The Eighth House: Hades & Persephone by Eris Adderly

IV RESTRAINT

Persephone found it difficultto discern direction in the Underworld without Helios’s chariot arcing high overhead, but it was simple enough to see Hades was leading her somewhere far from the chamber in which she’d spent the past three days. Somewhere ‘a bit more fitting’ was the only inkling he allowed as to their destination, and she couldn’t decide whether this was ominous or thrilling. The backs of her arms prickled, either way.

The god who thought to ‘court’ her for a wife—an ephemeral excuse, they both knew—set a leisurely pace through the halls and hollows of his unusual palace. His right hand rested at the base of her neck as they walked, a warning against bolting or other foolish choices, or a reminder, perhaps, of her promise to obey. Both were effective. Both summoned thoughts of where that same hand had been.

Her fury that night had been as bright and blinding as the house of Hades was not. How dare he leave her that way!

Yet the greater outrage Persephone reserved for herself, for allowing the fiend to draw her along to that point. The moment the rock had grumbled closed in his wake, she’d thrown her frustrated body to the cushions and taken the matter into her own hands.

And he’ll never hear how you breathed his name in those final throes, will he?

She grimaced even now, as the corridor around them became a bridge underfoot, spanning an abyss between outcroppings of the structure. When she hazarded a sideways glance, he was ready with one of those smiles.

Beast! Is this it now? Is this the problem with immortals?

In her excursions to the mortal plane, she had been the aggressor. The seductress. Here she was something else, something that taxed her nerves.

Here, she was prey.

Was this what her mother understood? Why she’d been so determined in her protection? The way his face had been there, waiting when she closed her eyes. When her fingers had tried to recreate the intensity of his strokes, that dark gaze had come searing into her thoughts. That smirking mouth, the drape of hair over his shoulder … What further sordid things might he have done? The very idea had brought her climax exploding from the one direction she’d failed to anticipate, destroying with it a whole field of assumptions at once.

The Lord of the Dead was neither cold nor repulsive. She did not abhor his attentions.

She could not control her responses in his presence.

A thumb brushed over the nape of her neck and she barely avoided a gasp at the interruption of her thoughts.

He was driving her to distraction.

“Is the third realm so unnerving, Green One?”

She blinked into the cavern surrounding the stone bridge. “No, I was only wondering”—anything! Now!— “about those lights.” She nodded to the irregular smattering of glowing shapes piercing the blackness far, far overhead.

“Ah yes,” he said, pausing to follow her eyes, “the lakes.”

“Lakes?” Yes, encourage him.

“Mortals call them ‘bottomless,’ ” he said, shifting his touch to her shoulder, “and invent all manner of wild tales.” Hades cast her a sideways eye and his mouth twitched in the shadow of a grin. “If they only knew.”

Persephone stopped to stare, shepherding hand be damned. “Those are lakes of the mortal plane?”

“Some of their lakes, not all of them.”

“But … where is the water?”

He made some nebulous gesture with his free left hand. “The mortal and deathless realms come together in odd ways,” he said. “For them, they are lakes. Here, perhaps you would call them paráthyra. Windows.”

She eyed the faraway, shifting lights, their blurred edges eerie; so many misshapen lanterns hung above nothing.

“Is it so literal, then?” she said. “Is your domain truly under the earth?”

“Odd ways,” he said again with a shrug. “Insofar as we’d like to mark the passage of time down here, it is.”

Her brows came together, not understanding.

“Did you begin to wonder how many days had passed in that chamber?” he asked. She nodded. “I discovered for myself when I first claimed this throne how a lack of measured daylight begins to drive a mind mad. You would assume such things would have no effect on immortals, and you would be wrong. But”—he cast an eye to the unlikely portals—“I was able to come to an agreement with Tethys.”

“Why not Poseidon?”

“I don’t bargain with the other two lords.” For an instant, his voice turned grave and it was a sound that made Persephone swallow, but casual grace returned with the same speed. “But no matter. I only needed a few lakes, and our dear Tethys was happy to oblige.”

Persephone had only crossed paths with the titaness once, and the ancient water mother had exuded nothing but nurturing love and care in every direction. What deal could such an immortal need to make with the Lord of the Dead?

“And those?” She pointed down now, to a lit pair of tiny orbs, ruddy and flickering above the vast cavern floor. “Another of your bargains?”

“Oh, no,” he said, “no bargain. The distance plays tricks on your eyes, but those lights spring from Enodia. The Underworld is her home, as well, though I find it best if you don’t—”

“Hekate?”

“—speak her name,” Hades finished in disappointment.

The stone on the bridge ahead of them shimmered, as if under a sweltering heat. Red as Hephaistos’s forge, the same twin lights whorled to life from the void not three paces from where they stood, large now, and free-floating. Nothingness condensed between them, and out of the black stepped the Goddess of the Crossroads.

Persephone’s stomach lurched and, without thought, she shrank to Hades’s side for protection. The god had no qualms about circling her waist with a possessive arm.

“Enodia,” said Hades. What was that in his voice? Irritation? Uncertainty?

Hekate held up a hand and Persephone steeled herself to tolerate the motion. “I havve not come ffor you, Polydegmon,” she said. “Though you could havve told me of thiss developmennt.”

It took all of her will to make her eyes linger on the three faces of Hekate. A first so frightening it might silver mortal hair overnight preceded a second so beautiful it made Persephone’s bones ache. A third, no words could describe, save they bend and shear away from the agony of effort. Each of the three slipped and slid, one becoming another, sometimes two or all at once in sickening impossibility.

The Underworld goddess stepped in their direction, the golden-red orbs floating with her.

The twin torches. So the rumors are true, if skewed.

“You havve come a long wway,” said Hekate, approaching within an arm’s terrifying reach. The susurration of her voice came as many-layered and hair-raising as her faces, its sibilances sliding past her ears like layers of an onion skin. Even the dark fabric of her chiton, her hair, roiled about in some disconcerting, immaterial way, as though they stood there on the bridge under drifting seas.

Eyes a match for the hovering globes burned into Persephone’s for an unsettling amount of time. A moment before she abandoned courage to look away, the corners of Hekate’s lips turned up in a smile. Three smiles at once, really.

And they tell us Medousa is hard to look at. Fates!

“I approve of thiss mmatch, Lord Hades,” Hekate said. “You havve made a wise choice.” It was a pronouncement, and he opened his mouth for some rebuttal, but the goddess spoke over him, this time addressing Persephone.

“Consort of my Lord, you may ssummon me by the call of mmy name,” she said, “annd I will come to you and sserve. May your crossings be well-lit, alwaysss.”

Persephone hardly had time to become aware of her blush, let alone ask questions, when the tri-form goddess vanished in a whirl of dry air and a cryptic smile.

Hades’s arm remained at her waist, and she surprised herself by not stepping out of the unexpected feeling of security. The Lord of the Dead, a comfort? A long way to come, indeed. Her eyes traveled his chest, throat, and jaw, leaning back into that steadying grip.

“Consort?” she asked, meeting his eyes at last.

