room through eyes still bleary with sleep. Her gaze settled on the mussed pile of blankets where Nadira had slept the last few nights, but no dark head peeped above their edge. No hand or foot extruded from their folds.
Remembrance settled its aching weight in Persephone’s chest. She made a small miserable sound.
Hades’s arms came around her from behind, his bare flesh enclosing her in warmth. Persephone turned in his embrace and crushed her lips to his. She didn’t want comfort. She wanted to forget, wanted Hades to blot out the memories, at least for a time, with his hands and tongue and teeth.
Hades obliged.
Sometime later, panting, sated, still throbbing with sensation that was part pleasure, part pain, Persephone settled back onto the blankets. Hades rolled to his side and smiled at her, a grave smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. He also still mourned.
She closed her eyes on the knowledge. A moment later, Hades’s hand settled in the valley of her ribs just below her breasts. He dragged it the length of her torso, then ran his fingers over her hand and up her arm to her shoulder.
She kept her eyes closed, focusing only on the sensation of his broad, calloused palms stroking her body, letting it drive all other considerations from her mind.
His hand passed over her hair. He whispered her name. Sucking in a breath, Persephone’s eyes flew open. Hades paused mid stroke.
Persephone sat up. “It was you in the cavern, that day in Nysa.”
“It was,” Hades admitted, not quite meeting her gaze.
“But how could I not see you?” Persephone asked.
He kept his eyes down, focusing on his hand as he traced small spirals on her belly. “In the battle with the Titans, I was granted a gift called the Helm of Darkness; a truly hideous thing made of dog skin with wings on either side. It renders me invisible to all, Gods and mortals alike.”
At last, he raised his eyes to hers. “I wore it when I went to the Upper World, curious to see the girl of whom I’d heard so much from Hekate.”
Cocking a smile at him, Persephone asked, “And what did you think of me?”
“That the Fates crafted you for me.” He lifted a length of her hair and watched it slide through his fingers. “With your hair as vivid and shining as the light of Helios when he descends in the sky; with your eyes as green as Gaia’s fields on their most bounteous day; with your ankles as slender and supple as the branch of a willow tree, all things I long for, yet see but little. And more which I learned from Hekate: that you were another such as myself, a part of two worlds, yet belonging to neither, loving those who could never give you the love you longed for in return, and alone, though crowded on every side by those who made up your existence.”
His assessment of their shared circumstances echoed so closely the conclusion Persephone had come to those months ago when she’d tried to flee across Elysium and she told him as much. Then she asked, “If you truly believed I was made for you, why then didn’t you show yourself? Surely if the Fates crafted me for you, then they crafted you for me. Did you think I wouldn’t recognize that?”
“I meant to. The moment I saw you in the cavern I meant to reveal myself and my intention to win your love.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Hades rolled to his back. Eyes focused on some point above him, he drew in a breath, then released it slowly. “Though I know I’m not a horror, at times the certainty that I am overwhelms me. I was responsible for the death of my first love, and the only other woman who claimed to want me truly desired the access to Olympus that her connection with me gave her. Those in the Upper World believe me so terrifying they dare not speak my name. Even my brother and sister Gods avoid me for they find me unsettling. With all these proofs of my monstrosity, I often wondered if I could ever be pleasing in any way to anyone ever again. That’s the question that visited me and stayed my hand when I reached for the Helm.” Hades turned his head to look at her. “Are you angry?”
Persephone had many questions about his previous lovers but now wasn’t the time to ask them. In this moment, she needed most to reassure Hades. “How can I be angry when I likely would have done the same? That day in Nysa when I met the Goddesses, the day you took me, I would have hidden myself away and observed them from afar had I been given the choice. So deeply did I believe what the Sicani said about me, I expected the Goddesses to also reject me as abhorrent. I was stunned to speechlessness when they didn’t.”
Hades pulled Persephone back down. She curled herself against him and put her head on his chest.
His arm came around her and he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “It makes me ache to know you believed yourself loathsome.”
There was no reply Persephone could think to make to this, no words to capture the way his simple statement made her chest burn and her eyes well with tears of gratitude that she need never think that about herself again.
“It wasn’t my intent to take you that day, the day you met the Goddesses.” Hades slid a thumb down her upper arm, then back up. “It wasn’t my intent to take you at all. I meant only to visit you in Henna, let you accustom yourself to my presence, and woo and win you over time. Then the Goddesses appeared. When I heard your conversation and realized you meant to build a life around them, I knew I had to spirit you away.”
Persephone craned her head back to look into Hades’s face. “Why? Could you not have wooed and won me while I waited upon their visits?”
