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Their future was final.
But that did not mean Hades would not attempt control. He would protect the few who were closest to him—Persephone most of all.
If she would let him.
Hades manifested in a wooded meadow, and he was immediately overcome by the oppressive smell of Demeter’s magic. It bore down on him like a weight on his back. He could feel his body curling in on itself. The only reprieve was Persephone’s magic—a sweet undercurrent that called to his soul.
Something crunched beneath his feet, and when he looked down, he saw shards of shimmering glass amid blooming carex and foxglove, all sprouting from a bed of green grass, untouched, as Hades suspected, by the winter storm ravishing New Athens.
His gaze shifted to the ruins of a greenhouse. It was the source of Persephone’s magic. Her early magic too, for the thing that blossomed from the earth was a strange, black trunk with long limbs that curled around the metal frame of the greenhouse, and crushed beneath those branches were many of Demeter’s flowers—prisoners who found themselves at her mercy and found none.
Now he understood where the glass had come from.
He wondered at what point she’d come to wreak havoc on her crystalline prison, and for a brief moment, he let himself marvel at how far Persephone hadcome—from creating life that mimicked the dead to coaxing blossoms from the earth as she stepped.
Hades took a step, and as he did, the glass beneath his feet was like thunder in the quiet meadow. He was well aware he was not alone. He could feel eyes tracking him but was not surprised that fear had driven any living thing from the meadow.
He turned, eyes roaming the scattered tree line.
“I know you’re there,” he said. “Come out.”
There was no action that followed his words.
“Come out or I shall come to you,” he said.
It was not an idle threat. He knew exactly where the nymphs had taken refuge. Beyond the tree line was a river, and from its banks, they watched.
They were naiads like Leuce.
He waited with far more patience than they deserved as they negotiated.
“Lady Demeter will murder you,” said one.
“She will turn you into a bird as she has always threatened,” said another. “And force us away from our home to the sea.”
“He would not harm us,” another countered. “He loves Lady Persephone.”
“It is not his wrath we fear,” said another.
Hades sighed, vanishing from the meadow and appearing on the bank of the river where five nymphs were gathered. They were half in water, their fingers digging into the muddy bank, faces obscured by tall grass.
When they saw him, they gasped and likely would have fled if he had not held them in place with his power.
“One of you will tell me what you know of your mistress,” said Hades.
They shook.
“We know nothing about our mistress, my lord,” said one who had hair like the sun shining on water.
It was not a lie.
“When was she last here?” he asked.
“It has been quite some time,” said another. This one had hair the color of the darkest parts of the river. “Since Lady Persephone left.”
“Left for the mortal world?”
“No, since the greenhouse was destroyed.”