“Enodia is … dramatic,” he said, shifting an errant streamer of hair away from her brow with one of those wicked nails of his. Her pulse fluttered and she cursed herself for it. “Still,” he went on, “she sees much in the Realm of the Unseen. I would be a fool not to consider …”

Something in that dark gaze as his own thoughts rolled him under made Persephone ache in an unfamiliar way.

“Consider what?”

He cleared his throat, eyes focusing again.

“Regardless,” he said, “I think you see now why you might avoid calling her true name.” Some of the smirk had returned. “The goddess makes quite a sight for the unprepared.”

Nervous laughter was the best she could do as he released her to walk at his side.

The last of the bridge joined the palace proper once more, carrying forward to form yet another corridor. Real torches guttered past as they went, Hades leading them and Persephone having to trust it wasn’t to slaughter.

“I forgot to thank you,” he said, trouble billowing behind as he walked.

“For what?”

“For wearing it.”

There was a brush of a hand at the small of her back. Her eyes fell to scarlet linen, eddying around her feet with each step. Just like obedience, it had been another choice. Where would she find herself with her next?

✧

At the end of a wide, high-ceilinged corridor, a pair of doors at least twice Persephone’s height stood closed at their approach. Panels in some dark, burnished metal she couldn’t name hung with the weight of ages from hinges as long as her leg. Inlaid in milky quartz, crossing from one door to the next, was a symbol she knew from before her descent into the earth. She’d seen it carved into mortal tombs.

The mark of Hades.

It would seem he makes a habit of placing his mark on entrances, wouldn’t it?

He halted before the doors and turned to her, assessing.

“Before we go further, you will recall your promise to me,” he said.

How in the three realms could she manage to forget? “I recall, my Lord.”

“And what did you promise?”

Of course, he would make her say it aloud. It would only drive home the point. Persephone swallowed.

“I promised to obey.”

A phantom of a smile stirred that stern expression. “Yes you did.”

Three words could not have weighed more.

After all his displays of bending the earth to his will, the sight of Hades taking one of the sturdy handles to open a door struck her as oddly pedestrian. He gestured for her to go first, and Persephone stepped through into more uncertainty.

The chamber beyond resonated in such a perfect pitch with the god at her side, she wouldn’t be surprised to learn he’d manifested it himself.

They were standing in what had once been an active, limestone cave. As in the other chamber, a sourceless light banished shadows in every direction. There was no sign of moisture or sounds of dripping now, but well overhead, a forest of stalactites bristled, somehow both decorative and threatening at once. At least a dozen impressive stalagmites rose like sentries around the perimeter of the chamber, but the rest of the spacious floor lay cleared of formations, leveled, and polished to a low sheen.

A wide, unlit fireplace dominated the furthest curving wall. Before it sat a low table and a pair of heavy walnut chairs. Perhaps out of nerves more than anything else, Persephone clapped hands over her mouth in a laugh.

“Where do you get wooden chairs in the Underworld?” she asked. “I feel no trees here.”

“You receive them as a gift.” His voice, along with the sound of a door latching, came from behind her. “Perhaps an unintentional gift, but no matter. Aphrodite insisted on bringing them when she tired of standing.”

“The Fair One was here?” Lust and the Lord of the Dead? In this private place? She was both surprised and not, at the same time.

Do your eyes grow greener so soon? Perhaps the god knew more about ‘courtship’ than she’d care to admit.

“She was,” he said, “a very long time ago. It was when we made this.”

Persephone turned to follow his voice and almost took a step back when she found him.

Hades stood in front of an enormous black sphere, half again his height, hovering an arm’s length from the floor. It bobbed in place, the motion as subtle as breathing, and she could see their reflections in the gloss of its surface. Something indefinable in its looming presence promised and tempted, yet made her want to cower in fear.

Or was it Hades who did those things? Or both?

“What … is that?”

“That,” he said, “is the cause of your presence in my domain.”

“But what is it?”

“It is the Elaionapothos.”

“Oil of Desire?” She cocked her head. “I don’t understand.”

He smiled and held out an arm for her to approach, which she did while keeping a cautious eye on the ink-dark globe.

“At the touch of a deathless god, the Oil forms itself into that immortal’s deepest desires.” His arm slid around her waist as she came to his side, a confusing distraction as they faced the ominous thing.

“And this has what to do with my being here?”

Hades ignored her and leaned down to bury his face in her hair. She felt him inhale and hum an approval, his presence as intense and flustering as the hovering mass before them. He cleared his throat and returned to her question.

“The Elaionapothos obeys any god with the practice of its use, regardless of which realm he occupies. You feel your power weakened in my domain, yes?”

She nodded.

“Even with your abilities hobbled, the Oil will be as you wish it,” he continued. “Were I to take it above the earth, or to Olympos, where I am naturally weak, well …” He shrugged, stepping away from her side. “It will take whatever form I desire.”

He moved around the thing now, and it began to do just that: descending, flattening. “How do you imagine Zeus would react,” Hades said, “if he knew I possessed such an advantage? Do you think he would allow me to keep it here for myself, when under my command in his realm it might be a chariot? A ship? A storm of swords?”

As he moved around the Oil, it morphed from one black version of those things to the next, as quickly as the words left his mouth, and Persephone felt her eyes widen.

A weapon like that …

It settled into a circular, knee-high platform on the floor, as wide as it had been tall. A glossy lake with no vessel to contain it, the Elaionapothos now stood between them, defying logic.

“And what of Poseidon?” he asked, “Or Fates forbid, that hot-head Ares? If one of them were to discover it? I’d have half a dozen gods making plans to infiltrate my domain and seize it for themselves. Until now, there have only been two aware of its existence. You are the third, aside from myself.”

“Who is the other?”

“Aphrodite.”

Persephone raised her brows.

“She had a hand in its creation,” he said. “I was able to draw the raw oil from deep below the earth, and she was able to imbue it with the properties of desire. Each our particular gifts, you see.” Hades inclined his head. “We merged our powers into the Oil to give it the ability to read the deepest of wants. The price of her help was a favor.”

Her tongue grew heavy in her mouth at this.

So. His original intent hadn’t been to take a wife at all. She was here because of a blackmail demand: he could do as Aphrodite asked, or she would reveal his secret to the other gods. Her shoulders slumped the smallest measure.

Are you … disappointed?

“See for yourself?” he said, nodding across the Elaionapothos.

She stepped forward, cautious. “How do I …?”

“You’ll need to be touching it.”

She held her new chiton away from the black oil and peered down at the thing in distrust. “You didn’t have to touch it.”

“That comes with æons of practice,” he said. “Go on.” His smile promised nothing good.

Or everything good.

Ignoring the screaming doubts in her head, Persephone lowered a hand to the Oil. Her touch met with a flexible resistance, firm yet pliant, and not at all the liquid it appeared. The surface dimpled like a slick, dark skin under the press of fingertips.

“It’s not really an oil at all, is it?”

“Not anymore,” he said, sounding far too satisfied.

Was it her imagination, or was it warming to her touch? Her eyes rose to meet his.

“Why is this in your private rooms?”

