“Then you have to let me go.”
Zeus, Nick, Persephone, they all sang the same refrain. Let her go.
It only made Hades cling more stubbornly. Never.
“No, I have to punish you.”
She pulled out of his arms and scrambled back as far as the space of the bed would let her go. “W-what?”
“You heard me. You lied to me. You kept this suffering from me, and then you tried to harm yourself. Do you have any idea how furious I am with you right now?”
Her eyes widened in the first real fear he’d seen from her in a long time. Seeing her that afraid sickened him. But there was also something monstrous inside him that liked it. It would be so easy if he just let that thing out. He wouldn’t have to care about anything anymore but sating his own lusts.
“You want to bleed, Sunshine? I can make that happen. If you’re so fascinated with the sight of your own blood, believe me… I can accommodate you.”
“N-no. I… I just felt so lost, and this place got into my head. It whispered things. I… I just wanted to make it all stop.”
Hades took one of her wrists, and she jerked it back.
“Persephone, do not test me right now.”
Slowly she held her arm back out to him. He unwrapped the gauze. The bleeding had stopped, but she was still far from healed. He had to get her powers back. If she had them, everything would be fine.
He re-wrapped her wrist and got up off the bed. “Come with me.”
Tears slid down her cheeks. “Please, Master, I’m sorry.”
He wasn’t sure if he believed her. Whatever the underworld was doing to her, it had clearly driven her mad. He couldn’t leave her again. If he went on business, he had to bring her along.
“I’m not going to make you bleed,” he said quietly. “But I am going to punish you.”
She scooted to the edge of the bed and pulled back the covers. She was still naked from the bath.
He led her from the room and down the hallway to the playroom. She didn’t seem to even notice her nudity when she passed the guards anymore.
Inside the playroom, Hades raised an arm to the closet. It opened and a couple of large cushions floated out and settled in the middle of the floor.
“Sit. We’re going to talk first.”
If possible, she seemed to want to avoid talking more than whatever punishment was coming her way.
Hades sat on the other cushion across from her. “Tell me more about what happens when I’m not around.”
Persephone was quiet for a long time, but finally, she started to describe all the various ways the underworld made her feel. Some of it was physical. A good bit of it was mental. But she was right, as things stood now, she was completely incompatible with the underworld. If he were better, he would release her.
Maybe it was right that he’d drawn the lot of the underworld. Maybe it was fitting.
“You’d be happier without me if I sent you back to the surface and left you alone,” he said.
“I don’t want to leave you. I just can’t be here. I’m sorry I kept things from you. I was afraid.”
Suddenly, Hades didn’t have the heart to punish her. He only wanted to comfort and reassure her, but even that was too much. His mind was too busy, whirring with everything that was going wrong.
The honorable side of him knew he had to let her go. This place was destroying her. And yet… she’d eaten the seeds. Even he couldn’t fully undo that mystical link. Would he if he could?
“I have to get out of here. I need some air.” He couldn’t sit here with her looking at him like that. He knew how much she needed him, but he just… he had to get outside and breathe and think.
“You can’t leave me! You know what will happen.”
“I won’t be gone long. I promise. I need to think.”
He ignored her panic and plaintive cries and bolted from the room. He didn’t stop running until he was outside in the open air. He went to the stables and took one of the horses, and he rode.
He had to clear his head. It was all falling apart. Everything. Zeus was fucking with him. Couldn’t just let him have this one good thing. Persephone couldn’t be down here. And all the while, the seer’s words seemed to haunt and mock him.
She is destined to be yours.
A pack of lies. How could she be destined to be his when everything was coming apart? If it were truly destiny, wouldn’t everything fall into place? Wouldn’t it be easier? He was going to find that seer, and he was going to fucking torture her.
He didn’t know where he was leading the horse until he got there: one of the gates where souls were being processed. He should have stayed on top of this. He’d let everything crumble around him, and now the mess was almost too big to clean up. Fucking Zeus.
Nick was right. It was a swarm of them. Far more than usual and far too many. The underworld was in a slow and constant state of expansion, but there was a balance. An order. Zeus’s eternal petulant winter broke that balance. He thought acting out would bring Persephone back? Zeus was a fool.
And if the overflow was bad now, it would get worse. This was just the beginning. Only the truly weak had fallen so far. But soon enough the strong would succumb, too. No one could withstand a winter without end. No one mortal, anyway.
“My Lord, Hades,” Oris said. He was a low level grunt who had the boring and tedious work of processing new souls. “I haven’t seen this many souls come through since the black death. It’s crazy! What’s going on up there?”
At least the whole underworld wasn’t buzzing with the news yet. That was the last thing Hades needed.
“Oris, listen, I need you to do something for me.” He wouldn’t do it out in the open. Of course he wanted Zeus to know, and the smug self-righteous bastard would find out. But there was no sense causing unnecessary whispering in the underworld. No one needed to know Hades had lost it.
“Anything, My Lord.”
