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PART I

“Fate's arrohen expected, travels slow”

? Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

CHAPTER I - A TOUCH OF DOUBT

Persephone walked along the bank of the river Styx Jagged waves broke the dark surface and her skin tightened as she recalled her first visit to the Underworld She’d attempted to traverse the wide body of water, unaware of the dead inhabiting the depths below They’d taken her under, their fleshless fingers cutting into her skin, their wish to destroy life provoking their attack

She thought she would drown—and then Hermes had come to her rescue

Hades had not been pleased about any of it, but he’d taken her to his palace and healed her wounds Later, she would learn the dead in the river were ancient corpses who had come to the Underworld without coin to pay Charon’s toll Sentenced to an eternity in the river, they were just one of many ways Hades protected the borders of his real ished to enter and the dead ished to escape

Despite Persephone’s unease near the ay, the landscape was beautiful The Styx stretched forto a horizon shadowed by sableits banks, ignited like white fire against the dark surface Opposite thelike the jagged edges of his obsidian crown

Yuri, a young soul with a thickcurls and olive skin, walked beside her She wore pink robes and leather sandals—an enseainst the shadowy mountains and black water The soul and Persephone had becoether in the Asphodel Valley but today, Persephone had convinced Yuri to stray from their usual path

She glanced at her coh hers, and asked, “How long have you been here, Yuri?”

Persephone guessed that the soul had been in the Underworld for a while based on the traditional peplos she wore

Yuri’s delicate brows drew together over her grey eyes “I do not know A long time”

“Do you remember what the Underworld was like when you arrived?”

Persephone had a lot of questions about the Underworld from antiquity—it was that version that still had its claws in Hades, that version which made him feel ashamed, that version which made him feel unworthy of his peoples’ worship and praise

“Yes I don’t know that I’ll ever forget” She offered an aard laugh “It was not as it is now”

“Tellcurious about Hades’ past and the history of the Underworld, she couldn’t deny that part of her feared uncovering the truth

What if she didn’t like what she found?

“The Underworld was…bleak There was nothing We were all colorless and crowded There were no days and no nights, just a rey and we existed in it”

So, they really had been shades—shadows of themselves