The Eighth House: Hades & Persephone by Eris Adderly

II PROMISE

Persephone knew what wascoming, and it didn’t stop her. The weight of Polyxene’s ring, transformed now on her finger, somehow lifted the burden of words like ‘forever’ and left her bold. Heedless.

The infamous Question, asked anew after a tree-fattening number of years, did nothing to stop her mother from scowling, either.

“Much has been said, Daughter, about those who persist in repeated endeavors with the hopes of new, different outcomes each time.”

Demeter’s barley-crowned cattle flicked their ears as their mistress stood beside her chariot. Her eyes meandered over the rolling swells of Nysa on a humid, windless afternoon, late into summer. Fat honeybees hummed from perch to powdery perch at the center of the season’s last blooms.

“Ah,” Persephone said, gaze also conspicuously avoiding her mother’s, “new outcomes such as their elders seeing reason?”

“I have seen every reason,” Demeter said, “and with far more clarity than have you.” The Goddess of the Seasons placed the wide basket her daughter refused to take on the ground between them. “They will never be faithful. You know this. Not Apollo, not Hermes. Not any of them.”

It had become something of an art form, the way Persephone and her mother could have entire, stiff-backed conversations without ever making eye contact. The ring might have made her reckless enough to start flinging open old doors, but she had no interest in the wake of scorched earth that followed behind the locking of eyes on this issue. And so she remained, lacing her knuckles together for patience. Chin high.

“They’re no threat to me, and I’m sure you know this,” Persephone said. “Most of them are clamoring after Aphrodite these days, from what I hear. Ares, Hephaistos …” She shrugged. From a distance, their conversation would look casual, even bored. The tone of their words remained low, but a tension strung them together, pressing the mother and daughter pair so tight into their long-held roles the very earth beneath their feet felt ready to erupt at any moment.

“That bearded anvil pounder.” Her mother made a low noise of disgust. “Be thankful the Fates saw fit to bind him to that faithless wife of his and not set him hungering after you.”

But Persephone had not heard Hephaistos’s rare and sudden bark of laughter in an age, nor Ares’s crude jokes. Compared with the mortals, their kind were but a few. Eternity was daunting enough with such a limited number of peers; reducing that number by half had her wanting to wail. A prison with spacious rooms was, after all, still a prison.

“I have no interest in the Artificer or the Stormer of Walls, nor they me,” Persephone said. “Surely it’s not necessary to keep me sequestered from them.”

Her mother’s words grew a shade darker with ferocity. “You believe you understand the nature of immortal men?” she said. “You do not. They will ruin you, Daughter. And for what? To satisfy their lusts? I will not have this for you. I will not.”

The great and subtle voices of the mountains sang a more moveable song than Demeter’s words at that moment. It was no use, and never would be.

The muscles under her eyes tightened and Persephone felt her nails making delicate, crescent shaped cuts into the backs of her knuckles.

The others were arriving in the distance, by chariot. Artemis’s hound leapt to the ground and went tearing through the grass, flushing out an explosion of small birds.

Persephone wanted to explode with them.

The metallic weight of Polyxene’s ring as she let her hands fall to her sides was what kept her in one piece. She inhaled. Held it. Exhaled.

“I understand,” she said. “I will not trouble you with this matter again.”

She felt more than saw her mother’s curt nod and it took everything Persephone had to maintain her placid composure. A black tide swelled in her veins, filling her to the rim with the urge to lay waste to the fields. To draw back into herself every last drop of growing life from leaf and branch and root, and leave Nysa a rolling heap of ash.

Which of her parents she’d inherited her temper from remained a mystery, but it was this wordless gesture of Demeter’s that set Persephone seething.

“Some wisdom at last,” said her mother. “Perhaps your time with Athena has begun to bear fruit. Now go on.” The goddess gave the basket a nudge with her foot. “Your friends are here. If I know you, by the time you’ve filled this, you’ll have forgotten this whole idea.”

But that was the marrow of the thing, wasn’t it? Demeter didn’t know her at all. No one did.

By the time her fists relaxed, her mother’s chariot had dwindled to a gnat-sized silhouette above the hills. Persephone’s gaze fell to the fate-cursed basket and she scowled.

✧

Gold touched every stem and leaf in the field as Helios the All-Seeing drove his blazing chariot toward the western horizon.

Persephone stood at the edge of a tiny stream with her eyes closed, taking in the warmth of the titan’s disc, the sun turning the inside of her eyelids an amber red. The first knuckle of her right hand brushed against the second, the feel of Polyxene’s ring there a continual reminder.

She sighed. Opened her eyes. Clutched in her hand was the infamous basket, bearing a shallow layer of greenery. If she’d been there alone, there would be no need to pretend interest.

Her companions made sport far enough away that she would have to yell if she wanted their attention.

Persephone turned an eye over her shoulder to find Artemis playing games, as usual. The Goddess of the Hunt had something dark and unidentifiable in her hand, and was chasing Athena who—in a rare moment of irrationality—was shrieking in half-feigned terror and darting about to avoid her sister’s grasp. A laughing circle of Oceanids cheered them on while Artemis’s hound tore and leapt between the pair, wild with canine enthusiasm.

In truth, the three of them were half-sisters: Athena, Artemis, and Persephone. They all shared Zeus as a father, but a common mother was not to be found between any of them.

Of course. The Lord of Lightnings may rain on as many fields he chooses, but am I allowed one—one!—from among my peers?

Her sullen thoughts were ill-matched for the lazy serenity of the day. Would her mood be obvious to the others? Persephone couldn’t see how their skies deserved darkening over her personal concerns.

She looked down at the basket she held by the handle. The size of a large serving platter and flat-bottomed save the slightest curve, the reed-woven burden was yet another reminder that her current state of affairs could not continue.

It in no way surprised her how little Demeter knew about what Persephone considered a worthwhile day. For the sake of appearances, however, it was best to go along with her mother’s suggestions from time to time. At least if she wanted to forestall the arguments. And it was a fair enough excuse to gather new gifts for Polyxene. Not only had she failed to arrive with anything on her last visit, but she’d left with the woman’s ring.

