Macaria's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Macaria had lived her whole life beneath the ground, and she wanted out. Tonight she meant to ask the one question no one in the underworld would answer. She stood at the edge of her mother's garden, inside the black stone walls of Gloomspire Castle. Flowers and small skulls hung from the hem of her silver gown. Her pale green eyes fixed on the woman kneeling in the soil. Getting here had cost her. In the halls above, her sister Melinoe walked the shadows, dragging cold nightmares behind her. Macaria had waited until Melinoe's whispers faded down a far corridor. Then she slipped past the throne room, where her father Hades sat with his silent men. She did not want either of them to hear this. Her mother did not look up. Persephone pressed a pale seed into dark earth. Even here, where no sun reached, flowers opened at her touch. Her flower crown had wilted at the edges. She always looked half-asleep in this place. "Mother," Macaria said. "What is love like? The kind you can choose." Persephone's hands stopped moving. For a long moment she said nothing. "Why do you ask that here?" she said quietly. "Because I feel like you." Macaria knelt beside her. "Not like Father. Not like Melinoe. She loves the dark. I don't. I want the world you came from. I want to feel warm." Persephone finally turned. Her eyes were wet. "The world above is bright and cruel and beautiful," she said. "There are people who choose each other, freely. No one dragged them. No one traded them." Her voice caught. "I never had that choice. Your father took me. I learned to love him and this place because that was my only choice." "Then help me have the choice," Macaria said. Behind them, a door groaned open. Torchlight spilled across the flowers. Hades stood in the archway, his black cape brushing the ground, the silver skulls catching the light. His amber eyes moved from wife to daughter. "You should be at practice with your sister," he said. His voice was low and old as stone. Macaria stood. Her heart pounded, but she did not step back. "I want to see the living world, Father. I want to walk where the sun is." Hades studied her for a long time. Something in his face shifted, softened. He looked at Persephone, then back at his daughter. "You are your mother's child," he said. "I feared this day." He drew a slow breath. "For six months of the year, she leaves me and rises to spring. When she goes next, you will go with her." Macaria's breath left her. She ran to her father and hugged him tight. It was permission. It was a door thrown open. In a couple weeks time Macaria would roam the living world with her mother. She could still practice her powers there if she wanted but for now she just wanted to feel the warm sunlight she only read about in books.