She reached her hand forward and dropped the coins into his waiting hand. There were only ten of them, enough for five spirits to cross. “It’s not much, but it’s enough for a few.”
He looked down at the coins with wide eyes. Slowly, his mouth dropped open, and he looked back to her with disbelief clouding his gaze. “Where did you get these?”
“I made a bet.” She shrugged. “And I won.”
He peered down at the coins in his hand one more time before grinning like a madman. “You won a bet with Thanatos? Or Hecate?”
Her cheeks burned in embarrassment. “Thanatos.”
“Impressive, my queen. Very, very impressive.” He pocketed the coins and then pointed at the souls behind her. “Who do you choose?”
She wanted to know how to make that decision. Their fates for eternity were resting in her hands, even though she supposed she could try to win a few more bets. Although, now that Thanatos knew what she could do, she had a feeling it wouldn’t be so easy to beat him again.
Sighing, she turned toward the souls that were still waiting on the beach and tried to see into their hearts. Who were they as a person in their lives?
Should she talk to them? Mortals were especially good at lying, so talking to them seemed like the wrong plan. They would tell her whatever she wanted to hear just so they could get onto the ferry boat.
She took a step away from Charon and moved closer to Cerberus. Out of the corner of her mouth, she whispered, “Do you know how to do this part?”
He glanced up at her with an unimpressed look.
Apparently not, then.
Chewing on her lip, she took another deep breath and tried to put herself into the mindset of a goddess. What would her mother have done? But it wasn’t her mother’s power that came to her.
Instead, that darkness deep inside her chest lifted its head. That darkness she was desperately afraid of. The monster she never wanted to become because that power asked her to do horrible, mad things.
It unfurled dark wings in her mind with a sense of confidence. All she had to do was let go, accept that this power was her own, just as she had when the men were desecrating Artemis’s temple. Just like she had when she knew those animals needed to live, and those men needed to be traded for their lives.
Kore released the tense hold she always kept on herself and let the magic flow from her body with a brutal rush that stole her breath and raced through her veins. She could hardly breathe at all, but there it was. The truth.
The power inside her wasn’t just something she could use to kill plants and raise things from the dead. It was a power that had been denied her for her entire life.
Suddenly, the spirits on the shore weren’t just fluttering blue figures made of mist and life. Now, she could see them as they had been in life. The man in the back had been a drunkard who liked to hit his wife. The woman in the front had drowned her baby because she was afraid of what her mother would do when she found out. The child who kept threatening to dunk his toes into the Styx had been killed by a horse when he’d run out into the fields on his own.
Over and over again she saw through their souls and into their past actions. She knew their mistakes. Their hatred. All the things they’d done that would condemn them.
She could weigh their souls by their actions and more. Kore could see through every tiny bit of their soul and into the darkness beyond.
Pointing at five people, she said, “Them.”
But it wasn’t her voice. The words trembled with the power of a goddess enraged. The judgement swept across the shore in a wind that stirred the edges of the spirits. The remaining souls on the shore, the ones she hadn’t chosen, fell onto their knees with their hands raised above their head.
When she turned to look back at Charon, he also had dipped into another bow. Hands held out with the coins at the ready, he murmured, “As you wish, my queen.”
The spirits she’d chosen shuffled forward. She could hear the sound of the wind whipping through the fabric wrapped around their bodies. But it was the little child who paused and reached out his hand for her to take. “Thank you,