This Wicked Fate (This Poison Heart #2)(66)

“Who is she?” I asked.

Persephone shrugged. “I don’t know.”

The ship glided into the cove, and Persephone dropped the anchor and secured the sails. “I’ll take the dinghy to shore first. Stay here until I get back.”

“What?” Circe said. “No. I’m going with you.”

“No,” Persephone said firmly. There wouldn’t be any further discussion. Persephone went to the side of the ship and lowered the dinghy into the water, then descended the ladder and rowed to shore.

Marie joined me at the rail and tossed a blanket around me. She handed me my glasses and I slipped them back on.

“Thanks,” I said. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. “I’m so sorry. My headphones came off and it was like I didn’t have control of myself. All I wanted to do was go into the water.”

“The same thing happened to me. I guess the stories were true. Siren songs are no joke.”

“Mermaids are not to be messed with,” Marie said softly. She turned to me. “You saved me.”

“I couldn’t let these mer-hos just take you away,” I said. “I don’t wanna have to tell people you left me for a fish.”

Marie smiled and held my hand to her lips, kissing it gently and pulling me close. We watched as Persephone made the short trip to shore. Circe crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot anxiously.

Persephone allowed the dinghy to come to rest on the shore. As she got out and approached the woman, she stopped in her tracks, her entire body rigid. It could only have been in response to the woman’s immense height. Persephone herself was tall, but like Hecate, like Hermes, like the Fates, this woman towered over her by what I guessed was at least two feet.

“What is happening?” Circe mumbled.

Persephone and the woman spoke for several minutes, then Persephone motioned to the ship. The woman glanced toward us and nodded. Persephone got in the small boat and rowed back to us.

“Come on,” she called from the bottom of the ladder. “Leave our belongings. We’ll come back out for them.”

We climbed down and piled into the boat. Persephone rowed us to shore without saying a word. As we reached the shore and climbed out the woman approached us and extended her hand to me. I hesitantly allowed her to help me out of the dinghy. My hand looked comically small tucked inside hers, and she didn’t help me out as much as she lifted me like a baby doll and set me in the sand. After I was out, she pulled the dinghy onto the shore in one smooth motion, like it was made of paper.

We stood in front of her, and as I stared into her face I knew she was not mortal. She was not like me or Circe, but she was not like Marie or Persephone either. Her golden brown skin glowed from within. Her hair was black as the night sky, and her eyes … her eyes were the color of fall, all shades of brown and gold at once. She wore a gown that dusted the ground at her feet, its hem singed. She held a stringed instrument, like a small harp, in her left hand.

“How did you get the sirens to leave us alone?” I asked.

The woman sighed. “They cannot stand the sound of music more beautiful than their own.” She plucked at the strings of the instrument. “They have forgotten who they were before. Forgive them.”

I wouldn’t be doing that, but I wasn’t gonna say that to her.

“I was asked to make sure you arrived safely,” said the woman. “But I’m afraid I can offer no further assistance.”

Circe glanced at Persephone.

“Hecate asked her to come,” Persephone said. “She possesses Orpheus’s lyre. The only thing that can keep the sirens at bay.”

Circe’s mouth fell open. Marie took a step back. I stared at the instrument she held.

“Hecate is the mother of us all, in a way,” said the woman. “Not as literally as it applies to your family, but she is the oldest among us to still exist. I owe her an incalculable debt. When I was taken she was the first to know. No one is free from her watchful eye, not even Hades himself.”

Hades.

Another name I had become all too familiar with.

“You—you’re—I can’t believe it,” Circe stammered.

Circe, who was normally so sure of herself, was at a complete loss.

Now was not the time to remind everyone, once again, that I wasn’t up to speed on the relevant mythology, but I felt like I should’ve known who this woman was supposed to be. Marie pressed her mouth to my ear and murmured the answer.

“Persephone.”

Not our Persephone, but the original Persephone. Her story was one I was familiar with. She was the woman who’d become the object of Hades’s obsession, the woman he’d kidnapped and kept in the underworld for half the year.

She smiled and set the lyre in the sand. “Come. Make your camp on the beach.”

“We can’t,” I said. “We have to keep moving. There are other people coming here. They’ll go after the Heart and we have to get to it first. We can’t stop.”

“They made landfall on the other side of the island,” the woman said.

My heart sank into the pit of my stomach. They were already so far ahead of us. Did they already have the last piece? Was that possible?

“They landed on the other side of the island?” Marie asked. “Are there sirens over there, too?”