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I knew nothing of my Grace, but I didn’t think I could fall in love with someone who wasn’t kind. Could I?
Wait, maybethiswas Persephone? Were goddesses meant to be scary?
“Oh dear,” she murmured. “The lights are on, but nobody’s home.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re excused. You don’t remember, do you? No, of course not. You probably don’t even rememberyourself, poor bastard.”
I didn’t think I liked this lady.
“I am Hecate.” She stared at me for a long moment, as though waiting for some sign of recognition, before sighing dramatically. “Goddess of magic, witchcraft, the night, moon, ghosts, and necromancy.”
“Oh, okay. I’m the Spirit of Dreams.”
She blinked slowly. “That’s what you’re going by these days?”
“It’s the only name I know.”
“I see. Well, it will do for now, I suppose. Going by a title always confers a little more authority, doesn’t it? I prefer the souls in my part of the underworld refer to me as Goddess of Ghosts, just so they remember their place.”
“Right.” I nodded as though I knew what she was talking about. “That makes sense. Is this your house?”
She snorted. “No. My house has furniture.” With a lazy wave, a wooden chair appeared behind each of us, Hecate’s larger and grander than mine. She was still staring unnervingly at me, like she had no idea what to make of me. “Sit.”
I dropped into the seat, not wanting to argue with a goddess. Especially this one. Necromancy? Ghosts? I wasn’t about to play around with those.
“Do you know about the man and the woman I loved?” I asked, greedy for any kind of information about them. Any scrap ofsomethingabout who I was and who I’d cared about. “I’m here to help them.”
“I know plenty, but I’m not going to tell you.”Popwent the little bubble of hope that had been building in my chest. “I’m going to tell you about your friend.”
“Okay,” I said eagerly. Afriend. That was better than nothing.
“He is a young man who you’ve known most of your life. Grace is your soul bond, and his too.”
“And I don’t love him?” I clarified, because that seemed like an important thing to know.
“Not in a romantic sense, but you love and care for him deeply. You would do anything to see him safe and well.” Hecate leaned forward, wrapping a hand around my wrist and lifting it before tracing the lines of ink on my skin. “He gave you these.”
Oh. Well, that was nice of him. I hadn’t had much of a chance to examine them, but the mysterious images that decorated my skin were one of the only clues I had about myself and my life before.
I liked this guy.
“What is his name?”
“Dare.”
“Dare,” I repeated slowly. “That’s an interesting name. Isn’t it?”
She smirked at me, releasing my arm. “Just assume going forward that you all have strange names. You’re all daimons—except for Grace. The names are some kind of daimon tradition, I believe.”
“And Grace is a…” I trailed off, trying to remember what Persephone had called her.
“An agathos. A personification of something good—luck, in her case. Though Sophia called her anagathodaimon,and perhaps that is a better term. A reminder of the connection, the balance, between both sides.”
Grace theAgathos. Right. But what did a “personification of something good” actually mean in a practical sense? Was she a goddess too? Did “balance” mean that daimons were bad?
Hecate looked lost in thought for a moment, and I tried to decide if it was disrespectful to remind her what we’d been talking about. Sure, she was a goddess, but I was the Spirit of Dreams and that sounded kind of important too. Where did I sit in the hierarchy, exactly?
