10. Hades
HADES
WILLOW
For one ridiculous second, all I can do is continue to stare at the piece of fruit.
It doesn’t take a Greek mythology aficionado to know what that means.
Okay. Maybe I could have explained away the palace.
Cerberus, too, and the cold air that lingers despite the fire everywhere.
Heck, I could have even told myself the man who pulled me away from a Roman soldier was only another victim of whatever magic dragged me through the mirror, and that’s probably true.
But there is no explaining away a pomegranate in the Underworld when I’m supposed to be Persephone unless I admit that he’s—
He’s—
Oh, boy.
My fingers are clutching the lid to the dish. Slowly, I lower it, covering the pomegranate.
Aiden is standing behind his seat at the head of the table. Peeking at him out of the corner of my eye, I see that he has gone very still. Something in his expression changes; not guilt exactly, but recognition. As though he understands what the pomegranate means as much as I do.
He clears his throat. “Like I thought, this is not the sort of meal I ordered for dinner. I’m sorry, Willow. I don’t know who brought out the pomegranate, but make no mistake, it was not done so on purpose. Take your seat. I’ll have something else brought for you to eat for dinner immediately.”
Uh-oh.
“That’s okay—” I try again.
“I insist.”
Yeah, well, now that I know exactly who he is, there’s definitely no freaking way I’m going to eat food from the Underworld.
I know the story of Persephone. Everyone does.
The naive goddess was tricked into eating six pomegranate seeds and could only leave the Underworld for half the year because of it.
I can’t let that happen. I need to go home.
I’ll have to starve before I eat anything Aiden offers me, rude or not.
Only… is that what he’s doing? With this pomegranate? I mean, if he is Hades… is this his way of trying to get me to stay?
I have to find out. I have to know. And if that means I have to bite the bullet and just ask, that’s exactly what I do:
“Are you Hades?”
The words sound absurd coming out of my mouth, even after everything I’ve seen. Maybe especially after everything I’ve seen.
Aiden doesn’t deny it. Instead, he pulls his seat out and lowers himself into it, watching me closely.
The silence is answer enough, but I still need to hear him say it. “You are, aren’t you?”
His gaze stays on mine. He waits until I get the hint and do what he asked before—I grab the chair to his left and quickly plop down into it—and then says softly,“Yes.”
Welp. There you have it.
A strange laugh escapes me before I can stop it. “Okay. Great. That’s—” I wave one hand uselessly toward him. “That is definitely something you should have mentioned before inviting me to dinner.”
Just because I knew… just because Persephone told me… that doesn’t mean I’m about to let my host off the hook that easily.
Aiden—Hades—no, Aiden seems to understand. He leans into his seat, visibly uncomfortable. “I wasn’t sure how.”
Oh?
“I don’t know… you could have started with something like: ‘Hi there, Willow. Welcome to the Underworld. By the way, I’m Hades.’”
He purses his lips for a moment, and, crap, he has no right looking even sexier when he exhales softly like that and admits, “I considered it. But then I thought, if I recognized you as Persephone, you have to know who I am.”
He’s not wrong…
“I’m Willow,” I remind him. “And, I’m sorry, but I…
let me just put it out there. I don’t know what you expect from me.
I’m not really Persephone.” I can’t be. “And I can’t stay here.
” I gesture vaguely around me with one nervous hand, to the dining room around me, to the bedroom somewhere over my head.
“I mean, it was nice of you to save me from that Roman guy, but I’ve got to go home.
So, please, don’t worry about feeding me.
I can’t eat anything from the Underworld, and I think you know why. ”
I expect him to refuse. I expect him to say that I must; that he doesn’t is another plus in some imaginary column I’m absently keeping in the back of my head, let me tell you that. Instead, all he does is nod, though I do notice his jaw tightens a little.
“Don’t be sorry,” he rumbles. “I might have waited as long as I have for you, but it’s the magic that brought you to me. Believe me, Blossom. I will never try to keep you with me against your will.”
I feel a lot better about that, especially when I sense instinctively that—whoever he is—he’s not the lying type.
Still. That doesn’t mean I’m going to just let what he said pass me by like that with jumping at the opportunity to figure out what the heck is going on here—even if I let slip the whole “Blossom” thing for a moment.
“You said the magic brought me to you,” I say. “What do you mean?”
His eyes lower briefly to the covered dish before returning to my face. “Persephone always comes back to Hades. Here… the magic ensures it.”
The certainty in his voice sends a chill over my skin. “Always?”