His grin widened. “Imagine a place of rest that conforms to your every desire.” Black eyes glittered in suggestion. “But more important, the location of this room is known only to me. And now you, of course. No one will find this place unless I lead them here.”

Which also meant no one would find her.

The air in the chamber between them fairly crackled with portent as they faced off across the Elaionapothos. Hades crossed his arms over his chest and took some silent measure with his eyes. Persephone withdrew her touch from the Oil.

He lifted his chin in half a nod. “Come here.”

And it began, again. The price of her heavy bargain.

“I expect you to obey, Persephone.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Because you wish to leave one day.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, inhaling and exhaling, before starting around the Oil.

“No,” he said. “Across.”

The words halted her like a blow.

“… you will recall your promise to me.”

Was it fear that tightened her jaw?

The point of no return loomed large and she stepped up to meet its threshold. What purpose would arguing serve when her opponent could withdraw the very earth beneath her feet, the light itself from the space around them? The inevitable—whatever that was—lay across, and the sooner she faced it, the sooner it would no longer be a threat.

Persephone hoisted her chiton to keep it from tripping her up, and bent a bare knee up onto the black platform. The surface held. She put weight on it. Then it didn’t.

The Oil swallowed her knee, liquid long enough to close around the back of the joint. Her palm shot out to brace for a fall, to lever up and out, but the Elaionapothos consumed that as well, solidifying after it like clay in the sun.

Her eyes leapt to Hades, mouth coming open to match their panic. His chuckle rolled out in a wave the color of midnight, and he was no longer watching from across the platform. He was at her side.

She yanked at her arm, but the Oil held fast, gripping her wrist like a manacle while her fingers splayed and clenched, futile in the indescribable texture beneath the dark surface.

“Oh no, love,” he said, sliding his left leg between hers, one angled up and mired within the Oil, the other holding out hope of supporting her upright on the floor. “I have far more experience with the Elaionapothos—it will respond to my desires before yours.” Fingertips traced her shoulder now, contemplative. “I don’t think you’ll find them terribly unpleasant.”

She must have made a pathetic sight, partially bent over what amounted to a bed, straining to right herself, neck craned around to raise wide eyes to the god trapping her in place. The arrangement prickled her skin.

Prey. You are prey.

The question was, did she like it?

“Hades, what do you want?”

A smile unfurled on his face. “I want you to play my games.”

“Games?”

“Oh yes,” he said, leaning down to curl the heat of his body around hers and speak near her ear. “The game where I take your choices away and replace them with mine. As we began last night.”

She had to lock her elbows to prevent a collapse. That hold on her wrist, the way she’d splayed herself to his touch … The promise of pleasure under Hades’s hands had been great, but to what further limits would he push her?

“When we discover them, little flower, you will tell me to stop.”

Would he, though? No one would hear her protests otherwise, down here in this secret place. Just how much trust could she place in the Lord of the Dead?

“What is it you fear, Persephone?” His thumb brushed the back of her unembedded right hand, where it held her as upright as it could over the Oil. A caress for the prisoner. When the trembling began, did he feel it?

“You’ll hurt me.” She prayed the confession wouldn’t put her in more danger than its absence. Hades only chuckled.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said, tilting her jaw toward his with a knuckle. “Not until you ask me to.”

The naked impossibility of such a thought drew in Hades’s kiss on the tide of her gasp. That warm mouth made her reckless, the hot tongue urged her to forget. All those delicate parts of her hummed with want by the time he let her breathe. While she reeled from the nature of his argument, a dark hand slid to her elbow, drawing it back, toppling her last vestige of support.

“Come,” he said, and bore her down to the Oil without a fight.

His body covered the right half of hers, trapping her free arm beneath his weight and causing her untethered right leg to cantilever out over the edge of the platform, useless. The surface of the Elaionapothos molded to accommodate her curves. With her left knee crooked up onto the platform, secured in place for whatever ‘games’ were to come, Persephone knew her own vulnerability in the most unprecedented of ways.

Fates, I can do nothing to close him out! He will have whatever he wants!

He will have whatever he wants.

When the thought streamed by again in a different tone, she felt the heat rise in her face, and a hint of dew seep between her thighs.

Fabric tugged against her neck. Though she faced away from the god at her back, she could feel him pulling the fibula loose from her shoulder, coaxing it to release its hold on her chiton. The tension in the linen went slack and she froze, a silly attempt at prolonging the inevitable.

“Let me see you.”

Did his words try to assure as he peeled away the garment? The chiton opened on the left side of her body and Hades gathered it toward him, revealing the curve of her spine, her bare bottom. The heat of her secrets exposed burned against the cool air of the room like a blush.

She heard a hiss and some other sound of barely-restrained indulgence, but caught no sight of his face, no matter how far she twisted in the attempt. Charcoal-dipped fingers slid into view over her left shoulder, only to disappear and shift the mass of her hair behind her neck. Not one veil would he leave intact.

The silver crown of his hair tilted into view, and a mouth was on her throat. A surveying palm skimmed the length of her, from shoulder to thigh, pausing to weigh breast and buttock.

If his goal was to disorient her, stirring one new sensation after the next, crossing boundaries in rapid succession, he’d done more than achieve it. And the moment her breath couldn’t decide whether it wanted to come or go, the mass of his body left her.

Fabric rustled. The platform shifted beneath her.

Wha …?

Weight, once more, pressing her into the Oil. Hot weight. Naked weight.

Hard, muscled chest molded to her back, a heavy thigh draped over her hip, and—Fates help her—the intense heat of an erection wedged in the cleft of her ass.

“Hades.” A plea to the god unseen, but for what?

That purposeful hand returned to curve over her hipbone, to pull her back against him, stretching her trapped limbs against the hold of the Elaionapothos, so he might grind the promise of his lust into that warm press of flesh.

“Hades!”

She’d found no such heart-fluttering confusion on the mortal plane. Not once.

“I enjoyed the pretty sounds you made last night,” he said in that voice that turned her wrong-side-out. Some of the pull abated, but only for the gripping hand to snake over the swell of her backside, down between her cheeks. “Do you have more of them for me?”

Fingertips brushed pouting lips; slid into moisture. Persephone whimpered.

“It seems you do.”

His touch was everywhere, kneading, pinching, sliding. Each stroke carried with it instruction; Hades Nekrodegmôn teaching her body to beg.

And beg she did.

Forsaking all pride, Persephone tilted her hips, eager to learn. Somewhere behind her, a male rumble of lust thrummed against her spine. A pair of slick fingers curved and her teeth closed on her lower lip, reining in a moan. In her mind’s eye, she saw it: those dark knuckles, glossy and wreathed in the pale pink of her sex. Sweet pressure built in a way she wanted to both squirm away from and toward at once, insistent fingertips pushing firm and deep into the sticky meat of her fruit.

She made every sound for Hades. Some involuntary, some humiliating, and some she didn’t know she could make.

And then the fullness subsided, along with his touch.

Again? Again, he will deny me?

“Please.”

“Please?” A kiss marked her shoulder blade, and she could all but feel the mocking smile. With her neck twisted as far as it could go, his profile only just darkened the line of her sight.

