Goddess Interrupted (18 page)

Chapter Fifteen
The Weed and the Rose

I spent the afternoon searching the entire wing for Henry, but no one had seen him. Several of the doors were locked, and I made a point of avoiding the one Calliope was behind, but unless he was in there or had purposely locked the door behind him, he wasn’t in the part of the palace I was familiar with.

By the time I returned to the bedroom, I half expected to see him on the bed, waiting for me. Instead it was Pogo who greeted me with an excited yip and wagging tail. As terrible as I felt, I scooped my puppy up and cuddled him, and he licked my cheek. It wasn’t enough to completely chase away my fears and worries, but it was good enough to hold them at bay for now.

“I missed you,” I said, giving him a good scratch behind the ears. My mother wasn’t there anymore, undoubtedly having joined the others, and I sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed I was supposed to share with Henry. “Wait until you hear about the month I’ve had.”

But before I could get another word in, a familiar sensation washed over me, and I once again plunged into darkness. This time, instead of reappearing in the cavern where Cronus worked to escape his prison, I found myself standing in the middle of a dimly lit room that stretched for twenty feet in either direction.

One side of the room was nothing but a continuous window that looked out across the vast cavern, and a fire crackled in a marble fireplace opposite the view. There were no curtains, and the sole piece of furniture was a white armchair. Henry sat in it, clutching the armrests so hard I feared they would break.

“Henry?” I whispered, unsure if he could hear me or not. For a moment at the entrance to Tartarus, I’d thought he could, but now when I tried to brush my ghostly fingers against his, he didn’t so much as blink.

The door on the far side of the room opened and shut. Persephone padded across the marble floor, barefoot and wearing a simple cotton dress. In the soft light, she looked breathtakingly beautiful, and I bit my lip. With the possible exception of Ava, I’d never met anyone in my life who had the power to make me feel like a weed beside a rose.

“I thought I’d find you in here,” said Persephone.

“I come here to think,” said Henry distantly. “I thought you were on your way back.”

“I decided to stick around for a little while. You lot need all the help you can get. Especially you.” She took Henry’s hand, the same one I’d tried to touch moments before. “Mother told me what happened. Kate is looking all over for you.”

Henry shrugged, and he didn’t pull away. “I would rather not face her yet.”

“Why’s that?” said Persephone, perching on the armrest. Exactly the question I’d been dying to know.

For a long moment, he didn’t answer. “She could have died because I was foolish enough to put her in harm’s way,” he finally said, his words heavy as they fell from his lips. “I have done nothing but put her in danger since the moment we met. I cannot do it anymore.”

That was why he’d run? Because he thought he was a danger to me? Something inside of me uncoiled. That was ridiculous, and now that I knew, we could talk about it. I could set things right.

Persephone rolled her eyes, and for once I agreed with her. “What Calliope tried to do isn’t your fault, and Theo said the tests were clear. Nothing happened to her.”

The cords in Henry’s neck stood out from the tension in his body. “We don’t know for certain. Even if everything turns out all right, I agreed to put her in that position.”

And I’d agreed to go. I wasn’t completely helpless; didn’t Henry understand that? I wasn’t mortal anymore. Calliope couldn’t kill me, and eventually he had to acknowledge that I wasn’t going to break if someone breathed wrong around me.

Persephone ran her fingers through Henry’s dark hair, and a lump formed in my throat. I didn’t want to be there watching this, but I couldn’t look away, and I had no idea how to get back to my body. Seeing them act so close despite being separated for a thousand years—I ached. It was as if Persephone had never left, and Henry was simply confiding in his wife about something that had happened during the day.

That was supposed to be my job, but I couldn’t do it when he was hiding from me. My sister knew him well enough not to need to search for hours in the wrong places though.

“She’s been through much worse over the past few weeks,” said Persephone. “Your new girl’s tough, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” said Henry. “When she decides to do something, it is impossible to change her mind, consequences be damned.”

Persephone snorted. “Sounds like someone else I know. She loves you, you know. More than I ever did.”

Pain flickered across Henry’s face, but it was gone as soon as it came. “She does not know me. When she learns who I really am, she will go.”

“Just like me?”

He stared silently out the window.

Persephone slid off the armrest and into his lap, and she looped her arms around his neck as if she’d never left him. My throat tightened, and I dug my nails into my palms. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to see this. I didn’t care how little Persephone loved him, and it didn’t matter what my mother or James or Ava said. Henry was still in love with her, and he would always choose her over me.

When he embraced her in return, a sob bubbled up inside of me, and I turned toward the window. Even then I could see their reflection, and try as I might, I couldn’t look away. This was it. Our relationship—our marriage—was dying before he’d so much as given it a chance.

“Sometimes I wonder what things would have been like if I’d stayed,” she said. “How our life together would have been different if we’d taken our time instead of jumping into things.”

“Happier,” said Henry quietly. “Full.”

“Maybe,” she whispered. “Maybe not.”

They were both silent for the space of several heartbeats, and when Persephone spoke again, she leaned in toward him until her lips were inches from his. I closed my eyes.

“You deserve someone who matches you,” she said. “What happened between us wasn’t your fault. We’re two different people, and no matter how strongly you’ve convinced yourself that I’m your one and only, it means nothing when you’re not mine.”

I held my breath. She was doing this on purpose. She was ripping him apart so— Why? So he wouldn’t be hung up on her anymore? To make room for me? His heart was broken enough as it was. How was I supposed to find all the pieces and put them back together if she shattered it?

“Stop,” I begged, knowing it was useless. Didn’t she know what she was doing to him? Of course she did. I’d known Henry for a year, and it was excruciatingly obvious to me. She’d known him for eons.

“Are you truly happy with Adonis?” said Henry at last.

