The Eighth House: Hades & Persephone by Eris Adderly

IX LIMITS

“What do you mean, ‘she’s eaten his fruit?’ ”

Demeter’s outrage furled among the columns of the throne room. The Lord of Lightnings raised a silver brow and Hermes cringed.

“It is as the Messenger says, Mother.” Persephone maintained straight shoulders and a cool façade as best she knew how. “Lord Hades bid me eat of the pomegranate and I did so. I am bound to him now. You know what will happen if I do not return.”

“But why?” Demeter clawed at the air, as if she could drag away answers. “Why have you done this thing? You know the laws of the Fates.”

“I had no choice.”

“You had no choice?” The heads of wheat crowning her mother’s brow bristled with ire. “There is always a choice,” she said. “Choose now. Refuse him. Remain on Olympos. He has no power in this realm to come and claim you—what can he do?”

Persephone felt the color in her cheeks and lifted her chin, defiant. “What would you have me do? Stay in the upper realms until I grow weak and wither away? Never seeking the communion as the bond now requires? You would have me a husk of myself rather than bend your will on this single matter?”

Demeter’s eyes widened and she inhaled what must have been all the air on the mount. But it wasn’t her daughter on whom she rounded.

“Zeus.” She was halfway up the stairs to his throne, a thing that was not done without invitation. Rancor seethed from her pores. “You approved this nightmare in the first place. You will extract her from it.” The goddess stabbed a finger at him, and Hermes made himself smaller still on the fringes of the confrontation.

“You heard her,” Demeter said. “He didn’t give her a choice. He might as well be attempting to force the vows. Speak to the Fates. They can’t bind her to your brother forever over a faulty premise.”

“Have you forgotten in whose realm the Fates dwell? Shall I venture to a place where I am without power? Where I now have quarrel with its ruler?” Zeus’s smile glittered as he leaned forward in his seat. “You know the laws, Hôrêphoros. We don’t trifle with the workings of the Moirai. The only thing we can do is return her to his halls before the bond saps her completely.”

Demeter never released him from her glare, but made demands of Persephone. “Tell him,” she said. “Tell your father how that fiend stole you from the fields of Nysa when my back was turned.”

Persephone looked at the floor and said nothing. There was no point in adding to the crackling tension in the hall.

“Leave us,” said Zeus. She jumped, as his voice had dropped an octave in command. “I wish to speak to my daughter alone.”

“I will do nothing of the sort,” Demeter said. “I will remain on this very step until you pull your head out of your Olympian a—”

“Do not test me, Goddess.” Thunder growled from far away, and a heartbeat later, not so far. “I have very little patience for such wailings as all of these. You will wait in your palace or I will have you wait elsewhere.”

Demeter’s mouth opened for another retort, but it was Persephone who spoke.

“For every breath we waste here, Mother, your blight pours more dead mortals onto the shores of the Styx. The Underworld and its ruler swell with power as we stand here and debate. Is this your aim?”

Whatever flashed in her mother’s eyes then could be described by none of the four seasons over which the goddess ruled. Demeter set her jaw. Stepped back down the stairs with shoulders back and an arched brow of warning.

“Consider carefully before the two of you insist upon your way,” she said, holding each of their gazes in turn.

Demeter touched the wreath on her head and it leapt into her hands in the form of her scythe. Much the way Hades would do in the Unseen Realm, she sliced the æther and whirled herself from the hall. Hermes flew from the room in her wake, streaking away on foot at his usual quicksilver speed.

Persephone found herself staring at Zeus. Had she ever stood alone in his presence? In some respects, it was like standing before Hades. In others, it most certainly was not.

Do not think of that now. You’ll be bright red in a heartbeat.

The Lord of Lightnings stood and interlaced his fingers in front of him, inverted his palms, and stretched massive arms away from his chest. Then he descended to the second step from the marble floor and sat.

“Sit with me, daughter.” He thumped the stone beside him with a palm.

What else was there to do? She sat, and folded her arms around her knees. More than any other immortal, her father made her feel tiny. It did not help that she hadn’t seen him in ages.

Zeus turned blue eyes on her and the air in the throne room shimmered. Something inside her chest felt like it was curling open, white waxy petals at dawn. The feeling peeled up through her throat and her tongue grew heavy, then light, just before the words spilled of their own accord.

“I didn’t eat the fruit.”

Fates! Why?

But she knew why, didn’t she? Her father’s ability to compel truth was well known in the upper realms, but Persephone had never experienced it firsthand. It was … oddly freeing, once a body got past the sensation of something opening the core of their being like a fish.

He had a slow nod for her blurted revelation, his gaze turning out over the hall, considering. His elbows were on his knees, his fingers laced together out in front of him.

“And yet Hermes believes you did.” It was not a harsh accusation. He tried to solve a puzzle, not shame her for lies.

“We—Lord Hades and I—decided, well …” You shouldn’t be telling him any of this. “If my mother were to think I had eaten of the pomegranate, she would see my return to him as the only possibility. If she believes I still have a choice, she will never let me alone again.”

