minthe says placatingly. "I'm simply warning you."

"And her soul?" Anger vibrates in the dark tones of my demand. "Does her soul remember him?"

Minthe is quiet for a long moment as she considers. Against my thighs under my desk, my hands curl into fists capable of the greatest monstrosities.

I warn, "Minthe."

Minthe blinks. "I do not know, Hades. I am undecided."

"Why?" I demand, at the end of a very short fuse. "It is a simple question."

"Persephone's soul is—it's complex." Minthe's tone is as soft as her eyes. "She was drowned in the river Lethe, Hades?—"

"I know how she was taken from me, Minthe," I growl low and dangerously. "I am the one who found her."

Minthe severs eye contact, submitting to the beast that crawls under the surface of my skin. An ancient and unforgiving God. A thing of nightmares and curses. I can feel him hovering below the surface of my flesh, my gaze burning with the urge to let him break free.

Minthe pulls in a deep breath, careful not to challenge the monster by raising her head and daring eye contact again, lest he slip free from the prison of my flesh to destroy all that she is. Her voice trembles. "Persephone is different, as we suspected. The Lethe took her memories, stripped her bare of them all—but she is a Goddess. Her core soul, even stripped, is eternal. There are pieces of her, shards of recognition, I think. Her soul has no real memory, but there is something there. I see it in the way she pauses sometimes, the way she struggles to process. I think—I think it might be like déjà-vu for her. She knows, but she doesn't."

"Explain."

"She was born as the daughter of a farmer in a small Alberta town, in a country far from our own. She has never travelled to Greece, and yet she yearned to be here so deeply, driven by a soul-deep need to travel here, to you. Only a God or Goddess would be able to retain something like that after being drowned in the Lethe." Quieter, her eyes still trained to the floor between us, she adds, "It only goes to show how powerful she really is."

Something hums in my blood. "Look at me, Minthe." She obeys instantly, without hesitation. "Explain."

"Drinking from the Lethe is not something a soul does lightly. For the souls who do dare to drink, it is never more than a taste. That's all it takes to strip a soul of its most core memories. The memories that shape it for the next life, the memories that give the soul an elevated edge to the playing field in a world that grows more and more complex with every lifetime. The consequences are so massive, Hades, the souls who drink lose intuition . They lose the ability to read between the lines, to decipher the meaning of a hunch. They must relearn instinct in a world filled with souls who do remember. Whose souls have tiny recognitions from all the lives they've lived before. Souls who know places and people and the smell of danger or the taste of love."

She pulls in a breath. "Persephone did not simply drink from the Lethe, Hades. She was drowned in it. The water did not simply trickle down her throat into her belly, it filled her belly and burst her lungs." Emotion shimmers in Minthe's eyes. Her lips tremble with feeling as she whispers her next words, "It raped her soul. Yet her soul is so powerful, so prevailing, she has retained some of that instinct from which she should have been stripped. She may not remember as she might have had she not been submerged in the Lethe, violated by the rage of the river, but she remembers more than she should, considering the same."

"That's why Demeter did it." The realization comes to me in a wash of cold that threatens the heat of the ancient God beneath my skin.

How had I missed it before? The breadth of her power. It was never our power, as I had thought, that frightened the Fates enough to cut the thread of Persephone's life, her destiny. It was her power. My ego as a new and bloodthirsty God, relishing his might, had blinded me to the deadly reality my mate would face in consequence for the power she bestowed upon the world crafted by the Gods before her. A world she would change .

I've lived enough years to know that nothing sparks fear in the Gods quite like the threat of change, and those with the power to spark it. To craft it.

Minthe cocks her head. "What?"

"Her power. It's more than we thought—than I thought. But Demeter knew. Demeter created her, coveted her. She wanted to use her and when I took Persephone, I threatened her plans, whatever it is they were. When she fell in love with me, when I stole her heart as well as her body—Demeter lost the beast she intended to use to see her plans through."

Minthe frowns. "You think she was going to use Persephone?"

I don't think, I know. I simply do not know what she intended to use her for. "Yes, I do."

"But—" Minthe shakes her head. "Do you think she still wants to use her?"

Demeter has been searching for centuries for Persephone, just as I have. But she was not bound to the same restrictions she had the Moirai—the Fates—bind me. I've always thought it was because she wanted a second chance to poison her daughter against me. To ensure that I wasn't able to keep her for my own.

Now …

"Yes. I do think Demeter has other plans for Persephone. Plans for her ancient, abused soul."

"Persephone does not know she is a Goddess," Minthe speaks what I already know. Only confirming how truly dangerous, how viciously cruel Demeter really is.

Her core is rotten. The Goddess of Harvest and Agriculture is rotten, her core poisoned by her greed. And it makes sense now, the crops of the world dying as people reject whole nutrients for the rotten, poisoned foods assembled by corporations. The wheat that is stripped of nutrients and infused with toxins, preservatives. Demeter, the Goddess meant to feed the world, has been poisoned by the very greed she spills into the bellies of the needy, sparking a craving for more even in the knowledge that it will, eventually, kill them.

Rage is an ever-burning inferno in my gut as I think of my sister.

"Persephone will remember," I say confidently, though I do not know how I know. "In time, she will remember. Until then, we must work to reveal what it is Demeter planned to use her for. And if she plans to use her still."