The Eighth House: Hades & Persephone by Eris Adderly

 

I FULCRUM

Amid purpling dusk andthe late summer breeze and brine of a secluded stretch of beach just southwest of Smyrna, Persephone wore a false face. And, as she had for ages now, she offered a smile of false satisfaction to the world.

Or at least to Klaudios, her lover for the afternoon.

She turned blue eyes that weren’t hers, and blonde locks that weren’t hers, to gaze at the sated mortal man, gracing him with a stretch and a little groan of contentment that were not hers, either.

“You see?” he said with a chuckle. “There are real men to be found here in the Eastern ports, Euthalia.”

The handsome—and still quite nude—sailor gave his manhood a self-aggrandizing tug to illustrate his point. One of his bare feet pushed out to smooth their rumpled blanket atop the sand into some semblance of order.

In her mortal guise as ‘Euthalia’, she could wound him, if she were cruel. As well-formed as his body was, she could prick his pride by pointing out how utterly forgettable his lovemaking had been. How bland and barely distinguishable from the trail of discarded men just like him stretching back an age.

The faces changed. The languages. The climes. What did not, ever, was the handling. So solicitous, eyes on her face as they kneaded and poked, intent on gauging their own prowess. Secretly worried about the size and performance of their cocks. Their endearments, whether sincere or calculated, so soft, so toothless.

It was enough to bore an immortal to tears, and yet what alternatives did she have?

“Real men, indeed,” she said, running absent fingertips along the lines of Klaudios’s chest.

They lay propped up on elbows now, facing each other, though she made a mental note of where she’d laid her sandals, preparing to take her leave.

This was the last time Klaudios would be enjoying the company of the enigmatic Euthalia.

“Will you be gone from the port long this time, my wandering pearl?” He reached out to toy with her nipple while she suppressed a roll of her eyes at the name.

“I’m not sure,” she lied. “I never can predict these things.”

The shush of waves beyond their extended legs repeated to him the truth, but the mortal man was too blinded by pride to listen.

Persephone came to her feet and reached for his chiton, slipping the too-large garment over her head, fibulae still in place.

“What are you doing?”

“My peplos has washed out to sea,” she said, her smile too innocent.

“And what do you expect me to wear?” He grinned up at her, waiting for her to admit the jest.

She tied the second sandal in place, repressing a chuckle. “Will you not go naked before the gods?”

“Euthalia, wait.”

She was already on the narrow path up and away from the sand.

“Euthalia!”

The corners of her eyes crinkled in mirth. Sailors were adaptable. He’d figure it out.

Poor Klaudios, she thought later, as she made her unhurried way back through the busy streets of Smyrna. He’d never see his fair-haired, eager lover again.

Poor him? Poor me. He’ll be disappointed for a few weeks. I’ll enjoy my disappointment for an eternity.

But her discontent hadn’t started in Smyrna. Nor had it originated from any of the other cities of men. Those were only where it had gone to fester.

As she meandered, always toward her goal, Persephone let idle fingertips touch the crisp leaves of potted rosemary, gone dead in a drought year, outside this door and that. Bursts of new growth sprang up in her wake and morning would find the palest of blooms, impossibly full overnight. An unintended benefit for mortal gardens, grown from her inexplicable compulsion to touch everything.

No, flirtation was never simple as all her green and growing things, was it? Well. Perhaps among mortals. On Olympos? She made a low noise in her throat.

Persephone made her way through a netting of streets arrayed without any apparent plan or reason in that particular way of coastal cities, taking no care to avoid watching eyes. In her mortal guise, unless she willed it, the gazes of men would find an inexplicable reason to slide elsewhere. Unobserved, the goddess knew the lightest wrinkling of her borrowed brow.

Somehow—somehow—in a way she could not put to name, there had been something essential lacking in Klaudios. By the Fates, something lacking in the scores of mortal men with whom she’d amused herself. She couldn’t take them seriously. So many of them had been almost … too gallant and bright. Was it possible to possess too much of what others prized as desirable qualities?

Down and away from the mount to the southeast she went. Away from the agora, away toward the eastern gate, away, away, away from all she’d reached for that had left her wanting.

If all their so-called charms did so little to keep her attention—let alone fever her dreams, as the songs and poems all claimed would happen—what then, was wrong with her? If traditional appeals failed, should she what? Search for their opposite?

Maybe you should seek out just that, Persephone. A darker, more wicked partner.

