Kore had thought coming here would mean she wasn’t the flower maiden anymore. She was wife to the King of the Underworld, the man whom everyone feared. Instead, she was just the same as she was before. Still weak. Still viewed as a pawn.
“Done,” she muttered. “I’m so done living like this.”
The only unfortunate truth was that she didn’t know how to change. She was just the daughter of Demeter, a harvest goddess who was extremely powerful, but nothing in comparison to Zeus. And her mother wouldn’t talk to Kore when she was down here, she was certain of it.
Kore froze. Did Demeter even know her daughter was in the Underworld?
Probably not. It wasn’t like Kore had left a note, and Hades hadn’t told her mother or he never would have gotten her down here.
Groaning, she slapped a hand to her forehead. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she muttered.
And all she wanted was for her mother to be in the same room and give her some form of guidance. She wanted Demeter to give her a hug that only mothers could do, and maybe a few words of encouragement. Marriage was hard. Having a husband was hard.
But Demeter had never been married. She knew nothing about that part of life.
An idea bloomed.
Maybe Demeter wouldn’t know about marriage, but Demeter wasn’t the only female family Kore had. At least, not now that she was in the Underworld.
“No,” she muttered, shaking her head and denying herself even the thought of such a crazy plan.
She should talk with Hades, ask if the claims made by what was clearly one of his exes were true. And that would be that. He’d tell her the truth, and then she would know for sure. But she couldn’t do it, no matter how much she knew that was the right thing to do. Talking to Hades about something like this made her stomach heave.
If she tried her other plan though, there was no coming back from it. Her grandmother was one of the Titans. One of the terrifying creatures who had nearly destroyed the entire world when the Olympians rose against them.
Demeter would never talk about her grandmother. Even though Kore had asked a thousand times to hear something about Rhea, there wasn’t a chance she’d ever get a single story. The other Olympians spoke about their monstrous mother, though.
She’d once heard Artemis claim that Rhea was larger than a mountain. That her mouth split from ear to ear, because she was just like Cronus. The splitting maw of her mouth would devour anything that came near it. Other than her own children. Such food was for her husband to consume.
Kore always had a hard time believing those stories. And she was desperate enough to find out if they were true.
She opened her door slowly, peeking out into the hallway while holding her breath. No one wandered through the stone halls. No one would see her if she snuck out.
Perhaps she should have found it strange that no guards were watching over her. The new queen obviously would have some enemies, and she’d already found at least two of them.
With that thought, Kore raced back into her room and grabbed the plain himation Hades had given her when they first wandered through the Underworld. The one he claimed would make her look like any other soul here.
“Perfect,” she muttered. Throwing it over her shoulders, she fled the castle and out into the dark sands.
She’d bypass Charon. Hades had shown her there was a path for the gods alone that would guide her away from the rivers and let her pass over them without being affected by any of their poisons. Her feet slapped across the wet sand and through the frigid waters that tugged her in every direction.
Each river whispered for her to get closer to them. But the one that called her the most was Cocytus, the river of wailing and sorrow.
Frowning, she shook her head in denial. “I will not come and visit you today.”
“But you’re in pain,” it seemed to reply. “Come and shed your tears by my shore.”
A terrible idea. She would end up there for all eternity and then where would she be? No, Kore needed to do this on her own. She needed to get clarification from the only woman who had suffered through a marriage in her entire family.
Once across the river, she made her way toward the gates of Tartarus. The opening was a skeletal mouth propped open, as Tartarus