Persephone shrank in on herself, ready for the tirade to come. She’d deceived Hermes, deceived her mother. Deceived the Lord of Olympos, if only for a time.

The outrage came in the form of a smile.

“Hades is wise in this plan,” he said. “He is right about your mother.”

She had to make an effort to close her mouth. He was … accusing her of being right? She sat there in rudderless silence, but after a time, Zeus had more questions.

“Persephone, do you know why I approved this courtship?”

“I don’t,” she said. “Not when you knew Mother had such fierce protections on my innocence.”

He tilted his head and glanced over from under knowing eyelids. “Helios sees all, Daughter. Even such happenings as we might attempt to confine to the mortal plane.”

The mortal pl—oh!

“You do not understand, Father. I went to the m—”

“I do understand,” he said, “but that isn’t the reason for the courtship.”

She shook her head, but Zeus found her right hand and took it in his. Fingers squeezed with affection.

“You deserve more than I was able to give your mother,” he said. “Hades is … well …” Air huffed out through his nose. “Hades is many things. The Unseen Realm is not like ours. Mortals fear him because they do not understand death. Immortals keep their distance because they do not understand his ways. He is from a time before the War. As am I. As is your mother. But Persephone,” he said, “he will be a fair and loyal husband, should you choose to make the vows.”

Her brows came down, perhaps trying to dip into a place of hope. “How can you know this? Mother is sure he will leave me in disgrace.”

“She does not see many examples on this plane to establish her confidence otherwise. So many of our kind”—he let go her hand to gesture—“grow restless and bored over the æons. Our attention wanders. Aphrodite should be faithful to Hephaistos, Poseidon should have eyes for none but Amphitrite, and I … well, I’m sure your mother has regaled you to no end about what sort of creature I am.” A rueful chuckle accompanied a shake of his head.

She gave him a look, but Zeus only shrugged.

“I do not deny it. We are what we are. All of us.” He turned an unfocused gaze back to her, blue eyes serious now. “It is for this reason I can make such judgments. Hades has ruled below all these many ages without choosing a consort. What would have stopped him from doing as so many of us have done? From speaking the vows out of passion, and then forsaking them when he grew tired?”

“I … don’t know?”

“Whatever it is he seeks in a consort, the Lord of the Dead has waited for it. He has a patience none of us can match. He will stay true, Daughter, and this is what you deserve. So much better than what Hermes would have given you, or Apollo.”

Loyalty. Who knew? It had been her father’s concern, just the same as her mother. And yet his assessment, of at least one immortal, differed from Demeter’s as the night from the day.

Hades’s attentions had swept all other concerns out of existence. It wasn’t until the end of her time in the Underworld that Persephone had begun to consider practicalities. She hadn’t been able to catch her breath—or stay on her feet!—long enough around the god to even worry about a marriage, let alone whether he would remain faithful.

Her father bounced her palm in his. “You spent a week in the Underworld, daughter of mine. I’m sure it wasn’t to sit alone in the dark.” Now he wore half a smile, and her face went hot in an instant.

The gentle teasing was like nothing her mother would have to say on the matter. How had her parents tolerated each other long enough to produce her?

“Do you love him?”

Persephone almost choked, but the question should have come as no surprise. Zeus was about as subtle as the lightning he commanded. Still, after settling herself, she nodded. “I believe I do.”

There. Her father compelled truth, even when he wasn’t trying.

“Will you go back to him then?”

“If only it were that simple.”

Both brows climbed now, a series of lines furrowed above them. “I see.” The two words speculated and judged, but also kept a surprising respectful distance.

He stood from the step, straightening his chiton as he went. “Well,” he said, reaching a hand down to help her up, “we won’t tell Demeter otherwise, will we? I don’t know how much peace it will afford you, but it should continue to buy you time.”

When she joined him on her feet, her father caught her in a warm embrace, thumping her back with a massive palm. “Don’t make him wait long, Persephone.” The words brushed the top of her hair, “If you’re not going back, you should tell him before it hurts too much.”

✧

It was beginning to hurt too much.

Hades stirred atop the platform of the Elaionapothos. There was comfort in no position, rest after no amount of silence. The stalactites above pointed at him in accusation while their counterparts rising from the floor all stood by to witness.

It was his very own Hall of Judgments, right here in his private rooms.

He lay on his back, fist clutching what remained of the torn chiton Persephone had worn the day she fell into his domain. As he’d done dozens of times already, Hades brought the grey cloth to his face and inhaled the fading memory of her scent. An angry erection refused to leave him be.

How had he let Hermes walk out of his palace with her, unopposed? He could have had the Trickster bound in stone. He could have seen that thrice-damned pomegranate down her throat any number of ways. Who could have stopped him?

No one.

But you wanted her to choose. Her presence here must be her own idea, or it will be meaningless.

The Elaionapothos moved under his free hand where it lay on the flattened surface. He rolled on his side and the Oil responded further in a boiling of slick curves. Again, the twitch of his need was in hand. Again, he began the pointless strokes.