But who would want such a thing? More irrationality. Answers were nowhere, and yet here she was. On the mortal plane, resorting to this. Again.

Yes, my most bountiful thanks, Mother.

She grimaced to the slap-slap tune of her sandals on the hard-packed earth.

Her solitary path led her at last to her goal and she put the thoughts to one side. Here, now, was a final familiar haunt before she returned to the realm of the deathless gods. It had been too long.

One low house of baked earth, indistinguishable from any other on a dim street crowded with windows and doors and awnings, was what held Persephone’s eye as she approached.

Warm light showed itself from a tiny window, shoulder high against the blue-black of evening shadow. Here was the other indulgence the goddess allowed herself while she walked among mortals.

She rapped on the door, three times in just such a way. After a moment, a voice came muffled but firm from the other side.

“What flower blooms this evening?”

Persephone smiled, the clouds of her mood parting. “The eternal one, Good Mother.”

The door swung into the house on generations-old hinges and a woman stood in the golden light, beaming.

“My goddess! Come in, come in!”

Polyxene stepped back into the nest of her rooms and Persephone entered, releasing her intention from the blonde, mortal façade and reclaiming her true form.

The woman before her, perhaps just beyond her childbearing years but still full of feminine life, hurried to prepare a tea while her unlikely guest soaked in the surrounding room. There had been minor changes, but the feel was the same as ever. Humble. Honest. Good.

“It has been at least a year, has it not?” Persephone said.

“I have counted five, Green One.” The woman didn’t accuse, but Persephone cringed all the same. It was all too easy to lose track of mortal time. More strands of wiry white, she noted, threaded their way through Polyxene’s dark curls than had at her last visit.

Every wall and beam in the cozy space bristled with hanging herbs in various stages of drying. Earthen jars and tight-woven baskets littered every available surface, and some of these the woman reached into for pinches of this or that for the tea.

Polyxene was the only living woman to have seen the goddess undisguised more than once.

Persephone had only just arrived on the mortal plane during one of her secret excursions. She’d stepped from the æther just outside a sunlit copse of cedars, anticipating a private entrance into the world of men, only to find a teenage Polyxene trembling and staring wide-eyed back at her, a basket of gathered boughs scattered across the ground.

After a series of stammering promises extracted from the girl never to speak of the presence of the goddess that day outside the temples, Persephone had calmed and taken an interest in the flora the mortal had been collecting.

For a mere bud of a woman, Polyxene had impressed even the Goddess of Growing Things with her knowledge of and enthusiasm for the same. She had been learning from her grandmother the ways of healing. Persephone had been so delighted with this mortal after her own heart that during her returns to Smyrna over the years, she’d become a sort of silent matron.

The woman with the greying hair before her now, who moved about her home with such a quiet confidence, had become the only mortal to whom Persephone dared show her true self. Eyes too green, hair too lustrous, skin too eerily luminous to be human. There would be no way to slip among the streets and markets of men without attracting unwanted attention. Recognition would cause a riot.

And it was a relief.

A relief not to have to lie, and hide, even if her lies bought her some semblance of her own pleasure when she used them to lay with men.

In exchange for the gift of this unlikely and infrequent friendship, and out of sheer admiration for the woman’s dedication, Persephone would bring her the occasional cutting from the deathless realm. A blossom, a branch, a tuber, all superior to their mundane counterparts.

It was these rare gifts that had grown Polyxene’s reputation over the decades. Polyxene’s cures worked better than anyone else’s, the people would say. ‘Take your mother to Polyxene. She will know what to do.’

Persephone smiled as the woman offered the steaming cup, taking a step back to clasp work-worn hands in anticipation.

It was, as always, hot perfection.

“Mmm,” she said. “What have you today, Mother? Ginger?”

Polyxene tried to hide the making of a face. The woman had objected before to Persephone’s use of the fond name out of fearful respect for Demeter. The goddess, however, felt more warm sentiment toward this mortal, despite their dizzying inversion in age, than she had for her own mother in decades.

“And citron, is it?”

“Yes! You are right on both, my Goddess!” A flush of pleasure colored the tanned cheeks. Oh, how Persephone had fought to win such an easy discourse from the woman. So much insistence, so many assurances to do away with the bowing and scraping.

There was a movement at the edge of her vision and Persephone glanced to see a sleeping cat stretch its striped legs and send a yellow basket toppling. Polyxene rescued the container on its way to the ground, muttering at the small beast, and Persephone smiled.