Persephone smiled faintly. “When I wake up and the first thing I see is his face, I know it’s going to be a great day. That isn’t going to change no matter how much time passes.”

Henry threaded his fingers through her hair, and Persephone made no move to stop him. “Do you ever regret leaving?”

She didn’t answer right away. Instead she found his free hand and laced her fingers in his. “Sometimes. I miss the sun—the real thing, not the one in my afterlife. I miss my mother. I miss our family. I miss the seasons. I miss change.” She pressed her lips to his knuckles. “Sometimes I even miss you. Adonis is lucky. He’s like every other soul—he doesn’t fully realize what’s going on or that the world around him is fake. I do, and sometimes that’s enough to make a difference.”

Henry stroked her cheek with the back of his hand, and his eyes shifted from the window to her. He looked at her the way he’d looked at me the night we’d slept together, and my chest ached. Why couldn’t I wake up? “You could come back.”

Persephone gave him a sad smile. “What about Kate? You wouldn’t do that to her. I know you better than that. You might have her fooled, but I can tell how you feel about her.”

Henry was silent, and my heart beat so hard that I thought it might explode. Would he? Was he asking her to return as his queen or as his wife? Could she even do that?

Dizzy, I leaned against the window and wished with every fiber of my being that the glass would disappear and let me fall. At least then I wouldn’t have to hear this. I thought about leaving through the door, but if I couldn’t go through the window, I wouldn’t be able to walk through that, either.

“Kate is many things to me,” said Henry finally. “But she is not you.”

I sank to the floor and hugged my knees. I’d done so well fooling myself that this might work, that with time and a little effort, everything would be okay. But it couldn’t be. Would he have said those things if he’d known there was a chance I might be listening? Of course not. He wasn’t cruel, but I’d heard them anyway.

“Hades…” Persephone leaned forward and closed the gap between them, touching her lips to his.

My stomach lurched, and I hid my face in my hands. This couldn’t be happening. This was a nightmare, not the real thing. I’d fallen asleep without remembering, that was all. I would wake up soon, and when I did, Henry would be watching me sleep, and he would apologize for storming off. We would talk, he would kiss me, and everything would be all right again.

I didn’t know how long it lasted. I didn’t want to know, and by the time Persephone spoke again, I was all but tearing my hair out. Why couldn’t I go back? What part of me wanted to see this so badly that I was willing to put myself through this kind of agony?

“The thing is, I’m not me, either,” she said softly. “I’m not the person you love. That person never existed, and turning me into her in your mind—it’s destroying you. We had one good day together, and the rest of it was awful. I was miserable, and by the time I knew I didn’t want to be married to you anymore, you’d convinced yourself that you were in love with me. But you never were. You fell in love with a person who never existed.”

Tears splashed on the knees of my jeans. In a fit of desperation, I pinched the inside of my elbow hard, but I felt no pain. I was stuck.

“Tell me,” said Persephone. “Was that the kind of kiss you’ve spent the past thousand years imagining? Did your heart stop? Did the room spin and did everything else fade away?”

In the time it took for Henry to respond, I stopped breathing and lifted my head. Persephone was still in his lap, and they watched each other with such intensity that I expected him to kiss her again, but then I saw it. There was a distance between them now, as if she were pulling away. As if he were holding her at arm’s length.

As the seconds ticked by, a sliver of hope lodged itself inside of me, and I stood shakily to move closer so there would be no chance of me missing what he would say.

Except as I stepped forward, he leaned toward her again, and she didn’t stop him. My breath caught in my throat as the world dissolved around me once more, and Henry and Persephone disappeared.

* * *

I spent the rest of the night crying in bed with Pogo curled up at my side. Every half an hour or so, he would wake up long enough to lick my cheeks before falling back asleep. I wasn’t so lucky.

Whatever lesson Persephone had tried to teach Henry backfired, and even if she left the palace tomorrow, that wouldn’t change the fact that Henry would always love her more. I wanted to hate her for what she’d done, but she hadn’t been the one to burst into our marriage. I was the one who’d sought her out, and I’d convinced her to reenter her old life, despite knowing full well what the consequences of Henry seeing her again might be. All she’d done was try to discourage his feelings—in a twisted way that had failed miserably, but she had tried.

And now I’d lost him completely.

The sound of the bedroom door opening woke me up from a light doze. Pogo stretched, and when I sat up, he flopped down in my lap belly-up, apparently unwilling to let me go anywhere without him again.

Henry stood in the doorway, and for a long moment, we simply stared at each other. His ageless face was drawn and his lips turned down in a frown, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks.

Finally he stepped inside the room and shut the door. Without coming to greet me, he headed to his closet and began to sort through his clothes. I wiped my cheeks to make sure no evidence of my crying session remained, but they’d been dry for hours.

Once he’d picked out a fresh shirt that was indistinguishable from the one he wore, I expected him to say something, but he wordlessly disappeared into the bathroom as if I weren’t even there. Did he think so little of me that I wasn’t worth a hello?

While he was gone, I debated whether or not to continue pretending everything was all right. The coward in me wanted to, but I knew that if I tried, I would be as miserable as Persephone had been, and I didn’t want to be miserable anymore. I couldn’t spend my life waiting for him to set Persephone aside and focus on me instead.

By the time he came out, I knew what I had to say. Everything inside of me fought against the words that spilled from my mouth, but I needed to say it, and Henry needed to hear it.

“I can’t do this anymore.”

My voice was barely a whisper, but Henry stopped halfway between the bathroom and the door. He didn’t look at me, but his hands formed fists, and the cords in his neck stood out like they had in the room with the windows. Self-loathing washed over me. I was doing the same thing Persephone had done to him; I was giving up. Before we’d even had a chance, I was declaring it over.