The Eighth House: Hades & Persephone by Eris Adderly

VIII SUBMISSION

The ferry receded intothe hanging mist with a haste not often found on the crawling waters of the Styx. Kharon poled the barge of the dead with an irritable vigor, back toward the outer shore where the mortal shades had been amassing at a concerning rate since Demeter had begun her assault on the good will of her fellow immortals.

Hades paced along the sandy bank, arms clasped behind his back, head down, frowning.

It will not be long now.

He’d been ready to return to Persephone, but after hearing the ferryman’s report, the Lord of the Dead needed some brief measure of solitude to gather his thoughts. His intentions.

How many more days like this would he have? Their number, limited, would fall away again to the drone of his routines. The predictability of his realm would return. Why was he clenching his teeth?

Why was he allowing the game to continue? There were ways. Torturing himself was unnecessary.

Because you, Polydegmon, are a beast of the lowest order.

And for that, he owed her. At least this once, all bargains aside.

He should have worshipped her. Any suitor in his right mind would have. The way she’d stretched from the descending stone, exquisite. Helpless.

But who. Who was helpless?

Was he not the one who could not keep hold of reason? When the mere sight of her had his depravity welling up, obliterating all sense? When her flesh called out for his marks, when her body jumped at his licks?

Hades shivered.

There was no need for any of it, and yet he could not stop. And when she’d begged him …

“Please, Hades. I want to hurt for you.”

He hissed at the sound of her voice in his head, seared by a longing he couldn’t relieve. Wavelets from the river lapped at the bank, ineffectual in their soothing.

When Persephone had begged for the pain he had loved her. And not just any pain had she asked for. His pain. His! He came to her with his corruption and, with her eyes, her limbs, her tongue, she said, ‘Purify yourself upon me.’

He could have imagined no greater gift until she’d cried out at the height of their passion. That single word, that impossible jolt.

Sýzygos!

Beloved. When had the Lord of the Dead been anyone’s beloved?

It was a thing decided.

He could not let her go.

And he could not keep her.

You can. And you already know it.

The fingers of his right hand curled into a fist. Persephone was … different? No. ‘Different’ was not a large enough word. There weren’t large enough words.

He had fed his darkness in the past; sadistic games stringing together a trail of forgettable mortal women. They had been playthings, to a one. The Goddess of Growing Things was everything but.

He still wanted her cries, though they sank like a hook beneath his ribs. He still wanted her fear, though it clutched at his lust the way no Daughter of Man could have ever achieved with her temporary whimpers. But now, he …

He cared. Enough to ask her permission. Enough to wait until, impossibly, she crumbled in want of the cruelty he had to give.

He cared enough to cede her at least one opportunity. He took so much, surely, he could grant a request.

You didn’t outright give it to her, Clymenus.

It was true. The riddle he’d put to her was nothing more than a failsafe. She would never answer it and he would enjoy the self-righteous feeling of having offered her a reasonable bargain. Utter nonsense, of course, but when had Hades Nekrodegmôn ever allowed anyone to face him with even odds?

In a smooth gesture, he brought forth the bident from the ring on his hand, slashing it through the æther above the shore of the River Styx. He could travel the spaces between without the use of the weapon—it was his domain, after all—but the action had a satisfying decisiveness about it, and that was what Hades needed now. To decide.

He stepped through the rift and into the corridor just outside the doors to his chambers. Persephone was inside. He could feel her heartbeat when he allowed himself to settle into the silence of the hallway.

What methods she’d used to find her way back today, he wasn’t sure, but the goddess had requested the night and half the next day to contemplate his question while she roamed his realm undisturbed. She’d promised to meet him here at the end of that time. Perhaps she hadn’t left at all. It didn’t matter.

Hades schooled his features to the stony calm that had served him so well over the ages and pushed open the double doors.

There she sat, regal and expressionless in one of the heavy walnut chairs as he closed the doors behind him. Her legs were crossed under her chiton and graceful wrists dangled from the arms of the chair.

He clasped one wrist in the opposite hand at his back and moved into the room at an unhurried pace. She hadn’t twitched a muscle since his entrance, and it was clear her eyes had been on the door, waiting.

There was something on the air. Some premonitory tang that made the back of his neck prickle.

“You are afraid.”

It was as if she’d inherited the lightning and struck him.

“What?”

“Again and again you have demanded it of me. ‘What is it you fear, Persephone? Tell me why you’re afraid.’ ” She leaned forward in the seat. “And each time I have given you truth. And each time I have felt your satisfaction, to be able to claim those vulnerable pieces of me. Because it is an obsession. Your own fear is an obsession, and you can’t control it, but you can control mine, and it grants you a feeling of security to do so.”

She assaulted his foundations in blow after ruinous blow, but he managed to keep it from his face. His heart thudded in his chest, and somehow he twisted it into a smirk.

“And what is it I’m afraid of,” he said, “if you’re so sure that’s the case?”

“You need control.”

The smirk shifted. She uncrossed her legs to place both bare feet on the floor.

“That is your secret, ‘confessed to no one’, I believe your words were? Hades, Lord of the Dead, has to maintain control of every situation, at all times, because if he doesn’t, he fears someone will gain a single toehold and take from him that which he has carved out for himself.”

She … she cannot.

“You are very afraid”—she slid to the edge of the seat—“someone will uncover your secrets and use that knowledge to ruin you.” The goddess tipped a nod at the Elaionapothos, but a new shadow on her words told him ‘secrets’ extended beyond just the Oil.

“That is why you chose this question,” she said. “You believe you’ve hidden yourself with such skill, Unseen One, that you never bothered to prepare for an outcome in which I might come up with an answer.”

Was his mouth open?

“I have, haven’t I.” Green eyes blazed. “I’ve found one of your secrets.”

“I … I suppose you have.” Hades swallowed to wet his throat, and she was already rising to her feet. “Persephone, last night I … I need to explai—”

“Irrelevant.” Her hand cut the air in a negating line. “Do you give over control, or not?”

“Yes, of course”—familiar territory rushed away at the speed of panic—“but I wanted to tell you …” He fumbled for words like he never had. “There are things you need to understand, Pers—”

“Hades.”

There wouldn’t have been a larger reverberation had the Hall of Judgments come crashing to the cavern floor.

“I already told you,” she said, stepping in his direction, “I asked for what you gave. All of it. Again and again, you have cautioned me to speak if I’ve reached my limits, and I tell you I have not. I begged, Hades, because I wanted those words you whispered in my ear. I wanted to feel everything.”