After her mother had placed her once again among female immortals—glorified chaperones, is what they were—for a day of ‘flower picking’ in the fields of Nysa, Persephone had decided. She would be returning to the house of the mortal healer sooner than the woman expected.

There were those who would kill and die for what Persephone had now, and here she was, ready to do at least one of those things, at some point, to be rid of it.

Of course, the fields sang with beauty. The sons of Man would swoon and compose ballads. Blossoms in white and blue and purple dotted the sweep of foothills, and the occasional grove of trees, mainly cypress, but here a cedar and there an ash, punctuated the glowing afternoon landscape.

And of course, her sisters were pleasant company, no matter how different they all were. Artemis in particular. The goddess’s sense of adventure always spurred Persephone to attempt feats when she probably shouldn’t. Not that she had any desire to try leaping from the top of a waterfall again.

And yet here was her mother, so vigilant, so concerned. The goddess expending vast reserves of energy to harass, bribe, or bore the gods out of her presence. Demeter walked the eternal fields confident her daughter remained a maiden, untouched. Perfect. Artemis, her closest friend didn’t know. Athena—astute as she might be—didn’t know. They all rolled through the ages under their pretty illusion.

Among the cities of men, as she’d been doing since shortly after Demeter’s unprecedented edict had gone into effect, Persephone had allowed her resentment to bubble into one of the best kept secrets on the immortal plane.

No, the Goddess of Growing Things was no maiden.

If her mother had an inkling of what she’d been up to on her last visit to Smyrna—or Argos, or Kornithos, or any of the others—well … there were only so many nightmare scenarios she was willing to entertain.

It was one thing for Persephone to resent her mother’s interference. Any of her immortal companions could have explained her ill temper away with such an obvious irritant. Which of them would be content with their choices forfeit?

It was because Demeter professed to care about her so much. Because the Goddess of the Seasons was willing to hide her daughter away, while at the same time knowing so little about her. Her mother was oblivious to reality. Persephone’s increasing boldness in her travels to the mortal plane were proof enough.

When Demeter sent her to play in a field like a child, with the naïve belief her daughter was well under control, it made Persephone’s eternal golden blood boil. And it would go on and on, wouldn’t it?

All the more reason to return to Polyxene.

Artemis had given up her chase now, and she and Athena had collapsed on a grassy incline to stare up at the fierce golden sky. Athena pointed to something overhead, some bird or cloud perhaps, and Artemis nodded in agreement. The Oceanids had wandered toward a point further downstream to dip their feet in the clear water. Her companions allowed her and her peevish temper plenty of space.

Can you blame them?

She brought a hand up to shield her eyes from the sun and surveyed the field once more. There had to be something out there worthy of her time.

And so there was. She never knew if she was simply adept at prediction, or if these things manifested themselves from her thoughts. Either way, just beneath the gentle rise of a hill to the west, a bloom stood out on its own. A lone green stalk topped by a vast number of yellow blossoms.

Narcissus. Perfect.

Poison, certainly, but also medicinal with the right preparations. A rare and exceptional gift. The thought of Polyxene’s inevitable clapping hands made her smile.

Persephone stepped across the stream and made her way toward the lonely flower, her path heading straight into the blinding arc of the setting sun. Her bare feet pressed into damp grass and dark, loose earth with each step, and she angled her body forward now to compensate for the subtle incline.

As she neared her goal, a perfume grew heady on the air. The narcissus? It had to be, but it was strong. She found herself swaying in place and had to stop and lock her knees for a moment to ward off a stumble.

Sweet Fates, this thing is potent!

A treasure indeed, for her mortal friend. Had she ever come upon one like this before today? Was the near giddiness jangling her nerves an effect of the beckoning scent, or merely excitement at a potential discovery?

At her arrival, dozens of yellow blossoms burst open at the crown of the stalk, each with six-pointed petals arranged in a star around proud trumpets. She bent to inhale from the source and had to put hands on her knees to keep from swooning.

If Polyxene bottles this, she will earn her fortune.

Persephone laid down the basket and, righting herself, began to tug at the stalk, ready to pull the whole thing up, bulb and all.

The narcissus remained stubborn and so did the goddess. She persisted and it resisted, as willful a pair as there ever was. She was about to give over and borrow a blade from Artemis to dig her tenacious adversary out of the ground, when she felt it. The faintest of rumblings, under her feet.

Then: chaos.

A sudden jolt.

The hillside spasmed, horseflesh beneath a swarm of summer flies, and Persephone tumbled, scraping hands and knees.

An awful grating of stone welled up from the deep. Eyes rolling wild, she turned to her sisters but ended up looking at sky. The land convulsed, terrible and violent, rending the earth at her feet. Where there had been gentle hills, a gaping chasm ripped Nysa wide.

She did not remember losing her footing, but as stones and clods of moist soil bounced and spun away into the yawning depths below, Persephone saw her only support.

That thrice-damned narcissus! You just had to have it, didn’t you!

The defiant stalk was in her grip. The goddess held herself at the scarred rim of the earth, knuckles white, grasping at the mercy of a singularly unfortunate flower. A glance backward showed her black oblivion.

Quiet yourself. Panicking will be of little help.

She took a deep breath, and then another, slowing her heart, pushing down terror.

One thing at a time. One. Thing.

She planted her right foot on the wall of earth in front of her.

Now the next thing.

She levered herself against the freshly broken soil, testing the stability of the stalk.

It held.

With a grunt of effort, she brought her left foot up, ready to hoist herself over the edge of the gap.

The defiant narcissus chose that moment to compromise.

The bulb broke free and consigned Persephone to fate.

Her heart stopped. Then erupted in terror, her fingers clawing, desperate. She tore at the ledge and tore at the ledge, and then didn’t.

The goddess fell backward for a small eternity. The afternoon sky fled, shrinking from an infinite dome to a jagged, receding crescent of light.

She almost laughed through the horror.

You did this, Mother. This is what happened when you tried to protect me.

And poor Polyxene. She would never get Iacob’s ring back.

Persephone fell and fell and fell. A swallowing darkness separated living from dead, thought from form.