It had happened twice already, in the time since Persephone had left him. Though a deathless god had no need of sleep, he’d resorted to its attempt for the sake of escape alone. But solace refused him its mercy.

Closing his eyes had become a cruelty as it never had. She waited for him there; the scent of spring and petal-pale curves for him to ruin with his lust. The music of that voice, calling his name. Green eyes holding his, permitting, accepting.

Those eccentricities of his desire nature, which had him forgoing a consort these many ages, had met their match in Persephone. Against all reason, she’d understood his sickness, if that’s what it was, and had offered herself as a remedy. He’d grown to believe no immortal lover would tolerate his urges and yet, each time they’d welled up and Hades thought he’d go mad, she’d opened herself and said, ‘Take’.

She was the only immortal to have given freely to him without asking anything in return. And the more savage he became in the taking, the more zeal she poured into her surrender.

Persephone was his every desire and the Elaionapothos existed for one purpose alone: to give those desires a shape.

And so it had, after a fashion.

He ran a palm over the shifting black form at his side. If he closed his eyes, its surface felt all too real. He palmed a counterfeit breast and it was warm and soft with the proper weight and give. A nipple tempted his tongue, but he knew the salt and sweet of his little flower was beyond reach. The Oil would offer back a tasteless nothing.

When he opened his eyes, some nameless horror rippled along his spine and up through his throat. Here was the forgery of his love, wrought by his wishes and an object of power. The glossy black curves pretending to be his Persephone repelled with the chill of the uncanny. Sightless eyes stared out into a void, and they were not hers.

Not hers.

Hades levered himself away from the Elaionapothos, his own growl of disgust propelling his limbs. The false Persephone melted back into the slick platform while he stood back several paces, breath coming ragged with the violence of need.

The flames of indignation stoked him and the fury vented through his hands. He pulled at his cock, a punishment and relief at once.

When was the last time his passions had driven him to this? He couldn’t say. Before Aphrodite’s bargain, his ages below the earth had served to subdue his fervor. But no longer. Persephone’s gifts had ruined him, and his fist pumped over his ache in a poor imitation of her perfect embrace.

You had it. You had it and you lost it!

Completion tore from his throat in a roar. The sum of his fury slicked his pumping fist, drops of bitter seed, of useless temper, splattered the limestone floor. Hades’s vision blurred to scarlet as he stood, laboring for his breath.

Everything was out of his hands. His rulership meant nothing, would buy him nothing. What purpose did it serve? Even as he would draw the time near, the equinox retreated from his grasp.

And if she doesn’t return? If you are not her choice?

He staggered down to one knee, knuckles to the floor, and swore an oath no other god would dare repeat. On the mortal plane, there were tremblings in the earth, and the Sons of Man fled to their altars with offerings and fear.

Persephone, it turned out, had been right: Hades needed control. He needed her. And for all his power and reach, the Lord of the Dead had neither.

The act of gathering sandals and chiton again, of clothing himself and raking the wrath of his fingers back through his hair, had to suffice as an avenue to composure. He had eternity, but it was useless.

In a flickering of will, the columns of his throne room took the place of stalactites around him, and light shuddered, baleful and violet at the edges, from his sigil in the floor.

Hades assumed the seat of his power and tapped the veins of the Unseen Realm with a word.

“Hekate.”

✧

Persephone ground her teeth at the newest disruption to her peace. Helios was only beginning his climb from the east, and she’d spent the time before dawn watching the stars dim over the fields of Nysa. A return to the birthplace of her troubles, a suitable cradle for thought in these days since she’d returned to the upper realms, and then the rift had opened in the æther.

Now Demeter stood over her shoulder, glowering into the sunrise as Persephone sat, arms around her knees wearing a matching scowl.

After a building storm of silence, the goddess spoke over the dawn, her voice low and dark. “I spent ages protecting you,” she said. “You repay my efforts this way?”

Persephone controlled the breath she let out through her nose. From the corner of her eye, she could see her mother’s chiton rippling in a breeze that affected none of the grasses around it.

“You speak as though it were my choice to tumble into the abyss,” she replied through a tightened jaw. “I did nothing to invite this.”

“You could have refused him.”

There would be no peace. No peace here.

“Oh?” She tilted her eyes up to her mother at last, her brows rising with them. “With what power? Or do you believe the Lord of the Dead tolerates refusals in his own domain?”

Now the elder goddess deigned to fix her with a look. “And the pomegranate?” Her lip curled, hand coming to her hip. “Was it the only seed of his you couldn’t refuse?”

Persephone made a face, and her arms unfolded so she could brace her weight on her palms and lean back for a better look at what her mother had become.

“You’ve let him ruin you,” Demeter said.

Persephone looked her up and down, incredulous. “Are you ruined?” she asked. “After your time with my father?”

The immortal mouth turned down as though it harbored something sour. “My mistakes were yours to learn from, Daughter.”

“Ah”—she pushed herself to her feet—“so I’m a mistake.” Demeter opened her mouth, but Persephone swept her response aside, along with leaves and dirt from her chiton. “Let me banish any false notions you may have had, Mother. I ruined myself on the staves of Man ages ago. Many, many times over.” She pressed home the emphasis with a deliberate enunciation, relishing at last the way her mother’s face condensed in denial.