Her reassurances rolled over him like a balm. He thought to pull her to him, his hands already reaching out. “Persephone, I—”

“Enough.” A halting hand came up, fierce now instead of delicate. “Enough with your words. That voice of yours in my head. I can’t function. You will not twist this day back under your thumb, lord of this realm or no. If you wish to earn the rest of my trust, you will keep your word. I’ve answered your challenge. Today is mine.”

Persephone’s cheeks flared hot with color, eyes glinting a warning: if he wanted to save this, he was not to provoke her further.

She closed the distance between them and splayed her hand in the center of his chest, green eyes locked on his, intense, and began herding him backward with decisive steps. He came to a stop when the backs of his knees bumped against the platform of the Elaionapothos. The goddess gave him a push.

“Sit.”

Hades sat, but searched her eyes for some sign of what was to come. An unfamiliar tension knotted his gut. Nerves? Is that what this was?

Is this what she feels? When you corner her?

She came to stand between his knees, so like their first encounter on the bench the day after he’d revealed himself. Today, however, her features were cool and detached instead of warring between panic and affront. Her eyes moved over him like a problem she needed to solve.

Persephone brought her hand to his temple and combed her fingers back through his hair, nails grazing the scalp. When he couldn’t repress the entire resulting shudder, the bow of her lips grew into half a smile. A fist at the back of his head took a handful of hair and tilted his face up to hers.

She stared at him. Whatever she read in his eyes, it went unrevealed, but the pull of the connection deepened as her hold went on and on for unblinking moments. When the surrounding chamber seemed to have disappeared, the goddess reached out to pluck at the taut thread between them.

Her lips lowered to brush his, not quite a kiss, and his heart thundered in the silence.

“This is how it feels, you know.” Her whispered explanation came against his mouth, provoking feelings he couldn’t quite name. “To have your heart wrenched in anticipation. Uncertainty.” Persephone flicked the tip of her tongue between his lips, just as he’d done with that first kiss he’d stolen from her.

She pulled away, a satisfied glint in her eye as he twisted on her line. Some objection began forming in his mind, but, before he could give it voice, she bent again to melt her mouth against his. That sweet tongue sought entry and Hades gave it to her, the first kind of submission he could ever remember offering. The sheer novelty had immortal blood rushing to swell his cock.

Every slow lap of her tongue was excruciating. It was everything he could do not to seize her by the arms and throw her to the platform behind him.

She’s obeyed your every monstrous demand. She has kept to her word. Now you keep to yours, fiend.

He gripped the edge of the platform.

Be still.

Her hold on his hair changed hands and Persephone moved her kisses under his jaw and down his throat. One of her knees came to rest on the platform alongside his thigh so she could crowd him. Claim him. Her mouth burned at the muscles of his shoulder, his collarbone.

She inhaled at his hairline, just behind his ear.

“You smell like wet stone after it rains.” Her words curled warm with her breath. “Do you know I can’t get enough?” The fingers in his hair tightened. “Do you?”

Hades had never given a moment’s thought to what he might smell like. She, on the other hand, had been clawing away at his sanity since the day he’d trapped her in his realm.

“And you,” he said, “You are the dew at sunrise. Green leaves in the Spring. Do you know I had nearly forgot what those were like?” She was everything he could not have, every possibility the Fates had never seen fit to afford him.

And what do they afford you now?

Persephone drew back, searching him, and whatever she sought she must have found because the kisses came again, wet and ardent. His hands moved to the backs of her thighs, sliding his touch higher as he went.

“No.”

He blinked at her. Where had her mouth gone?

She took his wrists in a gentle grip and placed his hands back on the Oil.

“I will tell you when you are allowed to touch.”

Fates!

Persephone’s fingers went to the fibula at his shoulder and worked it loose. The dark wool fell away from his chest, exposing him to whatever purpose the goddess intended.

She took her own, unendurable time, fingertips marking out what seemed hours along the lines of his shoulders, the hollow at the center of his throat. He inhaled through his nose when her thumbs grazed his nipples. Had anyone ever bothered? If they had, it was beyond memory.

Her light touch tightened to a pinch and Hades grunted. Before he could contrive any sort of rude remark to misdirect from his shock, the goddess was kneeling between his thighs. A hot mouth replaced her fingers, and his erection twitched in eager response beneath the drape of his chiton.

She brought her teeth into it, and he made some sound. Some noise no other being outside this room ever needed to hear him make. There was a smoky little chuckle and she shifted to mirror her actions on his other side, letting him lean back on his arms to absorb the new sensations a second time.

The gossip of her lips and tongue traveled lower across his belly, and then her hands were working at his belt. By the time he managed to open his eyes, the goddess had him bared, his garment laid open beneath him.

His cock stood out, bobbing and vulgar before the divinity of her features, but Persephone’s gaze held a covetous focus. What could she see beyond impatient male lust?

It didn’t matter because she was taking him in hand and the warmth had his eyes rolling back.

No! Look at her!

And he did.

She drew the head across the silken skin of her cheek, and her smile warned of mischief. A crystal bead had grown at the swollen tip and a pink flash of tongue stole out to clear it away just before she rose to her feet.

She creates a balance. She gives just enough to make you squirm, but not enough to satisfy.

Just as he had done to her.

Images came flickering back from their previous encounters. Persephone with the collar and hook, writhing for release in this same place, atop the same Oil, and him letting her suffer from want. And then he remembered his clothing, undone around him.

The strap.

Would she expect …?

No.

No? How much balance would she want?

Not content with his silent struggles, Persephone had the blood red of her own chiton rippling to the stone at her feet.

Here she was again, a picture of everything he wanted to consume. Long and graceful, tight and round, cream pale and blush pink, and so full of life as nothing in the Unseen Realm truly ever could be.

Hades met the green eyes and what he saw there had him cursing to himself.

“Kneel.”

The Lord of the Dead, who did not kneel for anyone, felt himself slide from the edge of the platform. Felt his knees bend and support his weight on the limestone.

He knelt for Persephone.

She came to stand before him with a roll of her hips made to incite oath breaking or madness or both. One naked foot rose to the edge of the Oil beside them, and the goddess splayed herself at eye level, glistening and perfect.

“Worship.”

It was as if the earth had buckled beneath him.

He fell on her, rabid to obey as he’d never been, her pleasure his only goal.

Hades worshipped. He consumed. He buried his face and his tongue painted her with truth.

