This was a nightmare.
His chest and heart ached—both from the impact of her blow and for what he was about to do. He gathered his magic, and it tore from him. As it charged for her, she threw up her hands and screamed, anguished and enraged, and his shadows froze as they hurled toward her, long black spears just suspended in the air, vibrating as they were caught between the push and pull of both of their powers.
There was a moment of stark silence. It pressed against Hades’s ears until they popped, and suddenly his magic was racing back toward him. He managed to recover enough to gain control of them and turn them into ash, the remains of which were carried away with Persephone’s raging wind.
“Stop!” Hades said. “Persephone, this is madness.”
And it was madness—everything about it. Just weeks ago, Persephone had been unable to control her own magic. It had burst from her in the form of thorns, leaving her torn and bloody, and suddenly, fueled by whatever horror the Forest of Despair had offered, she was turning Hades’s magic on him? It was unheard of.
It was dangerous.
Then she spoke, and despite the roar of her magic, her voice carried like a spell.
“You would burn the world for me?” she said, and there was an energy gathering around her that was both feral and volatile. “I will destroy it for you.”
The sky opened, and roots that looked more like giant trees breeched the vast expanse, slamming into the earth below. The ground shook and debris rained down on the entire Underworld.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
He only seemed to be making it worse. She was heedless of anyone beyond her pain, but whatever that was, it would not compare to what she would feel when this was all over.
“Hecate!”
The Goddess of Magic appeared beside Hades, her robes whipping in the wind, and she brought her hand up to shield her eyes against the debris.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I felt her anguish and came as soon as possible.”
Persephone seemed to grow stronger. The roots that she had summoned from the sky grew larger and tunneled into the ground, curling around trees and mountains, squeezing until they were rubble. Hades attempted to counter that, his magic spiraling like matching vines to tangle with Persephone’s, while Hecate’s power joined the miasma. Only she did not attack Persephone. She kept her spells defensive, casting a shield over them in an attempt to contain the damage Persephone was doing to the Underworld. At the same time, though, Hecate’s magic had a weight. Even Hades could feel it bearing down on him. It made his shoulders shake and his concentration wane. He ground his teeth against the intrusion and knew that Persephone did too. There was an interruption in the power of her magic—a give, a break—and he watched as tears began to track down her face, her eyes locked with Hecate’s.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
But Hecate did not respond, focused on Persephone. Then, all of a sudden, her magic was gone and a horrible silence followed, as if she really had sucked the life out of everything within his world.
Persephone swayed, and Hecate teleported to catch her just as she vomited at her feet.
“It wasn’t real,” Hecate whispered, brushing Persephone’s hair from her face. “It wasn’t real, my dear, my love, my sweet.”
Hades watched as Persephone buried her face in Hecate’s chest.
“I cannot unsee it. I cannot live with it.”
“Shh,” Hecate soothed, and as she did, she looked at him, and for the first time since this had all begun, he could see what had sent Persephone into her rage.
Him.
Hades wanted to vomit.
Even now, his stomach twisted into hard knots, and his throat felt tight as the vision Persephone had seen played through Hades’s mind—Leuce locked in his embrace, pressed against a tree, their mouths colliding in a passionate kiss.
He knew how the forest worked because he had created it as a weapon for torture. The souls who were sentenced there constantly lived a reality of their greatest fears. They felt and looked real because, in a way, they were.
When she had stumbled on them, she would have had no reason to believe what she was seeing wasn’t real. It would not have occurred to her, such was the way of the forest.
He watched Hecate rise with Persephone in her arms.
“I will take her to the palace,” she said, “while you restore order.”
He did not argue. He would have preferred to be the one to take Persephone, but he also knew that she would not want him right now, so he let Hecate leave and focused on restoring order to his realm.
While it was something he could do within seconds, he took his time, turning the roots Persephone had brought into the Underworld to ash, leveling the ground she had disturbed, before calling up his magic to create lush, rolling hills, thick forests, and extensive gardens full of blooming flowers.
When he was finished, he returned to the palace and found Hecate in his bedroom. She sat beside the bed while Persephone slept.
“How is she?” he asked.
“Exhausted,” she replied. “She just stopped shaking.”
Hades’s frown deepened.
“I don’t understand how she managed to wander into the forest.”
“Enchantment,” Hecate said.
“Enchantment,” Hades repeated.
“I have been thinking, the fear is all wrong too.”
Hades’s brows knit together. “What do you mean?”
Hecate kept her gaze on Persephone as she spoke.
“Persephone has no fear of you cheating with Leuce. She trusts you. Her greatest fear is losing Lexa. Which leads me to believe this was meant to tear you apart.”
Hades considered her words and, after a moment, asked, “Was Leuce at last night’s celebration?”
“I believe so,” Hecate said. “Which is why the fear seems off. Even after that picture surfaced in the Delphi Divine, she was unbothered enough to bring Leuce to celebrate.”
“You said it was an enchantment?” Hades asked.
The goddess nodded.
“A potion, if I had to guess,” Hecate said. “Likely from a Magi.”
Hades had no doubt that Leuce was involved somehow. Her deception was about to end. He left the bedroom and headed outside, where his realm had been restored to order, and called for Hermes, who appeared almost immediately, as if he had been waiting for Hades’s summons.
“You called, Daddy Death?” Hermes arrived grinning, but that smile quickly died. “You look awful.”
Hades felt awful.
“Find Leuce,” he said.
“Oh no,” Hermes said. “What did she do this time?”
“Nothing different from before,” Hades replied. “She just fucked with the wrong god.”
“I’ll locate her.”
“Don’t just locate her,” Hades said. “Bring her to me.”
Hermes nodded and vanished.
When he was once again alone, Hades took a deep breath and wandered away from the front of the palace, around its many gardens. He was anxious
to have Persephone awake, to talk to her about what she had seen and beg for her forgiveness. Despite the fact that he had done nothing wrong, he had created the monster that had affected her so cruelly, and for that, he felt guilt.
He rounded the garden wall that separated the garden outside his bedroom from the Asphodel Fields and came face-to-face with Persephone.
She was pale and dressed in white. Without energy to keep up her glamour, her Divine form was on full display, and beneath the muted Underworld sky, she looked both beautiful and haunted.
For a moment, all he could do was stare. There had been so many times in the past when he had feared that she would disappear right before his eyes, that every moment they’d had was some kind of torturous game the Fates had woven into his life only to unravel, and he’d never felt that more than in this moment.
He swallowed hard and asked, “Are you well?”
She stared back, the gold of her hair glinting as a light wind teased the strands, and in that moment, her cheeks flushed a light pink.
“I will be,” she said softly.