“I’m sorry to say I have no cutting for you this day,” she said to the woman between sips of her tea. “My mind was elsewhere, I’m afraid.”

“It is nothing. Nothing.” Polyxene made some habitual supplicating gesture, always uncomfortable with immortal apologies. “That you bless such an insignificant home with your presence is more than any could pray for.”

Persephone was less impressed with herself by far than were mortals, but made yet another attempt to remember that anything might become tedious if one were to see and live it every moment.

“How fares your home these last years?”

“Well,” the woman said, folding her hands at her waist. “Perhaps as I get older, the years fly for me, too. It is much the same. I enjoy an ease, my Goddess. Thanks be to you.” A wistful smile. “People need healing. Green things need tending. My son returns from the sea with news and wild tales every few months.”

And, after a pause: “I do miss Iacob. It can be lonely, of a night.”

Persephone saw just the lightest dusting of fatigue over the woman’s features. Her husband had made his journey to the Underworld perhaps ten? Fifteen years ago, now?

“It can be lonely,” Persephone said. “Can’t it.”

Her own weights burdened her words.

The surface of her tea rippled under her breath in the lamplight. When would she be in Smyrna again?

“And how do you fare, Karporphoros?”

Bringer of Fruit. Somehow she didn’t mind the epithet when it came with Polyxene’s warmth.

“We are too alike, you and I,” she said, perching on a tall stool and holding her cup on her lap. “Little changes. My mother will not relent. I expect she feels some relief that I have stopped asking.” Persephone’s eyes went unfocused, working at knots beyond the clutter of the little room.

“Will this be my immortal life?” she said. “To come and go, dissatisfied, alone, from now until … until …?” Her free hand made a vague fluttering and Polyxene bit her lower lip. “And were I to fall in love with one of these men, what then? I watch them fade and die, a flickering of a candle while I go on and on?”

“My Goddess …”

Worry creased the woman’s brow and Persephone felt instant shame. There was no excuse for putting this mortal in such a position, to pose questions in front of her which had no answers. Polyxene only wanted to do good, and had such a short time in which to do it.

Persephone’s gaze waded around the room. So much gathered in one place. From seed to stem and rind to root, such deliberate cultivation. Who, of the two of them, was making the best use of her available years?

Her eyes landed at last on Polyxene and, again, her hands. Something at her center became very still. Very quiet.

“Mother,” she said, “will you lend me your ring?”

“Goddess.”

With wide, sober eyes, the woman slipped the jewel of black onyx and silver over a weathered knuckle. She offered it in an open palm and dipped the sort of nervous bow Persephone hadn’t seen in decades when the goddess took it.

The stone was long and narrow, meant to span half the length of a finger; the bezel and band worn worry-smooth over most of a life. The young Polyxene’s face when Iacob had given it as a gift had been the warmest sunrise in spring. The two had known such love.

This was useful. This was better than unchanging eternity.

Persephone let it well, and the room dimmed away, at least for her.

The dormant, still thing inside her woke. Stirred. A sleeping hive coming alert to the call of its queen. The soles of her feet, her lips, the crown of her head, buzzed with a tingle, electric.

Just how much did I inherit from the Lord of Lightnings?

Her fingertips grew cold as the humming force gathered. Then her forearms, the tops of her ears.

The ring grew hot.

Scalding.

The black stone knew the opposite of becoming. It trembled on the cusp of something … else.

Could they feel it? On Olympos? Would any of the deathless ones sense some subtle shift?

Did she care?

It could have ended with some dramatic burst, but it didn’t. When Persephone opened her clutching hand and now heavy-lidded eyes, she only felt … scoured? The slightest bit raw? It was the sort of sensation that would heal, she sensed. Like a mortal sunburn.

Polyxene stood frozen, fingers gripped her own crossed arms from a few paces further back than when the goddess had closed her eyes.

Persephone held out her palm, the ring in it almost seeming to breathe now, like a live thing.

“Come,” she said. “Look.”

The woman stepped forward, cautious, as though she held an adder. She leaned to peer at the ring, but only for a heartbeat before coughing and turning away in a hurry, a palm bracing herself on a high table.

“Goddess!” Polyxene wiped at her mouth with the back of a hand.

The shape of the onyx remained, but it was now formed in a stone of such a vertiginous and unearthly green the mortal woman couldn’t bear to look upon it without being vibrantly ill.