Consort.

She made no objection to the touch of his hand now. His fingers parted her, midnight dark alongside dewy rose, so he might taste her every hidden delight.

Persephone bathed him in low noises of encouragement and put a steadying hand on his shoulder. He lapped and she moaned, sucked and she whined. Her unbent knee began to have trouble in its support.

The fist was back in his hair, in silent, vigorous approval, and his cock throbbed along with a rush of unexpected pride. Hades Clymenus was capable of serving, of pleasing, another.

Not ‘another’. Her. Persephone.

His free hand moved to his erection, stroking to purchase relief while he smothered himself in her scent, her sounds.

“No.”

The slick velvet was gone.

Hades blinked up at her, open-mouthed, as the goddess stepped back and stood on two legs. She nudged his working hand away from his lust with a foot.

“Your pleasure belongs to me now, Son of Kronos.” The trouble in her smile made his gut tighten, and he knew what words would come next. “You will have it when I allow.”

Thrice-damned Creation!

And what were the depths of her self-control, that she could wrest herself back from completion in order to make a point?

But he had agreed. He had agreed.

She moved around him to sit on the bed—for what was the Elaionapothos when they were together now, if not the nest of their lovemaking?—one leg tucked under her, the other dangling to the floor.

“Bring your idle hands,” she said, gesturing with a nod for him to join her.

Hades got to his feet, marveling at his own obedience, and slid onto the pliant, waiting surface.

“On your back.”

The commands kept coming, and Hades followed. He shifted to stretch out, face up, on the platform beside her, his hands folded behind his head. Persephone wasted no time.

She brought her knee over his waist and sat astride his hips. When the bare flesh of her bottom brushed the standing heat of his cock, it was Hades’s turn to smile.

But the goddess had other plans.

She splayed her hands over his chest. Slid them up along his biceps and past his elbows. When she found his wrists, she drew them apart and laced her fingers with his, pinning his hands on either side of his head.

She is trying to lead today, isn’t she?

He chuckled at the little display and let her hold him like that as she leaned down for a kiss. Her sweet mouth was on his, tasting. The twin points of her nipples grazed his chest. His hands grew warm in her grip. Very warm.

Persephone sealed off their kiss with a hum of contentment and sat upright. Her arms stretched over her head, one hand pulling at the other wrist in exaggerated languor.

What is she hoping to—

Verywarm.

She was no longer holding his hands. The Elaionapothos was, right where she’d sunk them.

He tried to pull free but the Oil held him. Above, Persephone smiled.

The Underworld answers to Underworld gods.

It was true, but … where had he heard it?

Hades brushed speculation aside. The reality they shared at this place and time was simple. She wanted his restraint more than he wanted release. It must be so, and he would have to endure until it wasn’t.

And how thoroughly she’d founded his fears! No sooner had someone discovered one of his secrets than they were using it against him. Not that Persephone’s idea of exploiting a weakness was altogether unpleasant.

“Well done, little flower.” He crooked a grin up at her. “I’m impressed.”

“Shhh”—a finger was on his lips—“or I’ll have that fiendish tongue of yours held in check, as well.”

Could she? Was her mastery of the Oil already sufficient to form any sort of gag?

Her head bent low and his questions became irrelevant. Teeth were grazing his throat, pulling his earlobe. Her hands … her hands were everywhere, taunting and sliding, along with the damp heat of her sex.

He needed to touch her. To grab and to pull. To possess. But the Oil held him and he had to do without.

Lower and lower she moved, until she knelt between his legs, green eyes intent on his rearing cock.

Her teeth caught her lower lip, and she tilted her head to one side, studying. After several breaths where his ribs rose and fell, she seemed to come to some decision.

Knuckles drew down over the skin of his scrotum, and Hades did nothing to repress a groan. With her thumb and forefinger, she banded the base of his sack, pulling the heavy pair away from his body in a gentle stretch.

Persephone grew something of a smile at her own handiwork, just before lowering her head. Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t the rasp her tongue. His throat condensed on some guttural noise and his wrists pulled against the hold of the Elaionapothos. Even his hips strained in her direction, pleading.

She took her time, toying with the skin she’d made tight, that laving and squirming tongue centering all its attention on the sensitive jewels in her hand. But there was more for him to feel. Far more, and she had the advantage. The goddess who had him trapped in his own bed flicked those long, dark lashes up at him and grinned.

Her tongue slid the length of him, from base to raging tip.

It was an effort to hold his head up and watch, but watch he did. Not a force in the Underworld could tear his eyes away from this.

She drew his erection over her chin and along the front of her throat, all but painting herself with it. Down between her breasts it went, as she lifted her body, pressing bosom in all around him with her hands. The soft flesh surrounding his cock had Hades rocking, shameless, hips churning in a crude imitation of the genuine act. He needed it! Now!

She chuckled at his misery and slid back down to take him in her mouth.

Persephone moved over him, lips and tongue working at his pleasure in earnest this time, rather than teasing with hints and promises. Her hands stroked while she suckled, tactics changing as soon as they might become predictable. One moment she was fanning the flames with a skilled and sliding grip, the next she was swallowing him whole.

Tension built in his thighs, his groin. If she—Fates!—if she didn’t stop soon …

She rose to sit on her heels, lips pink and swollen from keeping him on the edge.

“Persephone.”

Did his desperation show on his face? What was she doing to him?

“I wouldn’t worry so hard, my captive lord.” She brought her knees over his hips, a hint of a smirk dimpling her cheek. Her feet pushed his thighs together as she sat astride him again. “I won’t make you suffer. At least not for too long.”

With no warning, she came up on her knees and had him in hand. Had him sliding along that wet furrow, anointing his hungry length with a slick promise to allow him to enter her temple.

The hammering in his chest threatened to be his end. She was going to … she was going to claim him.

He was marble hard, and willing beyond a doubt, but there was no question: Persephone was going to take him. No one had ever. Hades had always been the one to decide. To impose his will.

Here he was now, hands held fast within the Oil, flat on his back. The submissive side of this game was foreign. Disorienting. Persephone had accepted his commands with such relative ease, and having known him for a matter of days. The Lord of the Dead became still in the dawning of a newfound appreciation for her adaptability.

Poised now above him, ready to lower herself and douse the flames of his lust—or stoke them! He could have growled—Persephone caught his chin in her hand. Green eyes mirrored his desire; she withheld from herself, as well.

“Do you want it?”

