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!”
Her answer went around and around in my head. This was about Damon?
“Yes, this is about Hades!” she screamed, seeming to read my thoughts. “Call me whatever you want, but you’re the one who took him from me!” She started back toward me, anger flaring in her eyes. “I was the one who was supposed to marry him. Not some mortal like you! It was his and my mother’s deal. Then he met you and he didn’t want it anymore. He was mine, but you made him fall in love with you!”
“So if this is about him...why take it out on me?”
“Because you’re the only way I can get him. Get rid of you, I take your place. Why do you think I turned you mortal? I’m going to finish what Stheno couldn’t finish for me the first time.”
Persephone was behind everything. Stheno attacking me at school, the giant and chimera at the school…
Losing my memory those multiple times.
“You wanted him to think I was dead,” I said. “You wanted him to forget about me and be with you. You wanted to take my life from me.”
Her smile turned menacing again. “Why do you think I had Mneme take your memory? You know who she is, right? Titan Muse of memory? I would take you to places that Hades would never look, but he would always manage to find you because he never believed you to be dead. But not this time. You’re going to die and never come back.”
I just stared at her. She was so serious as she looked at me. I didn’t know how I could have thought this woman in front of me was actually a person I called a friend. Now that I looked back on it, how could I have missed her jealous stares whenever Damon would look at me the way he would, kiss me whenever he could?
There was nothing I could do now. There really wasn’t anything I could do. I was mortal, weak, helpless.
But I had had a good life, even if almost half the time I really didn’t know who I was. But in the time where I knew who I was and who I wasn’t…I had a good life. As good of a life I could have in my almost three thousand years I’ve been on this earth.
And if she was going to kill me, I was going to gladly except it because I had done almost everything I wanted. I found the man of my dreams and we had a beautiful daughter together. They were the two most important people in my life.
I just wish I would have been able to tell them I loved them. Especially since I never got to see Zoe after I remembered who she really was.
“Go ahead,” I said quietly as I started to walk toward here where she was standing just a few steps away from the edge of the cliff.
Persephone had been looking at me with fire in her eyes. But when I said it, they widened in surprise. Apparently, she couldn’t believe that I was telling her to actually kill me, that I was letting her do it.
“Go ahead and do it,” I said. I couldn’t help it that tears were gathering in the corners of my eyes. “I’ve led a great life, had people in it that made it even better…I’m fine with it.”
We were both there, right at the edge. I could hear the crashing of the ocean below, hitting the sharp rocks that were at the bottom. I closed my eyes as the sea spray brushed over my face and I could smell it. It was just as I remembered.
“Do it,” I whispered, opening my eyes again. “Before I change my mind and try to fight you off, even though I know I wouldn’t be able to anything to hurt you.”
“You’re right,” Persephone said, smiling. “You wouldn’t be able to hurt me.”
Before I knew it, she was pushing be backward. I couldn’t help it when I stumbled a few steps and my heart started pounding. Persephone shoved me again and this time my heel went over the edge. A whimper left my lips and I caught her hand before she completely let go of me.
“The next time you see your beloved Damon, you’ll be nothing more than a soul in the Underworld,” she said before letting go of my hand.
I could feel myself falling, but it was in slow motion. I was happy that it was, though, because I got to see Damon and Zoe one more time.
Shadow walking can be a very useful thing, though they came just a few moments too late.
As I started to fall, I smiled sadly at them on last time just as both of their eyes met mine. I had accepted it. But when Zoe screamed something, it made me realize just what I was losing and I didn’t want it.
“Momma!”
I was completely airborne and free falling toward my rocky grave below. I knew I wasn’t going to make it this time, not like the last. The Fates weren’t going to let me have a second chance at living from the same fall. They three of them were probably already pulling my thread taunt and readying the shears to snip it.
I could almost feel it when they did.
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