For a time, she thought no more.

✧

Hades stood at the base of the chasm and watched his intended struggle with the narcissus. He watched the Fates give her to him; watched her tumble from her home above the earth. A patient hand rested on one tall wheel of his chariot, and a harnessed pair of black mares waited with him.

Persephone fell and he was there to catch her. He scooped her unconscious form from the last of its plummet with a swing of his arms, reducing the impact as he cut her fall short.

What Hades was not prepared to shield himself from, however, was his first glimpse of the goddess, Persephone.

Whatever tentative plans he’d thought he had burned away like so many shadows before the path of Helios. Hades was in unfamiliar territory.

Immortals came in all sizes and forms: homely, handsome, hideous. He’d prepared himself to receive any manner of goddess into his realm, despite Aphrodite’s assurances. You won’t be disappointed, Polydegmon, she’d said with that smirk of hers.

But this? This might be more than he knew what to do with.

Persephone lay draped over his arms, her knees in the crook of one of his elbows, her neck in the other, head lolling back, unconscious. Such was the consequence of a direct passage into the Underworld from the Earth above, rather than entering his realm by the more customary and gradual means across the Styx. Kharon would not approve.

It was not her limp body that gave him pause, however. No, Hades swallowed to wet his throat for a more unexpected reason.

Here, in his black grip, was the embodiment of divine creation itself—at least if the Lord of the Dead were to try to describe such a thing. Petal pale skin all but glowed, even this far from the light of the sun. A dark waterfall of hair spilled over his arm, framing a face which—even at rest—compelled rapt attention from an infamously cynical god.

Her eyes were closed, the black fringe of her lashes brushing her cheeks. What would those eyes look like? Would they be light? Dark? Would they dilate with fear at the sight of him? He wanted to shake her. To jar her to consciousness and see for himself.

No. Control, Immortal. Master yourself.

It was true. How would he retain power if their first interaction consisted of him staring down at her, slack-jawed, like some awestruck Son of Man?

Reining in his urge to rouse her for the moment, Hades allowed himself instead the indulgence of gathering the goddess higher against his chest. He lowered his face between neck and pale shoulder and inhaled.

Damnable Fates, what have you brought me?

Had the scent of springtime ever been known in the Underworld? All things dewy and green flooded his senses in that one breath. It was as if Persephone was made of budding life itself, the antithesis of all that went on in his realm.

Something small and dangerous flared to life beneath Hades’s ribs, and he clutched her body close. His thoughts began to spin with unspeakable possibilities.

A stone skittered across the rocky ground.

“What foolish thing have you done, Clymenus?”

Kerberos padded toward him out of the darkness as Hades ripped himself out of his reverie.

As always, he heard the ever-surly guardian’s voice in his head. Far easier for the great beast to form words by thought than with its three canine tongues. And what better way to taunt Hades than by greeting him with one of his epithets: Notorious.

“A god cannot fulfill his desires?” It was not the entire reason for Persephone’s presence, but Hades couldn’t resist the amusement of needling the guardian in kind.

“A Deathless One may rut any mortal bitch he chooses, and sire pups as he will. Why bring an immortal female here? You will roll in the stink of complications.”

He shook his head at this admonition. Kerberos was right, of course, as he often was in that uncanny animal way of his.

Hades was, without question, the lord of his realm, yet he could hardly call Kerberos a servant. The imposing hound and he had cultivated a mutual respect, but unlike the dogs of men, the Guardian begged at the heels of no master. Of a height with Hades himself and nearly as old as the shores he patrolled, groveling before even a god would be laughable. Each was loyal first to his duties in the realm of the dead, and an easy familiarity had grown between the two from ages at work under the same purpose. Calling it a friendship, however, would be carrying the sentiment a bit far.

“There is more at work here,” Hades said, “than a desire to ‘rut’, Kerberos. Unfortunately, matters are already complicated. Olympian complications are exactly what has brought this female here to me.” He turned with his explanation to lay Persephone across the floor of the chariot, taking care not to jolt or bruise her. “Barring interference from any injured parties above,” he continued, “she is to be my … my mate, if you will.”

He’d almost said ‘wife’, but that was a thing of Aphrodite’s wishful imagination. Demeter’s daughter would never speak the vow of her own will. Not to the Lord of the Dead. And ‘mate’ was closer to something the Guardian might understand than ‘lover’.

Kerberos snorted, one of his three heads shaking itself with dour mirth. The sound of flapping ear leather echoed along the crevasse. “Sometimes I think you immortals are as soft in the head as the humans when it comes to mating.”

The horses stamped and chuffed in the presence of the great hound, their liquid eyes rolling with unease. Hades needed to be away from this place before the added disturbance woke Persephone.

“Why have you come here, Guardian?”

“My eternal charge, what other reason? I felt the rift open between realms. Kharon and Minos had not seen you, and the breach was significant. It falls to me to ensure no soul gets out. Or in.”At this last, Kerberos cut at least two pairs of disapproving eyes at the goddess.

Hades lifted a brow at the beast. “And are you satisfied now that all goes on with my knowledge?”

“Perhaps a poor choice of words, Unseen One, but yes. I see our realm shifts at the whim of its ruler, and not some external force.”

“A relief, I’m sure.” Hades pronounced each word with all the slow weight of his annoyance.

The Guardian ignored his peevishness, as always. “I’ll leave you to your female, then. I must return to my place at the river.” Kerberos turned his heads as one and trotted away into the darkness, his attention for the affairs of gods disappearing as smoke in a breeze.

Hades turned to calm the mares with pats to their arched necks and a few murmurs of reassurance, but the goddess lying unconscious stole his focus. He could see the shallow rise and fall of her chest as she slept, her lips slightly parted. His placement of her in the chariot had rucked up her skirts to reveal a length of pale thigh.

So vulnerable she was here in the Underworld. So exposed.

Yes, the Underworld.

A molten hunger welled up from somewhere as abyssal and deep as time. Everything in this realm belonged to him, from the waters of the Akherôn to the very souls of the mortal dead.

Everything.

