Page 57 of The Ash Bride

She was sobbing, her head aching and throbbing with such intensity that she could no longer move. Rocking side-to-side on her knees, trying to balance herself and failing as she fell sideways, arms still reaching before her.

Her head smacked the ground with a dull, echoing thud and the pain subsided for one glorious moment. Long enough for her to move again, to reach for her legs, to hug them to her chest, but she couldn’t find them. She could feel them, knew they were still attached to her body, but her head was filling with a fuzzy darkness, and it made it harder to find them. When she reached for them it was as if they were in a different spot than they should be, further to the side than they felt.

Eventually she was able to reach them, gripping them behind her knees and pulling them up to her chest. The blood and sand coating them made them slick, and her hands slid around under the pit of her knees as she did so.

She dipped her head to her chest, resting her forehead on her bloody knees, as she rocked on the ground.

The cut and bleeding knees, the unrelenting stinging of her palms, could not erase the pain she was feeling for Pelops. They only brought forth another wave of despair and heartache for him. For Pelops, who she had found dead and torn open in a clearing, where she sliced open her knees and hands as she crawled to his lifeless form. Who had laid beside, holding onto him in this exact position on the ground as she rocked back and forth, sobbing into his pallid skin.

The only difference between then and now, was that she was alone. With no Pelops to cling to.

§

When she opened her eyes, the darkness had dissolved.

Persephone was laying in the meadow, surrounded by green, flowing grass and tall, swaying trees covered in bright leaves, small bird nests littering their branches. Through the canopy she could make out the sky, brilliantly blue without a single cloud marring the image, only unmarked vivid blue as she drank it in. Almost too blue to be real, but the birds were singing, the wind brushing her hair across her bare shoulders, and the smell of the sea filling her senses told her it was real.

Pelops was smiling at her from across the grass. He looked so real that she could touch him if she dared walked the few steps across the meadow, across the long green ocean between them.

Hades had been merely a nightmare. A terribly realistic bad dream.

Of course she hadn’t married the King of the Underworld, Persephone laughed at the thought of it. It was dull and quiet, almost like she was laughing underwater. She must have fallen into a fitful, nightmarish sleep after spending too much time in the sun and drinking too much wine at the pool with Elektra and Melia.

A small sob escaped her throat as she launched herself into Pelops’ arms. Flying through the air until she smacked into him with so much force they fell over into the deep grass, disappearing from sight.

She pulled away from him and looked into his eyes, the blue-green eyes that she had dreamed of every night since she first seen them. The eyes that she had searched countless faces for during those long months she looked for him along the coast. Eyes that, despite her mother’s harsh judgments, she fell in love with and ached to see again, especially after such a horrible dream where he had died a horrible death, only to be resurrected and never know her again.

Thinking of the nightmare pricked the back of her memory, and something small sang to her through her own voice, too quiet to hear clearly.

Shutting her eyes, Persephone focused on the teeny song in her bones, her skin, flowing through her hair. It made her feel uneasy and strange, though she didn’t know what it was saying. Unable to understand it even with her concentration, Persephone shoved down the feeling of strangeness at having her arms wrapped around Pelops, and looked into his eyes.

She saw herself reflected in eyes so dark and so black that she jolted backward, slamming herself into the ground hard enough that pain sparked lit up her body where she met the ground.

Hades stood before her, smiling wickedly down at her.

Her heart sunk at the sight of him, and her stomach roiled, her mouth salivating before she vomited into her lap and under her dress. The putrid liquid draining into the crevice between her breasts, gagging from the feeling alone as she tried not to smell it.

Hades grimaced as he straightened his clothing and crown; the perfect opposite to her disheveled self, splayed on the ground and covered in the contents of her stomach and her own blood. He took a step back, distancing himself from the disgusting smell wafting off his wife.

“Hello,kale,” he said in a drawling voice.

Persephone glared up at him as his gaze bore into her, waiting for her to reply. He was going to wait a long time. She bit down on her tongue, forcing herself to hold back anything she might say to him.

Raising his eyebrows at her silence, he smiled knowingly, and said, “Anything interesting happen above these last few days?”

Persephone glowered at him, her lips twitching in fury watching him with a stiff, confident back as he eyes darkened at her insolence.

“Not so chatty anymore?”

Scoffing, she rolled her eyes.

Flames filled the sockets his black eyes had been shining from a moment earlier, and he clenched his jaw, fists forming at his sides. He seemed to be holding back the urge to blast her through the ground.

He rolled his shoulders back in a calming manner. “How is your mother?” Silence echoed between them. “Your friends?” Hades smirked and said, “Or Pelops—How is Pelops?”

“I would not know,” she said through her teeth.

“Wouldn’t you?” Hades winked at her, and Pelops appeared hovering behind him, struggling against something Persephone could not see.

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