Chapter 5
Disclaimer: I do not own the PJ or HoO series by Rick Riodan.
"I just want you to know, I'm not doing this to hurt you. I would never hurt you. She's just not the person I married and loved anymore." he says, sadly.
"Please don't leave me here. Don't leave me here with her." I whisper, tears pricking my eyes.
"Ky. Ky, wake up." he says.
I look at him, confused.
He walks over and starts shaking me by the shoulders.
I sit up with a start, smacking my head against something hard. I moan and clutch my forehead, squinting my eyes open.
I stare across from me to see Nico doing pretty much the same thing.
"Good morning." Nico grumbles, rubbing his forehead.
"Sorry." I say, shrugging.
"Ready for breakfast?" he asks, getting off the bed.
"Um, I can't eat the food here, remember?" I ask.
"It's okay. As soon as Persephone heard you were here, she made sure that all the food was regular mortal food." he says, grinning.
"Well, let me change and I'll be ready." I say, looking down at my rumpled clothes from yesterday.
"Take all the time you need." he says, leaning back into a chair.
As we walk down the hallway, a thought crashes into my mind. I turn to Nico and ask, "Why is Persephone here? Shouldn't she be with Demeter?"
"You know that crisis my dad called me down here for?" Nico asks.
"Yea." I say.
"Well, apparently Persephone misplaced her crown but she had thought it had been stolen. So she was practically tearing up the Underworld when I got here to help look for it." he says, rolling his eyes.
"Did you find it?" I ask.
"Yea. She had been gardening before she left for the summer and had taken it off and hung it on a pomegranate tree branch." he says.
"So, if you found it, why is she still here?" I ask.
We had reached the foyer and didn't have much more time to talk about the subject.
"When she heard you were here, she insisted on staying a few more days." he says, grinning.
"Joy." I say, the one word packed with sarcasm.
"Kyra! Oh, it's so nice to meet you!" Persephone says, wrapping me in a suffocating hug.
I awkwardly hug her back. This was not something I had expected. I had expected a stuck up goddess who thought she could do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted. Especially after what Nico told me of her freak-out about her crown. Not a nice hug-giver who greeted me with a ton of warmth.
She was dressed like any other mortal, a frilly white blouse and dark skinny jeans. But she definitely didn't look like your average mortal. Her skin was tanned to perfection and her eyes were a warm brown. She had one of those cute button noses and prominent cheek bones. Supermodels would be jealous of her lips. They were full and pink. Her hair cascaded down her shoulders in perfect chocolaty ringlets.
Nico and I had just walked into the dining room. The walls were painted a shimmery yellow color, not quite dark enough to be gold but not quite light enough to be yellow. The floor looked like it was made of gray shale.
"It's good to see you again, Kyra." Hades says, sitting at the head of the table.
"As to you, Lord Hades." I say, smiling.
"Sit, please." Persephone says, gesturing to the chairs.
Nico and I sit down next to each other and Persephone takes the other head of the table, across from Hades.
"So what brings you here?" Persephone asks.
I glance at Nico and Hades and see both of them were staring daggers at Persephone. I guess Nico had talked to his dad about why we had showed up here at about two o'clock this morning.
"I couldn't stand being with my mother any longer." I say, shrugging my shoulders.
"What did your mother do?" she asks, a spark of interest in her brown eyes.
"She became a drunkard." I say, a bitter taste welling in my mouth.
"I see." she says, looking at me carefully.
"Ahem." Hades says, turning everyone's attention towards him.
"Shall we eat?" he asks.
He claps his hands and three skeletal servants come from the kitchen carrying giant, covered, silver platters. They set them down onto the table and lift the lids.
My mouth starts watering at what I see. On the first platter was a ginormous mound of bacon, the second, stacks upon stacks of perfectly light brown pancakes, and the third, a fruit salad with strawberries, blueberries, oranges, bananas, and all the other kinds fruit you can imagine.
Nico's the first to plunge into the food. He forks five pancakes, ten pieces on bacon, and three heaping spoonfuls of fruit onto his plate. We all ogle at him as he commences to shovel the food into his mouth, most of it dripping in maple syrup.
"What?" he asks, with a full mouth, looking at us innocently.
Hades shakes his head but I catch a small smile flicker across his lips. I take two pancakes, a few pieces of bacon, and a spoonful of fruit onto my plate. I pick up the maple syrup and drench my pancakes in the sticky, amber colored, liquid.
As I'm returning the syrup back to it's place, I happen to glance down at my left arm. There were several, angry red, lines covering the inside of my arm.
I nearly drop the syrup. I sit back down in my chair, stiffly, and look at my plate, my appetite suddenly gone. I regret putting those ugly marks on my arms. I regretted it so much that it hurt to even think about them.
I try to push it aside, picking up my fork and stabbing a strawberry. I wasn't going to let this get to me. It had been a one-time thing and I had only done it because I had been on the brink of insanity at that particular moment. This wasn't going to be a problem and I was going to get through it.
A/N:
I was felling generous and decided to give you guys another chapter! Kyra is one tough cookie, don't ya think? What did you guys think about Persephone? I need to read the series again because the unforgivable is happening... I'm forgetting bits and pieces of the books! Not good!
So you guys know all about those two brothers that take pottery classes with me? Well, they were really nice today, no insults whatsoever! And you wouldn't believe what happened! The older one, he likes PJ too! I was practically freaking out. What's weird though, Mo is molded after this guy! And I had made up Mo's character before I'd even met him. They're really similar... It's weird.
XOXO,
Mrs-diAngelo25
P.S.
Thanks for the reviews! They make me soooooo happy! :)