✧

The scent of wet stone was the first thing to tell Persephone she was awake. Something soft lay under her prone body, and she tried to crack her eyes to see, but the lids were swollen as though she’d slept for an age.

She rolled to her back and rubbed at her eyes with drowsy knuckles, blinking at last into a dim, diffuse light.

Everything was grey.

Her head fell to the side and she saw violet. Not everything. Violet and red. And black. An orgy of cushions supported her, somehow sinister in their opulence. As she pushed herself up on unsteady arms, Persephone saw the grey was stone. Everywhere. All around.

Where in the three realms …?

Panic stretched and began to wake alongside her. She levered her body out of the sea of pillows to stand. Arms clutched to her waist, she turned to find the unexplained nest atop a knee-high platform of still more grey stone.

This is not Nysa.

Persephone made a slow pivot on one heel to survey the space and understand just how much the sunlit field this new place wasn’t.

The cushioned platform fit in the contour of a wall at one end of a long, ovoid chamber. Floor, ceiling, and walls all met with irregular curves, as though the cavity in the rock had been grown, rather than built.

This is not my mother’s palace.

She paced the room to investigate on careful feet—sandals intact, she noted—as though the slightest misstep might spring some trap. Her heart reported a thudding tattoo.

Overlapping rugs, plush and patterned, lined the floor. At the opposite end of the chamber from the bed of pillows, a wide slab bench in formidable granite stood alone. A pace or so behind it, a waist-high outcropping jutted from the wall like a stone shoulder blade. A basin made of the same granite as the bench sat on the ledge and, when she approached to peer in, Persephone found it contained water. The liquid surface was a still mirror for her held breath.

How am I—

Nysa.

The earth splitting wide, that awful fall. But to awaken in this? This … wherever?

Her focus traversed the dimly lit space. No torches bracketed to the walls? No standing braziers? No one could make light without flame except—

An immortal.

And another conspicuous absence, now that her frightened perception began to expand: doors.

Neither wall nor ceiling harbored a single opening through which a body could enter the room. The pattern of tiny vents pierced into the rock overhead might give passage to no more than an insect.

This was a prison.

Fates, what is happening?

Leaden feet carried her back to the platform and she sank among the cushions again, lost.

Which one of them had done this to her? And why?

Maybe your mother knows. Everywhere you’ve been, everything you’ve done. Maybe this is her way of—

Darkness. Black and complete.

It didn’t matter where the light had come from, because now it was gone. And in its place, terror.

✧

The ambient light drew back into the surrounding stone at Hades’s will, retreating before his entry like the sea before a tidal wave. It had been a long time indeed since he’d been interested in such games, but if he partook at all, it would be on his own terms. Another deathless god was on the other side of the rocky barrier, and she would see him when he deemed it most advantageous.

By means only the Lord of the Underworld could manage, he passed through the stone of his realm and into the enclosed space. The heartbeat he heard in the darkness was wild with alarm, but shot through, as well, with an intriguing thread of fury. Perhaps this Persephone would prove herself a bit more ‘sporting’ than the daughters of men.

The goddess sat among the cushions, feet tucked underneath her, back straight, eyes wide. Did she hope to find even the thinnest sliver of light? There would be none.

To Hades, the absence of light was simply another way to see. The ability came like the working of a muscle, over time and with repetition—something for which his counterparts in the other realms never had need.

True, he could have entered unseen wearing the Helm of Darkness as he’d done with Aphrodite, but Hades preferred the disconcerting effect the complete loss of vision would create.

“Who is here?” she asked the opaque silence. “I feel you in the room, coward.”

Why toy with her? Do you wish to forfeit her tolerance so soon?

It was a finely-honed edge to walk, wasn’t it, to engage in subtle cruelty for his own amusement? Could anything intended to be a marriage begin this way and survive? And yet a wedding had been Aphrodite’s goal, not his.

Still, indulging his depravities with Persephone as he had with the line of mortal woman stretching back through time … well. It was a risky gambit to say the least. Especially with a partner not so easily discarded after the inevitable end of his games.

“Did my mother send you?” she said. “Has she found some way to isolate me further?” Her voice came smoky like obsidian, yet building in upward momentum like the first green blades of spring, pushing past the ash and death of winter. The sound of it went straight to his cock.

A suitable opponent, yes?

Oh, yes. Aphrodite might have cornered him into this arrangement—this burden—but now, seeing and hearing and breathing in the arresting Daughter of Olympos, Hades forged his intentions anew.

He would take what satisfaction he could before matters became dreary. Might she tolerate his attentions? Possibly. But if she met him with horror … Well. Resistance and fear had that potent tang he always liked, didn’t they.

You could stop all this and simply explain what has happened. Let her make her own choices.

But where would be the fun in that?

And when will you again have the opportunity?

Hades turned his attention to the waiting goddess and began.

“Persephone.”

He poured her name into the void, each slow syllable a stroke of oblivion. At her stifled gasp, his smile widened in the black.

✧

“Where am I? And why?”

Persephone tried to cover her start with demands. Fates be damned, she’d felt the presence. Why had the other’s voice shaken her so?

“Well,” it said. He said—the tone was deep, and male. And self-satisfied, she noted with a downturned lip. “You’re not on Olympos, are you? Nor under the Seas.”

Two of the three realms ruled out, and none of the beehive hum of mortal activity stirring on the periphery of her senses. Only one possibility remained, and it made the fine hair stand up on her arms.

“The Underworld.”

The earth had opened up and swallowed her whole, and now she was beneath it. Some bizarre logic made this ring true, but it was a fact she would deal with later, once there were others to place beside it. She set it aside for her next question.

“I’m neither mortal nor dead—as far as I know. What am I doing here?”

“Oh, you will be delighted, Daughter of Zeus.” The male voice couldn’t have sounded more smug. The male immortal voice. “Your father has commuted your sentence of eternal maidenhood. You’re here to marry, by his approval.” Each sentence came as a shifting purr in the dark. As soon as she thought she’d ascertained his location, the sound came from somewhere else. Her eyes still sought light, but there was none.

Persephone ignored the absurdity of the word ‘marriage’ for the feel of her heartbeat in her throat.