Hades splayed his hand above her left breast. “The Goddesses have no care for those whose hearts they hold. They would have rent yours between them and thought nothing of the destruction. After all the hurts you’d already suffered, I couldn’t leave you in their uncaring hands.”
Persephone drew away from him. “They didn’t seem cruel.”
“Olympus’s creatures aren’t cruel, but neither are they kind. They think only of what brings the most pleasure in the moment. They care not who they injure or destroy in the taking of that pleasure. In time, the Goddesses’ fancy would have drawn them away from Nysa, from you. They would have left that place and never returned, giving no more thought to leaving you desolate than you give to the pain of an ant you happen to trod on.”
Persephone fingered a strand of her hair. “But they touched me in kindness.”
“They drew you into their circle because you were a novelty and it gratified them to do so.”
Persephone looked away from Hades, eyes drawn to the fresco of the circle of maidens in the meadow, the green-eyed fire-haired one, distant from them and alone. She had never had a place among them, would never have a place among them.
Hades lightly touched her cheek, turning her attention back to him. “Rather than abducting you and … and forcing my attentions on you so that your terror of me overthrew all other emotion, do you believe had I revealed myself to you in Nysa you would have recognized me as one created for you by the Fates?”
Persephone surveyed Hades. Did she love him now because the Fates crafted him for her? Or did she believe the Fates crafted him for her because she had come to love him? It was a mystery to which she would never have the answer and it mattered not to her, though the answer likely mattered greatly to him. She put a hand to his cheek, smiled. “I would.”
Hades drew her close. As his lips met hers, his belly roared. Mouth widening into a grin, he placed a hand to his stomach. “Alas, my gut hasn’t the sensibility to know when to keep silent. Shall we eat?”
Her laughter mingling with his, Persephone stood up and extended a hand to Hades. He took it and got to his feet.
Standing made her aware her body was still bruised and sore from all she had demanded of it the previous day. She lifted her arms to stretch the stiffness from it. At the motion, Hades’s gaze fastened on her.
Somehow, the intimacy of the fleece and cushions had made her nakedness seem natural and unimportant. Now out of the bed, whatever spell it cast was broken. Flushing, Persephone put an arm across her breasts, turned away. Realizing the movement only presented him with her bare buttocks, she turned back, snatched up a blanket from the pile of them on the floor, and wrapped it around herself.
To the accompaniment of Hades’s laughter, she looked about for her tunic. An image of leaping flames and one curled, blackened lily appeared in her mind. A stab of pain went through her and she went still.
Hades rose, moved to the other side of the room, opened a chest—thankfully, not one of the ones she had plundered for material to make the drape which now hung in the folly—and turned to her. “There is clothing here.”
Persephone hesitated, took in Hades’s wide unblinking eyes and white knuckled fist clenched on the chest lid. She crossed the room, put a hand to his cheek, then bent and began sorting through the chest. She pulled out an indigo skirt encircled by rings of material its whole length. Gems and golden discs were sewn to each flounce. Persephone set it aside as it was too fine. Next, she pulled out a bodice with lacing running the full length of the back. The lacing in front went up only a quarter of the way. The rest of the bodice was open, cut to show the wearer’s breasts. This too she had seen on the Goddesses, but underneath the bare front some of them had worn shirts of smooth, fine-woven cloth.
Persephone dug through the chest seeking such a garment, but reached the bottom without finding one. She did, however, happen upon a tunic. Its original color had faded to gray, and it was somewhat worn. She pulled it out and drew it over her head. Though it fell past her knees and the neck opening slid to one side, baring her shoulder, she deemed it more suitable than the clothing heaped in piles around her. Turning to one of those piles, Persephone selected a length of cloth from it and tied it around her waist. The rest of the clothing she bundled back into the chest and closed it.
“The Goddesses made an unnecessary sacrifice in giving me the clothing in that chest. It seems my castoffs are more to your liking,” Hades said as Persephone got to her feet.
Persephone tugged at the tunic. “It suits me better than such finery.”
“Rather you suit it, as you would anything you chose to wear.”
This pretty compliment made the corners of Persephone’s mouth dimple, as Hades moved to another chest, took from it a tunic similar to the one she had selected and clothed himself in it. Then he took her hand and led her into her megaron.
A male shade placed a final dish on the table as Hades escorted Persephone to her chair. Taking her seat, Persephone watched the shade. What sort of man had he been? Had he left any behind to mourn him? Why was the thing that remained with him even beyond death the skill of serving food?
Persephone watched the shade until he departed the room. Then she looked at Hades. “There’s truly nothing that can be done to better the plight of our subjects?”
