Narcissus
The Last Spring
Chapter 1: Narcissus
Spring felt strange today, like it was waiting for something.
Perhaps it was the chill breeze that rolled in, too late for the season - or the way the blue sky above the canopy of mangroves swelled and swayed, casting the lagoon into shadows, then sunshine, then shadows again.
Perhaps it was the absence of her mother—usually close, always watching—that left Persephone feeling strangely exposed.
Chewing on her lip, she cast a casual glance over her shoulder.
Of course, it could simply be that the god in the meadow beyond pretending to be a flower was starting to make her uncomfortable.
An unnatural breeze rolled through the hidden lagoon, smelling both familiar and unfamiliar.
Beside her, Lyra began to sulk again. The half-nymph crossed her blue-hued arms as she floated aimlessly along the water’s surface. “What happens when you marry that bloodthirsty savage and I never see you again?”
The reminder of her sudden betrothal sent a flare of emotions through Persephone’s chest, yet she could not pin-point the exact nature of the feeling.
She turned away from the god-pretending-to-be-a-flower and back towards her friend. “That won’t happen, Lyra. Besides, I’ve never even met him. Perhaps he will stink of rotten eggs and I will decide to end the engagement.”
Lyra snorted in chaotic delight at the thought, but the words tasted like a lie in Persephone’s mouth.
She knew it was her duty to obey. If her mother believed that marrying Ares was the wisest path, then it wasn’t Persephone’s place to question it.
Still, her thoughts drifted to the infamous God of War. She tried to imagine the face of the man she was meant to marry, but all she could summon was the sound of war drums and the smell of blood. Ares, the god of war—her future husband—was a stranger carved from stories, all of them loud and brutal. She had never met him, never even heard his voice, yet soon she would be bound to him. And though she told herself it was excitement, not fear, that coiled tight in her stomach, she wasn’t sure she yet knew the difference when it came to men.
Persephone sighed. The water was cool, and she let herself sink beneath it as if she could dissolve completely into its stillness.
“You’re thinking too loudly again,” Lyra murmured without opening her eyes.
Persephone blinked, caught.
Dragonflies skimmed the surface like tiny boats, and Lyra floated on her back with her hair trailing behind her like a poet’s black ink.
“I wasn’t thinking,” Persephone lied.
Lyra snorted again, the sound half-lost to the ripples. “You always are. Especially when you get quiet like this. Like the whole world is a riddle and only you’re meant to solve it.”
Persephone smiled faintly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin the peace.”
Lyra cracked one eye open, tilting her head just enough to glance over. “Peace?” The word came out bitter. “When has there ever been peace with us, Persephone?”
Persephone let out a soft laugh despite herself. The sound felt strange in her chest—like it had to push through something tight to get out.
She looked toward the meadow.
The flower was still there. Watching.
“How is Lason?”
Lyra straightened in the water, turning her bare back towards Persephone. Her slim fingers found the roots of a mangrove tree and clenched until they turned white. “Still cursed, last I checked.”
Guilt pushed hard against Persephone. Although she herself was not the one who inflicted such cruelty on Lyra’s brother, it was still the work of her own kind. “I meant it, Lyra,” she said softly, “When I marry Ares, I’ll make sure healing Lason is part of my claim. I won’t let your brother die.”
The curse wasn’t loud. It had come without thunder or warning—just a quiet shift, like something had been knocked loose inside Lason that would never settle again. One day he was laughing beside Lyra in the river; the next, he was coughing up blood with shaking hands and hollow eyes. The god who cursed him never showed their face, never gave a reason. Maybe they didn’t need one. Being born of a human and a water nymph was reason enough. Since then, Lyra had been forced to watch her brother fade slowly—held together by stubborn breath and the pieces of magic they shared as children. Even Persephone, daughter of a powerful goddess, had only been able to ease his suffering, not stop it.
Two months later, the curse still clung to him like rot, and Lason was slipping further away.
Lyra was silent for a long time. She didn’t cry anymore—grief had hollowed her out too cleanly, left her with only silence and the sharpness of her own thoughts.