“My father,” she said, rolling the bitter taste of incredulity around in her mouth. Her back slumped, confusion distracting from indignity. “Who in the Underworld would he have …”

“You know who I am, Persephone.”

The words were a deep velvet caress, so close in front of her now she might reach out and find a body with her fingertips. Her sightless eyes lifted to where she imagined he stood, and the blackness around her whispered the only possible truth.

“Hades.”

All reasonable avenues eroded to dust. Every rumor she’d heard about the most elusive of the gods gibbered about her in a black, flapping gyre. And then the cushions gave under his weight.

“Exactly right.” His answer came slow and deliberate, a serpentine tail coiling into place, and so close the vibration of the sound heated her ear. “Your father has given you as wife to the Lord of the Dead.”

Panic rose up, but she bound it down, securing it for the rough road to come. His proximity might have made her breath hitch, but his message brought a scowl.

“Zeus hasn’t the power to ‘give’ me as anything, Polydegmon. I fail to believe this realm is so far removed from the rest as to render you ignorant of the nature of immortal marriage vows. Even Aphrodite had to choose Hephaistos of her own will.”

Of all things, this made him chuckle, and the sound had her thighs clenching back an entirely unhelpful hum of awareness.

Male. Immortal. Forbidden.

And was he … was he leaning in to breathe her scent?

Damnable Fates!

“So she did, Flower of the Earth, so she did.” She could feel his smirk. “Not a detail escapes you, I see. Perhaps it would be more precise to say he has given his blessing for a courtship.”

Had there been light, she might have looked him up and down in disgust. “Is that what this is supposed to be? A courtship?”

“The Lord of Lightnings failed to define terms. It has been my privilege to do so in his place.”

Persephone’s hold on sobriety fled. “Why am I in the dark?” Her cheeks and the tops of her ears heated in outrage. Outrage and something … else? No. “This is your realm, Unseen One, why do you hide? Is this how you earn your name?” Spite served as a distraction from the disturbing new warmth.

“It might be one of the ways, yes.” That voice stroked her again. If that weren’t enough, something came in contact with her upper arm. Persephone bit back a gasp. When what felt like a knuckle went sliding along her prickling skin down to the inside of her elbow, the start grew into a shiver.

The Lord of the Underworld is sampling me like an exotic wine.

If Hades knew how her world wavered amid the surreal, he acknowledged none of it.

“You are in darkness,” he said, “so you understand who holds the power beneath the Sea and the Sky. Do you understand?”

There was no need to affirm the obvious. Persephone snapped at him instead.

“Will you show yourself? Or am I to remain blinded indefinitely?” She played a tune of defiance, loud and brash, if only to cover up a second, lower harmony trilling along now. Would he hear it anyway?

“Oh you will see me, little flower.”

Hades shifted closer still; there couldn’t have been a finger’s breadth separating her shoulder and what was probably the wall of his chest. The space between them roiled with heat, but Persephone was frozen stiff. A whisper of movement on her left and a hand was brushing the mass of her hair behind her shoulder, exposing her neck.

Creation spare me!

“Perhaps,” he continued—and had he just bent his head to place his words against her throat?— “perhaps tomorrow we’ll have a look.” There were lips dragging along the skin beneath her ear. “Would you like that? Persephone?” Hades growled the last of his offer low against her flesh.

He can see it! I know he can!

Her brief flirtations with Apollo and Hermes had done nothing to prepare her for the attentions of a ruler of one of the three realms. The Lord of the Dead was another sort of force, altogether. His language, his movements: they all seemed to see past every veneer.

Persephone wedged her palms between her knees to quiet herself. The inside of her lower lip knew the bite of her teeth, a warning against any sort of pathetic whimper.

Is this who you are?

Was it? Was this all the better she could do, confronted with one of her own at last?

The most infamous of the gods let out a lazy laugh, a crimson leaf floating to an autumn floor.

“Tomorrow then,” he said, uncoiling from the platform to stand again. Despite her attempts to retain control through scornful words, he was leaving her with parted lips, abyss-wide eyes.

Before Persephone had time to win back even the narrowest of advantages in the moment with perhaps more questions or insults, Hades Nekrodegmôn, Receiver of the Dead, had willed himself out of the room, taking his unsettling shadows with him.

✧

“Why do you deceive me, Artemis?” Demeter’s words for the immortal were poison darts, fired into the too-innocent breezes of Nysa.

“I may be many things,” the tall goddess said, the arrows in her quiver bristling a warning over her shoulder, “but ‘liar’ is not among them. Perhaps you should seek out Hermes if you want to deal in those sorts of insults. We don’t know where she is.”

“And you, Athena, will you pretend ignorance as well?”

“I pretend nothing, Daughter of Kronos,” Athena flexed irritable knuckles around the shaft of her spear, its butt planted in the field where they’d reconvened. “We’ve explained several times all we saw that day—it is you who refuses to listen. What reason could we possibly have to hide our sister?”

Demeter eyed the pair she’d tasked to accompany Persephone to Nysa. Let my daughter enjoy the flowers and trees that are to her as children, she’d said to them, but watch over her. Now they stood before her, in the shade of a stand of cypress, overlooking the same hilly terrain her daughter had walked only two days before, trying to tell her stories of tremors in the earth, of a great rift splitting the meadow in two. Of Persephone disappearing.

“Perhaps I should be speaking to that tawny brother of yours,” she said to Artemis. “Why should I believe he hasn’t convinced you at last to aid him in carrying her off?” That golden peacock had laid the foundation for her worries in the first place. Him and that silver-tongued Hermes. She saw through their games, the pair of them.

“My brother can attend to his own wooing,” said Artemis, “he doesn’t need any help from me. Tread carefully with your accusations, Goddess of the Earth. Your concern for Persephone is not without reason, but there are only so many barbs I am willing to tolerate.” Artemis’s jaw flexed, and the sleek hunting hound at her feet rose with the beginnings of a growl in its throat. The warning did little to blunt Demeter’s questions.

“So where is this ‘great rift’ in the earth now?” she asked. “The field appears as it always has. You expect me to accept your account, but where is the evidence any of this took place?”