Hades’s gaze flew to her face and stayed there for moment before he returned to his food. “There isn’t and I beg you not to ask again.”
It was only then Persephone noticed Hades still looked pale. His hands as they worked at the food on his plate trembled slightly and sweat beaded his brow.
She reached across the table and caught his hand. “Are you well?”
A smile like the opening of a flower to Helios’s rays broke across his face. “It’s an impossibility I be anything but.”
Persephone returned his smile but continued to study him for a moment longer before turning her attention to her plate.
Though her stomach begged almost as loudly as Hades’s for nourishment, she poked and prodded at the withered pears, the wizened grapes, the stale bread on her plate. It had been some time since Hermes’ last visit and Upper World food seemed not to keep well in this land below.
Persephone’s gaze wandered to Hades’s plate. Olives and dates mounded on one side. Figs bursting with ripeness rocked on their plump bottoms. Pork, succulent in its rind of crackling fat, dripped its juices down Hades’s arm as he brought it to his mouth. To the left of his plate sat a brilliant pink pomegranate. Saliva wetted Persephone’s mouth.
Hades’s hand closed over the pomegranate. Persephone returned her attention to her own plate and picked up one of the pears. She heard the wet rending of fruit flesh. Half of the pomegranate took the pear’s place.
Persephone looked up. Hades, gaze firmly fixed on his plate, toyed with an olive. She looked back down at the pomegranate. She raised her hand, lowered it, raised it once more. Battling down her gorge, she plucked a few seeds from the rind.
Hades drew in an audible breath. Persephone’s heart thudded, shaking her chest, her head. Her very teeth vibrated with it. She tightened trembling fingers on the seeds and lifted her eyes. Hades’s gaze was fixed on her as he mashed the olive into a pulpy mass.
Persephone lifted her hand slightly. Her stomach heaved. She raised her hand farther. Hades made an inarticulate sound.
Persephone brought the seeds to her mouth, tears pooling in her eyes. She took a deep breath. If only the roiling in her stomach would cease. She opened her lips. Hades leaned forward.
A loud hollow boom rent the silence. Persephone jerked and lowered her hand. Hades turned his head toward the door of her megaron.
The noise came again, followed by what sounded like muffled shouting.
She looked at Hades. “What is that?”
Hades got to his feet, crossed to the door of her megaron and stood there, head cocked, brows drawn down. The thudding came again, fell into a rhythm. Hades went through the door and she could hear the slap of his feet as he walked down the hallway.
Persephone rose and followed. She’d traversed half the length of the corridor when she looked down and realized she still held the pomegranate seeds in her hand. She tucked them in her belt and hurried to catch Hades up, taking his hand in hers when she reached him.
“Is it Hermes?”
Hades shook his head. “Hermes enters and leaves as he pleases. He has no need to batter at our door.”
“A shade then?”
“Aecus wouldn’t allow any, save those he sends to Elysium, to penetrate so far into our realm and a shade would have no reason to stop at my palace.”
A quick flash of Demeter’s face appeared in Persephone’s mind. Her hand spasmed on Hades’s.
He looked down and quirked a brow at her.
“Perhaps a mortal?” she asked.
“None can reach us here. Cerberus ensures that.”
As they descended the stairs the shouting grew louder, more articulate, but Persephone still couldn’t make out the words.
At the bottom of the stairs, Hades halted. “Stay here.”
Hades was still pale, his eyes pouched in bruised flesh, sweat darkening the top of his tunic. Demeter’s cruelty could be waiting for him on the other side of that door. Persephone knew he had heard much about it from Hekate but that didn’t mean he was prepared to face it, especially in his current state.
“Do you have strength enough to withstand whatever lies without?” Persephone asked.
“The only thing I lack strength to withstand is your loss. Stay here. I beg you.”
Persephone shook her head and tightened her grasp on his hand. “I will neither leave you alone nor allow myself to be separated from you. We’ll face whomever or whatever it is together.”
Hades’s gaze traveled over her face. He nodded then moved toward the door. The blows thudding against it were much like those Cerberus had rained against the palace gates when he sought to reclaim Nadira. Persephone shuddered at the association.
When they reached the entrance, Hades hesitated before grasping the handle of the nearest door and pulling it open. On the other side a man stood, fisted hand upraised, eyes large and dark in a too-thin, too-pale face. He looked mortal but seemed to have no trouble gazing directly at Hades, a feat which, according to the Goddesses, would drive any without Immortal blood mad.
The man dropped his hand and swallowed. His throat made a dry click, audible in the heavy silence. He drew in a breath, drew himself straight. “I am Orpheus of Pimpleia, and I come to barter with the Lord of the Underworld.”