“Of course, love.” He thrust upward, seeking. Was it not obvious? But she lifted her hips, denying relief.

“Beg.”

Her new smile exulted in the reversal.

You are the lord of a realm. You do not beg!

But madness. Madness loomed. To be without was to be less than whole. Was to burn and burn with no respite. What choice did he have?

“Persephone, please.”

“I think you can do better.”

She flirted her sex over the tip of his erection. On the day Aphrodite made her demands, he would have laughed, but now the move was all it took to break him.

“My goddess, let me love you!” He strained to reach her, begging with his body, as well. “I need it. I need you! Please, Sýzyg—unh!”

She sank onto him in approval, all the way to the hilt.

Worth it! Worth it, pride be damned!

Persephone ground against him to their mutual sounds of relief, stilling herself for the span of several lung-filling breaths after, while he flexed, excited and helpless in that wet clutch between her thighs.

Just when he thought he’d have to start pleading again, she ducked her hips and began to roll. It was slow like the growth of the cavern. Hot like the River of Fire. Exquisite.

It could not last.

She found a rhythm. Placed a steadying palm on his chest. Took what was hers.

Yes. Admit it is so.

She rode with startling zeal, seeking her own pleasure from his body. The pace of his breath increased, working to follow her rhythm. He grunted and pushed, his efforts beneath her the best he could give, but frustration grew on her face.

The goddess bent low to savage his mouth with a kiss, and Hades nearly betrayed them both with an early end. She was too much for him. Too good for him. He couldn’t take it.

But the torment didn’t last. Persephone drew back, brows furrowed, and came to a halt. Something in her eyes dissected him.

“This isn’t what I need,” she said at last.

Her hands slid to his wrists and pulled them, one at a time, out of the mire of the Elaionapothos.

“Oh, love.” Shock at his freedom lasted an eyeblink before he had his knees bent for leverage and his hands at her waist. Now he could make a worthy effort. He could please her.

“No.”

A stilling palm was on his cheek.

Persephone leaned down and began to slide from him, her weight taking her to one side. He caught her up in his arms, insides knotting against the idea she might abandon him now. Their faces were very close, and she met him with those eyes.

“I need you on top of me.”

Every last shred of him roared an affirmative. He rolled her beneath him, immortal blood singing in his veins, and plunged into his goddess with a growl.

The familiar position of power earned anew after such a trial made his head swim. Yes, yes, damn him, she’d asked to lead them today, but the sight of her spread below him, pulling him down as though this was her aim all along, had his inhibitions scattering like so much ash.

He tried. He tried to pace himself, to close his eyes. That perfect face was more than his endurance could bear.

Is that why you always take her from behind?

But how else would he hold onto the control she’d so astutely pointed out he needed?

“Hades!” She slapped him with his name, the wrong tone entirely. “What are you doing?”

His eyes flew open, exultation lost at what sounded like accusation. Green eyes flared in outrage and he stilled himself, the weight of his upper body held up on his arms.

“Persephone, what?”

Was he hurting her?

“Today was mine! You gave your word! Why this?” The words became sharp, but Hades was lost.

“Why what, my love?”

“My feet!”

He twisted his neck around to follow the line of her legs where they parted around his hips and saw her feet sunk ankle-deep into the Elaionapothos.

But I—

And then he knew.

Hades brought serious eyes back to hers.

“Persephone I’m not doing this.”

“What?”

“The only thing I want is you. And I have it.” She opened her mouth, but no words came. “It’s the Oil,” he said. “It answers to you.”

Tension coiled in his belly when he spoke his next thought aloud.

“Little flower … you want this. Don’t you.”

It wasn’t a question.

Something like lightning arced from her eyes to his and back again. Her pupils dilated, the thunder of comprehension rolling in the aftermath.

As deliberate as the passage of time, the Daughter of Olympos beneath him fanned her arms out to the sides and over her head. Her fingertips met above the pool of her hair. His lovely Persephone’s throat moved as she swallowed, her eyes demanding witness. The Elaionapothos swallowed her delicate fingers, accepting them inside, pinning her in place.

Hades had given her control and Persephone had chosen to surrender. To submit.

“You’re right,” she said, some new peace smoothing her features. “I do want this. I think I’ve always wanted this.” She tilted her hips in offering. “Take what you want, Hades. I belong to you now.”

The question of keeping her loomed, but yes. He had her.

Again and again, he had her.

Creation spun away from the two of them and they were all that moved and breathed on the deathless plane or any other. The god of endings and the goddess of beginnings closed the circle and were one. Hades took and Persephone gave, the maelstrom consuming itself.

In a far deeper corner of the Underworld, where power roiled sufficient to frighten gods and monsters alike, the Fates exchanged a final nod.

✧

There had hardly been time to explore the orchards of the Underworld the day Hades had dealt with the trespasses of that mortal man, but Persephone wandered among them now.

Row after row of fruitful trees stood impossibly green and healthy in the light of the paráthyra. Her time in this realm was approaching a ripeness as well; she could feel it swelling in her limbs. The plucking would come in the form of decisions, but they were choices Persephone found herself ill-suited to make.

What was she doing here?

The reasons behind her arrival in the Unseen Realm Persephone understood. And the reasons she remained—as much her complete lack of resistance to the idea as it was the will of its lord—were plain, as well.

But what was she doing with Hades? Nekrodegmôn, Receiver of the Dead. Clymenus, Notorious. What was she doing languishing in the bed of a god who turned mortals mute with fear and made even most Olympians flinch?

A few fallen leaves and a sparse carpet of grass crunched under her sandals as Persephone walked through her troubles.

She had spent the last few days in an opium dream. Hypnos would be proud. Eight days of discovery, trepidation flowering into bliss. Was she becoming something new, or had all this been a part of her all along, so many seeds waiting for a rind to burst open and birth them upon fertile ground?

Persephone, Daughter of Olympos, would have recoiled at Hades’s touch; would have fought tooth and nail to retain every bit of the control she’d surrendered of her own will, just the previous night.

The Persephone who watched the Phlegethôn churn beneath her feet as she dangled in the grip of trust, however … That Persephone only knew hunger. She had tasted an equal, opposing force. Where Hades sought control, this new Persephone found an inexplicable readiness to submit.

She circled the fingers of her left hand around her right wrist, recalling the grip of the Oil her own desire had forged.

By the Fates, do I want to submit.

She turned down a row of citron trees with a grimace and kept her meandering pace.

