Series: Willow Winters
Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 74198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
The voices overwhelm me on the balcony. My limbs refuse to stay still. “I must go inside,” I confess to my sister, and I grow lightheaded.
Aphrodite rises with me, offering me a questioning look, and we go inside and down the hall to a smaller chamber with a clear pool of warm bathing water in the center. The windows are cut in slits, so the light falls over the water in a pattern. On shaky legs, I take a seat at the pool’s edge, and so does Aphrodite, although more gracefully. I envy her beauty. She knows it so. This is one of the ways to reach the mortal realm. I get glimpses of it through the water. A roof on fire. A harvest rotted in the field. Someone screams. The vision is one that turns my stomach. I never wanted this.
“I do not know how to end their pain,” I murmur.
“Are you certain?” Aphrodite questions, her gaze on my face begging me to meet it. “You do not look so certain, Persephone.”
“I am certain,” I swallow thickly, my stomach feeling hollow, “that I cannot end all their pain.”
“Yet you frown when you say so.”
“I frown because…it is complicated.” It is more than complicated. The choice before me is not one that seems as if it has an answer. Not one that would end the mortals’ pain. If I chose my mother, Hades will wage war on all the realms. If I choose Hades, my mother will wage war on any realm she can reach. No one wins. Pain ensues. And I am the cause.
“There you are,” my mother says from behind us, entering the chamber. My body sits straighter at her voice. My heart races. She brings the scent of the garden with her. Sun and soil and flowers. “I thought you might have gone, Persephone.” Her voice cracks at my name. Her eyes are red-rimmed and her face gaunt. The bags under her eyes tell the story of restlessness. My heart breaks at the sight of my mother.
The prayers pick up again. Many of them have my mother’s name along with mine. “I have not gone.” I tell her and nearly choke on the words. Yet. The last word that failed to slip through my lips: yet.
I reach my hand out to my mother, and she comes to sit on my other side, peering worriedly into my face. “What disturbs you, my sweet daughter?” she asks, but surely she knows it is not one thing that plagues me.
Hesitantly, I answer with a partial truth. “The mortals,” I murmur, her hand still in mine. “They’re asking why you have forsaken them.” My lower lip trembles as I dare to look at her. Meeting her eyes and knowing her truth.
My mother furrows her brow, her lips pursing in regret. I watch her try to deny it—try to clear the expression off her face—but she cannot. Have I been here long enough to persuade her to show mercy to the mortals?
“Mother.” I squeeze her hand. “Do magic with me.” A smile, although soft and one that doesn’t reach my eyes, slips onto my face.
“Magic,” Aphrodite repeats, kicking her feet playfully under the water. “I do love it so,” she reminisces.
My mother’s face lights with love. “Persephone,” she says. “You’ve never—”
“I didn’t have a chance to ask you before. I did not know enough of my own powers.” Aphrodite peers at me as though she knows I have a secret, but she doesn’t interrupt. “I thought I might never get the chance to do this with you. Now we are together. Will you?”
She suddenly looks hopeful and shy, as if she also dreamed we might do magic side by side but never had the courage to admit it. “It is time to welcome harvest back to the earth,” she muses. “Would you like to call it with me?”
I cannot help it. A grin spreads across my face, and my power grows in me. This is the greatest pleasure for my mother, and for me—
For me, it is almost the greatest. I do not know yet if it would surpass what I might find in the Underworld. Dread creeps in at the thought.
I shake off the comparisons. When my mother offers me her other hand, I take it. I can feel Aphrodite watching us, excited for what is to come. Perhaps the start of a truce. Perhaps with my mother’s healing, whatever Hades has done will not feel as heavy for the mortals. Maybe they can live with his pain so long as they do not feel my mother’s wrath. It is a balance. One I can provide. Hope flows through me.
“For the good of all and to the harm of none,” we whisper. Together, my mother and I start the spell, our eyes closed, our hands held by one another.