A Bloom So Deadly: Hades and Persephone Retold

The Rescue

She was nowhere.

Hades tore through the wooded lands, a set of determination in his jaw, trying to keep his worry at bay. He could not sense her. No matter how far or wide he walked, he could not pick up on the slightest trace of her darkness.

She had last been seen on her way to Hecate's cottage. She had not made it there. That was all the information they had. And it was well into the evening, her walk to Hecate's would have been twelve hours prior, at least.

In the distance, he could hear Thanatos and Hecate calling out her name.

Had she gone? Had she decided she had enough of him and this place and left? He had given her too much leeway, walking to and from Hecate's alone. Would she even know how to leave? She had no coin to pay Charon, not that he knew. And she'd given no indication that she'd ever been able to spirit herself as he and Than could.

Something was wrong.

Hades went back to the castle so he could walk the path she might have taken, trying to ignore the anxiety welling in his chest, tightening his gut.

Something

was

wrong

He traced what he imagined had been her steps, head down, just trying to feel any trace of her. There had to be something. Long minutes passed as he stepped carefully, stopping with each step to try and sense anything that might point him in the right direction.

There.

Hades drew his eyes closed and took a step backwards. He had almost missed it, just the tiniest trace of something off the path. He turned, assessing the area before stepping toward it.

It was faint. The kind of faint that made his chest further tighten, made his steps quicken. It was not strong, it felt like it was fading, like it was dying.

He was not sure he breathed at all as he hurried down a slope in the path, not until he came across a briar patch and saw rips of cloth clinging to the thorns. Hades reached out and plucked the largest piece, perhaps a few inches long, from its trap. It was a piece of her silks from that morning - he could not forget, she had looked so lovely in that purple. She had been here, she had gone this way. But the silk was not what had called him. He looked down and saw the dry blood running over the stone's edge below.

Fissures of darkness crept along his skin.

"Persephone!" he yelled for the first time, like the others. He turned around, eyes scanning in every direction, but she was nowhere. His eyes swept back over the briars, bits of dead plant snapped all the way through. He had to remain logical. Her passing through had not been with careful movements. She had been erratic, uncaring that she cut herself. Had she been running from something?

Alarm filled every inch of him. Hades pushed through the briars with as little care as she, snagging his clothes and cutting his arms as he passed through. He could feel her as he did, feel her dying essence smattered in those thorns, the blood that acted his beacon even as it faded, parted from her.

There was another tug from ahead and he pushed forward, unable to see if she had bled into the grass as she walked, but knowing that she had. What else would that fading darkness be? She had left him a trail of blood and he thanked the Fates that they had the bond that they did. He doubted even Hecate would have picked up on her energy, faint as it was.

A few times he had to stop, had to close his eyes and let himself feel which direction she had gone. And as he went, he could feel her. Somewhere in the direction he was going, he could feel Persephone. Not the fading bits of her blood. Her.