“Not like last night, my Lord,” she said. “Please.”

Listen to yourself!

“Do I have something you want, Persephone?”

The pads of his fingers settled over swollen flesh, warm and still. Torture. She rocked against his touch, shameless. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” His words were a breath on her ear, and everything ached with need, straight through to her bones.

“Don’t leave me.”

What? Why would you say something like that?

Quiet laughter answered like steel over stone. “I think that’s the least of your troubles,” he said, making no moves to satisfy. “Tell me, Daughter of Olympos, if your hands were free, would you cure your own ills?”

She whined at the truth of it. Until he chose to let her up, the hunger would go unsated. Hades was undeterred.

“Have you done so already? Here in my domain?”

Persephone nodded, the bite on her lip becoming painful. Was it Hades making her want to offer up her secrets? How far did his powers in this realm extend?

Her hips wriggled for friction.

“Are you in need again?”

“Yes!” She wanted to cry! Fates!

Hades chuckled. “I’d make you ask me, but another game for another day, hm? Your body pleads sweetly enough.”

Her moan of relief mirrored sounds of pain when his fingers returned to work. He settled for no longer than a moment on any single approach, each lasting until she began to tense before it gave over to the next in a disorienting bazaar of pleasure.

The fervor built. Her eyes couldn’t stay open, but purple and white lights banded behind fluttering lids. Nonsensical sounds bubbled in her throat as she jerked like a blind thing, seizing.

The throbbing came at intervals, and those intervals decreased. Faster, faster, that florid pulse thundered a crescendo in her ears, her sex, until there was no silence between its ruddy beats at all.

It overtook her.

There was nowhere to hide, no way to delay, held wide and fast by the Elaionapothos as she was. Her mouth came open to choke on the enormity of feeling, the helpless rush as she surged her completion around Hades’s fingers.

Even before the convulsing subsided, Persephone knew the pang of a terrifying truth.

It will never be enough. This. Him. Never.

A hand was smoothing hair away from her face, kisses made tracks up the damp line of her neck. Her muscles were limp and euphoria rang in her ears. For a time, there was nothing but the sound of her slowing breath and the Lord of the Dead petting her cooling skin with a feather’s touch.

When the silence broke, it was with his voice and, at the same time he shifted against her back, she remembered he was very naked.

“Tell me the truth, Goddess,” he said. “Have the Sons of Man served your needs?”

There was something about the question more intimate than the cries he just pulled from her body. It was a truth no other knew, save perhaps, in some small part, Polyxene. And what about him kept compelling answers?

She shook her head. “They haven’t.”

He moved again, higher, almost caging her upper body with his. She could see his face now, and those black eyes held her as surely as the Elaionapothos.

“We have something in common, you and I.” Hades traced a thumb over her lower lip. “We’ve tried to slake our desires on mortal flesh and skill, but it hasn’t quite satisfied, has it?” Another tiny shake of her head.

Part of his very presence uncoiled her instincts to defend or prevaricate; charmed them into a placid line, the subdued and weaving will of a snake. It was a dangerous lull—she might answer anything. Agree to anything.

“Let me share with you my own truth, Persephone,” he said. “I have known no immortal flesh.”

How naïve does he imagine me?

“You’re the lord of a realm.”

“I’ve made it no secret,” he went on, “though I doubt anyone on Olympos bothers with talk of me. Not when your maidenhood has been such an intrigue all this time.” His smile curved and grew, teasing with the lines at the corners of his eyes.

“But Aphrodite,” she said. “She was here. In your rooms.”

And where Lust goes …

His hand moved to cup her jaw, eyes focused and grave, once more. “There has never been a shred of interest on either of our parts,” he said. “Aphrodite’s very essence and mine are in complete opposition. She would never tolerate my demands, nor would I hers.”

“What are your demands?” A whispered question, coming more wide-eyed than Persephone would have liked.

“Discipline,” he said. “Surrender.” He let the backs of his fingers slide down her trapped arm to where it sank into the Oil. Parts of her tired from bliss began to warm again with want. “The nature of lust is not control of the self. It pursues pleasure for its own sake, of its own will.”

“You’ve”—she swallowed, wetting her throat—“you’ve strange ways of showing me I should go without pleasure.”

“I never said that.” He leaned down for a kiss, which she gave, her stomach tightening at the hard length pressing at the small of her back. Hades pulled back just far enough to speak.

“I’ve asked for your obedience. I’ve asked you to give over your will to me.” Sweet creation, those words! And was she arching against him? “Your pleasure is mine now, to allow or deny, but this”—he rolled his hips—“is too important. It is beyond my games. Will you make with me, Persephone, the only union the deathless plane has ever known between the Sky and the Underworld? Shall we be one another’s first taste of our own kind?”

Hades spun enticing words, but the goddess teetered on a knife edge, grasping for signs of certainty that might tip her.

“If I say ‘no?’ ”

All motion ceased.

“I will not force you, Green One. Is that what you want? To stop?” She could read it in the tilt of his brows, the tension in his arms. He did not deceive.

“No,” she said, “I don’t want to stop.”

The rough kiss came as a relief. She couldn’t have stared into those black eyes any longer without losing something of herself. The cost of this bargain was already high enough.

A cost you don’t seem to mind paying so very much, do you?

A heavy erection slipped between her thighs, sluiced through new wetness.

No. No she did not.

His fingers closed over her wrist, just above the Oil. “Shall I free you?” he asked.

Persephone took a full breath in and out while some gathering force thickened the air between them. Her lips parted. Did her pupils dilate when she decided?

“No.”

A hiss and a growl. His hand disappeared and she felt wrist and knuckle bumping and rotating between her cheeks, streaking her own fluid lust over his cock. The blunt head nudged, ready to end an age-long ignorance for them both. Consequences hovered.

“Goddess.”

The one word signaled the last of his restraint.

In the silent space between thought and deed, a sliver of clarity opened against the haze of want. Neither of them had gone seeking this. Abandoned hope and blackmail had brought them here, but they both saw a new path and took it. And Hades didn’t chase, as the others had done. There was no fawning or posturing. There was only his call, which she’d chosen again and again to obey.

Come to me. Come to me. Come.

The Lord of the Dead hilted himself, filling her, and Persephone gasped.

And gasped again. The loud crack of stone hitting stone broke the heady spell in the chamber, and something inside her jarred loose with it. Something marrow-deep, familiar and unfamiliar at once. She could almost grind it between her teeth.

Hades froze, impaling her from above. Where her line of sight came into focus out over the plane of the Elaionapothos, a stalactite the size of her arm had fractured away overhead and fallen to the limestone floor. Behind her, a grunt as the god both acknowledged and chose to ignore. The distraction lasted a breath, maybe two, and then Hades began to move.

He drew back and pushed home again, this time deliberate, slow as luxury, to the tune of a measured groan. Persephone stretched around him, the last of the day’s reservations scattered on the wind. Here was the most forbidden of forbidden things, and she would have it. Her choice. Hers, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

“Hades.” His name was everything. A cry of victory, a demand, a preening affirmation, all ground out in a voice she hardly recognized as her own.

