by Amelia Wilde
That doesn’t mean he’s forgiven her.
And—and. My mother changed her mind at some point. Decided I was property. Decided to warn me about him, again and again and again, because she knew that he’d want revenge no matter what he said. No matter what she gave.
There are no heroes in this story. Not a single one. Not even me.
But I’m less concerned with who’s heroic and who’s villainous than I am with the truth.
Did he bring me here to get back at her?
Is our entire relationship a lie?
The question folds into itself like a flower closing for the night and refuses to reopen.
Eleanor comes to the other side of the planter and frowns down at the uneven gashes in the dirt and the scattered seeds. “Not much better then.”
I push my hair off my forehead and probably get a bunch of dirt all over my skin, making this moment even better. “I don’t even know why I’m here.”
“To plant flowers.” She drags a finger through the dirt, rearranging the seeds with a flick of her fingernail. I catch the hint of a smile. “Among other things.”
“Am I just his revenge on my mother?”
I’ve never been punched in the chest before, but I can imagine this is what it feels like. It keeps happening over and over and over, and Eleanor looking at me, completely unbothered, doesn’t help.
“You were there,” I grumble at the seeds. “You could at least tell me.”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters.” Another blow. If this is all a lie, then I can’t stay here. If I can’t stay here, I’ll die. If I can’t live without him, then, then, then. “The start of everything matters.”
“Persephone.” Eleanor looks out toward the front door, where light gets in around the crack in the doorframe. “It can’t be all that matters.”
“The foundation of something matters. If it’s built on a lie, then it could turn out to be a lie in the end.”
“You think that man’s love for you is a lie?” She lifts one eyebrow, her whole face committed to expressing her utter disbelief. “How can you think that?”
“Because I heard the story.” I’m not proud of snapping at Eleanor, who doesn’t even flinch. She just stands there in her soft gardening clothes, watching me like I’m a stranger who’s wandered in off the street. “And I don’t know how anyone could love me after they had to suffer through what my mother did. It can’t be about love. It can only be about holding a grudge and taking revenge.”
It hurts to say it, but at least it’s out in the open now, that ugly, roiling thought that’s taken up so much space in my head since last night’s sit-down with Poseidon.
She leans over the planter and waves a finger in the air. “That,” Eleanor says, voice as gentle as ever, “is not how love works.”
“Isn’t it?” A hot tear rolls down my cheek. I’m never going to stop being a crier, am I? This is just who I am as a person. I’m a person who cries at everything, and the worst part is that I feel it deep in my soul, this hurt. This ache. I can’t shut it off like Hades can. I can’t block it out. “Because if this was about love, then he—he wouldn’t be—”
A quiet laugh. “He wouldn’t be a soft man, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”
“I don’t want a soft man.”
She shoots me a look. Obviously. “Love makes new truths out of everything, Persephone.”
I wipe stubbornly at my face. Great—more dirt. “I don’t think it does.”
“You know...” Eleanor has somehow managed to make all the seeds neat while I was standing here feeling hopeless. “He had so many dogs.”
My throat goes tight and hot. “I know. I know about the dogs. You already told me about them.”
“Chronos was the law back then. He was the truth.” She pats the dirt over the new seeds then goes to retrieve the trowel from where I threw it. She drags it softly across the soil. “He made it true that every one of those companions would die, and there was nothing Luther could do about it.”
“I don’t know what this has to do with—”
“The very first thing he did once he left that house was buy a new puppy. And that dog—he called her Holly—stayed with him for thirteen years. What do you think he was doing while you were gone that night?”
That night. She means the night Decker tried to sell me to Zeus. And succeeded, for a while.
“I don’t know.” He’s never talked about it. “Making plans with Oliver, probably.”
Eleanor scoffs, and it’s the gentlest scoff but I feel it in my bones. “He sat outside the surgery room for Conor. Nobody could convince him to come out. It’s white walls and surgery lights. I think he gave the surgeon a heart attack. There were rumors about it later.”
“I still don’t see—”
“He made a different truth. So can you.”
The seeds are finished and there’s nothing left for me to do except tell her she’s right and go back across the valley to the life that waits for me. She doesn’t need to know that I don’t believe her.
13
Hades
I’ve done something wrong, and I don’t fucking like it.
It’s not the wrong thing that makes my clothes feel too tight and my skin feel like it’s being sandblasted. It’s that I have to do something—I need to do something—to please Persephone. She’s been distant, almost ghostlike, since last night, and it’s untenable. My usual strategies of bending her over my bed or a desk or really any other piece of furniture won’t do. The last thing I want is for her to lay there with hurt in her eyes, pretending she’s somewhere else.
No. Fuck that.
I’ve been signing documents at my desk without reading them, that’s how this has gone. Oliver keeps coming in and out to ask me what we’re going to do about Zeus. Nothing today, for fuck’s sake. Zeus isn’t here today, and Persephone is, and this is perhaps the first time in my life that I can remember having this particular emotion.
I’d rather claw my own skin off than feel this way.
“Oliver.”
He stops pacing by the door. “Did you think of something?”
