Epilogue
Persephone
The Heir
Olympus had fallen for the first time since Hades and his brothers overthrew their father.
My mate had led the slaughter of the tyrant Titan king. Afterward, his brothers, envious and afraid of his power, tricked him. They banished him to the Underworld.
It was a long, bloody history—eons of betrayal, of suffering.
Hades would have let it go. He would have remained in his realm and allowed his brothers to rule their golden city.
If they hadn’t come for me. His most treasured love.
That was their fatal mistake.
When my mate and I returned to our realm after conquering Olympus, Dante still led our army in looting the city of the gods. The riches they hauled back would fund our reconstruction. Gold and gems would be scattered among our citizens. Even the slums would be remade into something beautiful.
The gods understood neither justice nor mercy, so we spoke to them in the only language they knew—power. The powerful ruled. Now, we held that power. We stripped their golden city bare and reduced its splendor to rubble and memory.
My husband and I forever held the keys to Olympus, though neither of us wished to cross its golden bridge again. That place promised nothing but pain.
Zeus, Poseidon, and the other elite gods now resided in our dungeons. They were sentenced to hard labor, rebuilding the Underworld’s most brutal regions. They’d be released after two thousand years—the same span of time they’d treated my mortal reincarnations as blood sport.
And every week, they would fight each other or the arena’s most bloodthirsty creatures, clad in rags and half-starved. Let them learn how it felt to be entertainment. To be prey.
My mother was spared. She would live in the ruins of Olympus, forbidden from ever seeing me again.
My thoughts no longer dwelled on the gods, who were history now. I looked toward the horizon, toward the future.
Thousands of years living among mortals had taught me more than I ever learned as a sheltered goddess. Immortality is a burden if you do not evolve. I learned to embrace the human world’s rapid changes, to adapt with each shift, so we would never grow stagnant like other immortals.
Every first quarter of the year, I left the Underworld to teach at Reaper Academy. My specialties were plants, potions, and spells. I would have loved to teach weaving, but that gift was mine alone—no one else could learn it.
Hades had no interest in teaching or mingling with students, but he paced the hall outside my classroom, overprotective as ever.
Most days, Cerberus stayed with me in his true form.
The massive three-headed hellhound dozed beneath my workbench, where I kept my tools: mortar and pestle, athame, copper cauldron, glass vials, brass scales, and leather-bound grimoires filled with eons of knowledge.
One of his heads always watched, even as the others slept.
The students were fascinated by my hellhound but wise enough to give him a wide berth.
Dante had vanished from our circle after the conquest, hunting Morrigan as she fled. I knew he would find her eventually.
The students were in awe, sharing a campus with actual gods. Of course, anyone with sense feared the God of Death.
Word had spread to every corner of the earth that true gods now taught and led the academy. Gifted students from across the world applied to Reaper Academy—the most prestigious supernatural school in the mortal realm.
Apollo had joined as a guest professor, teaching magic and music. His classes were always full, with half of the school on the waiting list.
We allowed Stardust, Goddess of Witchcraft and Magic, to remain as headmistress. She’d earned her place by holding the school together in our absence, and she wanted Reaper Academy to be a true place of learning for gifted humans and supernaturals alike.
I insisted on eradicating every old rule. The former laws were part of a pact between Zeus, the Fates, and Hades, and now the Fates were trapped in their scorched cave, and Zeus labored in our camp. Headmistress Stardust gladly abolished the barbaric practices.
Everyone deserved a measure of kindness. That was my motto as the Queen of Death, strange as it may sound.
Today’s class was held in the botanical conservatory. Sunlight fell through the glass ceiling, warming the rows of plants I’d cultivated, nightshade beside healing herbs, wolfsbane next to lavender. Poison and cure, side by side.
Students sat at long wooden tables, notebooks open, attention fixed on me.
Sindy occupied the front row as always. My best friend still hadn’t fully grasped that she’d befriended the Queen of the Underworld—Goddess of Death, Weaving, and Life. But as Bloom’s friend, Sindy now had access to everything she’d ever wanted here.
“The key to this spell,” I said, holding up a sprig of belladonna, “is intent fused with precise pronunciation. The plant itself is deadly—just a handful of these beautiful berries can kill. But prepared with the right incantation, it becomes a powerful healing tonic.”
