This Wicked Fate (This Poison Heart #2)(7)

“Were you able to rest at all?” she asked.

“I—yeah.” It actually felt like my body had completely shut down. I didn’t even remember falling asleep. “What time is it?”

“It’s almost one in the afternoon.”

My heart sputtered. A whole morning gone. “Where is everybody?”

“Marie and Nyx left a little while ago. Marie asked me to tell you she’d be back soon. They had some business to attend to.” Persephone readjusted the table. “I’m clearing out this front room. We thought maybe we could bring in a big table and lay everything out. We’ve done so much work, Briseis. We’ve spent so much time searching for the other pieces already, it might be good for us all to be on the same page.”

“How did the other pieces of the Heart get split up in the first place?” I asked. I needed to put my mind somewhere else, and it seemed like a good place to start. “They were all together at some point, right in the beginning when Medea buried the pieces of her brother.”

Persephone winced.

“I—I’m sorry,” I said quickly, putting my hand on her arm. I had to remind myself that these weren’t just stories. They were a family history—my family history.

Persephone shook her head. “It’s all right. I’m always just a little shaken by the cruelty of what was done to Absyrtus. I’ve seen so much in my life, and still, his death stands among the most violent I’ve ever heard of.”

“It’s awful,” I said. “I hope Jason got what was coming to him.”

“He got to grow old, which feels unfair. But I take comfort knowing he was unhappy and hated by the gods for what he did to Medea. When he was an old man he fell asleep under the mast of the Argo as it rotted away in a shipyard, and it crushed his skull.”

I paused. “Well, damn.”

Persephone smiled like the thought of it was the best thing she’d ever heard of. “I like to imagine he was in agony for some period of time before he actually died.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I’m not entirely sure how all the pieces of the Heart were separated. I know that soon after Medea buried Absyrtus, a piece was taken by a demigod on orders from Jason himself.”

I thought of who in their right mind would or could do something like that. “Who’d he get to do it?”

“You’ve heard of the twelve labors of Hercules?” Persephone asked.

“Um, not really. Is that in the Disney movie?”

Persephone chuckled. “I haven’t seen it. But you’re familiar with Hercules?”

“Yeah.”

“He was given twelve tasks to complete after he killed his wife and children.”

“Hold up,” I said. “He did what now? That’s definitely not in the Disney version.”

Persephone pushed a heavy side table out of the way with her foot like it was nothing. “I can see why they may have left that part out. But yes. He killed his wife and their children and, as punishment, was given twelve impossible tasks, things like slaying the hydra monster or capturing Cerberus, the three-headed beast that guarded the entrance to the underworld.”

“Yikes,” I said.

“When he completed the twelve labors he hopped on a ship and sailed the world. Want to guess what ship it was?”

I already knew. If Jason had given the order it could only be one ship in particular. “The Argo.”

Persephone nodded. “And who was on that ship accompanying her husband as he pursued the Golden Fleece?”

I stared up at Persephone. “Medea.”

“Precisely,” she said. “Hercules had a front row seat to the chaos that ensued, and after everything was done and Absyrtus was dead in the ground, Jason asked him to do something more absurd than anything he’d done before—steal a piece of another demigod’s body from its final resting place.”

I thought I was over being shocked by the history of this family, but I was wrong.

“And he did it?”

“I’m assuming he did,” Persephone said. “I don’t know how. As for the other pieces, I’m not sure how they came to be separated.”

“But you and Circe found two more of them.”

“It took us years,” Persephone said. “It cost us more than we thought it would.”

I looked into her face and saw the same weariness I’d seen in Circe, but magnified a dozen times over.

“There’s only one piece left now, right?” I asked. “After all this time, we only have one more piece to find.”

“The Mother.”

“The Mother? What’s that?”

“Your mom said you all run a flower shop?” Persephone asked as she walked across the hall.

I tagged along behind her. “Yeah, we do.”

“Do you ever take cuttings from plants to seed others?”

I thought for a moment. “Not really. I mean, I do that on my own sometimes. I can make another plant from any part of the original one.”

She nodded and walked back across the hall and scooped up the chaise. “When Absyrtus went into the ground, his heart, his actual heart, still nestled in his chest, was the first to bloom and produce the heart-shaped plant. It seeded the other parts of his body with that magic, giving us the original six pieces. The Mother is the last and most powerful piece. You’ve seen what the piece we kept here could do. Imagine something a hundred times deadlier.”