He answered her with a slow roll of hips, his weight and pressure bearing her flat, pillowing her cheeks against his groin. There was no way he could touch her in enough places at once. Chest to her shoulders, lips at her cheekbone, the firm hold of a thumb at the small of her back—never enough.

And the Oil. Fates, the Elaionapothos. It held her indefensible; spread her for him, yet made her secure. The restraint at her wrist and knee removed all worry over decisions, all choice but to accept into her body the god who would court her for a wife.

Submit and be free, was the seductive song it sang, and Persephone found her arousal twisted up into a tight knot of intensity she’d never known.

A trio of percussive cracks interrupted them this time, and the goddess jerked at the sound of more stone hitting the floor, somewhere out of sight. There was a rumble of more rock grating against itself, and Hades slowed to a near standstill.

“Is there something wrong?”

“I don’t … think so.” Uncertainty stowed away with his assurances and Persephone’s brow furrowed.

“Is this … usual?”

“No,” he said after a pause, “but I don’t care.”

And he didn’t. Dark fingers gripped her at the waist and fitted her down onto his cock. They did this again. Again. Again.

Persephone moved with him as best she could, her back arching to take as much of the god as would fit. When his rolling gave way to the more primal need to thrust, Hades hunched to capture her mouth, their bodies now mirrored arcs. A circle made whole on the deathless plane, decay feeding into growth, the fruit of the grave nourishing spring-white buds and pumping the veins of green leaves until they withered and gave suck to death again.

They moved and worked together now, every push and flex rougher than the last, as though the coupling were a war. More of the cave formations fell, but it was nothing, now. All around them, impossibility frolicked. Stalagmites grew from the ground, glistening, building in sweaty heartbeats proportions meant to take ages, before crumbling and forming again. The air was thick, humid. Limestone glittered. Crystallized. The Oil of Desire held her and Hades had her.

The approach made her eyelids flutter. The drag of his cock, the shifting of swollen flesh—it was just out of reach, always one more push away. She grimaced, straining.

“Hades! Nnnh!”

“Makes two of us,” he slurred against to the top of her ear. The hand at her hip crept around, fingers seeking, finding. She made an angry sound of amplified pleasure, the infuriating ache so much closer to relief.

“I’m close, love,” he said, working her from inside and out. “Come for me now.”

The words did as much for her as any dancing touch, any filling cock. Her eyes snapped open.

“Come for me.”

Lungs filled. And filled. Her muscles tensed and burned.

“Come!”

Come to me. Come for me. Come.

Everything burst in a pulsing gush. The tightening of her belly forced out her held breath. The grip of her sex pulled at the length he fed her and Persephone came around Hades with a wail.

Chips of shattering stone pelted the Oil around them. There might have been a jolt to the floor, but the goddess couldn’t be sure under the pummel of hips, the staccato of profanities as Hades reached his limit.

“Persephone!”

He bottomed out, lancing his need with a growl. The pressure on her furthest places bordered on pain, but it didn’t matter. Too much of Hades was exactly the right amount, and he gave her just that, in jet after scalding jet. Filling her with ages of unspent need.

For a moment, nothing could be still. The Elaionapothos rippled beneath them. His cock twitched and she throbbed around him in the reckless wake of orgasm. Even the light in the room flickered from bright to dim, for it, too, required Hades’s control to maintain and the god had lost his grip on such things.

There were kisses along her cheekbone and Persephone felt the tremor in his arm as Hades tried to hold himself upright. With a final push, as though he might summarize all that had just taken place, he slid a hand down her arm and drew it from the Oil. The black non-liquid relinquished her knee as well, like dark soil pushing up a spring shoot. The Lord of the Dead collapsed behind her, heaving an exhausted sigh.

Her freed fingers flexed and clenched, testing their own use after time spent amid the inexplicable hold of the Elaionapothos. She straightened her knee, stretching, and felt her thighs slide together, the proof of boundaries leapt.

At least a dozen of her long breaths strung themselves end to end, making a line along which Persephone could pull her mind back into same plane as the rest of her body. Parts of her wavered in a dizzying way she’d never encountered among the Sons of Man. Her head was clear of noise, of the oppressive, listless chatter that at other times kept her just off balance. Here now, at last, she’d had the thing Demeter had assured her was so ruinous, and she was cleaned out, calm, and floating in unblemished peace.

Hehad brought her here.

Hades, the Unseen One, god beneath the earth, had done this for her. He and he only.

Persephone blinked, seeing the chamber around her for the first time in what seemed like hours. She pushed herself onto her back, and then rolled to her other side to find him.

I’m in bed with the Lord of the Underworld. Light of Creation, look at him!

It was true. There he lay, face, chest, and thighs as white as the Oil was black. A dark hand sprawled over his belly, and she followed the lines down to the curve of his cock, where it fell lax now in the sheen of their coupling. Every bit of languid nudity begged for the touch of her hands, from the charcoal arch of a foot to the mist-pale temptation of an exposed throat. So what kept her from doing just that?

He had to have felt her staring, because he turned his face to look up at her from under heavy lids. The haze of completion softened the trouble in his smile, and his arm fell wide away from his body, inviting.

And why not?

She nestled into his side, fingertips fanning along his ribcage, one bent knee draping over his. Discarded chitons were a joyous catastrophe beneath them.

What n—

Cold! Something wet popped her on the shoulder and she gave a little gasp. Hades’s eyes opened at her jerk and she looked to the ceiling just as another drop of water pocked down against her skin.

The overhead landscape of the chamber still hung heavy with descending stone, but there was no way to mistake it for the same dead cavern she’d seen on her way in the door. There were stalactites and stone curtains, yes, but they were new, and in different locations. Where before, there had been dry relics of the space’s forming, now there were wet inverted spires of living stone, dripping humid life onto their knobby counterparts rising from the floor. Onto her. The bones of the earth in Hades’s private rooms almost seemed to blossom, for lack of a better word.

“My Lord, is this normal?”

He huffed amusement and gathered her close at the hip. “Little flower, not a single piece of this is normal. Not you, not this”—he made a lazy gesture around the room with his free hand—“not any of it.”

She cast a wary eye around the altered space, the potential violence she saw now in the columns of stone. “Will it”—she bit her lip—“will it happen every time?”

The hand at her waist moved up into her wild hair, gripping and drawing her down near his face. “I have no idea, Persephone,” he said, awakening to mischief again. “But your assumption there will be other times is most encouraging.”

So was the hot tongue in her mouth, the scrape of nails at her scalp. If this was the ‘ruin’ to which obedience brought her, Persephone would obey and let him raze her to the ground, then beg to be remade so he could destroy her again.

✧

It was a very different thing to put clothes back on with another immortal’s eyes on him. It was not the absentminded formality that came after bathing or sleeping. Hades wanted to liken the feeling to something, but there was nothing to which he could.

A daughter of Olympos was in his bed—well, atop the Elaionapothos, the nearest thing—stretched out on her side, head supported on her hand, green eyes following his every move. She’d thrown the red linen of her own garment in a haphazard drape over her curves, whether from some inexplicable modesty or mere habit, he didn’t know.