“Olympus houses all the knowledge we could ever want,” Persephone tried again, more hopeful this time. “There has to be a cure for Lason somewhere among all those ancient tombs - I might even be able to learn how to heal him myself. Once I marry Ares, I’ll be able to - ”
“Shut up, you idiot,” Lyra snapped. But when she turned, there was no anger, only grief. “Don’t you understand? I don’t want you anywhere near that place. The gods can’t be trusted; there’s a reason your mother decided to hide you from them until now. They’re cruel and deceiving - all of them.”
Thoughts of The Garden flitted through Persephone’s thoughts; of clear pools of starlight, twisting ceilings of Bougainvillea, the endless dreams she sought to escape into, searching for something - anything - more.
But Persephone frowned. “I’m a god, too, Lyra.”
Her friend growled and waved her hand angrily, as if to shoo the words away.
Persephone’s lip twitched. “Okay, I’m not.”
“You’re different,” Lyra said, exasperated. “You make the flowers grow and sing like a damn bird in the mornings. You’re not like them - beasts taking the form of beauty while hiding wolven fangs and eyes of hellfire.”
Persephone didn’t have a retort to that. She had yet to encounter another god besides her own mother - well, besides the flower behind her.
As if on cue, that strange, foreign scent had caught on the wind again - amber and jasmine.
An ache, almost like a tug, pulled at Persephone’s chest.
She glanced back towards the meadow, where she knew the god still watched.
Strong gusts blew across the fields of grass like great ocean waves, vast and empty and completely ordinary, save for the single yellow flower standing eerily still against the torrent of wind.
The petals shimmered under the midday sun as if dusted in glass.
Beautiful, she thought.
Time slowed and stopped.
A strange thrill swept through her - like stardust rushing beneath her skin - beckoning her forward.
Persephone,
Persephone…
“Persephone?” Lyra’s voice pulled her from the trance. “Are you okay?”
Persephone’s face flushed as she tore her eyes from the flower. “Y-Yes, I’m fine.”
She had heard stories—gods so powerful their presence alone could unravel your senses. But she’d never believed them, not really. Not until now.
Could the figure in the meadow be one of such gods? And if so… why pose as a flower? Did it think to trick her? Or Lyra?
A sudden feeling of unease and anger crept up her spine.
Could it be the very same god? Back to finish what it started?
“Persephone?” There was now concern in that sharp, angled face. “Your face is red. What happened?”
Persephone shook the feeling of stardust from her skin. She supposed Lyra could not sense the god the same way Lason had not sensed the one that cursed him. And perhaps that was for the best - because if Lyra knew what lurked in the distance, she would never allow Persephone to risk what she was about to do.
But do it, she must.
She flipped her autumn-red hair over her shoulder, forcing a casual grin onto her face. “Actually,” she said, “I was just thinking about something funny Lason told me once.”
Lyra ran her fingers through her wet hair with lazy strokes and glanced away uncomfortably. “Oh?”
“Mhm.” Persephone leaned closer as if sharing a secret. “He said he always lets you win. Thought it would hurt your feelings otherwise.”
Lyra’s head snapped around. “He did not say that.”
Quick to bite, as always.
Persephone shrugged, stepping lightly onto the wet bank. “I don’t know… he was half-asleep, but he seemed pretty sure.”
“The fool was trying to impress you,” Lyra scoffed in disbelief. “You can’t trust a word he says.”
“Of course,” Persephone said with mock innocence, walking backwards now, grinning. “That must be it. Still… it would explain a few things.”
Lyra’s jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”
Persephone shrugged. “Don’t worry—I’m sure you’ll prove him wrong. Eventually.”
Lyra sputtered, spinning around in the water, muttering half-formed curses under her breath. A sharp crack echoed through the trees as a nearby branch snapped, splintering under the force of her frustration.
While Lyra channeled her irritation and magic into the surrounding woods, Persephone quietly slipped from the safety of the lagoon, slid her thin, white dress back over her head, and stepped into the meadow beyond.
Dropping the performance, she took a deep breath. Spring tingled at her fingertips. Her mother was meeting with the queen now to discuss her wedding arrangements, but would be back soon. She would have to make her dealings with the god quick.
