Page 37 of A Kingdom of Wild and Power
Alina raised her staff once more, and magic tore through the air. Flesh exploded away from her in violent bursts, raining down as she forced her way free.
She stepped out of the sandwyrm’s corpse, grip locked tight around both staff and desert dagger.
Her brown eyes were narrowed with a hunger Dawn had never seen before, not even in Hagan.
A hunger to survive.
To avenge.
To claim power.
Kai and Dawn could only watch as Alina emerged fully from the creature’s ruined body, blood trailing behind her. She took two unsteady steps before collapsing to her knees, breath tearing in and out of her chest.
She looked up at them, chest heaving, dragging a hand across her face only to smear it with more blood and filth.
And then she laughed.
Kai rushed towards her at once. Dawn did not move. She stood frozen, eyes wide, staring at the woman before her, the woman she had thought she knew. Perhaps she once had.
But this was no longer the Fire Princess.
This was something else entirely.
Something forged in teeth and darkness.
Something dangerous.
Dawn swallowed, unease tightening her throat, as Kai knelt beside Alina, gripping her shoulders and checking her forwounds. Alina remained on her knees, laughing softly, staring at nothing at all, as though some unseen door had opened inside her,and there was no closing it again.
I think Persephone was never able to come to terms with the truth that Hades had only ever truly loved one child: his daughter, Melinoe. That Zagreus and Makaria were, in his eyes, something lesser… or perhaps nothing at all. She could have endured his indifference towards herself. That kind of absence, though painful, is survivable. But his failure to love their children? That was something far more devastating.
It broke her.
And I think that fracture twisted into something darker over time. Into resentment. Into bitterness. Into hatred. Hatred for the one child who had been given everything the others were denied. Hatred for Melinoe.
I think that is why she turned against her. Why she stood beside me, and helped me try to destroy her.
Tabitha Wysteria
Kage had grown almost accustomed to life in hiding within Tartarus, to the strange rhythm of his days spent alongside Zagreus, guiding souls back to safety or escorting them down into the deeper pits of Hell. Wren would lie or sit nearby, watching them with a quiet serenity in her blue eyes, as though she understood truths neither of them yet grasped. Kage passed the hours wondering when Mal might come for him, and as time stretched on, that wondering slowly curdled into doubt. Perhaps she had forgotten him. Perhaps she no longer cared.
Whenever such thoughts crept in, Kage scolded himself without mercy.
Mal would never forget him. He only needed patience.
He had once believed that death would strip a soul of its fears and frailties. Instead, he discovered it changed very little. He was still Kage Blackburn, burdened by the same worries, the same quiet insecurities. Death had not remade him at all.
‘You’re overthinking again,’ Zagreus remarked dryly as Kage followed him down the long corridor lined with cells.
Kage’s eyes narrowed slightly.
Zagreus smirked. ‘You may believe yourself difficult to read, but you’re really not.’
Kage answered him with a dismissive snort, though the words lingered longer than he cared to admit.
They halted before one of the cells. Kage’s attention settled on the young woman inside, crouched against the stone, far enough from the lava wall at the back to cling to the illusion of safety. The instant she noticed Zagreus and Kage, her eyes flew wide and a thin whimper slipped from her throat.
‘You have been sentenced,’ Zagreus recited from the scroll in his hand, his tone laced with boredom, ‘to Hell.’