Athena leaned down to take up her great shield from where it leaned against her hip, shouldering it in her readiness to put an end to the conversation. Her face had grown redder than usual. “It is as we’ve said, Demeter. The hillside healed its own wound only moments after it tore itself in half. You may choose to believe us or not as you will—stranger events have shaken our realm in the past—but as for myself, I will stand here and bear your insults no longer.”

The Goddess of War turned on her heel then and strode from the shade of the cypress. A pair of dappled grey horses tossed their heads at her stiff-backed return to her chariot.

Artemis ran a calming hand over the head and haunches of her dog, lowering its protective hackles. She hefted her bow and painted Demeter with a final assessing look. Her features softened, but only just.

“We know you speak with such fire out of a Mother’s desperation, but—”

“Is that what you know? Two virgin goddesses with not a child of their own between them? So much experience, I’m sure.”

“—but she is Zeus’s daughter, as well. Our father is unlikely to have let any harm come to her, Demeter. I’m sure she is well, and I am sure you will discover where she has gone. If we learn anything new, we will find you.”

With this, Artemis jogged away, her hound trotting at her heels, to join Athena at her chariot. Demeter watched the pair mount the cart and, with a flourish of the reins, Athena’s horses thundered from the field, carrying the goddesses who should have protected her daughter with them.

Now she stood alone, knuckles popping one by one, a scowl fit to blacken acres of grain to the root carved between her nose and chin. Like everything else, she would have to take care of this herself.

This had better not be your own doing, daughter of mine.

✧

Hades made his patient way through the bare stone halls of what others might call his palace. His formal dwelling in the Underworld could claim only the most distant kinship with its cousins terracing the slopes of Olympos. Any signs of frivolity—those curtains and tassels and busts preferred by much of the pantheon—were too ashamed to even begin manifesting in his domain. Fripperies and distractions, the lot of them. Austerity helped him to focus.

And focus he did.

His legs knew their destination. He might will himself there, but walking allowed him time to plan.

He’d given her time. A whole night—as it were—for her thoughts to run rampant. More games? Hades sighed. Yes, but he did so enjoy them, didn’t he?

The wall of the corridor he moved through opened on his right to overlook one of the greater caverns. Here it became more of a recessed walkway, and the molten line of the Phlegethôn glimmered far below in the dark.

Something of interest among all this sameness, hm? And why not?

How would he present himself? Simply appear in the room? Hades grimaced. No. He wanted her many things, but startled was not one of them. And how, for example, would that help if he found her asleep? Perhaps darkness again, if only to begin.

The speed at which his motivations had changed was troubling. He’d gone from irritation to lust at the mere sight of Persephone. And at the sound, the scent of her? The way she’d dared to upbraid him all while trembling away in that darkened room? Hades had moved straight past lust to something far worse.

Interest.

You have to retain the upper hand, Immortal.

The walkway tunneled back into the rock, a corridor once more, and Hades clasped fingers around the opposite wrist behind his back.

She didn’t have to know what he was. Not right away. A god could take whatever form he chose, could he not? There was Zeus with all his bulls and swans, for whatever sick thrill that got him. And Hades had disguised himself as a mortal to appear to the daughters of Man on many occasions.

Perhaps some unruly golden curls; wholesome, tawny limbs? Blue eyes like one of the sky-dwellers? He smirked and only stone walls were there to see it. An entertaining choice.

Persephone might drop her guard when met with a more familiar breed of immortal. He could buy her instant ease, perhaps even ready affection. Who knew how badly Demeter’s edict might have made her hunger by now? His steps slowed as he lost himself in it.

There she was, lidded eyes, parted lips, embracing her false God of Light. Hades would cast off his fair façade in the midst of it and she would shriek at the truth. The sound of it would finish him off then and there.

And after? What then?

He turned left down the last of the vacant hallways and exhaled, shaking off the remaining images of a mere few moments’ amusement. Since when did he fail to consider the long game?

The idea of Persephone’s submission was tempting, her dread a useful tool with which to bargain—if that was the way the wind blew once she saw him—but everything between them would be clear and straightforward.

To entertain fantasies of trickery? Was he no better than Hermes, that flighty charlatan? No. Ruses and tricks were mere sleight of hand, and even the audience knew them for lies. The real sorcery lay in honest, naked power, which enthralled without doubts or dispute.

And one of your own kind deserves better from you, Clymenus.

Yes. He would show her his truest self, physically and otherwise, and judge her reaction. This was no delicate mortal he prepared to sport with: this was a goddess. She had earned, at least, the respect of sincerity.

He came to an iron glyph set into the deep grey of the corridor wall. A circle above a crescent, bisected by a cross: his personal mark stretched an armspan wide, gleaming against dull surroundings. On the other side of the stone was the first challenge Hades had looked forward to in a very long time: Persephone.

✧

The light Hades left behind might have been worse than its absence at their first meeting. It forced Persephone to relinquish denials, to confront reality.

She walked the length of chamber, restless after a fitful sleep of indeterminate length. Who could account for time without Helios or Selene riding the skies overhead?

So. The Underworld.

She was in this place at the blessing of her father and the will of a monster—or so other immortals were wont to name the Lord of the Dead down here in his hidden realm.

A monster whose words had curled against her skin under the veil of darkness, whose voice had taken license with her body’s reactions where she gave none. Persephone’s arms condensed around her in a shudder. The way he’d established power, blinding her in shadow … Was it fear that made her cringe? Or something … worse.

But why necessarily worse?

Why, indeed. Her knowledge of Hades came only from whispered tales, passed among gods and men alike as so much contraband.

Harsh. Cold. Unfeeling. His reputation on Olympos hardly spoke of a desirable partner. Her mother would be … horrified? No. There were no words hyperbolic enough for what she would be. Zeus had to have given permission without Demeter’s knowledge, but why? Why now, after all this time?

Persephone went again to the basin on the ledge, taking up the cloth and wetting it to scrub away dirt from her fall yet another time. Any traces were imaginary now, but between nerves and a severe limit on distractions in the sparse chamber, her obsessive cleansing knew no difference.