“You did nothing of the sort.” A wind began bending heads of grass, rustling tree boughs at the edge of the field.

“Oh, but I did.” She couldn’t help a flash of teeth as she stepped around the goddess, orchids bursting around her feet as she went, their petals lurid and suggestive. “You wasted your worry for Hermes and Apollo, but I knew mortal flesh across oceans and empires and time. Consider well the reasons Lord Hades came to know this before you did.”

“Willful child.” The force of rushing air grew, carrying dying plant matter with it in whirling eddies. “You will listen to the wisdom of no one. And now you will what?” She stepped toward her daughter. “Abandon your duties to the call of immortal cock?”

The scattering of orchids withered to black as the goddess advanced, but the building violence of Persephone’s emotion had the field writhing with spontaneous life. Ivy zig-zagged across the ground like lightning. Tree ferns exploded from the earth. A forest of sundews shot up in the wake of her retreat, higher than her head and bristling wet, poison to match her words.

“And my ‘duties’ require me to exist alone?” she said, raking the air with clawed fingers. “To never know love?” Low-lying flytraps snapped shut.

Demeter’s scythe appeared in her hands and the mother goddess began to shear through rampant plant-life. “You have known my love since your birth,” she said, eyes the color of a storm as she carved her way toward her daughter.

Willows lumbered full-grown from the soil on all sides, massive and whipping their branches in what was now a howling, aggressive wind.

“Ah yes,” Persephone shouted over the gale, “the two are entirely the same. Why ever did I not think of this before?”

Out of a cloudless morning sky, the air flurried with snow. Withering cold crisped their breath and Demeter came at her, relentless. Tree limbs popped and shattered under ice and the same was on her mother’s tongue.

“What you haven’t thought of, Persephone, is your reason for being.” Split trunks crumbled to ash as she curled her fingers into a fist. “Each of us is born into a purpose.” She came forward, freezing, as her daughter seethed to a boil. “How will you fulfill yours from the Underworld? Hm? You said it yourself. With what power?” Drifts began to pile up against the carnage of growth and destruction. “The mortals will suffer under your need for ‘love,’ ” she said with a sneer. “Will you place your wants above those who rely on your gifts?”

The words hit Persephone like a fist in the gut, and brambles erupted from the earth around her, thick as sea serpents and snarling to her defense.

“I could ask you the same question, Goddess of the Seasons.” Thorns stabbed outward in every direction, woody and coiling with spite. “Or have you forgotten the deluge of shades you sent to the Third Realm in your fury to have your way?”

A hum welled beneath Persephone’s feet, and she teetered on the blade edge of refusing it all. Something familiar and yet unfamiliar began to crackle and grind along her extremities. She tasted iron.

Demeter was shearing past the brambles with arc after arc of her scythe, some nadir of threat dilating her pupils as she came. Her voice groaned now, ancient and deep. “You do not belong there, Karporphoros. No more than some cowering mortal belongs here.”

Persephone’s bones were the bones of the earth. Some dormant portion of her will sounded to a terrifying depth in a single choking heartbeat, and brought back the only answer it could.

Stalagmites thrust up from the ground in a maw, gnashing a barrier between her own choices and everyone else.

“You do not decide where I belong anymore, Mother.” The scythe swung. “I decide.” Chinked against stone and stopped. “I do.”

The Goddess of Growing Things stood white with fury, while Demeter stared open-mouthed at Underworld stone negating Olympian power. Right there. In the upper realms, right out in the open.

And Persephone … Persephone had decided.

She’d decided everything was too much. Every desire, every responsibility, every sacrifice. All of it. She could please no one, and so she would please no one.

The æther rippled and she melted through it, away from her mother’s dumbfounded face.

At least no one on this plane.

✧

Blackness furled above the throne room floor and twin torches smoldered into being. Enodia was with him.

“My Lord.” The goddess folded two and six hands at her waist; blinked one and three pair of eyes. Hades shored himself as he must against her shifting, tri-fold presence. He gripped the arms of his throne.

“I will wait no longer,” he said. “I must know what she does.”

Hekate hovered with her usual cryptic serenity, the possibilities of her being too nebulous to stand on a floor in any defined place or time. “You agreed to alllow herr wwill to prevail, Polydegmon.”

“She will have her choice,” Hades said, tightening his jaw, “but I will know what it is.” He slid forward to the edge of his seat, voice lowering with his need. “You have dominion over every crossroads, Hekate. You will find her at her time of choosing, at the forking of her path, and you will learn her mind for me.”

The layers of her voice shushed together, a friction of discarded snake skins. “I cannott agree on the wissdomm of ssuch a disscovery.”

Light dimmed in the columned space, flickering with the hold on his patience. “I do not ask for agreement.”

