Chapter 1

Before dusk, my husband Hades and our son Eren appeared on the social feed.

By nightfall, the post had spread through every hall of Olympus and every shadow of the Underworld.

The post claimed that Hades, lord of the dead, had taken a flower spirit as his lover, and that they were raising a five-year-old son together.

The picture under the headline showed Hades standing beside Eren. A woman leaned close to them, smiling softly as she smoothed my son’s hair.

The boy was Eren, the child I had nearly given up half my life force to bring into the world.

The woman was not me.

I was Persephone, goddess of spring, queen of the Underworld, and Hades’s wife under every sacred law.

Not long after, Nympha posted her own update on the social feed.

In the illustration, my mother’s pomegranate brooch lay beside a small charm of laurel and asphodel, clumsily woven by a child’s hands. Beneath it, she wrote:

Thank you, Lord Hades and sweet Eren, for the blessing gift after my return from the Temple of Asclepius. Eren made the charm himself.

A small card lay beside the charm, written in Eren’s uneven handwriting:
For my gentle mother, Nympha. Get well soon.

I recognized the brooch at once.

It was the brooch my mother had given me when I married Hades.

Now it rested beside Nympha’s gift.

Just then, my phone buzzed with an anonymous text.

Happy birthday, Lady Persephone. Hades gave me your brooch, and Eren made me a gift with his own hands. They are both with me tonight instead of you. Please do not be angry. After all, I am dying.

I looked down at the dining table. The cake had gone untouched. The candles had burned halfway down. The wine prepared for our fifth wedding anniversary had turned cold in its glass.

No one remembered.

They remembered only that Nympha had returned from the healing temple.

I sat alone in the dark hall until the obsidian doors finally opened.

Hades came in with Eren. He lit the lamps with a flick of his hand and paused when he saw me.

“Why are you sitting in the dark?” he asked. “Why haven’t you gone to bed?”

I said nothing.

His brows tightened, as if he expected another argument. He turned to Eren.

“Go to your chamber first.”

Eren yawned, but when he passed me, he stopped and looked up with eyes so like Hades’s that they once used to soften my heart.

“Happy birthday, Mother,” he said. “Father and I didn’t mean to forget.”

Then he added, “You won’t be angry because we stayed with Nympha for a little while, will you? You are the goddess of spring. You will have many more birthdays. Nympha only has six months left.”

I looked at him and said nothing, not because I had no answer, but because I had already heard enough.

Hades had said almost the same thing half a year ago.

Back then, he told me Nympha had been struck by a withering curse. The healers said she had only one year before her body faded. She had never known the warmth of family, he said, and wanted to feel it once before death took her.

“Persephone,” he said then, “we have eternity. She is dying. Can you not spare her this?”

So I gave in once, because I still believed my family would know where to stop.

After that, they gave away pieces of my life one by one. My ceremonial robes, my garden walks, my evenings with Eren, and finally even my mother’s brooch were offered to Nympha as if they were small comforts I should surrender without complaint.

At first, I tried to object. Each time I opened my mouth, Eren spoke before Hades could.

“Mother, didn’t you teach me to be merciful? Nympha is dying. Why do you always make things hard for her?”

Slowly, I stopped asking for anything from people who had already decided I should be the one to sacrifice.

Then one night, I heard Eren speaking to Hades outside my room.

“Nympha is so gentle,” my son said. “So graceful. I wish Mother could be more like her.”

Hades laughed softly.

“Your mother is strict because she wants what is best for you. But if you like Nympha so much, I can let her stand beside you at the family altar. She can bless you like a second mother.”

I stood behind the door until the last warmth in my chest went cold.

Then I closed it quietly.

Today would be the last birthday I spent with them.

From the moment I heard that conversation, I had already decided to leave.

After tomorrow, I would return to my spring realm.