Destroyer of Light (28 page)

It came like a breath on the wind. She stood tall, the broken sheaves of wheat falling from her open hand.

“Aidon…” Her heart raced. Her skin prickled. Every ounce of her was bent toward awareness of him— pulled in the direction of his voice.

“Who are you—”

“Shh,” Persephone hushed Triptolemus and walked forward alone.

“What do you mean ‘Aidon’?” Demeter clenched her jaw. “I knew it. I knew it! So calculating… he never misses an opportunity.”

Persephone didn’t hear her.

Persephone… Wife…

She turned in the voice’s direction— southeast.
Aidoneus… Where are you?

I am coming for you…

She sucked in a breath and she knew he could feel her worry even from so far away.

Not to take you back— not yet. But we need you.

His voice was clipped and serious. How betrayed did he feel? How upset was he about the Pomegranate Agreement? For the first time since they had parted, she dreaded seeing him, dreaded that her worst fears would be confirmed. She raised an eyebrow.
Who is ‘we’?

The House of Nyx. Hecate. The Oneiroi.

She straightened her shoulders.
And Thanatos? Where is he?

He is the reason we need you
.

Persephone pursed her lips. She had been right
—
everything was terribly amiss. She’d spent the whole day trying to explain that to her mother and Triptolemus. But her chest felt heavy and Persephone didn’t know what upset her more— that he hadn’t come for
her
in all this time or that his aloofness even concerned her at a time like this.

“Here, Persephone,” came his voice from just ahead. The rhythmic thud of heavy footfalls followed.

His shadowy outline came into view first, quickly followed by his solid form as he removed the Helm of Darkness. Persephone’s breath caught in her throat and her knees faltered before she quickly regained her composure. Hades was dressed in full armor, his golden cuirass and greaves partially concealed by a long black cloak. His expression was as unmoving as the faceplate cradled under one arm. He stood motionless and regarded her; she bit her cheek, wondering why he didn’t embrace her. Or at least greet her, for Fate’s sake. It had been
three months
.

Aidoneus looked past her for a moment and narrowed his eyes at the angry goddess standing behind his wife. “Calm yourself, Demeter. I’m not here to take her below.”

“You have no right to be here at all,
creature
,” she ground out.

Aidoneus suppressed an eye roll. Instead, he glanced at— and through— her companion. What he saw in the man’s soul shocked him. He raised his eyebrows in surprise, a smile teasing the edges of his mouth. “I’m glad to see Iasion found his way back to you after all these aeons, Demeter. And as your lover, no less.”

Persephone turned to Triptolemus and then to her mother, who had turned white.

Triptolemus, who hadn’t moved a muscle since Hades appeared, looked from one deity to the other. “Deme?”

“You knew?” Persephone asked her mother, whose teary-eyed panic affirmed her answer. “And you said nothing?” She gently addressed her mother’s consort. “Do you see now, Triptolemus? It is as I told you. We all come back from the Other Side…”

Triptolemus wrenched his hand free of Demeter’s and took a silent step back. “Who…”

“Iasion was Demeter’s lover, destroyed by Zeus. It happened aeons ago, boy,” Hades stated without emotion. “His soul crossed over. And you are he.”

Triptolemus shook his head in disbelief and backed away from Demeter. “So when I told you about my dreams…”

“Triptolemus,” she pleaded with him.

“…you
knew
the entire time…”

“Please, my sweet prince—”

“No!” He interrupted her roughly, then softened his voice and expression when a tear rolled down her cheek. “No. Please, my Lady. I… give me some time to think.”

“Triptolemus, wait.”

He spun on his heels and paced back to the Telesterion.

“Triptolemus!” Demeter helplessly watching him go. She wiped her eyes roughly with the back of her arm. “How could you…”

“How could I what?” He countered with a sneer. “Tell him the truth?”

Persephone looked up at him, her brow furrowed.
That was cruel, Aidon.

As cruel as the agreement that separates us?
Hades shot back. She blanched. Was he truly that upset with her? Was this why he hadn’t spoken with her in all the time they had been parted?