What was she to do? Wallow in euphoria, here in the Underworld, forever?

Is that what you want? Forever? After eight days?

Her cheeks grew hot even at the idea. When had she grown so impetuous? Had so much time on her back made her heart and mind shift places? Or perhaps she was drunk on immortal seed and hadn’t abstained long enough to be sober.

Hades had spoken of marriage, of Zeus’s approval of a courtship, but why dangle an opportunity to leave the Underworld with Hermes if only she were to obey? How did he intend to have a marriage with his consort in another realm?

Or had it all been a ruse? The tale of his bargain with Aphrodite a lie, and Persephone, another forgotten toy to cast aside as her novelty expired.

His ‘consort’. Hekate’s words had dug in and burrowed deep. All while her body had been thrilling in a tangle of fear and lust, some portion of her more profound than flesh had been sampling the idea. Savoring and finding it not unpalatable at all. Neither god nor man had made her feel such things, not on any plane or in any age.

When the time came for her to leave, would she find herself persuading him to let her stay? Why was it so difficult to put a finger on what she wanted? What she ought to do.

She paused to reach for a nearly-ripe citron, the oblong rind pebbly under her fingers. It was alive, there was no doubt, but she could not feel its pulse the way she could have in her own realm. Sight and scent and touch would have to suffice for her here, as though she were a mortal. Persephone left the fruit on the branch and moved on, frowning.

The Lord of the Dead carried out his duties here in the Underworld, she had seen it herself. Who, then, would be responsible for such matters as only the Goddess of Growing Things could remedy? If she remained here below the earth, her abilities unable to touch any green living thing, what then? And what of the mortals? Did they not need food and shelter?

A marriage here would upset the Balance. It could not be done.

And there was another matter.

Her thumb fumbled with the back of the silver band. She had a ring to return, and cringed to think how long eight days on the deathless plane would have been for her dear and worthy friend. The passage of time was a tricky thing between the realms of gods and m—

“Persephone.”

She gasped and whirled.

Hades stood behind her, composed and somber while she swore and caught her breath.

“It is time,” he said as her heartbeat slowed. He held his arms clasped behind his back, his posture upright as though he were making some pronouncement in the Hall of Judgments. The fine hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

“Time for what?”

“I have word. Hermes comes for you tomorrow. I assume you still wish to go?” He spoke with a cold formality and she felt her brows coming down into a knot.

So. It was time. And she did need to go, but why did it feel like this? As though it were tainted somehow.

“Hades,” she said, “you must understand. The Unseen Realm requires oversight. You maintain an order here. I have my own responsibilities above. The mortals depend on my gifts as surely as they do yours. I cannot abandon them.”

He nodded, jaw set. “Then this is as it must be.” She had seen her father brew storms less ominous. “You will do one last thing for me before you leave.”

“Which is?” Their stances had become adversarial, and Persephone didn’t care for it.

Hades produced a hand full of something round and dusky pink, and held it out to her at arm’s length. She stepped toward him, squinting.

“A pomegranate?” She eyed him. “I don’t understand.”

“I want you to eat it. Before you go.”

“What does it matter if I eat a p—”

Oh.

To eat the fruit of her captor was to be bound to him forever.

He had a slow single nod for her moment of realization.

Betrayal, she found, tasted more like that under-ripe citron.

“Then what is the point, my Lord?” She stung him with the honorific and his eyes narrowed. “Why bother to let me leave at all? Why fashion some elaborate tether when you can just keep me prisoner here?”

How in the three realms had she thought there had ever been a choice?

“Because if Hermes is coming for you,” he said, gesturing with the fruit, “he does so at the command of Zeus. Unless I intend to start a war, I’ll have to give you up, at least for a time.”

Persephone gaped, and her arms folded over her breast. “So it was never my choice, was it? ‘Obey and leave one day.’ ” She looked him up and down, willing herself not to spit. “It was always your intention, yes? To force me? I trusted you, Polydegmon.”

Her reality skewed into wrongness, and a sickness churned in her gut.

“I did not always have this plan, Persephone. Not in the beginning. I—” The famous control slipped. “I cannot lose you!”

Too many emotions slapped at her at once. Hades seized her wrist and pushed the pomegranate into her hand, trapping her fingers around it beneath his grip.

“You’ve obeyed me all this time, Green One. Do it once again. Eat this cursed fruit and be done with it.” She tried to pull back from his grasp, but he held her and his voice was fierce. “You cannot deny what we shared last night—you know this is where you belong.”

The angry crescendo, the peal of finality in his words had her eyes welling. Persephone shook her head.

“How could you do this?” Her voice broke, dismay winning out over shame. “Will you force it down my throat?”

“One of us will see it past your lips.”

She was reeling. Reeling.

When your heart was free, you called him ‘sýzygos.’

“All those times you called me ‘love?’ ” The pathetic plea made her insides twist. “This is a courtship? This is how you treat the one you hoped to have as a wife?”

Whether her accusations stung or the villain had seen enough, he stepped back from the scene he’d wrought and left Persephone holding the pomegranate.

The Lord of the Underworld drew out his bident and painted her with a withering eye.

“Hate me or no, I expect that fruit eaten by morning, little flower. Or, so help me”—the æther split in two in the wake of his iron weapon—“I will feed it to you, myself.”

With the threat in place, Hades stepped through, and the orchard was silent again.

It was the first time he’d called her ‘little flower’ and it had hurt.

This was what it was like. Her mother had warned, and she’d refused to listen.

But you don’t have to suffer this. Not forever.

She turned over the pomegranate to consider Polyxene’s ring.

No, indeed. Not forever at all.

✧

The Helm of Darkness was the only thing between Hades and a terrified riot of mortal shades where they gathered on the shores of the Lethe. To walk among them unseen was not a necessity, but their cowering and wailing would not help him think. By contrast, their milling procession in his unfocused line of sight helped to still him the way beings of brighter realms might be stilled by gazing at a pond of gliding fish.

If I could only drink from the river myself. Forget this entire disaster.

The souls of the dead took up the waters of the Lethe to forget all their previous incarnations. If they chose to spin from the dark womb of the grave again, to bloom on the earth anew, it was the bargain the Underworld required them to make. It was their only chance to begin again, wiped clean and innocent as a babe.

And what of his next life? In the past, he had divided his existence in two: the time before the War, and the time after, in which he’d ruled this domain away from the struggles and machinations of his peers.

