Unborn Read Online Free PDF Page B

fertile earth, enjoying spring and summer. When her time is up, she is brought to Father and I am ejected into the death and cold of fall and winter. Demeter’s sadness causes the change in the weather. I would watch as she wept and wallowed, her depression shaping and fueling the harshness of those seasons. She does nothing but pine for the day that the daughter she lost to Hades can once again return home.
    “Her life would be intolerable without those six months she shares with Persephone. She would not risk losing them. Demeter is many things, but careless she is not. Had Hades not agreed to take me in trade for his beloved Persephone, I do not know what she would be like now.”
    “So she leveraged you for Persephone . . .” Drew said, his mind clearly working to put the pieces of the puzzle together. “How could we not have known this? Persephone is a wretched being who loves nothing more than to gossip and meddle. How has she not spread this information? Even if she didn’t know who you were, she would surely say why she was let out,” he contemplated aloud. “It was long thought that Hades eventually saw her for what she was and wanted to be rid of her, but Zeus would not allow it. He made him keep her, the concession being that Hades could be rid of her for half the year.”
    “She is unable to say anything. That is why you do not know the truth,” I replied simply. “She is bound by whatever agreement was made. If she breathes a word about it to anyone, it is forfeit and she is relegated to the Underw amo the Uorld forever.”
    “Then how is it that you can speak so freely of it?”
    “I am not bound by it as she is. As Father explained to me, it was not a condition put forth. It matters not at the moment, anyway. I fear that the agreement has been nullified in one way or another, as I am here and she is there—neither of us where we should be. Spring is my time to return to Father. That was taken from me by the Dark One.”
    “The Dark One?” Casey asked, his eyes widening to bottomless pits of black.
    “She was taken by a Dark One and abandoned in the alley I found her in last night,” Drew explained. “He probably left her for dead. Who knows what information he was privy to before her abduction. Perhaps he knew that she had never been left to fend for herself. That may well have been his intention.”
    Casey’s chest rumbled violently.
    “I should very much like to meet this winged one,” he grumbled, his low, menacing tone promising pain. “I have a blade I would like to sink deep into the cavern where his heart should be.”
    “What do you know of the Dark Ones?” I asked earnestly. “Father would never tell me details, only that I should avoid them at all cost and fear them terribly. I did my best to comply.”
    “Too much. I know too much,” Casey returned, offering nothing further.
    “That is yet another discussion we will have when the time is right,” Drew said, changing the subject. “There is no need to inundate you with anything more at the moment.”
    “What do you know of this agreement?” Casey asked, his brows furrowing in a suspicious manner. “Who is it with? Who governs it?”
    “I do not know.”
    “Who is left to enforce the consequences if it is broken?”
    “I do not know.”
    “How was it broken?”
    “I do not know.”
    “What do you know?” he asked, his frustration growing. Casey suddenly seemed far less composed than he had proven to be. Something about the Dark One and my circumstances had him agitated.
    “I am afraid I know too little to be of any help.”
    “Did the Dark One say anything to you?” Drew asked with far more tact than Casey.
    “No, but Father said something strange as I was taken from him. He said that he feared that day would come—as though it wasn’t a question of if but when I would be taken from him.” I directed my response to Casey, hoping he would see it as something of worth.
    “Sounds like maybe it’s a