Before Demeter could protest again, a swirl of dark mist burst into a winding gyre behind Aidoneus— a pathway over land and sea. From it emerged a woman with skin as pale as starlight, her figure wrapped in darkness that spread into every shadow. Her hair waved weightlessly. A silver-haired, silver winged youth dressed in a shining cuirass led a shrouded blind man forward. In their wake, a thousand shadows spilled forth, faceless creatures with smoky wings and glinting eyes, rising and wafting upward on the breeze like a flock of starlings. An ancient crone emerged last, carrying a four-lamp torch. With a wave of her hand, the path to the ether shut and disappeared.

Persephone walked forward silently and the thousand shadowy dream creatures, the Tribe of the Oneiroi, alighted in the fields and bowed before her. Nyx hovered next to Hecate, Hypnos and Morpheus stood at their side, the torch lighting their faces. Persephone’s shoulders drew back, relief and burden warring within her as she stood before all as their ruler.

Demeter stood aghast, the color leached from her skin. The hosts of the Underworld surrounded her and her daughter. Persephone picked up her skirts and walked to Hecate, embracing her. The crone smiled as her wrinkled arms wrapped around her. “It is good to see you, child. My queen.”

“Why have you come here?” Demeter blurted out. Persephone moved to stand with the hosts of Hades. Kore was slipping away from her…

“Sisyphus has captured my son, little one.” Nyx’s voice wavered when she spoke to the earth goddess. “Your daughter must come with us.”

Persephone contemplated what this meant for the world above, then quaked when she felt her husband’s presence beside her. Aidon’s index finger reached ever so slightly forward and trailed along the tendons of her wrist. Persephone shivered and felt her skin prickle with gooseflesh and her insides grow molten. His touch became deliberate, his finger stroking the delicate skin. She glanced up at him. His face was still set in stone. She moved her arm out of his reach and clasped her hands in front of her. She felt sadness and alarm emanate from him for a moment before he held his emotions at bay.

“We will bring her back once this is done, Demeter,” said the Lord of the Dead. “I promise.”

“This was not part of the agreement, Aidoneus,” Demeter seethed, barely leashing her rage.

“The agreement was that she stay above. Which she will. She is not returning below.” He placed his hand on Persephone’s shoulder and she turned to him. Aidoneus flinched back from her stony expression before he spoke to her. “My queen, Sisyphus holds Thanatos in Ephyra. If he escapes, it might take months to find him again. Months that no one will survive if this imbalance continues. Hypnos has a plan, but—”

“But it is the night of the feast and festival, Kore. You and I were going to celebrate together— the first time we’ve been able to relax for
months
. This cannot wait another day?”

“Great goddess, if you’ll pardon my interruption, it is the celebration of that very festival throughout Hellas that gives us our necessary distraction,” Hypnos piped up.

Demeter ignored the winged God of Sleep. Her lip quivered. “Kore, you promised me…”

Persephone felt her insides twist. Her husband stared at her, his eyes awash in sadness and longing, his face set with purpose. Nyx was calm, but Persephone could sense her distress at her son’s kidnapping. Hecate looked on expectantly. Persephone took hold of Aidon’s hand. “I’ll go,” she said quietly, trying not to look at her mother’s face contorting with hurt.

“Thank you. I cannot do this without you,” he said, and gently squeezed her fingers. His thumb traced over the ridge of her knuckles.

“Just like that?” Demeter said. “He comes to you out of nowhere, with no warning, and you disappear with him on one of the most important nights of the year?”

“Mother, I’m sorry. I truly am.”

“This is preposterous,” Demeter said, her voice level. “Here you stand, Hades, with all the hosts of the Underworld—”

“Not all of them,” he muttered, still eying Persephone. She felt a chill crawl up her spine and knew immediately what he meant. The Keres.

“—and you expect me to believe that you absolutely must put
my daughter
in danger. And for what?”

