Hell Is An Empty Heart (Book One of The Triple Moon's Chronicles)

66 | Athena's Past X - Themis

"Why are we squandering our breath?" Athena asked. The bright light danced in her eyes, making Persephone's love the centre of her life. She moved around with that radiance that outshone the armour she had just adorned on her. "Let me weave for you the strongest of the ties to the underworld," she chanted, her arms spreading like the sky opening up for their hope to run wild. There was laughter in her throat and butterflies sailing in the sea of her excitement, but Persephone shut her eyes instead.

She closed the door to this dream when her chin dipped down to her chest. Her frail body curled up in shame as the ropes of guilt strangled her heart tighter. It was with a shaking head and a bit on her lips that she answered "no" to the offered ruse.

Sadness stained Athena, with her eyes now tinted in red over her sudden downturn in expression. She took her sister's hand in hers and led her to sit on the stairs of her temple. Athena brushed away the strands of hair on Persephone's face, but it didn't dry her tears. She then whispered to her, "I can see love when it is presented to me. You felt it when he last kissed you?"

At her words, the absent-minded Persephone descended back into her days in hell. There were mirrored smiles when they fought each other in their many chess games. A reflection that grew to fit into their own curse of infertility. Then there was happiness. The bliss carved in his face in this fleeting moment when they stood together on the top of that cliff to watch the faint sunlight.

Her love shrank at this last image, and screams filled her mind until it burst. She betrayed him while he surrendered himself to her.

"It doesn't matter," Persephone said, as if she wished those words to come from Hades. "It doesn't matter what I feel because he is the evil one who took me." She laughed, gritting the misery in her teeth. "Nothing really matters because if I leave again, Hermes will bring me back, and my mother, she'd—" The last words couldn't come out of her mouth, and it was Athena who reminded her of the good reason.

"Can you blame her?"

Persephone couldn't; Demeter was everything to her. "I don't know what to feel about her lately." She took a new breath in, and it burned all the way to her lungs. "Please allow me to stay here for a while. Just a few heartbeats to think about it all. And please tell me another story about you. Tell me what to dream so I can dream myself out of my own unfortunate state."

Athena smiled in acceptance of the request, and she took Persephone in her arms for a tighter embrace. "What would it be this time?" she asked with a kiss on her sister's head. "Your favourite of all?" She rolled her eyes and revealed, "My failed arranged marriage to this ignorant Hephaestus?"

***

Hephaestus, the son of Hera, had grown, like the beard covering half of his square face. He was now a mature man by his own definition, thus ready to return home. For he who had failed to meet his mother's criteria of male beauty and strength, he had sent to her only attention a gift the most admirable.

A throne like the one she had never received from her husband Zeus, a gilded seat as the perfect portrait of her own vanity, a chair made with invisible fetters.

Hera fell for its charm; her ego was flattered, and she deemed her act right to have pushed this child's endurance. She even found courage in his grateful gesture and was ready to welcome him back by her side. Hera sat on the throne, where the revealed shackles bound her to it.

The trapped Hera could no longer go back to Mount Olympus, and her absence grew suspicious.

Conspiracies about the missing Metis resurfaced again, and Zeus finally came to the aid of his wife to end all the calamities. Like for Demeter, he sent his messengers at first to Hephaestus; they had to give him anything for him to release the Queen of all the Gods, but he refused.