“You’re driving me fucking insane. Go find someone else to bother.”
“He could be moving on the mountain again, and we wouldn’t be prepared.”
“Wouldn’t we?”
“You might not be prepared.”
I put down the pen and look at him. “Oliver, if you suggest one more time that I’m in some sort of vulnerable state, I will kill you.”
“Fine.” He nods and slips out the door. He’s right, obviously. Obviously he is fucking right. Something has to be done about Demeter, too. I’ll have to send people to her property to figure out what she’s been making, but knowing her, all of it is covered in poison or already burned to ashes. I also won’t risk Persephone to get that information, either, though I’m sure she could.
All I want is for her to come to me willingly.
I could drag her here without issue. I’ve done it before and enjoyed it very much. But not this time.
Conor stretches at the corner of my desk and puts his head on my knee. Absently scratching behind his ears gives me no good ideas, but looking out at the factory floor does.
Persephone likes diamonds.
Why she likes diamonds, I don’t know. I’ve never asked her. But I’ve already wrapped them around her neck and her wrists. That leaves one piece missing. A queen needs a crown.
The noise of the factory floor drowns out all the competing bullshit that makes it impossible to think. Persephone’s frown, which she woke up wearing this morning, and the deep hurt in her eyes. The problem of Zeus, and the added problem of Poseidon, who is less predictable than Demeter some days. The low-level buzz filling my skull and chopping my thoughts off, declaring that they’re ended. If that doesn’t stop, everything else comes apart at the seams and Persephone inherits a nightmare.
The office I’m looking for is an alcov
e on the right-hand side of the floor, carved into the walls. It’s an ancillary altar to the gods of metal and stone and the man who works inside is the most experienced acolyte. He’s the one who works on all my personal projects. There is no more personal project than this one.
He doesn’t look up from his work table when I pull open the door. I wouldn’t have doors at all, except in some cases the settings on his pieces are so delicate that errant dust can fuck them up completely. Other than Oliver, he is the only person on the mountain to get this kind of leeway.
Aside from Persephone.
“Clear your schedule,” I tell him when he lays his project aside on a sheet of black velvet. “I need something specific for tonight.”
Persephone sits in the chair by the window, the glass clear so she can see the night. Empty hands, an empty face. My heart lurches farther outside my body at the sight of her so still, with no book balanced on her lap. Heartbeats become tense pulls between the place where the organ is supposed to be and where it is, which is wherever she goes.
It’s a wordless tension and walking through it is like walking into deep water.
Gladly. Fucking gladly.
I balance the diamond tiara in the palms of my hands. It’s the most delicate thing, perfect for Persephone, but strong. I stood over the work table while it was made, supervising every second of its creation. That man deserves a fucking raise. If I didn’t know better I’d think this was a spray of stars pulled down from the sky and set in platinum.
My heart beats harder, blood pumping through all the still-wounded parts of me, and finally Persephone looks up at me in her regal silence.
“Yours.” I let it catch on the starlight coming through the window, and her eyes follow its curves for so long I think she might slap it out of my hand. Try to crush it beneath her foot. But then those eyes meet mine again and she nods.
That nod is a fist. It’s a firm grip. She lets me settle it against the wild fall of her hair and brush one of the stray locks back from her cheek.
“Mine.”
She lets out a breath that’s a half-cry and her hand comes up to cover mine. Forgiveness is a current between our skin. She’s wrong to do it, of course. Too hopeful by far. The person I am has been beaten into me for long enough that I’ll never be different. But that’s never what this was about. It was simpler than that. It is simpler than that.
I’ll make it so.
Her dress comes off over her head easily, and I find that she’s wearing nothing underneath. The sight of her naked, sitting straight and proud with diamonds in her hair, etches itself into my memory.
“What are you doing?” she whispers.
I kneel down in front of her, which causes a head rush of unbelievable proportions. History slams into my vision, overlaying everything with a strange aura, like gauze on a canopy bed. Fuck. Fuck. This is a terrible sign but I can’t stop looking at her. I can’t.
“You could call it worship,” I say, and then I spread her legs.
Persephone tastes like honey, like clear water, like a summer berry crushed between my teeth. Her hands find their way to my hair and she pulls me in close. As if she fucking needs to. I’m the one who needs this. I’m the one who’s starving for her. I have always been starving for her.
She hisses, hips rolling and bucking, and I’m forced to pin her down so she doesn’t throw herself to the floor. Yes, this. Yes, here. Now. There is no part of her I leave unexplored, no fold I leave unlicked. I suck her clit until she cries diamond tears to match her new crown. Until she begs me to fuck her in sobbing whimpers that wake up all the pieces of me that I thought were sleeping or dead.
And then I fuck her on the chair with hard, deep strokes. Persephone digs her nails into my shoulders, and her teeth. Pain sparks under the half-moons of her nails and stings goose bumps into my skin, all of me tensing with it. With her.
The night drops down around us, painting over everything else. Nothing to see here. No mountain, no people, no looming threats. There’s only the sweet clench of her muscles around me and the soft sound of her panting, which gets louder with every stroke. She’s pulling me in, trying to keep me there.