Why had Hades chosen her, of all the goddesses to pursue? He wanted to … to court her? Persephone made a little huff of disdain in the silent space. What sort of courtship started with an earthquake and proceeded to imprisonment? And, more important, could she escape if matters became more ridiculous than they already were?

She stopped her scouring and pacing long enough to stand in the center of the room. As she’d tried several times already, Persephone reached within to touch that part of her godhood so inextricably tied with every growing thing in the realms. She let it fill her, churning and green and immense, and cast it up and out through the rock surrounding the chamber.

Again, she felt nothing. The will of living growth was enough to push apart stone and, amplified by an immortal, could have served to wedge open a crevice into the sealed space. The beginnings of a way out, if only she could find it.

Persephone had never experienced such an absence of life. Not a stem, not a root, as far as her will could reach.

And what did you expect? This is the realm of the dead.

The Underworld was either too far below the surface—if indeed its location was as literal as all that, which she doubted—or divine abilities flowed by rules of their own in Hades’s domain. Either way, it was one more failsafe she couldn’t rely on to—

The ambient light fled the room. Again.

Something almost imperceptible had changed in the quality of the air.

He was with her.

“In the dark again, are we?” Did she sound as jaded as she hoped? Anything was better than nerves, weakness.

“For the moment.”

“You promised yesterday to show yourself. What has changed?”

“I said perhaps.” His voice was moving, but in which direction she couldn’t tell. The space, along with its lord, was playing tricks. “You’ve had a night to change your mind,” he said. “Are you certain you wish to see?”

“Games,” she spat. “Does my Lord Hades still intend to court me for a wife?” She heard his hum of amusement at her insinuation. “Then face me, Nekrodegmôn. The Sons of Man have managed to do that.”

“Hah!” Her challenge earned a bark of laughter. “Very well. Meet your fate, Persephone.”

In the space of a breath, he restored the light to the room.

The gods of Olympos were, with few exceptions, a tanned and golden lot, or sometimes sanguine and ruddy, depending on temperament. They spent their immortality basking in sea or sky, kissed by the light of Helios.

Hades, Lord of the Dead, was not a god of Olympos.

Before her stood a figure so pale it might as well have been carved from marble. If it wasn’t for him speaking to her moments ago, Persephone couldn’t have said whether life flowed in his veins at all.

Despite the chilly façade, Hades stood with a casual smirk, inviting her continued scrutiny. One muscled forearm rested between the prongs of his infamous bident; the rest of his weight centered on the adjacent leg. The phrase ‘body of a god’ was not lost on Persephone.

He might have said something then, but whatever part of her heard him was subordinate to the part of her that was staring.

That Hades was the color of a thing grown underground only made sense when she considered the realm he called home. What she couldn’t explain away, however, were his extremities. They looked as though he’d dipped them in ink and his limbs had absorbed it like a sponge. Hands and sandaled feet were the deep grey of doused coal, and the dark coloring crept up to forearms and knees until it faded away to match the rest of him. The stained flesh had a lustrous quality about it that brought to mind the skin of a snake. Persephone slapped away an urge to reach out and sample its texture for herself.

You embarrass yourself. You don’t need to touch everything.

He arched a midnight brow in her direction. “Do you wish for darkness again, Green One?”

No, there would be no mistaking Hades for any of the others. Not even the slightest chance.

“Lord Hades,” she said without breath, “I don’t—that is, I’ve never seen—”

You’re stammering now? Are you a mortal spying their patron at a temple? Fates!

“Stilled that salty tongue of yours, have I? Come, now, you’ve nothing to say?”

Persephone snatched up her wits like a fumbled weapon. “You intended to shock with your theatrics, yet now you’re cross when you achieve your end?” This earned her a smirk and a subtle dip of his head, which only served to further irritate her. “Why, then,” she said. “Why me? Because I’m the one daughter of Olympos forbidden to any of the other gods?”

“You know, I’d never thought about it from that angle before, little flower.” Hades flashed white teeth. “Forbidden fruit is sweeter than all the rest, isn’t it?”

“Be careful you don’t bite into the apple of discord,” she said, folding her arms in front of her breasts.

Did his grin widen at that? Was he enjoying her rude mouth?

“I shall attempt to look before I bite, goddess,” he said, “but no. You can thank Aphrodite or perhaps even Hermes for your ‘invitation’ to my realm.”

“Vague is not a color that suits you, Rich One.”

“I suppose not,” he said, “but I do enjoy watching your lovely face twist around.”

She blinked at him, unimpressed, and congratulated herself on not turning a violent red at such a comment. Hades continued.

“It’s all one big vicious circle, you see.” As if to illustrate, he hefted his bident mid-handle, cutting a practiced swath through the air, like the arc of a scythe. It condensed at the end of the stroke into a bulky iron ring, which he popped onto a finger.

“Hermes tried to court you,” he said, beginning a leisurely pace around the room, “and Demeter wouldn’t allow it so she hid you away. I’m sure you’re more than familiar with that part of the story, yes?”

She eyed him in silence as he moved off to her right.

“Once your mother denied him,” Hades went on, hands clasped behind his back, “our fleet-footed friend has been pining for you ever since. You’ll have to give him credit—the Messenger normally has the attention span of a gnat. Well. You can imagine Aphrodite was none too pleased with her lover’s wandering eyes. Rather glorious a concern, when you think about it.”

Persephone refused to turn and watch him as he walked behind her, but she imagined those eyes glittering in dark mirth at this notion.

“What does any of this have to do with me?” she said to the cushioned platform.

“Ah, this is where the Goddess of Lust asked me to ‘remove’ you from the equation. And now, here you are.” He arrived in front of her again and spread his hands. “The beauty of it is, if Demeter hadn’t bothered to make an unobtainable prize of you, Hermes’s favor would have wandered back to Aphrodite by now on its own. Your mother thought to save you from the gods of Olympos, but delivered you to the most hated of us instead. Poetic, don’t you think?”

She might have thought so, were it happening to someone else. And would that smile have been … handsome, if she weren’t so unnerved?

Handsome in the way of a tiger, before it leaps at your throat.