Now, he would portion his ages another way. There was the time before Persephone … and then there would be everything else. There was little doubt left: his actions had destroyed the ‘everything else’ for them both.

He had heard the sons and daughters of men in his realm describe the winding trail of the Lethe as a disorienting sight to behold. The River of Forgetting, they said, appeared to both exist and not exist, at once. To look upon it was to know the lead-grey current was present, and yet to blink and shake their heads as though they couldn’t quite remember what it was they’d just seen, or why their gaze had fallen where it did.

As the realm’s immortal lord, Hades had no choice but to accept the truth of their tales. Other than its contribution to the darkening of his extremities, the Lethe left him unaffected. He was as blind to its influence as he was to any number of important realities, it seemed.

Realities like tears over a cursed pomegranate.

Regret reached between his ribs again with a clawed hand. It took hold of things vital and soft, squeezing and twisting.

The betrayal on her face accused him, lovely features contorted in his mind’s eye to reflect the damage he’d done.

Should he have known? Could he have known?

Aphrodite’s veiled suggestion, once a distasteful scheme, had become a matter of unfortunate necessity, as Hades saw it.

Persephone, it turned out, did not feel the same.

His ability to read the motivations of others had yet to fail him in such a spectacular fashion. She wanted to stay with him, did she not? Or at least return after this charade with Hermes played out to its ridiculous end. He’d pictured her leaping to eat the fruit, to make certain no further Olympian schemes could part them for long. After the last time they’d made love, he’d only assumed …

Yes, made love.

He let the word roll around in his skull, just short of forming on his tongue. The Lord of the Dead had never loved anyone, possibly not even himself. Was this what it was to love? To ache in the other’s absence, to covet their smiles beyond any sanity of his own?

How had he arrived at a point such as this?

There was Aphrodite blackmailing him into abducting a goddess he’d never met. There was his instant lust for Persephone that had grown into … into what? Coming to care about her pleasure and pain? His enjoyment of fulfilling her desires? What had happened to him?

When had the idea of marriage vows become anything more than lip service he’d paid to Aphrodite?

When had he begun to love her?

Does it matter, when you’ve destroyed it all now?

He had never attempted to force her into anything until the pomegranate. All the pageantry of asking for her obedience, his games of restraint, had been just that. Pageantry and games; titillations meant to cater to his dark fancies—and hers, if he could believe his good fortune. Every step of the way he had sought her permission, had extracted promises she would speak if they reached her limits. She never had.

The Olympians had entrusted him with countless deaths over untold ages, but never a single life. Not until Persephone, and it had been her own. She had trusted, she had served, she had begged, and she had surrendered. All with such a naked, honest desire as Hades had never seen.

And now he had become the villain, just as she’d named him in jest the night he’d come to her with the belt. When the inevitable ties of the pomegranate—her captor’s fruit—brought her back to the Underworld, Persephone would feel nothing but resentment.

If he forced her, she could not choose him. She would never share his company with the same blissful abandon she’d shown this last week.

She would not love him.

It had become the most miserable fate he could imagine, and he’d brought it upon himself. He had done everything wrong. Actions which in the past wouldn’t have made him think twice now haunted him as sickening. Sickening and awful and wrong.

Well what are you going to do about it, Polydegmon? Wallow in self-loathing here on the shores of the Lethe?

He removed the Helm and every mortal in sight shrank back with a collective gasp. His bident drew out between his hands, and the Underworld tensed at his whim, ready.

✧

The Elaionapothos rested in its platform state, and Persephone sat on its edge, elbows on knees, clutching the pomegranate in grim hands.

Hours and hours staring at the fruit had seared her mind barren, like a cloudless summer sky traversed by nothing but the sun. She’d thought every thought it was possible to think, and they’d abandoned her to a stillness by turns until the space inside her head grew eerie with quiet.

Every thought save one.

“I will feed it to you, myself.”

She had no doubts he could do it. Her abilities were nothing in this realm. His command of the stone, the power he had to come and go unseen? Those alone would likely be enough to accomplish his ends, and if Hades was any peer to the lords of the other two realms, then the displays she’d seen thus far were but a sliver of his entire might.

Persephone shivered.

What choice would be left to her n—

“Goddess.”

The double doors to the chamber burst inward, rebounding against the walls. Persephone leapt in her seat and fumbled the pomegranate. Hades strode into the room, collapsing his bident as he came.

Her heart was in her throat.

“Hades, wai—”

“Have you eaten it?”

She looked him up and down in disdain.

“No.”

His eyes found the red fruit, discarded on the floor. In a heartbeat, he was across the room to retrieve it, to stand in front of her, holding it out in one dark-fingered hand.

She crossed her arms over her chest, the refusal clear. Hades sighed and something loosened in his shoulders.

The god knelt at her feet.

“This is a heavy thing I have asked of you,” he said, placing the object of her displeasure upon her knee but not releasing his grip.

“You didn’t ask,” she said. “You commanded.” She made no move to touch either him or the offending pomegranate.

“Yes,” he said, “and for that I am sorry.” Was there sincerity in those bottomless eyes of his? Who could trust anything now? “If you will only listen, my lov—”

“Don’t call me ‘love.’ ”

His head tilted down and to the side, jaw tightened, but he continued.

“Persephone, you were right.” She blinked at him, forgetting to glare. “About the control, the fear. About everything. I cannot give over control of this to the Olympians. It is too important.”

When the line of her mouth firmed up even more, he set the fruit on the Oil and returned the imploring hand to her knee.

“I thought,” he said, meeting her eyes at last, “you would want to stay with me. I thought this—” He seemed to bite his own tongue, before trying again in a more measured fashion. “I thought, with the pomegranate, we could … it would give us some assurance.”

“Assurance?” She could feel her brows climbing.

“That even after Hermes came for you, Demeter wouldn’t be able to keep us apart. Not for long. We both know she’ll have you locked away even more strictly now that this”—he gestured between them—“has happened.”

“It seems you and my mother have plenty in common.” She uncrossed her arms to lean forward on her hands, seething. “You both want to keep me locked up.”

He inhaled, a deep, rib-expanding breath, and let it go. When he spoke again, he sounded tired. “That is not true.”

Her silence challenged his denial, but Hades was not deterred.

“This,” he said, taking up the pomegranate again, “can be a way, but it is not what you think.” When she opened her mouth to snap at him again, he held up a hand. “If what we’ve shared means anything to you at all, you will hear my plan. Please.”

Against her better judgment, Persephone listened.