“Do not worry, Mother, I will not ask you to look so closely again, this night.”

“Karporphoros,” the woman said, regaining her balance. “What is it? What have you done?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” Persephone said. She contemplated the altered jewel. Placed it on her own finger. “I will return this to you,” she said. “I promise this.”

“Will it … will it dizzy my head again when you do, Green One?” The unspoken part remained, of course. If it will, you can keep it.

“It will not if I make a new gift of it in the way I intend.”

Dark, expectant eyes returned to the goddess, pleading to understand.

“You will do so much for so many,” Persephone said. She turned the ring this way and that in the lamplight, allowing the inception of such a deed to settle on her. “I will take some time. I will not choose in haste, my mortal friend. But an eternity is going to waste in my hands, and it would not in yours.”

“Goddess.” A mere whisper.

Was the ichor still gold in her veins? Or would Persephone bleed red now, if she cut herself?

“If I return with this stone unchanged,” she said, “my immortality is yours.”

After several incredulous blinks, Polyxene stammered. “But I am a—an old woman! Well. Perhaps not old, but”—she made a helpless gesture—“but, Goddess.”

Persephone reached for the woman with half a tired smile.

“Then I will not make you wait long, worthy friend.”

The unnatural green gem sang in the light. The goddess would have to begin paying heed to the time.

✧

It was not unusual for the Goddess of Lust to slink everywhere she walked. It was not unusual for her to glide familiar fingertips along the columns and doorways of immortal palaces. It was not even unusual for her to smirk and sigh out of boredom, oh no. Reputations were not born out of thin air.

It was unusual, however, for her to be doing these things in the Underworld. Whether she would still have done them, if she knew the Lord of the Dead watched her, remained a mystery.

Hades was not amused.

He stood at the head of the great hall, the Helm of Darkness concealing him altogether as he assessed his uninvited guest.

The moment one of the Olympians had entered his realm, he’d felt the familiar pressure. It shared a hint of sameness with a state of submersion in water, though subtler, more airy somehow. When he’d traced the disturbance to its source, and discovered Aphrodite, of all immortals, circumspection had banded with irritation and Hades had followed her, hidden.

Now her steps carried her around the floor of the great hall, her footfalls producing no echo, despite the size and relative emptiness of the chamber. A dozen or so of her acolytes clustered together just inside a vaulted doorway the lot of them could have passed through three times abreast. The windowless corridor outside it loomed like a void. Breathing as one, they stood without a scrap of clothing to share among them. Hades curled an unseen lip.

She brings living mortals into my domain? Arrogant.

The goddess stood out as a gewgaw on an ash heap amid the cool, dry black of the hall. As it remained always, at his preference, a diffused glow lit the chamber from nowhere and everywhere all at once. He could see the distaste radiating from her like heat from her unfortunate husband’s forge as she eyed the broad, twisting columns that marched the length of the space. He suspected her unaccustomed to a place so bereft of ornament. But Hades would not soften hard lines with draperies or mosaics. It was not his way.

She sauntered toward the Throne of Tears as he watched, circling it as she stepped up onto the dais. He felt his jaw tighten, but waited. The most opportune moment would come.

The severe, black granite seat, on which Hades alone had the right to sit, spanned the space between a pair of towering, glossy stalagmites, eternally forming on the very spot. The goddess traced a delicate fingertip through the moisture on one of the dark columns, taking a license too far. And, as anticipated, she turned her back.

He removed the Helm, appearing some paces behind her. The herd of acolytes gasped.

“You imagine you can meet the demands of this Throne?”

Aphrodite turned, unflapped, toward the flat rumble of his voice and greeted him with a smile that told him this meeting would only get worse.

“Hades.” She acknowledged him with the slightest of nods; familiar and brazen in a way only the Goddess of Lust would dare respond to a Lord of one of the three realms. “A grim throne for a grim ruler, yes? I had no idea you favored a style so”—her eyes flitted around the hall—“bare bones.” She flashed teeth at the tasteless jest.

“For what purpose,” he said, taking a deliberate step, and then another in the direction of his throne, “are you in my domain? I am certain my realm has never been considered a destination of pleasure.” He sneered at the word. “And I know you to make efforts when it comes to only one other pursuit.”

He came to stand on the dais, and turned to look down at her, allowing his height to speak about which of them had precedence here. Some of her smirk deflated, only to reappear inverted in his own scowl.