“How little credit you give—”

“Mother,” Persephone said, “the viability of the first harvest, the offerings at the festival, everything I told you about… it cannot exist without Death,” Persephone answered, interrupting her husband and letting go of his hand to stand in front of Demeter. She thought about the crow with the three holes through its heart. There was no time to waste. “Sisyphus escaped from the Underworld just days before I returned to Eleusis. You must understand how important it is that the King of Ephyra be sent to Tartarus. He seeks to bring down all the deathless ones. He tried using the winter famine to his advantage to do so and now—”

“But Kore, why must
you
go?”

“Because I must.”

Demeter scowled. That was the kind of answer Hades used to give her during the Titanomachy when she asked him questions. She clenched her jaw and glared at Aidoneus. The Lord of the Dead had irrevocably tainted her daughter. “Can’t someone else—”

“It’s
my
responsibility, mother.”

Demeter held her daughter’s arms lightly. “If Sisyphus captured Thanatos, then you know what he has. What he could do to you…”

“Yes.”

Nyx spoke quietly. “Aristi, we must leave soon. The—”

“So you willingly put yourself in that kind of danger?” Demeter raised her voice, ignoring the Goddess of Night. Her grip tightened. “Sisyphus has the very sickle that Kronos used to castrate Ouranos! Daughter, please.
Please
listen to me. I cannot— I
will not
allow you to come to harm!”

The Goddess of Spring sighed and took a step back. She plucked an asphodel from the wreath in her hair and twirled it in her fingers for a moment. Demeter relaxed her shoulders. Perhaps Kore was coming to her senses.

Persephone flung the bloom to her side. She held her right hand outstretched while it settled to the earth. As soon as it touched the soil, embers radiated from the anthers, blooming into a great ring of flames. Demeter’s eyes grew big and she staggered back. Persephone met her gaze serenely, her eyes rimmed with orange fire. Through her haze of fear Demeter maintained her dignity enough to cover her mouth with the back of her wrist and stop herself from screaming.

“Sisyphus
is
dangerous, mother.” Persephone said as the Oneiroi lifted into the air and circled about them again. She reached out toward the circle of flames and pulled their destination closer. The walled citadel of Ephyra appeared before them in the widening pathway through the ether. The Queen of the Underworld took a step toward it and looked at her mother one last time. “But so am I.”

***

The first sounds to enter his ears were light footsteps and the scrape of a staff along the limestone floor, drawing a circle and six lines. He smelled frankincense and winced as he breathed in, feeling the chains constrict around his chest. His arms hurt the moment he moved them and he remembered that his chains laced through bone and skin, held taut to the wall on either side.

Directly below him was an ornate seat gilded with every jewel imaginable. Sisyphus’s throne. He’d been hung above it as a trophy— the triumph of the sorcerer king over Death himself. Sisyphus had led a parade of nobility past him, exclaiming to all in Ephyra that he as god-king held all power in this world over life and Death.

Thanatos blinked his eyes open, his cheekbone still aching and swollen. Yesterday a woman who’d lost her son and husband to the harsh winter had hurled a heavy
kantharos
at him. He could still smell the stale wine dried on his skin. The room was windowless, and he had no idea whether it was day or night. The back of his head stung, and felt wet when he leaned back. Through the pain, he marveled that he was still injured. He’d never stayed injured— or powerless— for this long in all the numberless aeons of his life.

It had been a grand chase across continents— Europa, all the way to the eastern shores of the vast ocean, down through the deserts to mighty Aegyptus, whose people embraced the afterlife without fear and called the god of their dead Osiris. Then through the vast plains and mountains of Asia all the way to the lush valley of many rivers where the king of the dead was known as Yama. Then back to Hellas, until finally Sisyphus led him to Ephyra and snared him in a pit strung with the refashioned Chains that the sorcerer had stolen from the Underworld. Thanatos had fought hard and lost. To his vague recollection, at least three men had died at the touch of his sickle. He’d struggled until a mighty blow landed on the back of his head, sending him reeling into a dark and dreamless sleep. When Thanatos awoke a day later, he was bound in the throne room, immobile. His sickle— his
own weapon
— sat at the side of the throne, out of reach, right next to the man he desperately wanted to kill. He wondered for a moment if this was how Tantalus felt, with the illusory water and figs a finger’s length away.