There appear to be any number of things you don’t know.

He fastened the remaining shoulder of his chiton with its fibula and moved to tie off his belt.

Why had he thought the occasional mortal woman would be an acceptable substitute for this? For her? Would he go on with the affairs of his realm, behaving as if nothing had changed?

And the cavern, lurching back into a formation cycle the moment their bodies had joined. An unnerving sight, yet the ichor in his veins sang with the seductive melody of growth and decay.

This whole arrangement should have been an inconvenience, but he’d accepted it might become entertainment, instead. An amusement to pick up and put down at his leisure, for a time. What it would not—could not—become was a need, an ache.

Persephone blinked at him through languor and a lazy smile. “Had your fill already?” she said.

Hades swore to himself. Had his fill? Had his fill? She ought to be beneath him again and squealing right now, but the Lord of the Dead kept his face under control.

“The Underworld is a demanding realm,” he said, coming to stand at the edge of the platform. He trailed fingertips over her ankle, but she pulled the limb back, moving to sit upright instead. Fabric threatened to slip below her breast.

“And you’ll be abandoning me again for how long?”

Did she sound … eager?

“Provided I find my duties as I left them,” he said, “perhaps a day.”

“A day.” Eager became annoyed. “You’re going to lock me in here to stare at your furniture until you return?” He raised a brow, but she anticipated his doubts. “What chance would you say there is of me finding a way out of the Underworld on my own?”

Hades smirked. “None.”

“So,” she said, coming up to sit on her heels, “why not let me explore? Or are you afraid of a single, powerless immortal running loose down here in your caves?”

The sight of her disheveled on her knees had him biting back a snarl. Powerless? Hardly. But there was no need to be a tyrant, not when she’d agreed to his terms.

“Very well, Persephone,” he said. “As I am more than capable of finding you no matter where you may disappear to within my realm”—he paused to watch her face for understanding—“you have leave to wander.” Something in her shoulders relaxed at this, and he nodded, satisfied.

On his way out the door, he ran a hand up one of the damp stalagmites and rubbed slick fingertips together, frowning. It made no sense.

He turned to her before slipping into the corridor. The goddess hadn’t moved.

“Maybe not quite a day,” he said, narrowing his eyes at all the possibilities draped in scarlet linen. “I will find you.”

✧

Minos and his brother Rhadamanthys argued over the fate of a single mortal at such length Hades could no longer be still. The Judges of Men kept up with their charge in more or less the expected manner and, now that he’d marked nothing out of the ordinary, he could move on to the next of his routine visits.

In the wavering light of the largest of the paráthyra, the orchards of the Underworld grew in regular rows. The trees and their fruit served no other purpose than the vanity of nostalgia. The souls of Man had no need to eat and neither did he, nor any other immortal residing under the earth. He had not always been Lord of the Dead, and the solitary plot of green on the floor of the Great Cavern stood as a lasting memento of his ages before the War.

Ah, but now there’s something else green in your realm, isn’t there?

He pushed the thought aside with a frown, steering his focus back to finding Askalaphos. The orchard keeper rarely had anything unusual to report, save the occasional complaint of Menoites’s oxen wandering loose, trampling new growth.

It was neither the herdsman nor the arborist, however, who came rustling between the trees.

“Your immortal ‘guests’ arrive with more frequency, Polydegmon.”

The surly presence of Kerberos did nothing to raise his brows, but the smaller figure following the beast did.

‘Guests’. Bah.

“Goddess,” he said, looking Aphrodite up and down in disdain. “I hope you haven’t come seeking more favors. You’ll find you’ve exhausted your supply.”

The Fair One’s smirk ignored his disapproval outright.

“Well,” she said, “if your lapdog’s warm reception wasn’t overwhelming enough …”

Kerberos snarled but padded away to the orchard’s outer rows, leaving the deathless gods to their privacy.

“What is it you want?” he said. “My end of the bargain is complete. Persephone is here and out of your way.”

“And so she is.” The goddess swished past him in a cloud of sheer yellow linen, the mischief in her tone enough to make him want to grind his teeth. “It seems you’ve wasted no time at all, Clymenus.”

“Except perhaps the time I’m wasting now.” He had nothing but dry scorn as they began a slow course down the length of a row.

“Do you know,” she said, ignoring his jab, “the first time Poseidon took Amphitrite to his bed, it was said the Aegean multiplied with such numbers of fishes the Sons of Man could drive an oxcart from Athenai to Smyrna without ever sinking their wheels in water?”

“Wasting. Time.”

“Zeus and Hera?” Her lecturing continued, and Hades gathered his patience. “When your brother first claimed his consort, the lightnings raged about Olympos for a day and a night. Selene gave up and stabled her horses, the skies blinded her so. The chariot of the Moon sat idle for two nights that month.”

“You will come to a point, Fair One, or I will open a rift here and now and cast you back to Olympos.”

“So testy.” She waved a hand. “I’m sure your poor bride-to-be is smitten already.” The goddess stopped walking and turned to face him. “When I heard tell of earthquakes, my Lord, one right after the other for the better part of the night …” Aphrodite shrugged a graceful shoulder, smiling as though she’d said something clever.

“Earthquakes,” he repeated.

That madness with the cave. But surely …

“A realm recognizing its master’s consort.” She could not have sounded more smug. “Persuasive indeed. Has she agreed to the vows?”

As though a wedding were a possibility. Hades scowled. “What business is it of yours?”

“Of mine?” she asked, all feigned innocence. “Oh, none whatsoever, Lord of the Dead.” Pale fingers plucked a fruit, ripe, from a pomegranate tree. The goddess examined her take with an arched brow while she continued to speak. “I’ve only come to forewarn you.”

“Forewarn me of what?” Did she dare makes threats in his realm?

“Hermes has become aware of Persephone’s whereabouts. And if the Messenger knows, it won’t be very long before Demeter knows, as well.”

“And from whose lips did he learn this, I wonder?”

“Be serious.” She brandished the pomegranate at his accusation. “That would defeat the purpose of our bargain entirely. I don’t know who told him. What I do know is this: time grows short. If you want a bride without interference from Olympos, you’ll want to act, and soon.”

“You assured me Zeus had given his approval.” Hades forced his features to neutrality, but something in his chest roiled. It should have been weeks before the inevitable demands from the Sky. Persephone had only begun to surrender, and the way she responded to his touch, his mere presence, told him she had far, far more to give.

“Oh, you know how this game will be played, Polydegmon.” The goddess met his eye, cynicism bright green beneath copper lashes. “Demeter will insist, The Lord of Lightnings will laugh, then the threats will come out, and then he will bend. And then our dear Hermes will be down here to fetch her from your ‘villainous clutches.’ ” She punctuated her thoughts with a roll of her eyes.

“Your bargain with me is complete,” she went on, “but the look on that very serious immortal face of yours tells me you’re nowhere near prepared to end your time with Persephone. I did promise you’d find her suitable, did I not?” A knowing flash of pearly white teeth accompanied a flick of a delicate wrist. Aphrodite tossed him the pomegranate, and he caught it with a grunt.

