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The second he releases me, I tear into a run. Careless over my state since all I’m wearing is the sheer pink shift—all I managed to grab before Hades showed us the dying Purgatory.
And now…something dies in me. Something in my heart breaks off, far worse than my broken wrist. The most terrible, most horrific. My chest aches with a gnawing woe because Crescendo’s pain is the worst. He’s kneeling on the floor at thebase of the piano, his head low, clothes tattered. The jester’s cap is discarded nearby like an afterthought. Countless bells have fallen.
And every soul in the ballroom has become a frozen ghostly statue. No waltz. No music. No bodies twirling in a dance of meaning through the tragedy.
Tears stream down my cheeks as I thread my fingers together, accepting the physical pain because this torture is the worst. “Cres, Cres, Crescendo…” I drop to my knees, cup his cheeks, and touch my brow to his.
“I am so sorry, sweet girl. I-I tried so hard. All through the night while you slept.” He turns toward the lifeless souls. “I played. I played until my music…broke.” He looks up, meeting my eyes—his are just as tear-stricken. One subtle turn, and they sweep up to Eros who approaches from behind. And Crescendo tells the God of Love. “They’ve forgotten how to dance.”
I climb into Crescendo’s lap, coiling my arms around him, holding him so tight until we are swapping tears and grief. He rocks me. I cradle him. I kiss him. And he kisses me. Nothing chemical or sexual. It’s agony and misery wrapping their arms around one another. The faintest of notes echo from his chest. My song.My Heart is Broken.
And then…he breaks. While my mouth still kisses his, my first, my best friend in Purgatory, my greatest friend in any known realm, breaks.
“Cres?” I pull away by a thread. Panic engulfs me. His eyes are nothing but gray and vacant stone. “Cres?” Hairline fissures have formed in his stony features. “Crescendo…” I choke on a sob as my tears fall onto his royal blue scraps, sewn together from Eros’s old capes. Because finer things never mattered to him.
He just wanted to be close. He wanted to know he was a part of you in some small, special way—like feeding a strange girlsoup in a dungeon, playing the perfect tune for the moment, or stealing a kiss on the cheek. I don’t know what to do with the waves of anguish crashing against my heart. Part of me wants to throw my head back and scream and break more bones in my body.
Instead, I end up curling closer into Crescendo’s lifeless stone form. Chest aching, soul breaking, I hold him, murmuring little prayers, wishing I could piece him back together—believing in a world where he can wake up.
“Butterfly…” Eros’s fingers settle on my curls.
I cling tighter to Crescendo, retreating into his chest. “Please, Eros…” I whimper, touching my brow to the jester’s shoulder. “Help him. Make him wake up. Make him come back. Make it…better.”
As Eros draws me back into his arms, my nails scrape the tattered fabric of Crescendo’s clothes, but he slips through my fingers. He will never slip through my heart.
“Purgatory is dying, Aradia.” He cups one side of my face, thumbing away my tears. “And Crescendo was one of those rare souls who bound his soul force to mine. And Purgatory’s. He did it for me.”
A deep hurt, deeper than I can fathom, drowns Eros’s eyes, blackening the abyss more.
“He played his last song for me, Eros,” I cry, shivering in his arms. “Mysong.”
With a solemn nod, Eros touches my wrist, and I sense a current of energy pulsing into the flesh to heal the bones. He kisses the inside and says, “It will take a little time to heal, but this will ease the pain.”
It doesn’t matter. Despite the raw throb of the break fading, nothing will help the deeper break. The affliction wants to drag me down, buried in the crust of Limbo.
“I am truly sorry for your loss,” Hades says once Eros carries me out of the ballroom and into the hall. “But there is a way to restore everything…and everyone.”
A thread of hope? I struggle out of Eros’s arms, scrambling for Hades.
“How? Tell us how!” I plead, and he winces when I stumble against him, and a gloved hand reaches out to steady me. “I’ll do anything.”
He lowers his head, eyes full of poignant approval. “I believe you, glowing girl. And the power liesinsideof you, but…it is not your choice, nor will, to heal Purgatory’s heart and soul. Eros and Eros, alone, must choose.”
I swing my head to the God of Love who approaches us, obsidian hand balled into a fist and eyes narrowed as he proclaims a firm and unyielding, “Explain.”
34
“Bloody Valentine, Aradia, this is all my fault.”
EROS
With my cape wrapped around her pale body, Aradia shivers in the corner of the bed.
Her splintering emotions affect her more than Purgatory’s chill.
This is why my brothers have disappeared. After our night together, they must have left quickly once they sensed the tortured souls escaping their confines. Given their skills as demons and not simply lovers, I imagine they have gone to aid Morpheus in preventing any more souls from fleeing through the Mist to the mortal realm.
Hades strokes his jaw, pacing and studying my little Butterfly. “I felt it when she crashed into me by the staircase.” He lifts his eyes to me, where I stand on the opposite side of the bed, approaching Aradia’s trembling form. “It’s why I came.What you do not likely know is how the souls began their escape over a month ago.”
