“The mortals?” Persephone whispered.
Hades looked at her. “His feelings.”
Shock swept through Enyo, emptying her mind and draining her anger. She hadn’t known that. Keras had told her that she was the reason he took the pills, but she hadn’t realised it was that bad. She had only thought he had been trying to escape his emotions, his feelings for her, not that he couldn’t bear them.
Did he want them gone?
Erased?
Any hope for her and Keras that had been building inside her died in that moment as cold swept through her, a numbing chill caused by the dawning of a realisation she wanted to pretend hadn’t happened.
Keras didn’t want to feel anything for her.
She battled that feeling as she stared at Hades, clawing together the fragments of her hope, even when it felt like a futile endeavour.
“I gave him the choice,” Hades said. “He chose to end his feelings in the only way open to him.”
She shook her head, not wanting to believe that, even when her heart said it was true. She had driven him to this.
“You should have stopped him.” She clenched her fingers into a tight fist. “You knew he was addicted to them and you did nothing. You should have done something.”
Hades narrowed his eyes on her, his face a black mask. “You should have done something. Two centuries he has been in that world… a world you could enter… and you chose not to see him.”
Persephone threw her hands up, had Enyo’s and Hades’s gaze leaping to her. “I am done with this. I am done with both of you.”
The ground trembled beneath Enyo’s boots and Hades reached for Persephone, but thick brambles snaked across the air between them, forming a wall, and she disappeared.
Hades turned a vicious snarl on Enyo.
She braced herself.
He sighed, gazed at the wall of brambles as they slowly died and crumbled, the crimson fading from his eyes.
“It is because of you that he started taking the pills.” His low voice swept around her, had her tensing again in case he did attack her, but when he continued, his tone softened in time with his expression. His pale blue eyes held a shadow of vulnerability as he reached a gauntleted hand out to the dead brambles and they turned to dust that coated his claws. “It is because of you that he will stop taking them.”
His gaze slid to meet hers.
“You need to guide him now and give him strength, take care of him in his troubled times. I need you to bring my son back to me.” The vulnerable edge his eyes held grew as his tone softened further, reached into her and tugged at her heart. “Can you do that? I ask you as an equal, not a god, or anyone above you. I ask you as a father. Bring Keras back to me. I tried. I truly tried. It has not been easy on me knowing what has been happening to him and being powerless to stop it.”
Enyo nodded, willingly accepted the burden he placed on her shoulders because of the faith he showed in her and the love that beat in her heart for his son. She wouldn’t fail him.
She took one last look into his eyes, seeing the pain there, the unguarded emotions that touched her, that told her he truly regretted what had happened to Keras and how deeply he needed her to make things right, to free his son of his addiction. She had wanted Hades to pay for what he had done, had wanted him to suffer as Keras had.
And he had.
He was.
He had been suffering along with Keras for two centuries.
She could see that now.
She teleported, returning to the gate that would take her to Mount Olympus, and ascended the invisible steps that led her up onto the horizontal shimmering rings that rotated lazily a few feet above the black ground. She focused on her mission as she reached the central violet disc and sank into the gate, as she passed through the link between the two realms, and teleported again the moment she emerged.
Transporting herself back to Tokyo.
Straight to Keras’s room.
Persephone kneeled in the spot where she had been beside Keras, her green gaze locked on his peaceful face.
Outside the room, the seasons were in disarray, time racing to accommodate the goddess’s presence in this world. Late autumn and early spring warred, blooms attempting to open and buds sprouting even as the red leaves of the maples dropped from the trees to spin down through the air to rest on mossy boulders and the surface of the pond.
“I cannot remain long,” Persephone whispered, a pained look on her face as she stroked Keras’s brow, clearing his black hair from it. “Why did he not tell me?”
Tears tracked down her ashen cheeks.
“Why did you not tell me?”
Persephone’s pain became a palpable thing as she murmured those words to her son, stirring the guilt inside Enyo again. She hadn’t meant to hurt the god-queen, had only thought to hurt Hades and make him pay for what he had done. Now, she had caused a rift between Hades and Persephone, and had deeply hurt the goddess.
Enyo moved to Keras’s other side as he shuddered, as he arched off the bedding and his face contorted, sweat dotting his brow and causing a sheen across his bare chest as he writhed.
She pressed her palm to the centre of his chest, keeping him in place. He growled and snapped fangs, and she looked across at Persephone, seeking her help.
Persephone smoothed her fingers down his cheek, a slow caress that she repeated. Her emerald eyes glittered with unshed tears as she leaned over him, as she brushed her palms from his face to his neck, and over his chest. Wherever she touched, the bruises and cuts from Enyo’s rooftop fight against him healed.
Enyo could feel the love Persephone held for her son as she quietly, calmly worked to heal him. It flowed through the room, embracing her too, making her long to have known such love for herself.
When all the cuts were gone, leaving perfect unmarked skin behind, Persephone feathered her fingers down to his wrist. They stopped on the bracelet and she looked across at Enyo.
“Did you do this?”
Enyo nodded, her gaze drifting to Keras as sorrow and guilt hollowed out her insides, had her heart growing heavy as she wondered whether she could save him as Hades had asked.
As if she knew her thoughts, Persephone whispered, “What did Hades say after I left? Did he ask something of you?”
Enyo dipped her head again.
“And will you do it?”
She glanced at Persephone, feeling the weight of what she was asking just as she had when Hades had made his request. “I will do all I can for him… because I love him and I should have told him that many centuries ago.”
Tears burned the backs of her eyes.
Persephone shifted her left hand and placed it over hers where it rested on Keras’s chest, above his heart. She slipped her fingers around Enyo’s hand and lightly squeezed it.
“I ask the same thing of you, Enyo. It is only you who can help him now. Do all you can to ease his pain and see him through this. The mortal world needs him. The Underworld needs him.”
Enyo swallowed thickly and managed a small nod.
“It was the right thing to do,” Persephone murmured. “You were here with him at last and he was still taking the pills.”
It was a small comfort to Enyo. Enough to lift her spirits and give her strength.
Keras stirred, groaning low in his throat.
Persephone lifted his hand and kissed it as she slipped a new limiter around his wrist, her lips pausing there, and then she disappeared.