“What I say to you, my Lord Hades is no more than this: unless you wish to hand back your new consort”—she waved away his frown at her choice of words—“you’d best find a more permanent way of binding her to your side. Marriage vows will do, but in their place …?” The goddess tilted her chin at the fruit he now held.

Hades folded his arms and fixed her with a look that went on for several breaths. Aphrodite didn’t flinch.

“You came all the way to my realm in person to tell me this?” he said at last.

Dark red brows tipped up in amusement. “Do you think I want word of my involvement in this getting back to Demeter? I’ve learned to trust only myself when I require secrecy.” That smile, he suspected, was one her unfortunate husband had seen a great many times. “Shall I find the Guardian again to show me the way out?”

“No need for that,” he said, setting the pomegranate at his feet. “Kerberos prevents the escape of mortal souls from my realm. There are quicker ways back to Olympos.”

He pulled off his iron ring and drew it out between his palms. At the end of the sweeping motion, the weight of his bident rested in his grip.

Aphrodite tsked, teasing. “So godly. Have you done that little trick for Persephone? I’m sure she’d be impressed to see your ‘weapon’ grow.”

Hades ignored her and stabbed the iron tines into the æther. With a swift downward slash, he tore a gate to the upper realm. Blazing sunlight carved a swath onto the floor of his cavern and the goddess blinked against the glare.

“Your cautions have been noted, Goddess of Lust.” He presented the ephemeral gateway with an open palm. “Should you find your way into my realm again, might I suggest you come bearing good news? My patience has limits.”

She stepped to the glowing threshold and painted him with a sideways grin. “Indeed, my Lord.” In a flutter of yellow fabric, Aphrodite slipped through to Olympos. Hades closed the rift behind her with a twisting motion of fingers and wrist.

The orchard was silent. He nudged the discarded pomegranate with a sandaled foot and condensed his bident back to its ring.

Demeter’s wrath would be on them within days. He had in no way had his fill of the Daughter of Olympos who wandered his realm at this very moment. Not the give of her flesh, not the exquisite sounds she made, and certainly not the urge to spar that alternated with bouts of pure submission.

Is it possible to have your fill? Of her?

But his goal had never been to find a bride. The Lord of the Underworld had want of no such thing.

I approve of thiss mmatch, Lord Hades. You havve made a wise choice.

Hekate’s words nagged him. The Goddess of the Crossroads had been the first to use the word ‘consort’. What could she see, from those thrice-knowing eyes of hers?

“Are you listening to me, Polydegmon?”

Kerberos interrupted his thoughts, the three-headed beast approaching again along a flanking aisle of trees.

“My mind is elsewhere, Guardian. You were saying?” It would never do to remain so unfocused.

“Any other immortal visitors you expect lurking on the banks of the Styx I should know about?”

Hades shook his head. He hadn’t expected this one. “Let us hope not.”

“That female of yours is in heat, yes? I feel your mind on the rut.”

He sighed under a grimace of irritation. The keen eyes of his fearsome colleague were, as always, the only set to see the truth of his moods.

The Goddess of Growing Things did have his attention.

By her own admission, she was a breaker of rules. Her adventures on the mortal plane were evidence enough. Yet, here she obeyed with only minimal prodding, and he was sure even that bare token of resistance stemmed from fear of the unknown more than any real aim at defiance.

What guise had she worn when she’d seduced the Sons of Man? Had she chosen some nondescript mortal face? Sought to keep her dalliances inconspicuous? Or had she wooed with a full complement of earthly beauty? Surely nothing like the perfection of her true, immortal form. She would never have kept her secret that way.

It was almost a shame necessity kept their unexpected tryst confined to his domain. For all he had shown her thus far, his curiosity burned to see the Green One in her own element. Would blossoms burst in her wake? Forests surge up at her command?

Aphrodite had come with her demands, and Hades had gone to their fulfillment with little enthusiasm. After the fall, the sight and scent of the goddess in his arms, he’d set aside indifference for the oft-ignored call of lust. But now …

Now Persephone confronted him with unknowns.

He had called out her name. Forced it out at those moments of pleasure, spun silk-fine but strong as steel. The Lord of the Dead did not dignify playthings with the calling of names.

Because she is not a plaything.

Submission had been his goal from the moment he’d laid her in his chariot, but their every exchange showed such ends to be laughably simplistic. He could force submission. He could threaten and command.

But when Hekate had appeared on the bridge and Persephone had stepped without thought into the protection of his arms …

Hades shivered.

What he wanted now, he would have to earn.

What is she doing to me?

She was driving him to distraction.

“I’m sorry, Kerberos, what was that?”

The hound snorted hot air from all six of his flaring nostrils and lashed an irritated tail.

“You are useless this moment for hearing reports. As always, I have our borders under control, whether I am thanked or not. You should find and mount that bitch of yours. Clear the fog from between your ears. And your legs.”

Hades glared. He should have been paying attention, but the Guardian’s familiarity of late signaled a need for a return to order.

“You serve the Underworld well, as always, Guardian. Be grateful you were given wardship of a kingdom whose ruler tolerates your tongues. I assure you, either of my brothers would not.”

Kerberos shook himself, the vigor of threshing pelt and ears retort enough as he reared on hind legs. With a rude whipping of his tail, the beast turned and prowled away among the trees. “Insufferable gods”, the dog thought back at him, disappearing into the cavern.

The Guardian was right, though. He did need to clear his head. And he knew who would help him do it.

Hades knelt to retrieve the discarded pomegranate. The fruit filled his palm, a lusty pink rind with a little crown bursting from one end.

… a more permanent way of binding her to your side.

A small, ancient voice at the back of his head suggested this was not the way.

He ignored it.

✧

The palace of Helios stood as far to the east as it was possible to go, on the banks of the river Okeanos. Around it glowed the land of the Hesperides, though the Nymphs of Evening and their hundred-headed Drakon were nowhere in sight.

The many windows of the House of the Sun painted a mosaic of golden light across the deepening purples of night, and Demeter, reserves of energy exhausted, passed over its gilded threshold alone.

The day’s trek had pushed her to the edge of her abilities, but Helios was close. She scouted a path to the throne room, guided by nothing more than heat, and soon laughter.

The halls of the palace were a blazing excess of immortal ostentation: surfaces leafed in gold and teeming with precious stones. Columns, friezes, pediments, all adorned with every conceivable metal and mineral chosen from the finest riches of the earth. Donated by Hades, no doubt—a bribe to keep Helios out of the Underworld. Why anyone would need extra incentive to avoid the Lord of the Dead, the goddess didn’t know.

She did not have to search for long. A beam of light blared with frightening intensity from a pair of immense gilded doors. It was as if a thousand—ten thousand!—war horns sounded their fearful news all at once.

Demeter passed under a lintel high enough to admit sailing ships and squinted against the violence of the light. Her forearm snapped up to shade her eyes in an attempt to make out anything at all. The giggling trickled to a halt and there might have been the outline of moving bodies some distance into the space, but her impaired vision played tricks and she couldn’t be sure.

