Hades' Cursed Luna novel Chapter 351

Chapter 351: Goodbye, Mama

Hades

I stepped into the scene, Eve not even realizinh that I had taken a position beside her. My heart winced as I took it all in.

My son, standing before his mother’s painting, eyes alight with awe, wet with tears not shed. Muscles in body locked in as I watched him, stare, emotions whirring in too probably too convoluted for him to decipher. All he could was feel them, let them wash over him as they washed over me now, as I stood as a witness to it.

He looked lost, yet so found, As if the pieces inside him that had never quite made sense were clicking quietly into place.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t sign. He just stared.

And I...

I couldn’t breathe.

Because there she was.

Danielle.

Painted in the softest color I’d ever seen her wear, her cheeks blooming with warmth I hadn’t seen since before the war. The curve of her lips—tired, proud, glowing with love. Love for the baby in her arms. For him.

The one we never got to raise. The one we never got to name together. The one she never got to watch grow.

And gods help me—

She had finished this painting. She had sealed it with everything she never got to say even when she was not aware of her fate.

The green eyes of the child were vibrant and otherworldly—his eyes—but I knew they hadn’t always been that way. She’d repainted them. She must have. Again and again. Waiting for them to be perfect.

I recalled her saying she wanted Elliot to have my eyes—my real eyes, before my father took them, before Flux took them, before Obsidian and blood and war turned them cold.

But I had convinced her.

Convinced her that green would suit him better. Not a mirror of me but as a mirror of all i held dear back then; her. I said it would make him look softer, gentler. She’d laughed and said, "You just don’t want him to grow up brooding."

And maybe I didn’t.

But now, standing here, watching him lift a hand as though to touch the boy in the painting—himself—I realized she had painted them green because of me.

Because I asked.

Because she trusted me to know what kind of legacy we’d be leaving behind.

And now... it was the only color on that canvas that didn’t feel like grief.

It felt like love.

Elliot was what remained of thar love.

Not just her laugh or her hands or the way she used to hum when she braided her hair.

I missed this. The pieces of her I hadn’t even known were missing until they stared back at me in our son’s face.

I took a breath and finally knelt beside him. Not touching—just close enough.

"Do you know what this means?" I asked.

He didn’t look at me, but I saw his head tilt—listening.

"It means she saw you," I said. "Even before the world got to."

He blinked slowly, lashes wet but no tears falling yet.

"She knew who you’d be. She saw your eyes, even when the rest of us couldn’t. And she put them here. For you."

He turned to me, just a little.

"She didn’t leave," I said quietly. "She just... stayed where you could find her again."

He opened his hand, revealing the small carved wolf still resting in his palm.

He hesitated, then gently placed it at the foot of the painting—beneath the folds of Danielle’s painted shawl, as though offering it to her.

And I—gods, I couldn’t stop it.

The ache rose in my throat like a storm tide, and I reached out, cupping the back of his head as I pulled him into my arms.

He didn’t resist.

He buried his face into my chest, and for a long moment, we stayed like that—father and son, both too full of everything to speak.

Behind us, Eve said nothing.

But when I looked up, her eyes shimmered.

She didn’t try to interrupt.

She didn’t try to comfort us.

She simply let us have her.

Danielle.

In silence. In oil. In the only truth left behind that didn’t demand to be explained.

Elliot shifted in my arms.

Then slowly, he turned his head, peeking past my shoulder. His hand reached outward, small fingers curling in the air—beckoning.

Toward her.

"Mummy," I heard him murmur, voice hoarse but steady.

She blinked.

Her posture stiffened like she was about to take a step back, to fade into the shadow of the doorway where she always seemed to retreat when the moment felt too tender. She shook her head softly, already lifting a hand in polite refusal.

"I don’t want to intrude," she whispered, trying for a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. "This is your moment. His. Yours and Danielle’s."

But Elliot didn’t waver.

He stood from where he’d knelt, turned to her, and signed something with both hands—something deliberate, something that stopped her breath:

"You are part of my always too."

Her lips parted, stunned.

He signed again, slower this time, so she wouldn’t miss it, because maybe words would not be enough.

"She gave me life."

"You gave me back."

Eve’s hand fluttered to her chest, and for a second, her control cracked. The grief, the guilt, the undeserved weight of it all—crumbled.

Her voice was barely a whisper. "Elliot..."

He took a step forward.

Then another.

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