“How many visions have you had?” said Persephone, and the sticks burst into f lame. James crouched on the ground a few feet away, and through the f ire I could see shadows in the deep lines etched into his face, making him appear years older than he was supposed to look.
I shrugged. “Three, I think. All to the same place.”
“Have you been able to control them yet?” she said, and I shook my head. “Do they happen at regular intervals?”
“No.” I stared down at my hands, unable to stomach watching James. “Did you ever sleep with Henry?” Persephone didn’t say anything for a moment, and when I glanced at her, her face looked oddly contorted in the firelight.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to answer.” Our eyes met for a fraction of a second, and she straightened, her expression smoothing out. “Have you?” I nodded. “Once, in March. It’s October now,” I added.
“I think.”
Persephone tugged on one of her blond curls and sighed.
“I used to be able to tell. Even after I died, my hair changed colors with the seasons, but after a while it stopped.” She smiled faintly. “It’s stuck on summer now.” That explained why her hair had been a different color in Henry’s ref lection. “What—what season did it turn strawberry-blond?” I said.
“Fall,” she said. “It grew redder with the autumn, and in the dead of winter, it was black. It lightened into brown in the spring.”
Of course. James had explained to me that a ref lection wasn’t an accurate depiction of what had happened. It was whatever the creator wanted. And what Henry wanted was for Persephone to be smiling when she saw him each fall.
“I didn’t mean to sleep with him,” I said, and I paused.
“That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Part of the test was lust, and Henry had me so well-protected that Calliope didn’t have the chance to kill me, so instead she sabotaged the test by giving us an aphrodisiac.”
Persephone clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “You’ve certainly had it rough, haven’t you?”
“What do you mean?” I said warily. Was she being sar-castic?
“Well, I assume you love him,” she said, and I nodded.
“It’s good you’re there for him. He deserves to have someone who loves him.” She hesitated and said reluctantly, as if she were admitting some deep, dark secret, “I worry about him sometimes. It’s terrible that the one time you’ve been with him had to be because of an aphrodisiac.” She glared at Ava. “Aphrodite ruins everything.”
“It wasn’t me,” said Ava, her eyes wide. “I wasn’t even there.”
“It’s named after you.”
I started to retort, but Ava huffed and remained silent.
After a moment, Persephone gestured at her dismissively.
“Regardless, with what you said earlier about Mother only having you because of me, and then all of this—well, I would imagine it isn’t easy. So you have my sympathies.” I didn’t know what to say to that. Maybe after an entire day of bickering with Ava, she was all argued out. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me.”
“Don’t expect me to keep it up,” she said with a snort.
“To answer your question, yes. Once.”
It took me a moment to f igure out what question she was talking about, and when I did, my mouth opened, but no sound came out. So Calliope had been wrong after all.
Even though I’d known Persephone and Henry had been married, it was a punch to the gut to hear that I hadn’t been Henry’s only. The last thing I had that I didn’t have to share with her evaporated. Once again, Persephone had gotten there f irst, and all I had were her leftovers.
“It was awful,” said Persephone. Her hand lingered between us, as if she could sense how upset I was, but she dropped it back in her lap. “It was our wedding night, and we didn’t talk about it. It just—happened. It was expected, and both of us were too shy to ask the other if we wanted it. We both assumed.”
I was silent. I didn’t want to think about how badly things would have gone for Henry and me if there hadn’t been that spark between us. His guilt and anger had been bad enough the morning after.
Ava tactfully moved to the other side of the f ire, taking a seat beside James. They bowed their heads together, and the soft sound of their conversation wafted toward us, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.
“When we—” I cleared my throat. “I would’ve waited if I’d had the choice. But I didn’t not want to. That was the point I realized I loved him, and—for what it was, it was nice. It was really nice.”
“Good,” said Persephone distantly, staring into the f ire.
“Hades deserves that. He deserves you.”
I shook my head. It didn’t matter what Henry deserved; what mattered was who Henry wanted, and so far that didn’t seem to be me. “It was the morning after that was so terrible. When Henry realized what had happened, he freaked out. Panicked,” I amended at Persephone’s confused look. “He apologized and took off, and that was the last I saw of him for days. The only reason he came back was because Calliope killed me, and he went to the Underworld to get me.”
Persephone grimaced, and she said in a small voice, “No, it isn’t.”
“No, what isn’t?” I said.