Wind still rolled through the tall grass like waves on a haunted sea, bending everything in its path—everything but the single yellow flower that stood upright at the center of it all, utterly untouched. Still. Watching.
Persephone took a step forward. Then another.
She clenched her fists at her side until her nails dug into her palm.
The wind howled around her. The grass bowed. The meadow stretched out like a breath held too long.
There was only the hush of her own breath, the pulse of something ancient humming beneath her skin. She did not notice the trail of flowers that grew and died with each drawing footstep.
She wondered who this god was, so insistent on hiding its identity. Would it reveal itself once it knew it had been caught? Make a deal with her to free Lason from his endless torment? She wondered what she had to offer, and if threatening to unleash her future husband on the deviant would be enough.
She neared, and the wind ceased. She stopped before the flower.
It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
Too beautiful.
Its golden petals shimmered with shifting colors she didn’t have names for, like the light was bending just to please it. The stem gleamed with silver-veined green, pulsing faintly, alive. The air around it shimmered, heavy with a scent of amber and jasmine, yes, but… something darker—something ancient.
Persephone could only stare for a moment, heart pounding, frozen in place.
This wasn’t nature, she reminded herself. It was divinity in disguise.
A god, watching her through borrowed beauty.
“Was it you?” Her voice sounded loud and foreign in her own ears. “Are you the one who cursed him?”
The flower didn’t respond.
“Answer me.”
A cooling wind swept by, ruffling the hem of her dress, almost curiously.
Silence.
Fear and reason bled into anger. Her throat tightened, the weight of Lyra’s grief suddenly crashing against her ribs.
“You’re the one who made him suffer, didn’t you? You thought no one would notice - that a half-mortal boy wouldn’t matter.”
Persephone knelt in front of the flower, eye-level now, adrenaline tugging at her chest like a warning.
Persephone,
“I don’t care who you are,” she said, voice low and trembling. “I don’t care if you’re too much of a coward to reveal yourself. But you looked at me, at my friend. You touched her brother. And now I see you.”
Persephone…
Her hand hovered over the bloom—trembling, resisting—then lowered, slow and deliberate -
Persephone…
- until her finger brushed the edge of a petal.
Emptiness.
For a moment, there was only emptiness - no sound, no wind, no body, no thought. Just emptiness, vast and endless, like she’d fallen into the space between stars.
And then, all at once, there was everything.
Wind exploded through the meadow, howling through the grass in violent spirals. Light fractured. The sky pulsed. The ground trembled beneath her feet as if the world had been holding its breath and exhaled all at once.
Persephone yanked her hand back like she’d touched fire, stumbling onto the grass. Her heart thundered. Her fingers burned cold.
The flower hadn’t moved.
And yet… it was burning.
Not really. Not with anything you could point to or see.
But Persephone felt it.
Then a low laugh shook the earth.
“And I see you, daughter of spring,” a cool voice split the endless howling.
Persephone scrambled backwards across the grass, tearing fistfulls of grass from the meadow as she tried to flee the voice.
Screams - someone was screaming her name in the distance. But Persephone couldn’t turn and seek out the familiar voice - not as the ground opened up before her with a great rendering tear, and the shadow of a man appeared.
No, not a man - a god.
He emerged from the tear like a shadow made flesh—tall, impossibly graceful, cloaked in smoke and midnight. Darkness coiled around him lazily, as if the night itself couldn’t bear to let him go. His hair, black as obsidian, moved though there was no wind near him, and his eyes—gods, his eyes—burned with a deep, ancient fire, the kind that didn’t flicker.
It consumed.
Like hellfire.
Each step he took closer was soundless, deliberate, and the earth beneath him seemed to hush in reverence. The kind of stillness that came just before a storm—or surrender.
He stopped mere feet from her cowering form.
“Please.” Her whisper was lost in the roaring of the wind. She began to cry, then.
His eyes followed the tears as they slid down her face, yet his face remained unchanged. Unreadable.
Then his warm hand was on her face, and the world crumbled to dust at her feet, sending her and the stranger into endless darkness and far, far away.
