Wearing an outfit of mourning.
“Orfeo?” I shout again, scared and desperate. “Mom?”
I realize I’m lying on the cold tile floor. Above me, the stars shine bright, galaxies swirl by in a slow-moving blur of color. I stand and it takes me a few shaky steps for all the blood to rush back down into my legs. I must have been on the ground for a while.
The kitchen table is empty. The picture frame window over the sink is open, stars glimmering where I once always saw sunshine. Wind flicks the lacy curtains back and forth.
“Mom?” I call out again, turning slowly in a circle. There’s no noise but the wind. I know I should feel anxiety or fear—maybe even physical pain from being on the ground. But I don’t feel anything.
Am I dead?
When I turn back toward the kitchen table, there’s a woman there. She has soft features—a pointy chin, pink lips, wide-set eyes fixed on the cards she’s shuffling between her hands. Her long brown hair is pinned up, away from her face into a sculptural bun on the top of her head. Her features shift, and I gasp. The same features flicker into view when she turns her head to the right and again when she turns to the left. Like the pattern on a butterfly’s wings, there is perfect symmetry between her three faces.
I recognize her immediately.
Hecate.Asteria’s daughter.
She continues to shuffle the tarot cards in her hands as I approach, the golden bracelets around her wrists clanking together gently.
When I reach the table, she looks up at me and smiles.
“Sit, Diantha.”
My breath catches in my throat. I swallow. “You know who I am?” My voice comes out hoarse and shaky.
“Of course.” She extends an elegant, pale hand toward my usual chair. “Please. I know you have many questions.”
I do. I have so many questions I don’t even know where to start, truthfully. If everything I just saw is true—that would mean I’m…
It feels ridiculous to even think. There’s no way.
“You’re very clever, using your mind to get into the catacombs rather than force. I know it couldn’t have been easy to be so patient.”
I nod. “My mother always told me I would end up here, in Echidna. I just never knew why. I don’t think she did either.”
Hecate smiles. “She didn’t. She saw and knew many things, but she never knew about the portal. She also didn’t know what she agreed to, the day she shook Hades’s hand. He is, after all, a complete bastard.” She says this with, I think, vague affection.
I shiver at the sound of his name. I didn’t want to believe it. “What did she agree to?”
“Well, first of all, she could never reveal to you who your father was. Which was an easy enough agreement for a human woman to make. After all, how many would believe that she’d had a child with a god? Let alone an ancient god.” Hecate chuckles. Her laughter is like soft music. She turns over the top card from her deck. The Lovers, reversed.
“But Hades knew that eventually you would reveal yourself. You are half his, no? You would eventually develop some interesting abilities.”
“That’s why I can move between realms—why I’m able to exist in two forms?”
She nods. “Spirit and body. Above and below. You have other talents, as well. Resilience, for example. A path forward always presents itself. You are able to evade danger. You present as magic, even to those who are unable to name what it is they see in you.”
“So he knew my mother would be unable to keep her side of the bargain, because eventually…” I trail off. It hurts too much to say.
“That’s what Hadesthought, but your mother never told you why you had special talents or where they came from. She simply let you become…well, you.”
The ache in my chest explodes to a full-on gripping pain.She just let me be me.That’s exactly what my mother had always done. Even though I was meeker than her, more rigid.
“And that angered him even more,” I say, my voice trembling.
Hecate nods. “His precious ego was injured. He couldn’t just let you believe your magic came fromher, a lowly human.” Hecate smirks, lifting her brows in a conspiratorial look that says:Men, am I right?“He sent his demons after you and your mother. They chased you neighborhood to neighborhood, state to state. Those losers were meant to remind her of his power. Hades wanted your mother to know she was never safe.”
Realization takes hold in my chest, an icy fist around my heart. I bring my fingers to my throat. “She tried to tell me. She mentioned the demons.”
