13. Confessions
CONFESSIONS
WILLOW
There are moments when the difference between Aiden and Hades is impossible to miss.
Aiden wears the body, speaks with the Brooklyn accent he finally stopped trying to hide, and moves through the palace like a man who spent most of his human life expecting trouble to be waiting around the next corner.
Hades is something else. Older. Colder. Vast enough that when he presses too close to the surface, the shadows gather around Aiden’s feet, and the fire in the sconces rage like a curse I don’t understand.
I used to believe they were two separate men trapped together, just like Persephone and me. But I only just woke her up. As I know all too well, Hades and Aiden have been together for eighty years. In that time, I’m beginning to understand that they’ve become something more complicated than that.
Aiden is Hades.
Hades is Aiden.
Not completely. Not cleanly, either, and that’s why I hear him mumbling to himself sometimes when he thinks I’m not listening. But after eighty years of sharing the same mind, I don’t think either of them knows where one ends and the other begins.
Maybe that’s why he hasn’t told me everything. Maybe that’s why he always changes the subject. Maybe—
I turn away from the railing, taking one of his chilly hands in mine. “Forget about Hades, baby,” I say, and if it’s the first time I use any sort of pet name for him, that just slipped out, too… and I don’t regret it one bit. “You’re right. I do think of you as Aiden. But… who is Aiden?”
Who are you?
His head lifts.
“Before Hades,” I clarify, just so he knows what I mean. “Who is Aiden?” I pause, realizing something important. “What’s your last name?”
For a long moment, he says nothing. And then, with an Irish lilt to his accent, he says, “My name was Aodhán Murphy. The schools made me Aiden. When I enlisted, I used that name because it was mind since I was a boy. But I was born Aodhán.”
I try to mimic the way he’s pronouncing it. “Like that?”
He smiles, and it’s like the sun shines behind him, that’s how warm stealing a tiny grin from this man makes me feel. “I told you to call me Aiden, Blossom. That hasn’t changed. Aodhán died a long time ago.”
Fair enough. “What about Aiden? Did he die?”
It’s an idea. Considering he’s the Lord of the Underworld, I’ve wondered—
“No. I made it all through the second Great War and the most I got was shot at. I’m as alive as you are.”
The second Great War… “World War II? You fought in World War II?”
He nods. “That’s what they call it now. We just called it the second Great War.
But… yeah. I was born in Brooklyn,” he says, almost as though he was resigned to tell me something about the man he was—or he was just waiting for me to ask.
“Nineteen nineteen. My mam was Irish. My old man… he took off when I was a boy, but my mam managed. We didn’t have much.
Nobody did where I came from, but we had enough until we didn’t. ”
I’ve heard fragments before, whenever he lets his guard down. I’ve heard his accent. His references to ration cards, to dance halls, and to neighborhoods in New York that no longer exist. I knew he came from another time, especially after he made it clear that he waited eighty years for my arrival.
For some reason, though, knowing the exact year he was born makes it real.
“I enlisted as soon as they let me. Was in Europe by 1941, spent my time in France and Germany. I made it through to the end before coming home in 1945 to find that my mother was gone, my girl was gone, and no one had any use for a soldier who only knew how to kill.”
I totally bypass the “kill” part, stuck on the way he said “my girl” like that.
Duh, Will. Of course he had a girl. A man who looks like that, is generous, thoughtful, and a great cuddler who developed one heck of a blush the first time he woke up with an erection and realized I could feel it… lucky girl. He probably had plenty of them back when he was only Aiden.
Don’t be jealous, don’t be jealous—
Ugh. I never thought I was the jealous sort, even if Persephone has her moments. But hearing that Aiden had a sweetheart while I’m still the untouched virgin…
Wait. Wait.
“Gone? She was… gone? What do you—”
A shadow passes over his face. “I forgot to ask her to marry me before I was shipped off. Stupid kid that I was… I thought Veronica would wait for me to get back home. She didn’t.
Which was fine. Maybe we were meant to be.
Maybe,” and his eyes flicker to mine, “I was meant for a sunny blonde schoolteacher instead.”
It’s my turn to flush. “I thought you were meant for Persephone,” I said.
“Hades was. But, ya gotta remember, Blossom, I’m not always Hades. I’m Aiden, too, and… maybe you don’t want to hear it, maybe I’m hopin’ too much when I should be grateful just to have known you, but I know that I was meant for you.”