The ruddy orbs began to bob in orbit around their mistress, lazy at first but picking up speed. The goddess closed a number of eyes and let her arms fall to her sides, her focus moving between planes. “But perhapss you assk for knowledge to abate yourr mmisery,” said Hekate, even as she acquiesced and settled into her element. “I can promise nno ssuch—my Lord.” There were frowns. She made several faces at once. “Do you tesst me, Hades?”

“What is it?” He was leaning forward now, ready to leap out of his seat. Enodia’s torches whirled faster, making their way toward a blur.

“The Green One toils withinn the confflux as we sspeak,” she said. “Did you know thisss?”

“What do you mean?” He felt his knuckles strain. His nails began to etch granite. “How would I know anything?”

More than one of her heads tilted back as she sank, events on another plane enfolding her sight. “Her decisionn iss imminent.” Silence from within the ring of red light. A fluttering of so many eyelids. “She battless her mmother.”

“What?”

The one word echoed at a low boom among columns of stone, but Hekate was elsewhere, seeing events he couldn’t.

“Demeter remindss her daughter of her obligations to the mmortalss,” the goddess said, “annd it painss her.”

Hades began to slide the iron ring from his finger, the line of his mouth turning grim. “They were not to interfere.”

Terrifying smiles warped the scrying faces. “Perssephone is clever,” she said, some thread of pride entering her voice. “Shhe gainss in power, she—”

Enodiagasped, a chorus of shock, and the torches flared to a halt, all but winking out at the disruption. Hades was on his feet, bident in hand.

“By the thrice-damned Fates, what do you see?”

Only Hekate Perseis, Destroyer and Lady of Shades could stand before the raised voice of Hades, unflinching.

“It …” She searched for something. “My Lord it matters nnot. She …”

He gripped his weapon.

“She. What.”

“She hass chosenn.”

Some searing thing clawed from inside his chest. He knew, but needed to punish himself. His steps flowed from the dais, sending him to loom and hiss over the immortal dashing his hopes.

“What did you see?”

Enodiafolded her hands again and faced him with manifold eyes. “Your goddess hass called the Underworld,” she said. “Ourr rrealm has ansswered.”

The mere beginnings of Hades’s fury looked like the culmination of others’. The tines of his bident boiled to a livid amber, the very teeth going white as though he’d pulled them from the Phlegethôn. The doors to the hall burst open under a howl of sourceless wind.

“It was to be her choice,” he said. “Hers! They were not to interfere!”

Hekate stepped out of his way.

✧

The mortal plane weighed heavy on her limbs, but it was the ring on her finger that pulled her. Persephone descended into Smyrna from where she’d emerged on the mount, south of the city proper.

Dawn saw the markets beginning to swarm, the Sons of Man abuzz in furious trade, even before Helios had cleared the line of staggered rooftops. Only the slimmest of her efforts kept her mortal guise in place; her strides ate up the crowded streets between her and the fate of her choosing.

The door to Polyxene’s home was under her knuckles, their particular rap coming from long memory. As soon as she heard movement on the other side, Persephone flew right past the exchange of their normal safeguarding phrases.

“Good Mother, I have come.”

A young woman who stood under an awning two doors away looked up from the linen she wrung of water and cocked her head at the stranger. Stepping through the æther directly into Polyxene’s dwelling might have been less conspicuous, but terrifying the woman with such a sudden appearance would do no good at all. Nor could she know whether the healer would be alone.

At the dull sounds of a latch, the door swung inward and Persephone faced the wide eyes of an unprepared mortal.

A mortal with far more white in her hair than the goddess had seen on her last visit. The woman gaped at her, and Persephone struggled to keep herself from doing the same in return.

“May I enter your home, Polyxene?”

The woman rattled a nod and stepped out of the way, holding the door wide, and then closing it after her.

“My goddess!” The incredulous greeting came even before Persephone released her hold on her guise. No one else addressed her as ‘Good Mother’ or tapped on her door, just so. Still, Persephone shed her false appearance and stood as herself.

“Polyxene, I’ve come as I promised.”

“Goddess, it has been”—the woman’s eyes darted around the room and she made some helpless gesture—“it has been so long. I believed you would never return.”

Only now was Persephone seeing the darkness to the lines on Polyxene’s face, the slightness of her frame more pronounced than she remembered. As she stepped backward into the space, her focus expanded to her surroundings. The shelves were less heavy with containers, the surfaces less crowded by baskets and drying greens.

She dragged her gaze back to the ominous portent of silver hair. “My friend, how long has it been?”

“Eight … eight years, Goddess.” Polyxene ducked her head, as though such a revelation might anger her matron.

Eight years? Did time skew so awfully between the Underworld and the mortal plane? But Hades had said as much, hadn’t he? “The mortal and deathless realms come together in odd ways.”

Fates! What have you done to her?

“I am so, so sorry,” she said, stepping forward, hands coming up in supplication that only set her mortal friend bowing. “I didn’t know, Polyxene. I didn’t know.”

“Please.” The woman was shaking her head, eyes still on the floor. “Please, Goddess, you cannot apologize. Not to me.” The hand wringing began, and Persephone had to bite her tongue. “It is a gift for any mortal to have been visited by a deathless god once in their lifetime. And you have returned here, again and again. I am not worthy. I am not.” In her distress, Polyxene had sunk to her knees, and the sight squeezed at something in Persephone’s chest.

