A Thousand Thrones

Twenty-One

Twenty-One

My body started tingling.  I couldn’t feel anything before it started at the tips of my fingers and toes and started to spread.  But it was a strange sensation after it left.  It was like my body weighed twice as much as I was used to.  I felt like a stone as I laid on the soft surface underneath me. 

But then I was also cold.  Wherever I was, it was so windy that I could feel my hair whipping across my face, though I couldn’t find the strength to even lift my arm to brush it away. 

“Well, are we about to wake up?” a voice said from above my head. 

In response, I groaned.  I was still trying to place the voice, though.  I knew the person, but it wasn’t the same man who had stabbed me before. 

My eyelids felt like sandpaper against my eyes when I opened them. 

The first thing I saw was that I was outside and the storm clouds were rolling up above me as I lay in a bed of soft grass.  My fingers dug into the earth on either side of me and I could feel the coolness of it against my skin.  I was wearing a white flowy dress, like one we would have worn in the ancient times but had gone out of fashion. 

“Looks like we are awake then.”

My eyes slowly trailed up to the face that was looking down at me with a menacing smile on her face. 

“Persephone?” I asked.  My voice was hoarse and throat dry.  “What…?”

This was Persephone.  The other one that is.  And now that I remembered everything, I remembered her.  She was my best friend and had always been there for me.  She was even there at my wedding to Damon, was the first person after me, Damon, and Artemis to hold Zoe after she was born…

How could she be the one behind all of this?

Persephone’s eyes narrowed.  “Shut it, you filthy whore.”

My eyes widened as I started to sit up, only for her to kick me in the ribs.  My next breath came out in a wheeze, which then prompted her to aim a kick my face.  She missed, though the side of her sandal clipped my cheek.  I could feel it when it broke the skin.  I reached up and touched it gently with my fingertips and pulled back to see blood.

I was immortal.

I wasn’t supposed to bleed.

I looked up at Persephone and she could clearly see the shock in my eyes. 

“I’ve got friends in low places,” she said, grinning.  “Menoetius is the one who got you for me.  You remember.  The Titan of violent anger?  I freed him from Tartarus and he’s helped me ever since.  And as for your blood…right now, you’re mortal.  It’s only for a short time…though it won’t take me very long to do what I want to.”

She started walking then and I started to sit up again.  When I looked where she was walking, my eyes widened.  We were in Greece at exactly the same cliffs where Stheno through me off before Damon got permission to turn me immortal. 

I was home. 

It wasn’t really home anymore, though.  My parents weren’t there with me, my house wasn’t there…”

“Why?” I called to her since the wind was picking up.  “Why have you done this to me?”  My brain worked at the answers, but I only came up with more questions.  “You were the one to make me forget all of the other times.  I thought we were supposed to be friends.”

I could hear Persephone’s laughter before she turned around to look at me.  “Are you joking?  Who do you think this was about?  You stole my life!”