Chapter 18 Hades
Hades
I cannot be still without her even though I feel numb. There’s a cage around the beast inside of me. I’m not certain how it’s come to this. The events of her departure are hazy. All I remember are her moans as she straddled me and gave me a pleasure that drugged me.
Sleep is difficult at the best of times. I could not fall asleep easily when I was alone in the dark for all those years. When I was a captive. One would think sleep would be an easy way to pass the time, but it was hard to come by and disoriented me more than it comforted me.
It’s difficult to explain. Most beings, souls or otherwise, cannot understand what it’s like to live without life for so many years.
Without purpose or meaning or sensation.
With only my thoughts of being trapped and alone forever more.
One loses a sense of time. Time to sleep and time to wake blur into nothingness.
One loses a sense of whether one is awake or asleep when there is no sunrise or sunset to track the time.
I watched her go.
It was like watching the best parts of me disappear out of the Underworld, leaving only that crack in the sky behind. Then that was gone, too. Without her, it feels like nothingness once again. Although there is so much. So much that requires my presence and authority.
I consulted with the guards. I walked with Minox in the halls. I sat at a table and ate, though I cannot remember what.
And then I came to my empty bedchambers.
Staring up at the ceiling, surrounded by her scent that lingers in the silk sheets, it seems as if I merely exist. The firelight is dim above me. I would like to pass some of the hours with sleep, but when she leaves, it is as if I am back in that prison again.
What will be here when I open my eyes?
Not my love, Persephone.
Closing my eyes, I attempt to let my mind quiet.
It fills itself with images of her. Persephone, sleeping on the pillow, her sweet curves tempting me.
Persephone, placing the tip of her finger to a rosebush and making the roses black as night.
Persephone, both her hands on mine at court.
The memories of her are all-consuming, like a drug that makes me crave her all the more.
All I can think is that she is not here. All I can feel is the emptiness of the bed. Tomorrow, when I walk the path, she will not be there, and I will be left with her empty throne next to mine. She will not hold my hand at court. She will not pass judgments.
“At least,” I murmur out loud. “There is proof she was here. The Underworld is cleansed of ash.”
Cerberus rises lazily from his spot on the rug by the fire and pads to me, then hops up onto the bed. It creaks as he comes to me. He nudges sleepily at me with three of his noses, circles on the blankets, and goes back to sleep.
He’s certain she will return.
Or he is certain that I will be fine either way.
I’m envious of his certainty.
With time drifting by too slowly, I go out into the hall, motioning to the guards to tell them I do not need an escort. My feet take me to my andron.
I wave at the hearth, and a low fire burns up from the logs. This late in the night, I do not need much light. I do not even need the mirror. I do not need—
I do need her. Curse all the realms, I need her. I’ve not negotiated with Zeus about scrying, and most of my life has proved to me that no one is waiting for me to need their presence.
No one. Not even Persephone.
And still, I go across to the mirror.
Its surface is dark and opaque. For a minute, I stand a short distance away. The closeness of it is almost enough. I can endure this separation if I am in sight of the mirror. It’s not a connection with Persephone, but it makes such a connection possible.
The possibility is all I need. Would I beg Zeus to allow her access to his andron? Could I bribe or blackmail a servant to cast a spell upon the still waters of Persephone’s garden so I may steal glimpses of her in Olympus like I did before?
With Demeter’s rage and Zeus’s knowledge of my betrayal, I know not what my next steps should be. I’ve already broken many laws of the gods and gotten away with it. To risk anything is to risk losing Persephone.
But I cannot leave it alone. I cannot stand here, staring at a black mirror, then go back to my rooms. So perhaps the possibility is not all I need.
My heart beats higher into my throat, practically suffocating me.
What would it hurt? I will not let the ache of Persephone’s absence send me into another rage. I will not.
I’m only going to see.
With one hand reaching out to the mirror, I take two decisive steps toward it. After a moment, the black begins to clear, fading toward the edges until the glass reflects my andron and my face.
That is what I expected to see. The Underworld and me in it. There was no reason to hope for anything else.
I’m about to step back when the reflection shivers. My blood heats and thrums with anticipation. I can barely breathe as firelight appears first on the edge of the mirror. Firelight on white walls.
And then a chair. And then Persephone’s face, close to the mirror, leaning in with a wrap around her shoulders.
I cannot help the pull to my lips that brings an asymmetric smile.
“You are here, my queen.” My voice is low and holds a tone of reverence.
Persephone whispers, “I did not think I could be so lucky as to wish my pull to you would bring you here.”
I lean closer, gripping the frame, wishing it were larger. Wishing I could simply walk through it. “Do you not sleep?”
“Do you not sleep?” she questions back coyly, with a beautiful blush moving to her cheeks.
“I do not,” I answer. “Not when you are away.”
“You cannot stay awake until I return, my king.”
“I can do whatever I please in my realms,” I answer her, the hollowness of her absence once again growing in my chest.
Persephone offers me a soft laugh at my response, but then her expression turns serious. “Not anything you please.”
My throat goes tight at the memory of what happened before. “Yes. Anything.” That is what it means to rule the Underworld. My authority here is absolute. “But I will not do anything, my queen. The souls here will be well while you are gone.”
She arches an eyebrow at me. “Will they?”
“Yes.” As long as you return. Return now, and I will swear whatever you ask. Anything.