“But this is why I’ve come to you now.” Persephone went to her friend and placed fingertips on her shoulder, a bid for the woman to meet her eyes. “To return your ring. Please,” she said, as Polyxene braved another look.

“I have come to give you this gift, as I said I would.” She had the ring off her finger and the green gem caught the light as she offered it to the healer. “Take it, my friend, you will have back your lost years and so many more. So many more!”

Brown eyes dropped, aghast, and the sight of immortality trapped within stone made her retch just as it had the first time. Polyxene wiped at her mouth with the back of a hand and coughed against the condensed distortion of time. The cough devolved into great, racking sobs, and the woman fell forward onto her hands.

“What is it?” Persephone dropped to kneel beside her. “Are you well?”

Polyxene smeared tears from her eye sockets with the heel of a palm, her mouth contorted, unable to cope. “My Goddess,” she said, “I … Kings wage wars over such gifts. There are stories. Heroes, I”—dark eyes snapped up to immortal green—“how can you offer this? To me. Who am I?”

The goddess’s heart poured out onto the ground for this woman. “You are my friend,” she said, her hand still resting on the mortal shoulder. “You are the most worthy being I know.”

Defeated sniffling accompanied the placement of Polyxene’s hands, palms upturned, in her own lap. “I … I have a grandchild now, I—what will I do?” Her voice had gone soft and her eyes pleaded, wet and unprotected. “Live and live to watch my son grow old and die? To watch my granddaughter do the same?”

“But you will heal so many. I have watched you.” The logic Persephone had carried into this house kept tumbling from her lips, even as she felt the Fates begin to pluck at it, threads unraveling. “You will use it in a way I am failing to do. It will be you about whom they write stories.”

“But I do not want stories!” Now the passion was back. “I want … I want …” Her hands fluttered like doves.

Persephone’s voice came down to a hush. “What do you want?”

The mortal risked another glance at the ring, but the vertigo sent her eyes back to the floor.

“I miss my love,” she said. “I miss Iacob. If I accept this gift, my Goddess, I will never meet him in the Underworld. If I alone of my loved ones cannot die …”

Persephone blinked at her several times and then her chest swelled.

What are you doing?

She felt the lump come in her throat.

Selfish immortal, what do you ask of her?

This was not a way. Not a way to escape, not by handing her troubles to this Daughter of Man. She could call it a gift; it would alter nothing. Persephone was trying to avoid pain. That’s what this was.

She sat back on her heels, then on her tailbone, one knee bent and one leg falling straight out in a distressing array for any mortal in the presence of a deathless one. The side of her hand came to her eyes, which were hot and stung. She bit her lip, working to keep it at bay.

“Karporphoros?” The voice came meek as a mouse, but it called down her tears like the ruin of a dam. “It is the most generous offer I could ever hope to receive,” Polyxene said. “I am ungrateful, I have upset you.”

“No.” She swallowed, trying to contain it. “No, you are right. This will not be a blessing for you. I am selfish. I only see what I want for myself.”

A long silence ensued, broken only by small, wet noises of grief.

“And what is it”—Polyxene dared to scoot closer—“Goddess, what is it you want for yourself?”

“Not to decide!” The gentle words were too much. Her true mother had never spoken so, and the genuine concern broke her. “My choices are the same as yours!” she wailed. “Abandon the care I owe humanity and return to the Unseen Realm to seek my love, or dance in eternal springtime. Alone.” Persephone knew her face would be red and wet when she raised it to look at the healer again. “I want both,” she said. “I want neither! But this is not a matter for which you should suffer so I might escape my pains.”

Polyxene’s mouth came open, at a loss for how to respond. Here was an immortal, collapsed, weeping and undignified, so very much not like the statues of gods in the temples.

You’ve done enough here.

The ring slid from her finger, her opposite hand gripping it even as Persephone righted herself. She felt the mortal scuttle back from the thing as though the infinite might be catching.

It had been a push, the first time. Now, as Persephone narrowed her focus, it was a draw. Something in the very humming core of her reached out, sought and took hold; a vast taproot sucking deep and eager at the well of life in the borrowed stone.

Her hands warmed before going hot. There was no gradual rise toward the event this time. It rushed to join her, like seeking like, unstoppable. The light and life of Olympos filled the goddess until it seemed it must burst from her temples in streams, each toenail, each eyelash, violent with the blaze of eternity.

Persephone shuddered, head lolling on her shoulder in the clanging silence of the aftermath. Long heartbeats passed before she opened her eyes.

Polyxene gaped, but the goddess was uncurling a fist from around the ring. The stone sat black and glossy in the dim light, a gift from her husband and nothing more. The goddess offered the jewel between fingers abuzz with her birthright once more.

There was hesitation, even fear, in the woman’s eyes, but she reached out and took the ring, no sooner clutching it to her bosom than the profusion of thanks began bubbling from her lips. Persephone gathered herself and stood, composure returning with the surge of godhood in her veins.

