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)
I learned how to go beyond what gods and mortals expect. To deliver horrors. I learned how to keep storing up my anger and my hurt until it transformed into unfathomable power.
They should know that kings will do unfathomable things for their queens.
Is it unfathomable if I can fathom it? Is it unfathomable if I can do it? I cast another demon into the mortal realm and watch it go without feeling anything but resolve.
My anger still burns. It rages. It howls. But I contain it. I turn the wretched feelings into demons and send them to haunt souls in the mortal world on my behalf. I let it rain down on the Underworld as ash. The silence that fills every corner of the Underworld does not go unnoticed. It’s as if they are afraid to even whisper their dissent. As they should be.
There’s no longer any part of the Underworld that is not covered in the evidence of my loss. Ash coats every wall. Every intricately carved stone. Every valley. It coats every surface that’s in any way open to the sky. Perhaps it is my sickness, but I find beauty in the way it cloaks the roofs. It is even beginning to blow in through the windows of my home. If Persephone does not return soon, perhaps the entire Underworld will be buried in it. No one will be able to see what lies beneath. We will build atop the damage or give way to a new kind of death.
My realms have already been transformed in another way.
Fear has crept into every corner and crevice. It seeps into the places that ash cannot reach. For the first time, there is no peace. There is no comfort. There are no voices. Silence covers every realm like a thick, invisible layer of ash. The souls who pray to me pray that I will forget them. They do not wish for me to remember they exist. To be left alone in the state of war.
I sneer at that silent plea. Forget them? Forget the souls I have tended to with fairness and compassion all these centuries? Forget the duty I have crushed under my powers? I cannot forget them. I could not forget them any more than I could forget Persephone.
An inkling occurs to me that I may one day become riddled with guilt. If she is returned to me, then I will have to repair the damage I have done to these realms. I will do so if she requires it.
But forget? Impossible.
If these souls truly wanted me to forget, they would stop their prayers. Another plea whispers into my ear with a gentle hiss as I gather more of my power and send another demon, this one gaunt but more ravenous, into the mortal realm. They must assume I cannot hear them if they do not speak out loud.
Absurd. I can always hear them. I will always remember them. I am their god, and they will not forget it.
“Send her back to me,” I snap at the sky, which is shaded in gray with speckles of lit ash, creating a speckling of lit red in the darkness. All this talk of imbalances between the realms, and yet Persephone is not here. That is the first imbalance that must be fixed. With every minute that passes, I become more and more desperate. More and more enraged. Zeus caved to Demeter because of her wrath. Now they will all suffer mine.
With my fists clenched and my blood throbbing through my veins, I summon more magic, waiting with my eyes closed while I draw on the deep pools of power in the Underworld. This will be a demon larger and more powerful than any I have sent before. It will stalk people’s nightmares and send them fleeing to me in their sleep. Praying for death. They will not be safe while they dream, and soon everyone left on the Earth realm will know it.
“I will take everything,” I say to the sky. “I will take your dreams. I will take your souls while they still dwell in the mortal realm. I will take your hopes and your fears. I will take everything, and then I will rip apart your only chance to be mortal again.”
I send another demon.
“You do not hear me, but you will understand,” I say lightly. “I will make you understand. All of you, in every realm. You have spent too long refusing to see. Pretending you did not know. But you will know.”
I send another demon.
“Do you hear your doom approaching? Have you noticed the demon standing above your bed? Did you wake up screaming?”
I send another demon.
Time passes and I refuse to sleep. I refuse to acknowledge Minox hiding in the shadows. I refuse to take leave given I am at war. Ash falls to the Underworld like snow. It forms drifts and piles. It is the residue of all these spells. All my power. I have been so restrained with it, and not a soul has ever known. I’ve held back my rage and my pain and been considerate in my judgments. The Underworld has never seen my powers like this.