I want to believe that so badly. “But—”
He shakes his head. “There is no ‘buts’. You started this conversation, Willow. It’s time we finally have it.”
My voice sounds breathless as I say, “I just wanted to get to know you. And I want you to know me.”
“I do.”
A look of disbelief flashes across my face. I don’t mean for it to, and I can’t help it. “It’s been, like, two months—”
“Almost a season,” he agrees, “and that was more than enough time.”
Two months is nothing. Unless he’s counting all of the memories he has in his head from Hades’s countless lifetimes, and the eighty years he spent reliving them with his constant companion.
“Aiden,” I begin, and now I sound bewildered. “I’m not Persephone—”
“Of course not. You’re my blossom. You’re Willow.
You tamed Cerberus and turned him into a pet.
You sprout flowers in your sleep, and sing off-key to them.
” Okay. So I’ve never gotten over this being an Alice in Wonderland ripoff, and I like to sing “Golden Afternoon” to the flowers I place in the vases Aiden wordlessly provided in his—our—bedroom once we started to wake up to roses in the sheets. “You smile at Charon. You smile at me.
“But, while I know I have a part of you, I don’t have everything.
I don’t have what I want. And I understand.
You miss your family. You miss your home.
You miss your world.” His expression turns sorrowful.
“You miss the sun. But, my blossom, to me, you are the sun. When you walk among the palace of Hades, I feel warm. I feel alive. I feel… I feel like a man and not a shade myself.”
My heart skips a beat. “Aiden…”
For a moment, I think he thinks he said too much. That he’s going to melt back into the shadows and disappear, leaving me alone to think over what he just said to me.
He didn’t say the ‘l’ word, but he didn’t have to. That was as close to a love confession as I’ve ever received, and if I was already wavering here on the balcony before he joined me, I’m basically putty in his hands.
And that’s when, instead of retreating, Aiden shifts closer.
“Listen… I ain’t askin’ you to remember the other me, Blossom.
To remember who you are, and who I am to you, because that’s not who we are now.
” His voice lowers, sounding even more earnest than before.
“You’re here, and I don’t know if the Underworld will ever let either of us leave.
I don’t know if I can get you back to your cousin.
I don’t know if the mirror’ll open again or if the gods who trapped us here are still out there waitin’ to finish what they started. ”
The shadows around us deepen, though the sky hasn’t changed.
Aiden reaches for my hand, then stops before touching me.
“And that’s why all I’m askin’ is for you to fall in love with me all over again.”
I nibble on my bottom lip. “That’s a lot to ask, Aiden.”
Especially because I’m pretty sure that I already have.
“It is.” His gaze drops briefly to my mouth. “But I’m askin’ anyway.”
My heart beats too quickly.
Not because he scares me. That would be easier, and I could blame it on the goddess inside of me. She was terrified of Hades at first, but me… I was never scared of Aiden.
Not when he looks at me the way no one ever has. He looks at me as though every awkward, ordinary piece of Willow matters as much as the goddess he spent decades waiting for because the god inside of him made him.
I don’t know what to do with that.
Well, no. I know what I want to do, but I don’t know if I should or how he would react, and in the end, I don’t do anything at all.
Taking that as my rejection, Aiden’s expression shutters.
He starts to lean away, but before I can ask him not to go, he straightens.
“Let me make something very clear, if I can.” He pauses. “Can I?”
I nod.
“I waited eight decades for you, Willow. I will wait as long as it takes for you to recognize me as your husband.”
Husband.
The word crashes through me with enough force that I forget how to breathe.
He doesn’t just want me to love him. He wants me to marry him.
You already are Hades’s queen, Persephone pipes up from somewhere inside of me. Accept that you are and be who you were born to be.
I was born to teach grade-school kids English. That was my calling. I taught about Greek mythology. I’m not supposed to be a part of it!
“I can hear you arguing with her,” Aiden says softly.
My gaze snaps to his. “You can?”
“No.” A faint smile touches his mouth. “But you get this crease between your eyebrows whenever she says somethin’ you don’t like. It makes me think of all the time I spend arguin’ with Hades.”
It’s good to know I’m not the only one. “She thinks I should accept being queen.”
“I can’t say I disagree. But remember this, Willow: she may be part of you just like I have to deal with a god who doesn’t understand why I don’t just exercise a husband’s right and bed you every night instead of just holdin’ you close.
It doesn’t matter what they want. It only matters what we want. ”
Oh, crap.