“There is one gift I can give you,” she said, “though you may only keep it for a few moments.”

Polyxene stared up at her while slipping on the ring, too dumbstruck to respond. Persephone gave her a tired smile.

“You’ll want to close your eyes. That ring was bad enough.”

When the woman did as her goddess suggested, Persephone found that place. It was the same new source that had been there when she’d fought her own mother at Nysa. The cool inevitability of shadow and stone. She drew her voice along it like a bow when she spoke the word.

“Hekate.”

Even with her eyes shut tight, Polyxene gasped at the name. The air in the room condensed and, though she could both believe it and not, twin red orbs of light preceded their mistress into being.

“Chosen of mmy Lord,” the three tongues greeted her even as their body coalesced into shape. “How may I sserve?”

She … she came!

It was enough to collect her own tongue in the presence of the tri-form goddess. “I would ask a favor,” she said. “An assurance for this woman, who is my friend.”

“Indeed.” At least two smiles curled Enodia’s face at once.

“Is there an earthly guise you might assume first, Goddess? I fear you may be too much for mortal eyes.”

“I cannott conceal mmysself in a ssingle physical fform,” said Hekate, “but I nneed not maniffesst a body on thiss plane for uss to sspeak.”

Particulate darkness scattered in a whirl, leaving only the bobbing torches to confirm the additional presence.

“Doess thiss ssatisfy?”

“It does.” Persephone ducked a nod, eager to proceed. “Polyxene, you can open your eyes.”

Even the orbs were enough to have the woman clutching her hands to her chest when she saw. The healer knelt, jaw slack, and said nothing.

“I know you have dominion over mortal shades,” Persephone said. “I would ask you to summon this woman’s husband, Iacob, so she might speak to him and know peace. As you did Iokaste to the mortal Alexios on the shores of the Styx.”

“Lord Hadess is nnot plleased to havve the dead wanderring outsside hiss rrealm.”

Polyxene had backed herself against the door to the street, but couldn’t tear her eyes from the hovering torches.

“If his motives are pure,” Persephone said, straightening, “he will tolerate my wishes in this.”

Though there were no faces to see, she could almost feel the smiles overlapping, smug. “Vvery good, Daughter of Zeuss. I will nnot be long.”

Hekate’s lights winked out and the air in the room seemed to crackle. Persephone turned to the healer. “It should be moments,” she said. “I have seen this. You will not have much time.” She tried to soften her expression for the awestruck woman huddling in front of the door. “You should stand, my friend. He will not want to see you afraid.”

Polyxene gained her feet in a daze and, as if the prospect of seeing her own husband’s shade was too much to contemplate, skipped straight to another timid question: “My Goddess … you say your love is in the Unseen Realm. Hek”—she gulped down the name—“the Lady of the Crossroads named you ‘Chosen of Her Lord.’ ” Brown eyes searched hers. “Does that mean … is your love, is he …?”

“Yes.”

She saw the woman blanche, but it was no more than could be expected. “He is not what you think,” she said. “I have come to learn this.” Who, exactly, Persephone was trying to convince, remained unclear.

Another presence coalesced and the fiery orbs were with them again, but the arrival did not end there. The shade of a mortal man, distinct but insubstantial, stepped from the æther. Polyxene’s limbs trembled.

“Iacob?” She stepped forward, tentative.

He smiled and opened his arms. “Lyxe.”

Whatever shock came from such contact between planes did nothing to deter Polyxene. Her grip on him was fierce and her tears free. “Sýzygos,” she said, “I’ve missed you. Every day.”

Beloved. The word hammered Persephone with its demands.

“I know, love.” His face was in her silver hair. “I know.”

Iacob’s shade began to whisper a long string of comforts at the ear of his living wife, promises from the dark side of the veil. The woman nodded and tucked her arms in between their bodies, allowing the embrace of a dead man to assure and press her home.

While the couple stole their moments of reunion, voices meant only for Persephone curled in her immortal ear.

“Theirss is nnot the only time that growss short,” Hekate said. “Lord Hadess knowss of yourr quarrel withh Demeter.” Persephone inhaled at this, but Enodia continued her warning. “The Unsseen Realmm will not containn hiss wrath. You musst decide, Green One, and eitherr wway you mmust tell him yoursself. There has been a balance ssince the War, but I ffear the planess cannot withsstand himm now.”

She remembered the fury he’d shared with her through the blood union. A reservoir of power vast beyond comprehension. Her gut twisted into a knot as she watched the mortal souls, reunited for the briefest of moments before her.

Persephone had to choose, and soon. She could not bring more grief on these people. On any of them.

“It iss time,” Hekate said, and not just to clinging husband and wife.

Iacob released his hold first, his understanding more complete than that of his beloved, and Polyxene looked to her goddess, eyes shining.

“Thank you, Karporphoros,” she said. “Thank you. It is the greatest gift. The greatest.”

This. This was right. This was so much better.

“You are most welcome, Good Mother,” she said, “May your family bring you joy, in this life and the next.”