“So. Goddess. What matter of business brings you beneath the Earth?”

Olympians did not travel to the Underworld if they could avoid it. Even Hermes, and that one was familiar with the landscape.

Whatever she’s about, you won’t like it.

Aphrodite stepped down onto the floor of the hall, waving a hand as though she found him tiresome. Hades took his seat.

He rested his elbows on the arms of the chair and steepled his forefingers together, awaiting the nonsense. The goddess bothered with no preamble.

“It is time for you to take a wife, Rich One.”

And nonsense it was.

He exhaled scorn in a quick rush of air.

“Are you not lonely under the Earth, my lord?” Her voice turned to honey, as though a solicitous course would be effective with the Lord of the Dead.

“Bah.” He made a dismissive gesture. “Do be serious, Goddess.”

Lonely. Did Olympos believe him so weak? He had ruled alone for ages without the need of another.

Perhaps they deserve a reminder of who resides here.

“I am quite serious, my Lord Hades.” And by the Fates, if her eyes did not say it. Did the others send her, or had she come under her own impetus?

“The Throne of Tears is not a burden to be held by one who pines for companionship like an unweaned pup,” he said. “I need nothing of wives.”

His brothers hadn’t brought up the subject in an æon. They knew better after the last time. So why, then, was Aphrodite here, raising the issue again now? Her feigned concern for his solitude was merely a first gambit, of course. Olympians didn’t bother themselves with happiness in the Underworld. He waited for the rest, features blank.

“Do you not even desire a partner who can satisfy your particular”—she rolled her eyes up to search for the word she wanted and came back with a mocking arched brow—“needs?”

Insinuation flowed heavy and florid as the goddess swayed a path over the stones. In a chamber of linear black and grey, Aphrodite cut a shocking figure. A mass of coppery hair tumbled forward over fair shoulders. Pale green linen, sheer as mist, draped over her curves in a mockery of discretion. Nipples and navel unnecessarily on display, though to what end in his presence, Hades could not determine.

Aphrodite might have been a perfect distraction for mortal men. Her wiles might even ensnare other gods from time to time, more the fool Ares. But the Underworld was his realm. It respected no power save his own, and visiting immortals soon found their familiar abilities most useless until they returned to the sea or sky.

The goddess’s charms were quite impotent here, and Hades found this suitable to his purpose.

“And what would you know of my ‘needs?’ ” he said.

“I know enough.” Something kindled, secret behind her eyes, and she toyed with an emerald pendant the size of a bird’s egg that rested between her breasts. He didn’t care for secrets.

“One can only imagine.” He drummed slow fingers on the arm of his throne and continued, dry as ash. “A deathless god may have his pick of mortal bodies, if he wishes to quench baser thirsts, Goddess of Lust—a fact of which I am certain you are intimately aware.” A shadow of a smirk appeared. “I have no need to alter my circumstances. Marriage is a fruitful endeavor. It has no place in the realm of the dead.”

“I see.” Some of the bold assurance had drained from her eyes, but something with a hard edge moved in to replace it.

“Allow me to approach this proposition from another angle, Lord of the Dead,” she said, slinging his name back at him in an equally taunting manner. “There is a particular flower I wish you to pluck up in marriage, and you will do this thing for me because you owe me a debt.” She folded her arms across her breasts and met his eyes in challenge.

“What debt.” The word fell heavy and deliberate, a bitter mouthful. “And what flower?” Hades frowned. His patience had limits.

“Ah, what indeed?” Satisfaction returned to her drawl.

Tiresome. And wasting his time. Minos will have been waiting.

“Do you enjoy vexing me, Goddess?”

Aphrodite ignored him and scanned the room from one end to the other before making a face. She raised a graceful hand at the elbow and made a languid motion to her acolytes. A buxom young mortal broke from the huddle near the door and approached her goddess, eyes glazed in euphoria. Bouncing to obey, the woman dropped to hands and knees on the stone floor, head erect and proud in her service. Aphrodite nodded an approval and took a seat on the arched back of her devotee and, furniture thus arranged, returned to her original pursuit.

“There is the little matter of the Elaionapothos,” she said. “You did not create it without help, as I recall.”

Hades narrowed his eyes.

“What was it you said to me?” she asked. “When you and I finished perfecting that little toy? An endeavor, I might add, for which you approached me for assistance.”

Ah yes. That little project.

And now Aphrodite had come to see him make good on his word. Though he ground his teeth, he would not be able to sit silent indefinitely.