It was ridiculous, and it answered none of the questions that burned in her chest. It was also the only way she would leave the Underworld unscathed. The weight of Polyxene’s ring reminded her there were other escapes as well, provided she could get through this first, and trickiest of doors.

His words stopped and Hades stared at her, waiting for acceptance. When she said nothing, he dared to reach for her hands. To gather them up and close them around the fruit of his realm.

“Please,” he said, and such a foreign word on his lips, for him to repeat with such frequency. “In the orchard. That was a mistake. That is not how I wish it to be between us.”

Persephone looked at his hands over hers, a study in darkness and light. The Lord of the Dead had persuaded her before, and blinding joy had made the cost dear.

Still, the goddess saw no other way.

“Very well.”

Hades nodded. Rose to his feet.

He offered her a hand, and she took it, questionable though their alliance was, and stood up after him.

“There is one more thing I must ask of you,” he said, “before you leave this place.”

She scowled. “Have you not asked enough?”

“Do you agree this is a complicated matter?”

Her eyes narrowed, but she tipped her head.

“Then I hope you will agree not to complicate it further by speaking to any of the others about the Elaionapothos. If there is one additional distraction we don’t need, it’s a race among immortals to lay hands on a new object of power. Not to mention if they come to realize the lord of the third realm has an advantage …” He shook his head. “I might almost say I regret its creation, but how can I? It brought me to you.”

If such a thing were possible, Persephone softened and hardened at the same time.

“Please,” he said. “They cannot know.”

Agree and leave. The only way.

“I will keep your secrets, Hades,” she said, brandishing the pomegranate like a weapon, “but you will not break my trust again.”

✧

Hermes stood before the Throne of Tears, the bearer of ruinous, if expected, news. The Lord of the Dead faced him from the seat of his rulership, stoic in a way he appeared to reserve for other gods. Persephone sat on his thigh, the picture of a lord’s chosen consort, just as they’d agreed.

He’d asked her, for appearances, to arrange herself just so, but she was no longer blind to his motivations. It might be the last stretch of physical contact they had, and Hades was going to squeeze from it every last drop. She tried to convince herself, for her own sake, that she wasn’t sitting there trying to do the same.

“And Basileus expects to simply rescind his word, not two weeks gone?” Hades looked down his nose at the Messenger. “Did he not imagine the Fair One’s matchmaking would be effective?”

The arm around her waist curled tighter. The result of this meeting was inevitable, but the impression Hermes left with was not. Persephone nestled further against the planes of Hades’s chest.

“My Lord, you must understand,” Hermes said, with a subtle bow, “there will be nothing left for any of us if Persephone does not rejoin her mother. Demeter’s wrath on the mortal plane … it’s killing them. What would you have us do?”

To see the mischievous god speaking with such humble sobriety had Persephone frowning again. Just how dire had matters become up there in her absence? Had her mother lost her mind?

“The sons of men barely make offering to me now,” said Hades, “and yet my realm flourishes as they pass across the Styx. Why should it trouble me if Hôrêphoros fills the Underworld with their shades in mountains with her petulance?”

His fingers pressed in at her hip, somehow warm against the chill in his voice. Against her better judgment, she leaned into the half-embrace.

There had been such joy. Is this how mortals experienced their little lives? Everything so temporary? So easily broken? The nights in his arms, in his thrall, they were all slipping away like so many clouds through her fingers.

Hermes paced the floor, a little of the Trickster she knew returning. “You claim you want Persephone for a consort, Polydegmon.” Slate blue eyes glittered and a blond brow ticked upward. “Will you have your beloved watch her mother destroy herself along with all of us? Will you ask your bride to watch the flowers and trees she loves wither and die, and to stand aside and do nothing?”

The god spun his words with careful and clever intent, but that did not stop them from carrying a pang of truth. Her arguments with herself and with Hades centered around this very question, though the Swift One could not have heard them. She considered the Lord of the Dead from the corner of her eye, the trappings of his mad plan making her squint.

If looks could have turned another immortal to stone on the spot, the one Hades fixed the Messenger with then would have had Medusa nodding in approval. When he broke from the glare at last, it was only to nuzzle his mouth behind her ear and steal his last and lightest of kisses. It was no more than a brush of lips and Persephone had to allow it. Their audience was watching.

“The agreement remains,” he whispered. She tried to keep her features neutral as the hand at her waist began slipping up her side to her shoulder.

He turned to the fleet-footed god and cleared his throat.

“Very well,” he said, voice just the wrong side of too loud. “I will permit you to leave here with Persephone today, Swift One, but understand this”—his fingers came in a possessive circle over the front of her throat—“the daughter of Zeus at my side has eaten the fruit of my realm. By consuming the pomegranate, she has bound herself to me by the laws of the Fates, which even your lord on Olympos will not dispute. Have her explain this to the Lord of Lightnings, and to her mother.” A thumb nudged her jaw, making her face tilt toward his. “She will return to me, whatever they demand.”

The god who set her blood on fire was making no subtle display of his claims, and if fury wasn’t enough of a struggle for her to contain, arousal managed to make up the difference. Were they alone, she would claw his eyes.

Right before spreading your legs. You’re a disaster.

Hermes was agog. “Is this true?” he asked her. “Have you eaten the fruit?”

Hades released his hold and she straightened herself.

“He speaks the truth, Messenger. I am bound to the Underworld. To Lord Hades.”

She didn’t look down, but felt him capture her hand and lace their fingers together into a squeeze. Now his trust in her would have to begin. With the secret of the Elaionapothos, with so many things.

“But Persephone, this”—he made some ineffectual gesture at the pair on the throne—“this—”

“This what?” she said, standing. “Do they not believe me capable of making my own choices on Olympos?” She hoped her words were a jab for Hades, as well.

Hermes tried to swallow the new development, no doubt reworking at a frantic pace the way he would report it to Zeus. He looked from her to Hades and back again, and it was the Lord of the Dead who broke the silence.

“Be off with you then,” he said. “Fulfill the letter of your lord’s command, and have him see the truth with his own eyes. But you will respect my consort, Messenger.” Hades stood now, radiating menace so the hall seemed to shrink around him. “I expect Persephone to return unmolested. The consequences for failing me in this will only begin with a permanent expulsion from my realm. They will end somewhere you do not wish to contemplate. Do I make myself clear?”

“Indeed.” Another quick bow and Hermes took a step away from the throne. It was the only time Persephone had seen him cowed.

