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A scream of pain rent the air, bringing them back to the moment. Devon took a step back, his face horrified again.
They both turned to where the scream came from, moving into the hall right after finding several injured people.
“I did this…” Devon said, horrified and pale with shock.
Persephone moved and knelt down to help one woman who was trapped under a pillar, which thankfully was not too heavy. At least not for a Goddess.
A groan from nearby had Devon moving that direction, where a man with a bleeding head wound was wobbling, trying to stay upright as he made his way to the exit. Devon was quick to grab cloth napkins from a nearby bussing station to staunch the bleeding while Persephone helped the fallen woman up.
Devon had gotten the man to an onsite medic before Persephone had calmed the woman enough to stand after removing the pillar.
Persephone looked up to see Devon approach her, perhaps to help, when someone in the corner of her vision halted him in his tracks.
“Devon,” someone, a woman, said as she moved up next to Persephone. The woman’s attention completely on Devon.
Persephone looked between both Devon and the woman, her mind throwing out question after question, when the woman she was helping to stand groaned.
“Apologies. Let’s get you some help,” Persephone told her as she walked past Devon. In the chaos of the last few minutes, emergency responders had arrived. When one approached her, Persephone encouraged them to see to the woman in her arms.
Persephone looked over her shoulder at the woman in the blue dress with Devon. Her gown rippled around her in shimmering waves and her long red hair flowed past her bare shoulders. The light caught on what looked to be a nose ring and where she had thought the woman’s red hair was pulled back on one side, it was actually shaved.
“I thought that was you.” A soft smile coming to her pretty face.
“Sasha,” he whispered back, his voice soft. Persephone knew what this was, she was not so adept at emotions that she failed to notice when two people held a certain level of intimacy.
They were lovers in his mortal days.
Persephone took a step away from Devon as the woman — Sasha — took a step closer to him. Sasha kept her shining eyes on Devon.
“You… they said you were dead.” A tear dropped down her cheek and that was more than Persephone could take. To see someone from his mortal life that he cared for.
Why had she not thought about a loved one left behind? The people he had been taken from.
She was being selfish, thinking only of her desire to have Devon as hers. She turned to leave as she felt a throbbing pressure in her chest.
It was the answer to a question she asked herself daily since meeting him. Could they ever be more?
No.
She needed to see him as a friend and only a friend. Persephone could not let her heart lead her any further astray. She closed her eyes and let the cold-hearted Goddess flow through her veins, pulling her mental shield back into place. She squeezed her bond to Devon so tightly closed, she wondered if it would ever open again.
“Persephone,” Devon finally seemed to notice her as she moved to step around this woman, his lover, and back out to the hall. She turned her head to look over her shoulder and shook her head. As she left the balcony, a feeling of power radiated off of Sasha.
Interesting that he had not chosen a mortal to love.
It didn’t matter. She would not stand in the way of him and his lover, or his past. That was for him to navigate and decide on what should remain. She could feel something between him and the woman, and if it were love, she would not begrudge him this. He would stand beside Persephone as nothing more than a friend and she would accept that. All she wanted for him in this second life was happiness. With or without her.
So why did the thought of him not being hers feel so horrid?
Persephone moved out of the way of several guests as they filed out of the ballroom and were instructed to leave the area of the damage. The distraction was enough that she went unnoticed until she came upon her sisters.
Amphitrite looked bewildered, and Hera leaned against a column with her eyes on Persephone.
“Everything alright, sister?” Hera asked, her tone bland but her eyes intense.
Persephone nodded her head, unsure of how to discuss what all had transpired.
Hera was her usual self and managed to gain all the details she needed without a word spoken between them.