“I said I was in your debt,” Hades answered. “And I would grant you a favor, should you ask it.”

“Yes,” she said, “I see you do remember. And now I am calling upon it. I want you to take a wife. You’re one of the last of us, Polydegmon, to be otherwise unattached. Your realm is ideally out of the way.” She made an encompassing gesture. “And that is where I need this little distraction moved. Out of the way.”

He regarded her in silence, waiting for elaboration. None was immediate.

She made another subtle curve of her wrist and two more stepped away from her entourage, both male, both aroused. Aphrodite’s presence on Olympos turned heads. Among mortals it intoxicated, indiscriminate. The acolytes approached their goddess from either side, eyes locked on her face, fevered with lust, each with a hand absently stroking an erection.

Ignoring the human tableau in favor of checking his temper, Hades pressed her. “And this … wife,” he said with distaste. “An immortal, I assume.”

“Of course.” She smiled. The advantage was hers now, and the goddess preened. At a nod of her head, the mortal man to her left knelt, ready phallus in hand. He pushed and found entry, taking up a leisurely thrusting, thighs kissing the upturned rump of Aphrodite’s human bench. His eyes never left the goddess, hungry as they were for approval. The worshipper-turned-seat began sounding her thanks for such a reward, and the usual stillness of his hall fled before earthy moans.

Hades took a long, full breath, and let it out. Slowly.

“Will your plaything be making a burdensome amount of noise for the duration?”

Aphrodite smirked and tilted her head toward the man on her right, who moved to kneel in front of the now panting female. Like his counterpart, he found an eager entrance and began a slow plumbing of the woman’s throat. Moans now reduced to quiet mewling, the goddess met his eyes, pleased with her crude ingenuity and daring him to veer off into petty distractions.

“Is that better then, Lord? Not so loud now?” she said.

He lifted an impassive brow.

Hades was no stranger to pursuits of the flesh. In fact, some of the ‘entertainments’ he enjoyed might have been beyond even Aphrodite’s tolerance for perversity. His pleasures, however, he took in private. The lewd public performances the goddess demanded of her followers felt crass and amateurish. A complete waste of time, but Lust Herself was ever inclined toward spectacle.

“Your theatrics grow tiresome,” he said. “Name names. Who would you see as Lady of the Underworld? Satisfy my morbid curiosity.”

“I didn’t imagine you had any other kind,” she said. “I name the maid Persephone. And I do not suggest. I demand. As payment on your debt.” She laid her hands atop her knee, a look of sober calculation underlying the outrageous display around her.

He snorted in mild amusement. “It is unwise to make demands where you are not the highest authority. A daughter of Zeus, you say? Have you considered that I have chosen to remain unwed for these many ages expressly to avoid becoming further embroiled in Olympian politics?”

“There are advantages to strengthening your ties to the Lord of Lightnings,” she said, her words melting into a purr that might have worked on other immortals. “Persephone’s voice advancing her husband’s agenda—your agenda—into her father’s ear, could help to ease relations between the realms. Basileus, our king, has not always decided matters in your favor in the past, if I recall correctly. Wedding his daughter could only provide leverage for your side in the future.”

“Your logic is not unreasonable,” he said, “but I find it lacking. The only one in this hall concerned with my political standing is me, yet I know you seek this match for your own benefit.”

Aphrodite tilted her head just to one side, patient for the rest. He asked the question.

“Why Persephone specifically, and not some other daughter of Olympos? We both know there are plenty.” His brother’s reputation for spreading his seed was not what one would call ‘discriminating’. “Not that it matters,” he said. “I’ve heard rumor of Demeter rejecting any immortal suit to come her daughter’s way. You know she will never allow it.”

“Ah, but this is the very meat of the thing,” she said. “Demeter has kept her exiled from the palaces. From Olympos itself. Even the Lord of Lightnings has been complicit in preventing the male gods from seeking Persephone’s attentions elsewhere.”

Hades gave a minimal shrug and Aphrodite took the hint to come to the point. The goddess swayed with the subtle rocking of her bench, and her lips turned up at one side.

“You see,” she said, “your nephew, Hermes—that fickle deity—has been ignoring my charms of late. He persists in his obsession with Demeter’s daughter, despite the edict to keep her sequestered from the lot of you.” Her eyes looked him up and down, and Hades knew whom she meant: any god with a cock.