I will promise her anything she wants now. The urge to bargain is strong, but I force it down. Persephone is not the person I want to bargain with. Zeus? Demeter? I will negotiate with them. Fight with them, if I must.
Not my queen. I will give her anything and everything.
Persephone looks over her shoulder. “I cannot stay.”
“Don’t go.”
“Think of me, my love?” she requests with a hand to the mirror. My own hand meets hers although there’s nothing but a slick cold beneath my palm.
“Every moment.”
She stares into the mirror, her eyes darting everywhere, as if she cannot stand to stop looking at my face.
“I wish I could touch you,” she whispers. “Scrying is better than nothing, but—”
Persephone does not finish the sentence, but the look in her eyes is exactly what I feel. It is far, far better than nothing to be able to scry and see her face. But it is far less than having her here with me. It is nothing compared with the feeling of her skin under my palms or her mouth on mine.
“My queen,” I say, just as she ends the connection between us.
Persephone in Olympus disappears, and I am left looking into my own face in the mirror.
And what I find there is not the man I thought I’d see.
The man looking back at me is desperate. Lovesick. Gripping the mirror as if it will keep him alive or pull him out of hundreds of years’ worth of imprisonment. He looks like he would fall to his knees at the feet of his goddess if it meant he could spend five more minutes in her presence.
I straighten, but it does not change anything. I look just as I did before.
Finally, I resort to leaving the mirror entirely. I get far enough away that the surface changes to black, and I spend the walk back to my rooms trying to rearrange my expression so that it is no different.
It’s only when I close the door behind me, shed the clothes and shoes, and climb into bed—Cerberus has not moved—that I realize my expression must have shown my feelings for Persephone long before tonight.
How many times has she seen that expression on my face?
How many times have they all seen it? To know that she has changed me forever? That I would bend to her will?
A voice hisses at the back of my mind, What does it matter? I cannot change this feeling that has come over me. I will never change it. Persephone could spend the rest of her days on Olympus or in the mortal realm, and it would never change. And who the fuck are they to judge me?
I think of her in the mirror instead. Waiting for me.
Hoping I would be there. Sitting there with the soft fabric of her robe around her shoulders.
The delight in her eyes when she saw me.
Her power is undeniable. She pulled me to her.
Perhaps the Fates’ warning for Zeus was right.
She would grow to be more powerful than him.
The very thought forces that fear back. The reason that I do not wish her to ever leave me. She is a danger to Zeus. And he knows it.
He’s already tried to kill her once and I do not know if he’ll try again. A numbness grows through me until I fall asleep thinking about her.
The night passes quickly, though sleep does not ease my desperation for her. I wake up with the image of her in the mirror fresh in my mind.
She’s all I can think about during the day’s session at court. All I can think about as I walk the path with Cerberus.
She’s what I am thinking of when Minox joins me on the path, sliding out of the shadows and falling into step with me.
“My Lord,” he greets me and I reluctantly oblige.
“Minox.”
“I have no intention of repeating what happened last time, Minox,” I say, after a minute.
“I knew you would not, my Lord.”
“I promised Persephone they would be well.”
He glances at me. “When will you go to Olympus, my Lord?”
Freezing, I stop on the path and stare at Minox. He stops as well and meets my gaze, his expression placid. Only a flicker of emotion in his eyes gives away that he does not know how he has mis-stepped.
“What did you say?”
“I asked when you planned to go to Olympus.”
“I cannot go to Olympus. You know that.”
He inclines his head, agreeing. “You cannot freely go to Olympus.”
“What do you mean, I cannot freely go to Olympus? Of course I cannot freely go to Olympus. That has always been the case.”
He swallows thickly, perhaps doubting himself. “My Lord, forgive me. I thought this was a possibility you might have discussed with Hecate.”
“Hecate.” I practically whisper her name as Minox’s suggestion races through my mind.
I am damned and condemned, cursed and yet blessed to rule the Underworld.
Day in and day out I must stay, for I am needed and the divine law requires each of the ruling gods to be bound to their territory.
Zeus to Olympus and the mortal realm, Poseidon to the seas, and myself to the Underworld.
Hecate, the keeper of the keys, knows this law well. She was present for its creation.
“Yes,” Minox says slowly, concern in his eyes. “Hecate is bound to return to the Underworld for Diepnon, but she may travel freely between the realms during the hours and days around it. She prioritizes magic and such over law… It is perhaps a conversation…” he trails off.
With anxiousness racing through me and my mind whirling with the possibilities, I turn away from Minox and stride down the path.
He waits only a moment before following me.
Up ahead, Cerberus reappears on the path, a stick in his middle head’s mouth.
He tears toward me, proud of himself. I bend down and take the stick, then hurl it ahead.
Cerberus goes after it, barking and barking.
Minox glides up next to me. “My Lord.”
“I did not have such conversations with Hecate,” I admit to him. I question Hecate’s reception to such things. My heart pounds. “When Hecate was in the Underworld. That is not what we discussed.”
“Ah,” Minox says with a slight nod of understanding.
“There is no favor I will not ask of Hecate, or any god, Titan, or mortal, if it means I may have my queen by my side.”
“Do you plan to discuss it with her then?”
“Gather those who may know where she is; tell Hecate I need to speak with her urgently. I will scry if she does not wish to return to the Underworld. I am amenable.”
“Yes, my Lord,” says Minox and glides away more quickly than he came. Though I cannot be sure I saw correctly, I believe there is a trace of a smile on his face as he goes.