Persephone screamed. She hated Hades with all her might, loathed her with all the passion that Kronos felt toward Zeus. Anyone would have run, in her position. What right did Hades have to take her from her home, deny her the earth and then punish her for trying to leave? It wasn’t fair!

“Five.”

She shouldn’t have run. Hades had warned her, and she’d not listened. She hadn’t listened to Demeter, either. If she’d been good, if she’d been quiet, she would still be home, and all of this would be a bad dream. Her mother would still love her—

“Six.”

“Please stop,” Persephone cried, her speech filled with tears, her voice a broken thing. “I can’t. Please.”

She was still crying when Hades went to her and placed her palm on her cheek, turning Persephone to face her. Through her tears, Hades’ outline shimmered. She blinked them away.

“You will survive, dear one,” Hades said. “You are stronger than this.” Hades placed a kiss in the middle of her forehead. The pressure of her lips burned rather than soothed.

Persephone rested her cheek against the willow tree. The beetle had long gone, having reached greater heights than her eyes could follow. Never before had she felt so alone.

“Seven.”

Persephone continued to cry, not making any effort to stop her tears, or her screams. She was becoming less a person and more a mass of throbbing, burning pain, a flame consuming itself. A bead of liquid slid down the hollow of her spine; sweat, or ichor. She wasn’t sure.

“Eight.”

“Please,” she sobbed in a chant. “Please, please, please...”

“Nine.”

Theseus and Pirithous had to be hurting much worse than this by now. How was that fair? How was any of this fair? Death was no release from suffering. Was that the rule the gods had to uphold? Was that justice?

“Ten.”

Ninety more to go. She couldn’t. She would faint, surely. If she were mortal, it could have killed her.

Through her tears and congestion, it was getting harder to breathe. She gulped down mouthfuls of air, her nails digging into the bark of the tree. Sap ran over her fingers, pale and sticky.

“Eleven.”

She stopped listening to Xenia. She didn’t want to know. There was no beginning and no end anymore, only this vast sea of pain, burning and relentless. She could not swim.

The ache in her arms was nothing compared to the fire on her back, but her shoulders still tingled with the strain of it. Her wrists chafed against their bonds, and her head throbbed. She wanted to throw up.

At some point, Hades paused. Xenia came forward with a cool cloth, pressing it against Persephone’s forehead.

“It’s all right, dear,” Xenia said. “You’re doing fine.”

She was not fine. She might never be fine again.