“I grow tired of his preoccupation with this immortal he shall never come to know. It is time for his attentions to return to their proper place.”

So there it was. Jealousy.

The base emotions are to be found at the root of all designs. Do you not know this, Clymenus?

“And I assume the ‘proper place’ for his attentions is on you, Aphrodite?”

“Of course,” she said, as though he were being obtuse. “I’m the mother of his children. And his lover. The Goddess of Love allows her consorts’ interest to wane when she chooses.” Her lips came almost into a pout and she stroked the damp chest of a still thrusting male acolyte with the back of her hand.

Hades couldn’t help but laugh.

“It appears he has already chosen, Fair One! And what do you suppose Hephaistos thinks about all this?” A rare bit of mirth warmed his chest. She wanted him to go to the trouble of taking a bride—a daughter of Zeus, no less!—all because she wanted a lover’s attentions back on herself. The weaknesses of the other immortals never failed to entertain him.

“Hephaistos is none of your concern,” she said. “My husband and I have an ‘arrangement.’ ”

He observed the smug lines of her face, the musk of coupling blooming in his throne room.

An ‘arrangement’. I do not doubt that at all.

“Let us say I entertain this absurdity of yours,” he said, altering his tactics. “You claim some knowledge of my ‘needs’, do you? What will I do then, with a maiden, hmm? Or do you believe the generous patience I’m showing you here extends to my lovers?”

Aphrodite showed her earthy side and snorted. “What won’t you do, you filthy immortal?” It was enough to make him bark out a laugh. “And I suspect you create worries where none exist. I think you’ll find Persephone’s temperament quite suited to your little ‘proclivities’, should you make the effort. After all, there’s someone for everyone, isn’t there?”

“Not for me. Not here.”

He’d tried to slice through with a note of finality, but it did nothing to affect Aphrodite’s knowing smirk. “That remains to be seen,” she said.

“And what of Demeter’s permission?”

You’re not giving this serious consideration, are you?

It was a mad idea. Preposterous. But a primitive, inexorable part of him had awakened at the scent of blood, as it were.

An immortal companion. The notion rolled around in his mouth, savory and crimson. His experiences with mortal flesh had been entertaining enough over the ages, but perhaps another of his own ilk might prove …

No. He pushed the thought down with an internal grimace.

Here you are, getting caught up her machinations.

Aphrodite went on, oblivious to his internal debates.

“First of all,” she said, “Demeter’s edict prohibits her daughter from consorting with any of the gods of Olympos. But you are not a god of Olympos. Are you, Lord of the Underworld?” Clever white teeth flashed in the light.

He inclined his head to acknowledge her point.

“And second,” she said, “Demeter’s consent becomes irrelevant when I have already obtained approval for the match from her father. Zeus.”

Indeed. The goddess had been busy.

As if orchestrated to coincide with this last revelation, to which she had no doubt been building the entire time, her trio of vassals was now grinding toward a climax, and they found it increasingly difficult to keep quiet. Aphrodite rose from her makeshift seat and turned to watch the final throes of their performance from a few steps away.

The woman’s face was flushed and damp from her efforts to accommodate the men. Fingers tangled in the gold of her hair, kneaded the pink curves of her bottom. The three pushed and worked, building to a crescendo and then seizing to a halt in the grip of their shared climax.

Three pairs of glassy eyes remained on their goddess, begging for approval. Aphrodite nodded and granted a dreamy smile of approbation. Enraptured mortal faces beamed thanks, and the two men bent to help the woman rise to shaky feet before they half-walked, half-stumbled back to wait with the others.

Aphrodite turned back to Hades, aglow with the high of worship. It was an addiction the others had. The Lord of the Dead needed no such displays from mortals. Not when they all came to his realm in the end.

But what of immortal devotion?

“Why has Zeus deigned to give permission after all this time championing Demeter’s cause?”

A rich chuckle. “Our Loud Thunderer wouldn’t be shackled to a feather for any longer than he absolutely must,” she said. “Zeus grows tired of such constant vigilance. He grows tired of constant anything, as Hera will tell you. It was a simple matter to convince him to abandon it.”

And here the goddess was. Convincing another ruler of the Three Realms to abandon reason.

“So.” His grip on control faltered. “Her father’s permission. And you expect me to approach Persephone with an offer of marriage, is that it? You do know we’ve never met.”

“No,” Aphrodite said. “You will not be able to come near her without Demeter learning of it. Your powers above the earth are insufficient.”

