Series: Willow Winters
Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 74198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
“My Lord,” he says. The door opens and shuts the very next second, and his footsteps fade quickly down the hall.
A shuffling sound distracts me. I stop gathering my power to send another demon to Earth and turn again, more rage lighting in me like a new fire. Was I so unclear to that guard? Does he need me to explain a second time? My queen’s message was simple. Mine was even simpler. There is nothing more to say.
But it is not a guard pushing open the door to my rooms with his shoulder.
It is Cerberus.
He pads in, his head cocked slightly as if something is wrong in the room, but he does not know what.
“Come,” I command.
Cerberus comes, his tongues lolling from his mouths. He pushes his body next to my legs, whining softly to be petted, so I get to one knee and do it properly. I ruffle the ears on each head and stroke his crowns several times each. He has stopped whining by the time I’m finished.
With Cerberus, it is easy. Concentrating on him for a minute has let my rage simmer down until it is embers.
It’s not gone, however. I’m not finished. I’ll take that heat and make the demons burn with it, and they will carry it to the mortal realm.
“Do you see?” I ask Cerberus. “This is what all this has come to. Demons in the mortal world. I will send more and more until Persephone is returned.”
He lets out a chorus of loud barks at her name, wagging his tail.
“Not yet,” I tell him. “Soon.”
Cerberus stays close to me, his side against my knee, while I send five more demons to the mortal realm. Then ten. He wags his tail without stopping. He must think the demons will bring her back.
In one way, they will. They must. Or else it will be all-out war.
Persephone
I must scry with Hades. It was my last wish from my father. Just a little time to appease my mother. A little time before I will obey the law of the gods and return to the Underworld.
As I wait, I’m tortured. My mother’s vengeance wrapped in a curse struck through Olympus before vanishing. She will not stop. I know it so. I could feel her agony in the last look she gave me. She thinks there’s a way around what is written but there’s not. I’m hopeful that Hades may see reason, because she does not. It is as if the loss of a loved one has turned her mad. Although I still exist. I will thrive even. But she feels nothing but pain.
She’s not left the courts and her arguments are screamed for anyone who cares to listen…which is all of Olympus save my father.
She claims the divine law not to be fair as the seeds were only eaten as I was leaving. One foot in and one foot out. Half she screams. But she does not want me halved. She wants me to choose. To choose her. To choose war against my lover for the sake of betraying a binding law. “Hypocrisy!” she screams, saying someone broke the law to abduct me. She blames Zeus, she blames Hades, and with the way she looks at me, I fear she begins to blame me as I do not fight beside her.
No one else speaks to me. The gods and messengers bow their heads and avoid my gaze. They do not wish for war, and I believe they blame me more than anyone else.
And then there are the voices. The prayers come at all hours of the night.
I do what I can to soothe those who call for me, but I cannot reach them the way I can reach the garden beds on Olympus. I send my best thoughts, my best spells. I sing lullabies and incantations for them. I tell old stories about persevering through hardship. I remind the mortals, as often as I can, that the world renews itself. That there will always be life after death. But with so much death upon them, they pray for a different side of me. For mercy in the depths of hell. They pray to me, to aid them in ways I knew not how until Hades wrapped his arms around me.
My hand falters at their pleas. Because I’m not there. I have no power in the Underworld while I reside in Olympus. They need me. The prayers are nonstop and they cry for me to help.
At night, when I’m falling asleep, the prayers get louder. I pull a pillow over my head to block them out, but simple cloth and feathers will not stop the sound. Those pleas are directed to me. Right into my heart.
“I know,” I whisper to the sobbing woman. She is crying so hard that I cannot understand her words. They may only be the frantic prayers inside her mind, but her crying interrupts it just as it would interrupt her voice. Fire, she cries. Fire destroys us, please, we need water. We need— Her prayer breaks off into more tears. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”