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“And yet she seeks your destruction?”
“Yes. The years without me have stoked her fire. And I fear my words alone will not be enough to convince her that I have loved her and yearned for her all these years.”
Sorrow filled Sybil’s eyes. “Polly… That is devastating. I—I’m so terribly sorry.”
Emotion stuck in Gaia’s throat, and she nodded, unable to speak.
“Where will you go?” Sybil asked.
Gaia’s gaze shifted to the horizon. The sky above them was gray and dismal, but the skies beyond only darkened with rage and foreboding. “I will meet her where the darkness is thickest.”
“You will offer yourself up, like a lamb to the slaughter?” Anger tinged Sybil’s voice.
Gaia fixed a defeated look on her lover. “She is my daughter. I will not fight her, nor will I hide from her. This is my penance.”
She turned to leave, prepared to stride down the road and make arrangements to board a vessel before the seas became too perilous to travel. But Sybil’s words stopped her.
“I will always love you, Polly.”
Gaia turned then, her dark hair whipping around her face. Sybil still held the wicker basket, and Gaia had the sense the weight of her books was grounding her; that if Sybil released it, she would collapse or float away.
And perhaps it was for the best that this barrier stood between them. If Gaia was able to hold her, she might never let go. She might never have the strength to walk away.
“If I survive this,” Gaia said quietly, “I swear I will find you. I will do whatever it takes to earn your trust again.”
Sybil’s lips pressed together in a tight line as more tears streamed down her face.
With her heart heavy and her eyes moist, Gaia turned from the one woman she loved more than anything. The one soul who had captured her heart so fully.
The one she might never see again.
ELYSIUM
PANDORA
These damned gods and their pretentious nature would be the death of Pandora. She was certain of it.
She sat in a large receiving room within the gleaming palace of Elysium, and everything around her screamed of elegance and finery. She smoothed her skirts for the hundredth time, the cold marble hard and unyielding at her back. Her gaze wandered to the open veranda before her, which boasted a wide coast and a cerulean sea.
Pretentious indeed. At least the illusion of the Underworld had been a humble forest. It was one of the things Pandora loved most about the place where she’d grown up. It was simple. And the simplicity had felt so real.
But this? This felt as false as Pandora’s persona. As false as the mask she would wear during her stay here.
The waves lapped, the rush of the ocean surrounding her. Look at this paradise, it seemed to say. Isn’t it wonderful? Everything here is absolutely perfect.
The whole notion made Pandora want to vomit. Did no one see through this facade? Were all the deities here complete morons?
She would see for herself, she supposed. Assuming anyone would come and greet her. She had been escorted to this chamber, left to wait for hours. As if the gods had anything better to do than sip wine and lord over their elegant lifestyle.
Pandora balled her hands into fists as her rage bled through her thoughts, triggering the memories that often plagued her. Anguished screams. Agony pulling at her, flaying her inside out. The gods ignoring her cries and pleas, looking on with cold apathy as her magic was stripped from her, ripped violently from her very soul, her very being.
Pandora’s fists began to shake. You are in control, she told herself. You are in control.
But the screams still rang in her mind, an echo of the past. A life she never knew, but was cursed to remember.
“Ah, Hecate.”
Pandora’s fists relaxed, and in an instant, she had donned her persona—a humble, lesser goddess of the Underworld. The name she had taken as a child of the Underworld, to conceal the identity of the soul residing inside her. For most of her life, she had been known as Hecate, or Trivia, the goddess of three paths.