“This meeting will be much easier, Goddess, if you face the other way.” The good-natured, booming voice came from where she thought she’d seen the silhouettes.

Demeter turned as suggested and discovered instant, if only partial, relief. The wall surrounding the door soothed the eye in polished obsidian. It must have been the only dark object in the entire palace, and the titan had to have imbued it with some additional properties to absorb the bulk of the glare.

Behind her, she could now see the reflection of Helios lounging on his throne. One of the Hesperides lay draped over his lap. Was it Aigle? Erytheis? She could hardly tell them apart. Either way, the golden head rested on one arm of the titan’s seat, and lustrous knees folded over the other. Helios played with her hair, and another of the nymphs leaned against the high back of the throne, smirking. Where the third sister was, Demeter couldn’t imagine. Perhaps still with the dragon, guarding the infamous golden apples.

“My apologies,” he said, the smile always present in his words. “This is just about the only way I can greet a guest. Believe me, I grow tired of speaking to the backs of heads myself.” The Titan’s easy laugh echoed around the room. Looking directly at even his reflection made her wince, but at least she was no longer blind.

He is far older than you. More powerful. Tread with care.

“Forgive this intrusion during your hours of rest, All Seeing One. I have journeyed far this day seeking answers only you may be able to give.”

“Peace, Goddess,” he said, “there is nothing to forgive.” Despite the grandeur of his palace, Helios paid no mind to formalities. “I saw your travels. I was expecting you.”

“Of course.” Demeter gave him a respectful tilt of her head.

She should have known. There was no surprising an immortal who saw literally everything under the sun. He was the sun. It was the very reason for her presence within his walls.

Helios leaned back in possibly the gaudiest throne Demeter ever had the misfortune of seeing: an amalgamation of gold and gems so layered and ornate one could hardly recognize it as a chair. The real treasures of the earth, of course, were sheaves of grain and fat cattle, not jewels and other shiny bits of rock.

Best to keep thoughts like those to yourself. Especially when you come seeking favors.

“What knowledge do you seek, Fruitful One? Ask and we shall see what I know.” His fingertips played along the profile of the nymph in his lap, stroking her nose, the bow of her upper lip like the petals of an exotic flower. The Hesperides, it seemed, were accustomed to such imploring visitors. They paid Demeter little mind.

“You are most generous, Helios.” It could only help to fan his pride. “My daughter Persephone has gone missing. Do you know where she is?” Had it sounded too much like a demand? She resisted the urge to wring her hands.

“How long ago was this?”

“I believe you have crossed the skies four times, maybe five, since she disappeared. I sent her to Nysa for a day of leisure and she never returned. Artemis and Athena were with her and claim ignorance. They speak of earthquakes, but the shape of the land disagrees. Nor does that tell me about my daughter. I do not trust their words.”

“Four days … Nysa …” The titan’s focus dissipated while he thought. The nymph took two of his luminous fingers into her mouth, and Helios smiled at the resulting glow that came through her cheeks. Demeter held back an irritated sigh as the demonstrative sucking went on, but Helios ended it with a bark.

“Ah yes! Nysa!” The fingers withdrew with a pop and he shook one at the ceiling in success. “Please understand, Goddess. I see such a great many things each day; it becomes a task to sift through them all.”

“Then you know where she is?” Demeter clasped hopeful hands, impatient.

“I do,” he said, “but I’m curious. You say Artemis and Athena claim to have seen nothing?”

Would he not come to the point?

“They tell me they saw a chasm open in the earth, only to close again moments later. They claim it was after this they noticed Persephone missing. I believe they lie to hide their half-sister.”

Helios shook his head and gave the nymph a tap on the shoulder. She slid to lounge near his feet and he shifted in his chair. “The Hunter and the Warrior did not lead you false, Demeter. I can confirm the tearing of the earth they described. What Zeus’s daughters did not see was your Persephone tumbling into the rift during the tremor.”

Demeter’s throat closed and the reflection of her eyes bugged back at her. Her mouth came open, tongue and palate working and failing to produce sound. When she found her voice at last, it broke at a wail.

“So she’s gone? My daughter is gone?” Her hands were at her face, a barricade to the sanity that might escape through her mouth.

“No! Not gone at all.” Helios rose and stepped in her direction, one bright hand raised in reassurance. “I saw her fall to its end from my chariot. The rift opened æther as well as earth. Lord Hades was there to catch her. I assure you, Goddess, I saw her unharmed.”

Her lungs tried to collapse. Demeter whirled on the titan, and then hissed at the light and turned to face the obsidian, the heels of her palms rubbing her eyes.

“Hades?” There was horror, and then there was this. “Hades has her? For what purpose could that stone of a god possibly want my—” Fingers flew to her mouth as her own gasp severed her words.

“I think you may wish to have a conversation with Zeus about this,” the titan said. He resumed his seat and made some oblique gesture at the two Hesperides. They gathered themselves and disappeared away behind the throne, but not before pausing to whisper in his ear. The line of his mouth was much less jolly than it had been.

“What does Zeus have to do with this?” Her nails bit her palms, quelling fury she could ill afford.

Helios sighed. “Just over a week before Persephone’s fall, Lord Zeus spoke with Aphrodite about Hades courting a wife. This did I also see while on my course.” Radiant hands spread in useless apology.

“A wife? And Aphrodite involved as well? Am I the only one who didn’t know of this? Why did no one speak to me?” Demeter’s voice climbed octaves and her eyebrows followed.

“And if they had spoken to you, would you have allowed such a thing?”

“No!”

All efforts to remain calm in the presence of the titan fell away like so much leaden ash.

“Demeter,” his reflection said, incensing with placating tones, “what could be so terrible about a marriage between Persephone and Hades? He is just, he is cool-headed. None of us have ever known him to take lovers, and the Unseen One has gone many an age without a consort. As a husband, he has much to offer your daughter: dominion in two realms instead of one, power only matched by the Lord of Lightnings himself, all the riches under the earth.” He gestured wide at the gold and precious stones covering nearly every surface in the room. “I have seen tragedy, Goddess, and it did not look like this.”

Her knuckles whitened around unmollified fists at her sides. Tears stung the corners of her eyes and not from glaring at the blinding immortal at her back.

“I tried to protect her!” She could feel saliva gathering in her mouth. “Hermes and Apollo? Do you know what they would have done to my only daughter? And now you tell me Hades Clymenus has taken her instead? The mortals won’t even speak his name, Helios! He is a monster!”

“Then here we are.” Helios settled back into his throne and ran fingers through molten locks of hair. “As I said, you should speak to Zeus. I have told you what I know.”

The goddess faced the image of the titan mirrored in the black stone wall, her gaze unblinking. Furious. His eyes, when she met them at last, were sunspots. Hers were a mess of scalding tears. There were no words left to say.

Demeter strode from throne room, from the halls of the House of the Sun. The night waited for her. Wrath waited for her.

The presumption. The audacity! Hades. Aphrodite. Zeus!

They would return her daughter. Or they would come to know ruin. There was no other choice.