Aiden straightens up from his lean, as though he can hear the nerves in my voice—hear them and respond to them.
“Not in the way you’re thinking of. You aren’t some copy of her, and you aren’t trapped inside someone else’s life, Persephone or any of her other reincarnates.
The Other chooses souls capable of carrying the old stories and helping them be retold.
Sometimes those souls resemble the first. Most times they don’t.
” His fingers curl against the arm of his chair, the only sign that this conversation is costing him anything despite how conversational he keeps his tone.
“But the bond remains. Hades and Persephone. The Underworld and its queen.”
Soulmates, whispers Persephone.
I swallow. “Soulmates. Are you… is this, like, a soulmates thing? Is that what you’re telling me?”
Please say no—
“Yes.”
Darn it.
I suck in a nervous breath, and because I’m Willow Ackerly (and definitely not Persephone), I freaking choke.
Not delicately, either. One second I’m trying to breathe, and the next I’m coughing hard enough to make my eyes water.
Aiden is out of his chair before I can wave him off, one hand hovering near my back while the other reaches for a silver pitcher I didn’t notice before and that I’m pretty sure wasn’t there.
“Here.”
He pours something into a goblet that also suddenly appears before offering it to me.
I almost take it, but not before Cassandra’s warning flashes through my mind again.
I fist my hand.
Aiden notices immediately. His expression closes off, though not with anger. More like it’s pain he expected and, yet, he still wasn’t prepared to feel it.
I feel bad, but not so bad that I keep myself from asking, “Is it safe to drink?”
He lowers himself back into his seat. “It’s just water. You can drink water and nothing will happen except you aren’t thirsty anymore. I vow it.”
Good to know. I point at the covered dish. “What if I eat that? Will I have to stay?”
I don’t know what it was that I did, but the air in the dining room suddenly changes. At the same time, he ducks his chin to his chest, avoiding my curious—and suspicious—gaze.
Shadows gather around Aiden’s chair, spilling across the floor in dark ribbons that move like living things. The candle flames bend toward him. When he lifts his head, his eyes are no longer black.
They’re pure white.
My heart nearly stops beating.
The man sitting to my right is still Aiden. I know that somehow. But there’s something else looking through him now—something old and ancient and super powerful.
I don’t move. Maybe he’s like the cyclops, I think in a panic. If I stay perfectly still and perfectly quiet, he won’t notice me.
The thing—the god—that should be Aiden notices. He closes his eyes and, for several terrible seconds, the shadows continue to coil all around him. Then he draws in a slow breath. When he opens them again, his eyes are back to being black.
“Leuce.” The name carries through the room without him raising his voice. “Come.”
A woman appears beside the table.
I don’t mean she enters through one of the doors.
One second, there’s empty space beside Aiden, and the next, a woman stands there in a flowing white dress.
Her skin is pale, her hair even paler, falling in long waves nearly to her waist. She is so beautiful that I immediately dislike her a little, which is unfair, but sue me.
I’m having a difficult who-knows-how-long-it’s-been. Day? Let’s go with day.
I’m having a real difficult day.
Ignoring me completely, she inclines her head at Aiden. “My lord.”
“Take the dish away. Tell the cooks that I expect that there will never be a pomegranate placed on my table again. And if it wasn’t the cooks, then I’ll handle whoever was responsible.”
Her gaze flickers briefly toward me before settling on the covered plate. If she’s curious, she hides it well. She lifts it with both hands as though it’s something sacred.
“Bring more water,” Aiden continues, “and ambrosia. Nectar as well. Nothing bound to this realm.”
Leuce bows. “Of course.”
She disappears with the pomegranate.
The moment it’s gone, some of the pressure in the room eases. Aiden looks at the empty place on the table, and I realize he hadn’t once asked me to eat it. He doesn’t seem disappointed that it’s gone, either.
He looks relieved.
Leuce returns almost immediately with a tray. Two silver pitchers sit beside a small bowl holding something pale and golden that looks like much thicker communion wafers. She places everything before me, then steps back.
“The water and ambrosia are safe,” Aiden explains. “They’ll sustain you without binding you to the Underworld. The nectar is also safe for you to drink, Blossom.”
One pitcher looks silver; that’s the water reflecting the container. The other holds a viscous liquid that’s more of a golden color, similar to the wafter things. I lift it high, taking a tentative sniff.
Sweet. Floral. Suspiciously pleasant…
Yeah. “Is this alcoholic?”