She doesn’t want me to leave. Persephone doesn’t count down the minutes until I’m out of her sight, out of her life. All of her is a plea to stay, stay, stay.
I don’t have anything to compare it to. There is no model for this anywhere in my fucked-up past. But I’m sure of it nonetheless.
I’m home.
That’s why it will hurt so much to leave.
14
Persephone
I look different now.
The crown—a tiara seems like the wrong word for it, though it’s extraordinarily delicate—was on the bedside table when I woke up this morning and I put it on. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world. I expected the feeling to fade when I saw it in the mirror of his closet, but...
So far, no.
I touch it again to make sure that it’s real.
It was late when Hades came back last night, and after he was finished—you could call it worship—I fell deeply and dreamlessly asleep. If this is revenge against my mother then so be it.
We’ll make it into something new.
Hades appears in the mirror behind me and my stomach sinks. He doesn’t look like a man who’s satisfied with himself and prepared for another day of leading a kingdom. Guarded eyes. Dark clothes. I swallow a sudden dryness on my tongue.
“Did you change your mind, then?”
HIs eyes meet mine in the mirror. He’s so much bigger. The difference is stark with both of us reflected in the glass, me with the sheet wrapped around my shoulders and him in a pristine outfit that’s not his usual suit and shirt. He slides one hand beneath the blanket to palm one breast then the other, but doesn’t break eye contact. “I will never,” he says against my skin. “Change my mind about you.”
I lean my head back against him at the same moment he says, “I’m going on a trip.”
It’s strange enough that at first I think the mirror’s cracked. “You don’t go on trips.” He doesn’t. He has never once mentioned going on trips, he has never once mentioned traveling, and he can’t. Anxiety shivers through my veins but the crown on my head catches my eye again. I’m not going to fall to pieces over one sentence. “Where are you going?”
“Better.” Hades coils one hand around my throat and holds me against him while he rips the sheet away, leaving me naked in the mirror, framed by his clothes. It’s obscene, the arched line of me against the black fabric. I’m a jewel on velvet. Hades tests me with his fingers, starting with the tiara. His fingertips meet every diamond and skim down over my eyes, my lips, each nipple. They both pull into tight peaks and he cuts off a small noise that would have been begging with more pressure to my throat. Air transforms into a resource I don’t have quite enough of and every breath is a new reminder of his power. If I want you to die, you’ll die. He said that to me once. And now I know it means the opposite, too. If I want you to live, you’ll live.
He makes me watch while he nudges my feet apart with his, spreading me open for the glass and for his searching eyes. He makes me watch while he dips one finger into my folds and pulls it away again, glistening with me. Hades gives my head a shake—keep watching—and sticks that finger into his mouth, sucking on it like it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted.
Then somehow he’s on one knee, shoving me back onto his leg and spreading me even wider. Pushing in one finger, then two, then three. And there I am, letting my head fall against his arm and having it pushed roughly back into place. There I am, clutching his shirt in my fists while he orders me to keep my toes on the ground and my legs open wider, little slut. And I obey him because he might have made me a queen but the crown on my head doesn’t only mean that I belong next to him, it means I belong to him. In every way. Even if that way is to watch myself as he fucks me casually with his fingers, stretching, going deep. Pulling me apart so that all the
pink, wet parts of me are on full display.
I’m close to giving in to a rough, electric orgasm when he picks me up like a doll and arranges me on my hands and knees. I have a closer view of my face now—of how pink my cheeks have gotten, how wide my pupils are blown, how I’m panting. Short, sharp breaths. Who is that woman in the mirror? Not the person I thought I was. I never thought I could be this.
Hades stays in the frame while he strips off his clothes, and even in the closet’s soft light—designed for him—I can see him. Bruises still fading on his ribs and sides. Cuts still healing. They all seem superficial now on his tight muscles and the taut planes of his body. How could I have ever thought he might die? It would take so much to kill him. More than life has already dealt.
A whisper of worry tries to fight its way in—you know what you saw—but then Hades kneels behind me and drags my hips back, putting my pussy where he wants it.
The thick head of him nudges against my opening and he pauses. He’s on display as much as I am. Warmth stretches across my chest. This is a gift for me, too. People do not get to see him like this, tensed and ready, concentration furrowing his brow, his teeth digging into his lip. The muscles low on his belly are coiled because he’s about to fuck me, and his eyes—still blue, at this hour of the morning—skim over my face in the mirror so coldly that I know he’s on fire. When our eyes catch in the middle of the mirror, me already bracing my hands on the plush carpet of his closet, bending for him in small movements so that he can take what he wants.
And give me what I want.
His gaze catches mine in the mirror. You, I think. There are the lips and teeth that ravage me until my skin is pink and raw. There are the eyes that turn my belly to a keening, animal desire. And while I’m watching, while he’s sure I can see, he gives a half-smile that’s so unguarded that it takes my breath away. It doesn’t reveal the soft core of him, the beating heart. Instead it reveals his dark, jagged lust—the one thing he couldn’t keep at bay.