“Randomly pick one hundred souls and send them to me. I’ll expect them at the castle within the hour.”
“Of course, My Lord.”
One hundred wasn’t nearly enough, but Hades was sure it was enough to make winter stop and fast. He wouldn’t allow himself to think about what he would become, the danger he put Persephone in. Deep down he knew if he did this, he would no longer care how much she suffered. He could keep her without remorse. He could make Zeus back down, and he could keep her.
Chapter Eight
Persephone sat in a corner of the playroom, her knees drawn up to her chest, the tears streaming down her face. How could he just run off and leave her like that? This was exactly what she’d feared—that he would know the truth and still leave her to suffer.
She tried to take deep calming breaths as if she could fight and push past the suffocating oppression that crowded in on all her senses. If she could only find a way to survive when he was away. There had to be some coping mechanism… something. Maybe magic? Couldn’t magic help her? This place seemed full of it.
She looked up suddenly. The energy in the castle had changed. Hades was back. She didn’t know how she knew, she just knew. Like he’d promised, he hadn’t been gone long. She got off the floor feeling stupid and melodramatic and wiped the tears off her face. She went to the bedroom and dressed in one of the long black robes from the closet. Then she raced down the stairs to meet him.
She’d expected to run into him. Surely he was on his way back to her. But their paths didn’t cross. The hallway was clear. It was clear down on the main level as well. She stopped in front of one of the guards lining the wall of the massive entry hall.
“Where is Hades?” She wasn’t crazy. She felt him. She knew he was here. She knew it the same way she knew day would never fucking come here—that the sun would never rise for her again.
“Your Grace, he’s ordered no one disturb him, including you.”
Persephone was quite certain that was not the question she’d asked. How could Hades shut her out? She’d
been kidding herself all this time. Whatever he felt for her… it was possession and control. It must be. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t like what she felt for him. She wasn’t sure which was worse, to be stuck in the underworld with a man—no, a god—who couldn’t love her, or to be without him and forced to face the endless night alone.
She paced back and forth in front of the staircase. He was somewhere in the castle. She could go find him herself. And yet… she was afraid to actively defy him and disobey his orders. He could simply leave her to her own private hell if he got irritated enough. He didn’t have to break out the whips and chains now that he knew his absence was the greatest pain of all.
The castle’s front entrance opened with a loud creak, and in drifted a crowd of people. A party? He was throwing a party at a time like this? But no, it wasn’t a party. These weren’t under beings. These weren’t his generals and other high ranking officials and their consorts. These were… these were regular people. Souls who had passed on.
It had been so long since Persephone had seen regular people that she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the normality. Gods, demons, various under beings were not the same, even if they were people-shaped.
The souls entering the castle appeared lost and confused and afraid as they wandered down the entry hall. Was she supposed to greet them? Say something to them? But before she could decide what to do, one of the servants went to intercept them.
“This way,” he said, smiling widely, “Lord Hades is eager to greet you.”
The long line of people followed the servant down one of the main hallways to the ballroom. Was it a party? That didn’t feel right. Something was wrong about this. She’d never known Hades to entertain human souls at the castle.
When the line had passed, Persephone started to follow, but the guard she’d spoken with stopped her.
“Your Grace, I have my orders.”
“And what are you to do with me if I don’t listen? Has he given you permission to hurt me or lock me up somewhere?”
The guard looked away. “No, Your Grace, but you really shouldn’t...”
She stood straight and attempted to look as regal and intimidating as possible even though the guard was a full foot taller than her. “It is not up to you to tell me what I should or should not do. I am your queen. You forget yourself.”
He offered a small bow. “My apologies, Your Grace.”
She hadn’t expected it would be that easy. No one else tried to stop her. When she burst through the doors of the ballroom a few minutes later, she wished they had.
It took a moment for Persephone to fully realize what she was seeing. The crowd of souls had been herded into the ballroom, and all of them seemed frozen. Some kind of magic held them, preventing them from trying to escape, because without it, she was sure they would try to escape. The tension in the room was so palpable, Persephone could barely breathe. It was too much like the feeling when Hades left her.
Hades stood in front of one of them, his hand outstretched, pressed against a man’s chest. His hand glowed bright orange, and then the man screamed and… incinerated. There was a brief burst of flame on him, but it quickly died, and a neat pile of ashes were left on the ground in the man’s place.
Persephone gasped, drawing all the attention in the room to her. “What? Why? How could you…?” Maybe they were bad souls. Like serial killers or rapists. But nobody inside the ballroom seemed evil. And weren’t the bad souls punished? Wasn’t that Melos’ job?
“Bring me another one,” he said. His voice had gone all dark and terrifying. Inhuman, almost like an animal. Before he’d at least made the effort of sounding like a person, but now… he’d given up all pretense.
One of the servants dragged another soul to him, this one a woman.
Hades turned to Persephone. He looked haunted, horrified by what he was doing. So why was he doing it? Why couldn’t he just stop?
“Y-you don’t have to do this,” She said, even though she had no idea why he was doing it.