“And if I have other means?”

“Oh?” Copper brows ascended. “Means you’d like exposed? No? I didn’t think so. The Goddess of the Seasons will thwart your advances. No. One does not entreat a flower to leave its soil and come live in a vase. One plucks the bloom and has done with it. Particularly if the Lord of the Skies has already given consent to the plucking.”

“You suggest I do what? Abscond with her then?”

“Precisely,” she said. “So pleased you understand, at last.”

“Ridiculous. You are well aware a deathless god cannot be forced into a marriage. She must speak the vows of her own will. You expect her eager to give her eternal hand? To the Lord of the Dead? After I’ve abducted her?” His voice had risen in incredulity to an unacceptable level. His fingers gripped the arms of the throne.

The goddess only smiled, predatory and eerily sweet all at once. “I am certain you possess the ability to ‘persuade.’ ”

“How in the name of the Three Realms do you expect me to accomplish such a thing?” He leaned forward on the throne, flinging one hand wide in exasperation. “Does her mother not watch over her every move?”

“Ah, Hades.” Her sigh was just this side of patronizing, and something twitched at his temple. “You imagine I am ever filled with desires and this leaves no room in my mind for forethought. But I have thought this venture through very thoroughly indeed. Listen a while longer, and I will tell you exactly how you will be able to snatch your bride away to your own domain, without interference from her mother or any of her other companions.”

And so, whether out of exhaustion or sheer morbid curiosity, he listened to her plan.

And it was very thorough.

It was so airtight, in fact, Hades could see almost no possibility of a failure. If he decided to go through with it, that was.

Stealing the daughter of another immortal and ‘persuading’ her to wed? This was not a mere favor Aphrodite asked of him. This was not a gift of riches, nor the return of a mortal soul to the living world, nor any other act he might wash his hands of afterward. This ‘favor’ would result in his having a partner here in the Underworld. And unlike his promiscuous brother, he would be loyal to one wife, if he married at all.

What was the likelihood he would want to share his immortality with Persephone, a goddess he only knew of by the fame of her birth, and had never seen with his own two eyes? And more unlikely still, that she would want to share it with him?

Especially when she sees what you really are.

What good could come of it?

But an escape hatch might free him to explore some of the potentials. Perhaps he’d see word slipped to Demeter, after the fact. The goddess would demand the removal of her daughter from the Underworld, and this would absolve him from blame while curtailing the situation with Persephone, as the inevitable need would arise.

He could play his games without the fear of a loss.

“I will think on this plan of yours,” he said at last, settling back in his seat. “And I will inform you of my decision before the next time Selene’s crown shines full in the night. Be grateful, Goddess, as that is more consideration than I was willing to give when I first found you in my hall, caressing the Throne of Tears as though it were your own.”

Aphrodite moved to stand before him and cut him an insolent brow. “Think for however long you like, gracious Lord,” she said, “But you will do this thing for me.

“It has been a great many years since I aided you in bringing about the Elaionapothos. A creation, I might add, we both know would not be entirely permitted, were its existence known among the other Powers That Be. I imagine you would like to continue to keep your little ‘plaything’ to yourself?” She waited for his acknowledgment.

Of course, he had no intention of giving up his secret to the other gods, his brothers Zeus and Poseidon in particular. It would upset the balance. He forced a nod and she continued.

“You see, that is why you will follow through with this plan and make Persephone your bride. Then Hermes’s attentions will be back where they belong, and I can put my lovely mouth to better uses than telling tales of what Lord Hades has been up to, hidden away down here in the Earth. Do you see it now, Polydegmon?”

He exhaled through his nose and faced down the goddess come to do business in his halls.

She has you. There is nothing else for it.

He could almost respect it, in a grudging sort of way. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had tied him in such a tidy manner.

“I see quite clearly,” he said.

“Splendid.” Aphrodite was all smiles now. “You have a week to prepare. Always a pleasure, I’m sure, my Lord Hades.”

She turned from him to glide across the room, but when the green swirl of sheer linens brought her to the open doorway, the goddess looked over her shoulder.

“Seven days,” she said. “You know where you must wait. I will make good as to my part; see that you do yours, as well.”

The Goddess of Love flowed from the hall, her entourage following without a backward glance for the Lord of the Dead.

Persephone had no idea what was coming.

And when it came right down to it, neither did he. All because of the Elaionapothos.

What in creation’s name had he brought upon himself?