I demonstrated the hand movements, weaving threads of gold through the air without thought—an act as natural as breathing. The students saw only the gesture; they would need wands to channel the effect.
“Remember,” I continued, “respect the plant. Thank it for its sacrifice. Everything holds consciousness. Everything deserves acknowledgment.”
A hand rose from the middle row. “Professor Persephone, what if we mispronounce the incantation?”
“You would possibly summon something entirely unforeseen,” I said. “Precision matters in all magic.”
Music drifted from Apollo’s classroom next door, haunting melodies charging the air. Beautiful and distracting.
Through the window, I saw Hades pacing outside my door. His eyes were fixed on Apollo’s classroom, irritation simmering beneath the surface. He didn’t like the Sun God teaching so close to me.
I suppressed a smile. My jealous and possessive husband.
“Now,” I said, “practice the incantation. Use your wands. Focus your intent. And remember—”
The mating bond in my chest tugged urgently.
“Practice on your own,” I told the class. “Sindy, supervise. Make sure no one accidentally poisons themselves.”
I left the conservatory, Cerberus on my heels.
We passed the Midnight Banquet Hall, then a pond where koi drifted in lazy circles, then Stardust Tower with its prismatic windows, until we stopped at the entrance to Umbra Grimoire.
The library doors loomed ahead.
I strolled through the main library hall, past shelves of ancient texts, and down the winding stone stairs few students knew existed.
A hidden door swung open at my approach—warded to recognize my magic signature alone.
The secret library underground, where my former self, Bloom, stepped into the arms of Professor Nero Ravencrux, not knowing he was Hades, my forever mate.
The air hummed with forgotten power as I stepped inside. My heart thudded. My pulse jumped. I felt Hades before I saw him. His nearness always struck me this way. The craving for him never faded, only deepened with time.
In a flash, he was there, pulling me into his arms. Our hearts hammered in sync.
“What’s the emergency?” I asked, breathless.
“This.”
He slanted his mouth over mine. His hands fisted in my hair, angling my head exactly how he wanted it.
I kissed him back, rising onto my toes. When we finally broke apart, my lips felt swollen. My breath came ragged.
I stared up at him, incredulous. “You dragged me out of class just to kiss me?”
“Not just to kiss you,” he said, his voice rough with lust. “I need to fuck you.”
Before I could reason with him, he lifted me effortlessly, carried me to the white sofa, and set me kneeling on the cushions. He positioned my arms over the high back, spread my legs wide, and stepped between them.
A cool draft brushed my bare skin—he’d already pulled down my ivory dress pants. I hadn’t even felt him do it.
The tip of his cock nudged my entrance. He was hard. Ready.
“So wet for me, baby,” he said, pure satisfaction in his tone. “Always ripe for me.”
“I have to get back to class,” I protested weakly. “You can’t just pull me out every time you—”
“Just a quickie,” he said, his deep voice dropping to a croon that weakened my knees. “I need my wife. Even a second apart is torture.”
His hands gripped my hips, hard enough to leave marks.
“And I don’t like Apollo’s music. It’s too weepy and mushy,” he continued, his voice a low growl. “I’ll speak to Stardust about moving his classroom far from yours. Or scheduling your classes on different days. Why doesn’t he return to Olympus and live peacefully among his brethren?”
“His brethren are in the labor camp,” I reminded him. “And Olympus lies in ruins.”
“Spoiled,” Hades grumbled, his arms tightening around me. “Enough of him. He darkens the mood.”
He was the one who’d brought up Apollo in the first place. The God of Sun and Brightness was the only one spared after the fall of Olympus, and only because he had helped me when I was Bloom.
Hades slammed into me from behind with one skilled, smooth thrust that made me gasp.
He didn’t even bother letting me adjust to his size, just filled me again and again, each stroke deepening the friction.
His thickness stretched my aching wall; his hardness seared my flesh with a pleasure that walked the line of pain.
Every thrust filled me completely, making me feel that I needed nothing else in this world but his cock.
This never grew old. I could never get enough, not even when he dominated me like this, taking what he needed to sate his male lust.
I didn’t mind being used. Not only because his appetite was insatiable, but because I knew he still woke some nights searching for me in the dark, terrified I had vanished again. That I was gone.