“Oh, but I do. And as much as it hurts me to see it right now, in a little while I’m not going to care about that look of revulsion on your face.” He turned to one of the guards standing silently against the wall. “Get her out of here. Put her in the cage. I’ll deal with her when I’m done.”
She tried to run, but of course she didn’t get far. His guards were so tall, with long, powerfully muscled legs. They could easily outrun her. It only took one of them to scoop her up and carry her down to the dungeon. He put her in the cage she’d been in the first night and locked the door.
“Please! Please don’t leave me down here!” All regal pretense was gone now.
“I’m sorry, Your Grace. Truly I am. But I cannot defy him.” Then the guard turned and left her.
No one else had been down here since her last imprisonment. The pomegranate she’d eaten that first night still lay in the middle of the cage where she’d dropped it, now dried and almost beyond recognition.
She tried without success to figure out why Hades was doing this. It couldn’t be because she’d hurt herself. Or… was this her punishment? He had to know she wouldn’t put other souls in danger. It wouldn’t matter how much the underworld got under her skin, if she knew souls would be incinerated… she would never…
Could that be why? Oh God, could this somehow be her fault? Persephone moved to the back of the cage and sank to the floor, her back pressed against the bars in a futile attempt to steady herself. No, of course this wasn’t her fault. Nobody was making him do this. But why? She’d come to learn he wasn’t a monster. Hades wasn’t evil. He had his darkness, but his darkness consisted of orgies and temptation, not mass murder.
She told herself she would never forgive him. She’d shun his affections. But he still held the only key to not feeling like she was dying in this place. How could she push him away when his presence and touch were the only things keeping her going? Though that might stop being true. She couldn’t imagine still wanting to be near him now.
He couldn’t come back from this.
She hadn’t been able to stop crying since she was put in the cage, so she didn’t hear the female servant come down.
“Your Grace?”
“Stop calling me that. I’m his prisoner. That’s all I am and all I will ever be.” It was such a joke to pretend she had any power here.
“That’s not true,” she said. “I-I brought you something to eat.” She opened the cage a bit and pushed a tray inside with a sandwich and some water. “I thought maybe a little something might help. Nothing too heavy. I know you might not have much appetite right now.”
That was an understatement.
Persephone thought she could probably overpower the servant and escape. But to where? There was no place to go that Hades wouldn’t eventually find her, and she didn’t want to think about what would happen then. She also didn’t want him to hurt the servant girl.
The servant locked the cage again and started to go back upstairs.
“Why is he doing this?”
The girl turned back but stared at the ground as if she found the interlocking stones wildly interesting. “Please, Your Grace, I’m not supposed to tell.”
“Tell me. It will be our secret.”
She hesitated another minute but then she came back to the cage and sat on the ground near Persephone as if she were afraid to speak the words too loudly. As if Hades might hear her all the way down here and come incinerate her as well.
“I don’t know all the details, but I’ve heard things. Zeus is trying to free you from the underworld. It’s been winter on the surface of the whole earth for months now. And people are starting to die. He wants to flood the underworld with too many souls to force Hades to release you. So My Lord Hades is destroying souls to keep you.”
It was the last explanation she’d expected. “So he doesn’t care if I love him or hate him as long as I’m trapped down here with him?”
The servant shrugged. “I d
on’t know what he’s thinking. H-he’s lost his mind. He hasn’t been like this in a long time, and n-never this bad.” The girl touched Persephone’s hand through the bars. “Your Grace, he will… change. I don’t know if he can come back to us. He may be lost forever. Whatever happens now, you must be brave.”
“What do you mean? What’s going to happen?” She hated how shrill and terrified she was starting to sound, but the servant’s fear was getting to her.
“I-I have to go. He’ll come down soon and… please don’t tell him I was down here.”
“I won’t.” It wasn’t like Persephone could tell him much anyway. The only thing she could say was that a female servant had been down there to see her. The servants and guards in the castle were hard to tell apart sometimes. And she still didn’t know anyone’s name.
An hour or so passed. Persephone ate the food and drank the water that had been brought for her. It didn’t help anything.
Finally, she heard heavy footfalls getting nearer and nearer. She knew it was him, but nothing could have prepared her for what came down those stairs.
It wasn’t Hades.
It was a monster or a demon, maybe one from the lower realms—the places Hades shielded her from. He was enormous, and even with the high ceiling in the dungeon, he had to bend down to not bump his head. His skin was black and reptilian. His eyes glowed red. He had long sharp claws that were probably better described as talons. And there were horns.
She felt the pieces coming together as the realization hit her. It was the statue from the party. Had it come to life?
Persephone couldn’t stop the scream that left her throat as the beast got closer.
“What’s the matter, Sunshine? My true form too much for you? You seemed to like it just fine when you were fucking a marble copy of it at the party.”
No.
“H-Hades?”
When he smiled, he revealed those too-sharp teeth—teeth that could easily rip fragile flesh like hers. “What did we say about that? You call me Master.”