Hell Is An Empty Heart (Book One of The Triple Moon's Chronicles)

42 | Revealing Bodices And Tied Strategies

Exhilaration for dry mouth,
Exaltation for heart palpitations,
Euphoria for excessive sweatiness.
Hecate distanced herself from the celebration;
As her enochlophobia took possession of her body.

After claiming her fair portion of the wedding feast, Hecate walked out of Hades' throne chamber to the fields of Asphodel. She shared some of her food with the starving three judges; because of their additional duty, they weren't allowed to celebrate like the other members of the underworld court.

Leaving again, Hecate was now on her way to see her dear friend Charon, the ferryman. Her steps were slow, but on her six feet, she was floating over the Fields of Asphodel, and the further she went, the closer she could see her friend.

However, Charon's boat stood still, anchored by the weight of the many souls sitting in it, as others in the River Styx clung on to his paddle. They were the dead without Obole, who ought to have been few.

Hecate's eyes froze on the scene, powerless, until a soul snatched some of her food. Just as she reached to grab it back, the soul threw it away for a mouthful of mud instead.

Picking up her empty plate, Hecate darted her gaze around, her mouth dropping agape at the sight of the souls gathered around her. They were all as thin as ropes with hollow cheekbones. The worst were the newborns, who barely possessed enough flesh to cover their bones. And yet, those were how they died, and they all entered the underworld, preserved in their last ever states.

A sudden coldness hit Hecate at the core, and she rubbed her eyes twice to check if that was an illusion, but it wasn't. All the dead weren't supposed to be like that. Famine was a rare scourge. Hecate chose a mother who held on to her child to answer her questions—someone who had just given life couldn't be spiteful.

Her hand grabbed the frail arm of the ghost, who turned back to throw a concerned look at Hecate. "Please tell me why you are here."

The woman sniffed and dipped her chin into her chest, shielding her sorrow further behind the cooing of her child. "My newborn had been sacrificed to the gods, but the earth grew no more fruits, so my husband sacrificed me too." Suddenly, her head lifted, revealing fear swirling within her blank irises. Her honeyed voice broke out, "I hope they will have mercy on us," a warning that drowned along with her body into the surrounding obscurity.

Wrinkling her brow, Hecate then tried her luck and seized the shoulder of a boy nearing his coming of age and pulled him back. "Why are you here?"

"I died so my sister could have my share of food. She was very sick when I left her, and I do hope she has found somebody else to look after her now."

His reply made Hecate's face turn pallid. "Where are your parents?"

"They died a few days before us, but we left their corpses in our house to keep us company." As he spoke, a smile etched a path across his face—the sign of relief. Pain, guilt, and the will to survive could no longer have a hold on him.

Hecate's shoulders tensed at her discoveries, and yet she needed to know more about it all. "Which god had cursed the mortal world with this plague?"

The boy rubbed his chin. "I'm not sure, but it must have been the bearer of fruits because the earth was completely barren when I left it." As he shrugged his shoulders, he merged into a mass of shadows, leaving Hecate alone again.

Biting on her lips, her gaze flitted around the fields of Asphodel from soul to soul, never landing on one that stood out from the others until a frightful thought hit her. They were all starved to death. As soon as Hecate understood what was happening, her dish of raw meat fell from her grasp, and she ran back to the palace.