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on me,
could there? But going back on my deal with Erebos . . .
    Finally, I left the tree line and walked up to
the back of the house, ready to go in the back door and put all the
nightmares out of my mind. Reaching for the doorknob, I looked in
the back window and stopped.
    Mom.
    She was sitting at the dining table with Daddy,
crying as he rubbed her back with one hand and held her hand with
the other. A coffee mug sat in front of her, some of her tears
falling into it as her shoulders shook. Daddy was muttering
something to her, placing kisses on her forehead after every few
words.
    Shocked, I turned and headed back into the
woods, my head spinning with the image of my parent’s apparent
making up.
    “My mom is here,” I said as soon as Erebos was
back in my sight. “Did you do that?”
    “Not directly,” he said from the spot I’d left
him in. “But she is here because of my actions, yes.”
    “I thought you were going to make her pay? I
don’t understand what’s happening.”
    “I removed the darkness from her that was
causing her drinking problem,” he said smoothly, still playing with
the ring in his hand. “She now feels the pain and suffering of
knowing that she destroyed her family. She left the only man who
ever really loved her. She acted terribly as a mother. She let
herself be overcome by a drink. Trust me, she feels pain. She knows
the suffering you wished for her to discover.”
    “You did your part of the deal,” I said slowly,
closing my eyes briefly as a sick feeling overcame me. “I can’t
back out of mine.”
    “That’s what I was hoping you would say,” he
said, his gaze finally turning to me, the sick smile contorting his
features.
    He stood up and held a hand out to me,
beckoning for me to come closer. I did as he asked, a knot growing
ever larger in my stomach.
    “This ring,” he said, sliding it onto my
finger. “It will cast the image of Persephone over you as soon as
we have entered into the Underworld. To everyone there, you will
appear as the goddess.”
    “Will it fool Hades?” I asked nervously. “I
mean, he was married to her. Won’t he recognize the differences,
like I did with my copy?”
    “That is the joy of it being Persephone,” he
said gleefully. “She hated Hades, therefore her darkest self was
always displayed to him. You will look just as she always
did.”
    I nodded, gulping down a few quick breaths as
he released my hand after examining the ring once more.
    “Do not break the stone,” he warned. “You will
have no cover if that happens. I will not come to save
you.”
    “What am I supposed to do while I’m there?” I
asked, my feet automatically following him as he began to leave our
spot and head further into the woods.
    “I need you to find something for me,” he said
over his shoulder. “Because of my current, uh, status, I am not
free to wander around looking for it myself.”
    “What is it?” I sped up my pace as we entered a
part of the woods I hadn’t ever really explored.
    “A helmet.”
    “Hades helmet?”
    “Of course.”
    “I read about that online,” I said, happy to
finally know something again. “It makes the wearer invisible,
doesn’t it? And it creates fear, or something like
that.”
    “Just a few of the things it can do,” he said,
turning sharply and heading towards a small hill.
    “Why do you need it?”
    “That is my business.”
    Silence fell between us and we moved through
the foliage and came upon the hill.
    “This is where we part ways,” he said, turning
towards me finally.
    “It is?”
    I looked around in confusion. For some reason,
I’d been expecting some grand spectacle, big black gates, a winged
guard, something. But everything looked exactly the same, nothing
special about the place at all.
    “Listen very carefully,” he said seriously.
“You have until the end of winter to find the helmet, no longer.
The Underworld is a massive place, take care to not get lost. I
would hate for all of my