“How would Aphrodite convince you to do such a thing, if the idea wasn’t yours in the first place? You don’t strike me as the sort of immortal whom others lead about by the nose.”

“Yes. Well,” he said, smoothing a hand over the top of his head. “I owed her a favor.” The curtain of his hair shifted under the idle motion to fall back over his shoulders. Like his oddly colored arms, it grew silver from the roots, but was inky black by the time it reached its end. Her fingers might run through it after a—

Stop it! Fates!

The rational voice in her head brought the thought to heel, but the dangerous, unpredictable part of her only unleashed new ones in its stead. The part that sent her in heat down to the cities of men had begun walking a curious circle. A lion discovering a wounded antelope.

The Lord of the Dead was not the only immortal in the presence of someone forbidden. Who was in the Underworld to enforce her mother’s edict? No one. And here was a god who claimed an interest in courtship, however unlikely. Persephone took in fine limbs, an arrogant smile. Shoulders and chest, deep from … from what? Wielding that bident?

What would he be like?

No! Enough!

“And how did you come to be in the goddess’s debt?” she said through a tight jaw, trying to steer her questions back on course.

Another low chuckle, but his eyes were on something distant. “I think that will remain a story for another day.” He focused again and Persephone did her best to hold her ground as he stepped toward her.

“Why would my father allow this?” she said, bold notions fleeing where her body refused. “My mother will be a tempest when she finds out.”

“There was no reason for him not to allow it,” Hades said. His hand rose to separate a sable lock from the bulk of her hair and examine its texture between a thumb and forefinger. Persephone swallowed. “Zeus is more familiar with my nature than most. He sees that I would not be an unfitting husband, despite the exaggerations the others spread about me. It isn’t for Demeter to decide, really. You’ve long been of age. She cannot keep you sequestered against your will, indefinitely.”

“Oh? Because it’s your turn to bind me away now, is that it?”

This earned her a throaty noise of amusement; a joke to which she wasn’t privy. His steps took him slowly around her while Persephone stood stiff and still. The question loomed large, as it had since his arrival.

“What is it you expect me to do?” she said.

Hades completed his circuit. Eyes as black as the night of a new moon looked down into hers and infinity spun away into their depths. She saw there possibilities both sublime and terrible.

“I expect you to obey, Persephone.”

Her breath caught, suspended at a lungful. The silence stretched. An unblinking stare worked to remake her world, and in it she read volumes. Realities to which she did not want to give name.

“And why,” she said, “would I do that?”

“Because you wish to leave one day.”

To leave? He intends to …

The furious labor of her heart began to drown out all else.

“You don’t recall me visiting Olympos much, do you?” he said, closing the short distance between them. “That’s because I am not a god who wastes time in gilded palaces, drinking and feasting. Gossiping. No. I am a listener. I observe. I plan.”

Much like the lords of the other two realms, Hades stood at least a head taller than Persephone. She had to tilt her head back to meet his eye, and swore a silent oath over the obvious imbalance of power this mirrored.

He drew the knuckle of his first finger over her collarbone. Something akin to panic rose in her chest, but it did not make her want to run.

“Because I observe,” he went on, “I can see that once Demeter discovers your whereabouts, and how you’ve come to be here, she will petition your father to have the matter ‘remedied’. He will deny her at first, but your mother holds more power than he would like to believe. Zeus might be king among us, but he will relent, I know him.”

The ghost of a touch had made its way to her shoulder now, drawing her eye as it went. Onyx nails extended just past the tips of dark fingers, serpentine, claw-like. He ran one down the side of her arm and she hurtled toward a precipice.

“You’ll be sent for, Persephone. Probably that imp, Hermes, will come with demands from Olympos—he knows his way in and out of my realm better than any of the others. Whether I release you to him is another matter entirely.”

Her eyes jumped back to meet his. Creation take me, he can’t be serious.

“Those are your choices, Daughter of Zeus.” His face was very close to hers now; his words painted her skin. “Abide by my wishes for a time and return to the upper realms. Or”—he shrugged with a dangerous elegance—“do neither.”

Arms snaked around her shoulders. There were palms gliding down her back to catch her at the waist, to crush her to his chest. Persephone angled her head back to read in the lines of his face a single hungry purpose.

Possession.

She saw the edge of the cliff in her mind, in his eyes. Fates, this is it. It’s happening. Now.

Hades brought his mouth to brush over hers and it was not cold, as she’d expected from the Lord of the Dead.

It was fire.

He spoke his damning words against her lips: “Will you obey?”

Without waiting for a response, Hades seized her in a kiss.

Liquid heat surged through every extremity, welled in every junction, lit every nerve aflame. Her upper lip felt the sliding invitation of a tongue and, consequences scattered to the abyss, she opened to him. He growled at this and pressed his advantage, exploring, savoring. Persephone had a taste for him now: warm and faintly metallic.

… a darker, more wicked partner …

The thought she’d dismissed at Smyrna came bubbling up to confront her. A small noise of recognition rose in her throat and, pressed close as they were, she felt Hades’s body respond. He sealed off the kiss with a nip of his teeth before pulling back to take in the turmoil he’d wrought. There was no hiding her flush, her parted lips.

Persephone stood reeling. He’d already begun to take from her without permission: his mouth on hers, his hands still at the small of her back. His very kisses seemed to know her every humiliating, unrecognized need. Why bother seeking her assent at this point?

But to speak the words aloud? There would be no turning back.

When he’d caught her against him, her hands had come up in a gesture of defense and there they’d remained: palms against his chest, fingers curling against the black of his chiton. It was a posture of resistance and submission both, and she raced in her mind toward the leap from one blind height or the other.

Resist.

Or submit.

Two possibilities, each terrifying. One stood defiant, a noble exercise in futility, chin up, but at what cost? The other beckoned with a crooked finger, whispering dark promises, for the mere price of surrender.

Eyes that turned on seasons of destruction and resurrection bound her to the spot, and Hades asked her again.

“Will you obey?”

No no no No No NO NO! This is madness! You can’t!

“Yes,” said Persephone, turning the key in a fateful lock, “I will.”