Page 85 of In the Garden of Monsters

Oh, Orpheus.He had brought me a pearl from Mnemosyne’s pond.

I gathered my courage and went to Ceres, carrying the pearl from the goddess of memory under my tongue to help me hold a shred of remembrance, a glimmer of truth through countless lifetimes. It was this pearl that helped me remember just enough to leave the ghosts, providing cryptic warnings and guidance across the veil separating life and death.

Orpheus the cat meowed softly, jolting me out of the memory. He rubbed his face against mine, as if acknowledging the immense tapestry of events and emotions that had led to this moment. I knew that there was an essence of the real Orpheus within the beast, helping me, like I had once tried to help him.

Dalí’s shout rang out from the interior of theorco.

“She’s here.”

I ran up the stairs. Dalí was at the back of the mouth. Past the central table, in the last light of the dusk, I could make out Lillian’s bare feet. She was lying on the carved bench that lined the interior.

I was about to go around the table toward them when suddenly a rough hand spun me around. Jack. Pushing me into the table, my lower back connecting with the stone, he pinned me there with an elbow—because his hand held something.

A pomegranate, burst on the side, a tiny mouth of ruby seeds gaping at me. Jack shoved his fingers into the fruit, ripping out a chunk of arils and pith.

He shoved the seeds into my face, pressing them against my closed mouth. His fingers parted my lips, and before I could understand what was happening, he forced apart my teeth. I bit at his fingers, and he pulled his hand back, but he had done what he set out to do. The seeds were in my mouth. I held them under my tongue, refusing to swallow. I could taste blood, and my lip hurt where it had cut against my teeth as he pressed the seeds into me.

“Swallow!” the voice that wasn’t Jack’s said.

Then Jack was yanked backward.

A shout rang through theorco. “No one touches her with violence.”

Jack howled when he hit the stairs outside the Mouth of Hell. Then there was no sound. I sat up in time to see his body roll to a stop on the path.

Ignazio stood there, a dark shadow against the lighter shadows of the dusky garden behind him. “Are you all right?” he asked. He was only a few feet from me, and I could feel his heat radiating, a sharp contrast to the cold stone of the table.

Outside theorco, Orpheus cried. His little blue eyes implored me. The Julia of the Julii ghost stood next to him. She balled her hand, held up one finger, and then pressed it against her lip.One more.

I knew what to do.

I pulled Ignazio to me, one hand on the lapel of his jacket, the other around his waist. He didn’t resist. I lifted my face to his and his lips met mine and parted, his tongue searching.

I blew an aril into his mouth. Then I pulled back and took a fist to his chest, hitting hard, forcing him to gasp and swallow the seed.

Ignazio’s eyes grew wide, then found mine. They flared, bright fire in his pupils. Everything about him transformed, hot, white, yellow fire. His arms wrapped around me, and he kissed me. His heat became my heat.

The ground beneath us shook. I heard Dalí yell something in Catalan, felt Orpheus rubbing against my leg, and the brush of ghostly fingers across my cheek, and somewhere beyond us, I heard a woman crying, a woman I knew was Ceres.

The kiss tasted like home—a home I had forgotten and yearned for in every fiber of my being, through every incarnation. It tasted like the sweetest pomegranate, which I now knew that I loved, its juice both tart and sugary, complex yet straightforward. In that instant, the weight of our shared histories lifted, as if the air around us had become less dense, more forgiving. I felt the redemption of our love in its purest form, a love that had battled against the trials of immortality and the spite of a jilted lover. Pluto’s breath caught, a moment of vulnerability as our lips parted, and I knew then that he felt it too. It was as if we had ventured into some sacred space, a sanctuary that could only be unlocked by our union. We had returned to each other, and there was no curse, no vengeance, no mortality that could ever pull us apart again.

Then the whole world fell away. There was no Julia or Ignazio, no Dalí, no Jack.

Only Pluto and Proserpina.

22

We stood on a massive precipice of shining ebony at the very edge of the Underworld. Our gazes stretched over a grove of golden oaks with glittering acorns toward the star path that ran along the banks of the mystical River Lethe, born from the tears of its namesake goddess. There was no sun, but the sky was full of brilliant and vivid hues of every shade of red and pink and purple. I could see Kharon, the ferryman, up in the distance where the River Styx met up with the Lethe, his hand outstretched, waiting for a coin of passage from the souls who had come down the star path and were ready to board. The star path was the last place a living being might walk before reaching the dock that would take them into their final resting place.

In my past, Ceres had been my lover, but she turned against me when she discovered my infidelity and my deep affection for Pluto. She cast a formidable curse on us. The true path to breaking this curse was obscure yet simple: it required me to persuade Pluto to willingly consume three pomegranate seeds.

However, Ceres, in her deceit, had convinced Pluto of a different, false remedy. She made him believe that every hundred years, my reincarnation had to consciously consume six pomegranate seeds to free us both from her spell. These seeds, which she convinced me that I patently didn’t like, were presented to me in various methods by Pluto’s earthly form. They were never hidden; I always had the choice to see and consume them.

Tragically, this was a ruse. He had convinced me to eat the six seeds twenty-six times over countless years, and each consumption led to my death. The cruel cycle was perpetuated by the effects of the River Lethe: upon returning to the Underworld, its waters wiped our memories clean. Ceres had ensured this selective amnesia.

Pluto remembered only the necessity of my consuming the seeds, not the repeated tragedies that followed. He was oblivious to the reality of my recurring deaths, forever locked in the belief that the next cycle would be our salvation. Every century, he was convinced it was our chance to finally break the curse, oblivious to the sorrowful loop we were trapped in.

A soft, tinkling bell echoed in the distance, and Pluto’s expression changed, as if pulled back to reality by its call. With a reluctant wave of his hand, he summoned Ceres. “You may come.”

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