Their audience had concluded with far less debate than she’d anticipated. Something rushed away from her that she could not control or grasp with her hands, so many waves retreating from a shore.

The goddess stepped down from the dais in a daze, the pomegranate looming large in her thoughts.

It’s over. Done.

And when her father found out? Well … she was not able, at that moment, to distinguish relief from lament.

“Lord Hades.” Hermes accompanied his curt goodbye with a nod and turned to the throne room doors. “Goddess?” Neither of them could travel the æther unaided in this realm. They would have to depart by less efficient means.

Persephone let out the breath she’d been holding and moved to follow. When her foot touched the bottom step, an iron grip came around her upper arm.

“Persephone.”

Hades stood over her when she turned, everything that moved her and killed her at once. Those black eyes consumed and made promises. The heat of his touch branded her with the most bitter reminder of the depths to which they’d descended in a matter of only days.

“The equinox,” she said. “Our agreement stands.”

At her hushed words, he pulled her close, made her hands collide with his chest. The Lord of the Dead laid his final caution on her lips, riding with it that blade edge of danger and affection as their every interaction had done.

“Beloved, you will have my mercy. The others,” he said, “will not.”

She couldn’t help a tremble at the endearment, but he released her and stepped back before joining them in any sort of embrace.

Every choice she made would have consequences. For him. For her. For countless others oblivious to the affairs of the gods.

When she turned at the double doors, Hades had not released her from that throat-tightening stare.

You must do this. You must.

She set her jaw and followed Hermes out of the palace.

✧

The light of day dazzled anew after Persephone’s time in the Underworld. The subdued light of the Unseen Realm had taught her to see with less.

Tall, dry grass swished around her ankles, and she squinted ahead as she walked, doing her best to ignore the incessant chatter of her escort.

Hermes trotted along beside her, his questions buzzing like gnats. He walked backward to face her since she wouldn’t stop for him, and Persephone wore a grim internal smile at the way she was forcing the Swift One to curtail his normal pace. This must have felt like the trickling of sap to him.

“Is it true?” he said. “The ground tore open and you fell?”She eyed him and made a face, but he went on, incredulous. “No one can enter the Underworld that way. How did you survive the drop?”

“Lord Hades caught me.”

Another short answer, but her patience wore thin. And how formally she referred to the god with whom she’d shared such intimacy this last week. Now that she was out of his sight, Hades seemed so very far away.

“Ugh! With those black claws of his?” Hermes grimaced. “How perfectly wretched for you.”

Did he think to commiserate? What would his face look like if he knew she didn’t share his revulsion? The dark hands of Hades fading to grey at the elbow and then marble white by the shoulder … and the way those fingers looked when they pressed into her flesh …

This is helping in no way. Stop.

The Swift One barreled forward in his line of thought, eyes wide with speculation. “Persephone!” he said. “You were down there for over a week. And Hades means to have you as a consort? Did he try to—I mean, did the two of you—”

“I don’t see how that concerns you, Messenger.” She marched on, refusing to look at him.

He gasped in scandalized glee. “You did! Oh how awful for you! Is his touch as cold as it looks? Did he have to truss you up so you wouldn’t run away?”

The rude questions made her face burn. He had trussed her up a bit.

But you didn’t want to run. Not unless it meant he might chase you down.

The very idea called up memories of the blood union. Of seeing, of feeling him hunt that mortal. But Hermes only saw her cheeks coloring. The god all but cavorted under the late morning sun.

“Persephone, you liked it, didn’t you? Fates! Wait until your mother sees you in such a state.” He untangled his pipes from his belt and brought them to his lips, playing out a mischievous series of notes.

She shot him a glare, but didn’t stop walking. “Enough, Hermes. I will go to Olympos with you as my father bade. I will not listen to nonsense the entire way. Wag your tongue for someone who cares to hear it—it isn’t me.”

How had she ever seen this frivolous god as anything but the shallow reflecting pool he was?

And then he was standing in her path, making her jerk to a halt before they collided.

“What now?” Her hands came to her hips.

An impish grin turned the corner of his mouth, and his hand rose to grip her shoulder. Then he was tracing a thumb over her collarbone, blue eyes traveling her flesh anew.

“You are maiden no longer, Daughter of Zeus.” The thumb tickled her throat. “Perhaps you’d care to sample a lover a bit less … grave?” He managed the audacity of a smirk at his own word play.

“Did you hear nothing in that throne room, Trickster?” She swatted the hand away and stepped out of his reach. “I am bound to Lord Hades as surely as Hera is bound to my father. I’ve no room for any of … this.” She gestured at him with a nod of disgust.

“And yet Zeus has tasted many sweets outside his marriage bed,” he said, advancing on her again. “Your own mother being one of them. You’re not in his kingdom anymore, Persephone. The Lord of the Dead needn’t know a thing.”

Not in his kingdom. Yes.

“You’re right,” she said, growing a cruel little grin. “I’m not in his realm. I’m in mine.”

Power she hadn’t tasted in days flooded her veins in a twisting rush. The soil burst at Hermes’s feet. Before he could finish swearing, dark, damp roots as thick as an arm coiled around those swiftest of feet and began surging up calves and thighs. She only halted the ravenous growth at his waist, but Hermes stood trapped on the spot, all the same.

Still, mockery curled his features.

“What will you do?” he said. “Leave me here and run off to tell your mother? Or Zeus, if you think he’d listen?”

She stepped close now, scalding him with a look. “It is not Demeter you should be afraid of, God of Thieves.” The roots began to constrict, making an awful stretching, snapping sound. “It is me.”

She halted the squeezing growth at his first grunt of pain and crossed her arms over her chest.

“I know the way to Olympos,” she said, “I have no particular need for your guidance. If you wish to be silent, you can accompany me the rest of the way. If not?” She shrugged. “Well. I’m sure someone will happen along who might find a way to free you.”

Hermes spread his hands wide, all smiles and paper innocence. “I was only trying to broaden your horizons, Goddess. You’ve shown me how the wind blows.”

“My horizons are broad enough,” she said. “Which will it be?”

“Not another word from my lips, I swear it.”

She wanted to slap the insolence from his face, but it would be one more thing wasting her time. Instead she cast her will over the roots and pulled them back down into the earth.

Her escort stood dusting his chiton while she shouldered past him toward the inevitable. Olympos waited. Her parents waited.

Decisions … waited.

The nimble god skipped after her, mute as promised, but trilling away on his infernal pipes.