Page 66 of Branded By Shadow
The memory of his desperate voice on Helena’s recording crystal was a distant ache. “I’m sorry, Theo. For everything I put you through. The silence, the worry, the—”
He waved a hand, cutting me off mid-sentence. “Don’t be. You survived. You came back.” His clear, honest eyes held mine without wavering. “That’s all that ever mattered. And you came back... as yourself.”
I gave him a questioning look, not quite understanding the depth of his words.
“After everything I saw...” He let out a deep sigh, his voice dropping as we walked. “The power, the politics... I was afraid they would change you. Turn you into one of them. Another Olympian, playing their games.” He offered a small, self-deprecating smile that was so familiar it hurt. “But you’re still just Cora. My Cora.”
I was, and that alone seemed impossible. After everything that had happened, I’d never thought I’d get to keep my own identity. But I had. I’d only become… more.
As we rounded a bend, the fields opened up to reveal a central pavilion of woven willow and sun-warmed stone. Two figures were waiting for us. Lyra was dressed in the familiar green robes of House Demeter, and Damon stood beside her, his dark form standing out against the vibrant life around him.
He should have seemed out of place, but he didn’t. He looked like the necessary shadow that allowed the sun to shine brighter. Because shadow and light were two sides of the same coin.
Theo’s breath hitched slightly in the face of so much power. “Are you ready for this?” he murmured.
I took a deep breath, the scent of the wheat fields filling my lungs. A feeling of rightness settled deep in my bones. I looked at Damon, and his steady, unwavering presence was an unspoken promise of support.“I’m always here, Cora,”he whispered in my mind.
“I know,”I replied. Turning toward Theo, I added, “I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t ready.”
As we stepped into the shade of the pavilion, Lyra welcomed us with a smile. She looked nothing like the angry politician I had faced in the amphitheater. The weight of her House’s authority seemed lifted from her shoulders.
“The elders say the fields have never shone so brightly,” she said, glancing toward the golden expanse around us. “They sense you, Cora. The harvest is welcoming you.”
I could still remember her desperate attempts to hold me down, to keep me from Damon, to break my will. But now, when I reached out, a stalk of golden wheat brushed against my fingers. “It feels... like it knows me.”
It was woven into the pavilion’s living walls, and it spoke to me. Its honesty and purity were what had brought me here today. And Lyra knew it.
Her smile faded into a look of humbling regret. “That day... at the Council,” she began. “I was wrong. About him.” She gestured almost imperceptibly toward Damon, a quick, nervous flicker of her eyes. “About everything.”
The admission hung in the air, a shocking, unexpected confession.
“I saw a pattern,” she continued, forcing herself to meet my gaze directly. “A history of my House’s pain. I told myself I was protecting you, but I was just a pawn in someone else’s game.” Her shoulders trembled with the weight of her final words. “I’m truly sorry. There is no excuse for my part in what happened.”
Apologies didn’t truly change what had happened. Words did little to wash away the blood on someone’s hands. But Damon and I were here together, and that was what mattered. “No, there isn’t. But we all made our fair share of mistakes.”
Damon wrapped his arm around my shoulder and met Lyra’s eyes. “You acted to protect what you believed to be your own. I can’t fault a House for honoring its blood. Alexander is the one who twisted that duty into a weapon.”
Damon’s words settled over the pavilion, a quiet, momentous act of diplomacy. The ancient, simmering animosity between their two Houses had been set aside.
If I hadn’t been here myself, I wouldn’t have believed it. House Demeter and House Hades had hated each other for millennia. And now, here they were, standing at the same proverbial table. For my sake.
“Thank you, Damon,” Lyra replied. “I admit I didn’t expect this generosity from House Hades. I’ve never been happier to be proven wrong.”
She turned toward me and Theo. “That being said, I trust everything is going well with the files we provided, Dr. Caldwell?”
Theo instantly perked up. He held up a data slate, his fingers tapping excitedly on the screen. “Going well is putting it lightly,” he said. “Cross-referencing the information with our initial data, we can have a stable, mass-producible version of the suppressant ready for public trials in a year. Evergreen is fully on board.”
The words landed not as news, but as a soul-deep validation. The breakthrough wasn’t just from my human intellect. It was from the Demeter archives, from the ancient, instinctual knowledge of my own bloodline. The scientist and the Olympian, finally working as one.
“Excellent,” Lyra replied. “This is the purpose of House Demeter. To bring new harvests to the world.”
Lyra extended her hand toward me, a simple, open gesture that was not political, but personal. “I think that was always your goal too, Cora. Before you even knew you were House Demeter. Before you were House Hades.”
I took her hand, the grip firm and sure. In that moment, the old wounds and the betrayals settled into their proper place, a part of a history that no longer defined my future. “Yes, it was. It still is.”
The four of us stood there for a moment—Hades, Demeter, and the human world—united in this new, unprecedented alliance. We were not in hiding. We were building a new world, right here in the open, surrounded by the golden, life-giving wheat. And for the first time in a very long time, I felt like I was home.
I shouldn’t have come here.