The woman smiled through tears as her impossible guests receded to other planes. Enodia drew her charge back to the Underworld, and Persephone willed her being toward Olympos.

Toward the equinox.

✧

“Then where was she last seen, Messenger?”

Hades stood in front of his throne, the Elaionapothos hovering at his back in the form of a glossy disk an armspan wide. Though it rose, conspicuous, over his head and shoulders in a dark halo, Hermes knew nothing of its capabilities.

The swiftest of gods addressed him from the foot of the steps as Kerberos and Hypnos flanked the seat of their Lord. “Her and Demeter fought,” Hermes said, back straight in an effort to present a collected front. “At Nysa.”

“And then?” said Hades.

“She fled.”

Kerberos growled. The Guardian had escorted Hermes this far without incident, but that was no guarantee of the beast’s continued tolerance.

“To where?” Patience wore thin all around, and Hades saw Hypnos grimace at the current of threat in his tone.

He can make whatever face he wants. If this sky dweller doesn’t tell me what I want to hear …

“We don’t know,” said Hermes, glancing from one Underworld face to the next. “Another plane?” The Oil began to change form at Hades’s back. “Surely if her mother had seen,” the Messenger went on, eyes darting, “she would have given chase. Their disagreement was …” He had only helpless gestures.

The Elaionapothos pooled on the floor.

“Was. What.”

Black tendrils extended from the mass and began to slither along the stones toward the fair-haired god.

“Violent.” Hermes took a step back, but it didn’t matter.

“Violent?” said Hades. Glossy coils climbed Olympian limbs and circled for grip. The Oil began to slide Hermes toward the throne. Winged sandals, useless in this realm, scrabbled for purchase along the floor, and Hades descended to the bottom step. “How do you know this?”

“H-Helios!” The Messenger’s eyes were wide, his gaze darting for some ally he wouldn’t find. Hypnos might cringe, but the God of Sleep would not undermine his lord.

“Indeed,” said Hades, slowing to drive his point home as the Oil pulled Hermes the last of the way. “And did I”—he took a fistful of chiton and twisted—“or did I not instruct you to see her returned to me unmolested?”

“My Lord, I—”

“Consequences, Hermes.” He all but growled the words into the Messenger’s face. “I warned you.”

The æther gave way to the bridge over the River of Fire. Instead of the throne room floor beneath his feet, Hermes now dangled in Hades’s grip, legs kicking over the red maw of the Phlegethôn. The Oil receded to its hovering disk, abandoning the joy of control to its maker.

Immortal eyes rolled wild at the sight of the terrible drop.

“Hades!”

It was a cruel mirror to the way Persephone had trusted him to hold her this way, not so very long ago. The goddess had melted into his embrace and altered the nature of his wishes with her surrender. This Olympian jerked, desperate hands choking the coal-dark forearm, the flailing summation of every reaction the reputation of Hades Clymenus had earned.

She is the only one. The only one who can see you otherwise.

“She has eaten my fruit,” Hades said, accusations booming over the crackling grind of the river. “She is my chosen Consort, and you tell me she is gone?”

“My lord!” The voice of Hypnos came from behind him on the bridge. The god must have leapt the æther in Hades’s wake, following to mitigate disaster. “He is a son of Zeus, my lord. We will start another war with the Olympians.”

The Lord of the Dead reserved the fury of his gaze for Hermes.

“I start a war with them?” He had never seen the God of Thieves so bereft of his insolence. It fueled some black fire he’d been ignoring, and Hades felt his power unfurl, vast and enticing. “Persephone belongs to me now,” he said, “and they have done nothing but come between us. No.” Hermes squirmed on his hook. “Olympos has started a war with me.”

Slate blue eyes were wide, and the god could only whisper. “Please.”

Hades’s smile curled. “You don’t belong here, Messenger.” He extended his arm, and Hermes writhed over living rock.

“Hades! Don’t! No!”

The clutching hand released and the Swift One fell, the boiling vein of the earth pulsing to claim an immortal for itself.

It gave him no small amount of grim satisfaction to hear the terror of a god unaware of the rift Hades had sliced open in the æther. Just above the annihilation of the river, the Messenger blinked out of sight. If Hades’s aim was as good as he remembered, the winged sandals and their master would land square in the middle of Zeus’s throne room.

Let him pass that message along. Vacuous fool.

“Polydegmon,” came the fearful voice from the bridge, “what will you do?”

His hands rested on the stone railing and the Lord of the Dead swept the Great Cavern in a single measuring look. At his back, the Oil began to shift.

“I have ruled in silence, Hypnos.” He felt his desire shaping the weapon. Growing it. Feeding. “They imagine me passive. They will learn.”

The Elaionapothos unfolded in uncountable directions at once, expanding into something immeasurable. Obscene. Crystal points bristling from the bridge towers warped in the tessellation of power. Stalactites and paráthyra distended overhead.

Had the God of Sleep a mortal stomach, he would have emptied it. Had the æther not jangled with disruption, he would have fled. All he could do as his lord prepared to rape the balance between planes, was stand on the bridge and will his pleas to the Fates.