Can’t you see what is happening? His eyes returned to dark brown and grew wide, his panic palpable. They are separating us forever! Their oaths, their laws, now mean nothing and they are making you and I and every mortal on earth victims of their capriciousness! They care nothing for us, and nothing for them! He gripped her hand in his. “Allow me to end their foolishness,” he said aloud.
“These are not your words,” she repeated.
“I am the eldest of my generation and you of yours. You and I are the rulers of the cosmos by birthright! It is time for us to embrace our fate, my love. Please, I need you.” He knelt forward from his chair, and fell to his knees in front of her throne. Aidoneus took her hands in his.
She looked down at him, mapping the fear and desperation on his face, her heart beating out of her chest. Persephone considered acquiescing— considered telling him to unleash the Erinyes, the Keres, the Tribe of the Oneiroi, the Hundred Handed Ones, all their innumerable allies and go to war. Then she remembered what she had seen in Tartarus. The throne. The fall. The rising embers. Destruction. Rape. Death.
Aidoneus squeezed her hands, drawing her attention back from those frightful visions. “The Olympians have never taken responsibility the way that you and I would— look how they wantonly destroy the very threads of existence itself! You know in your heart that we can rule more justly than they ever did. Say the word, Persephone, and we will cast down these oath breakers. I will exalt you as the queen of heaven, the earth and the seas, of everything above and below. You and I will reign over the cosmos and restore order and honor and justice.”
Persephone shook her head in horror. “Absolute power drove your father to madness, Aidoneus. Just as it did to your grandfather. It will do the same to you— and to me. And to any immortal. We are the rulers beneath the earth, and only there. And the earth above is dying! Chthonia’s borders are weakened, and we must tend to our own realm.”
“They’re not as weak as you think,” he muttered, out of earshot of Hermes. “And neither are we.”
“You saw what happened when they tried to take Sisyphus to the Pit. Nothing is safe anymore, my love. You know what he showed us! Kronos and the rest of the Titans will break free if this disaster continues. They will kill everything. Destroy everything; destroy us! He is influencing you even now—”
“Please, Persephone,” he supplicated. “My wife, my queen, I am begging you to join me! They’ll take you away from me forever if you don’t!”
He was right. She would never see him again. He would never hold her, they would never wake up in the grove as they had this morning, he would never be able to whisper to her again that he loved her. But if she supported him, they would witness the end of all things. The unthinkable would happen. They, the deathless ones, would die.
“Aidon,” she said, and squeezed his hand. “Husband. You once told me that you’ve loved me forever; that you would love me until the stars were shaken out of the sky.”
He squeezed his eyes shut to keep the welling tears from streaming down his face. Persephone brushed her hand along his cheek, and he shivered. “Persephone… please,” he whispered.
“Are you ready for that? Do you really want that so soon?”
“No!” He looked up at her again. “No, sweet one, we have time. We can cast them down; you and I can save this world together—” he said, his eyes watering as his voice choked.
“Everything will end, my beloved. The heavens, the earth, you and I, everything,” she said, watching Aidoneus’s shoulders slump involuntarily, knowing in his heart that she was right. She ran her hand along his face, tracing his cheek as she spoke, her palm now wet with his tears. “But before it does, if you do this, Tartarus will be unleashed—”
“No…”
“—and every threat Kronos made against you and me will come to pass—”
“Persephone, don’t!” His voice cracked over a whisper. “Please don’t…”
“No, my lord husband. You asked for my counsel. But before you ask me again to join you in declaring war on Olympus, hear this,” she shuddered, then composed herself. “You and I already know the outcome. We were there; we saw it. The last thing you will see before the end of all things, the very last time we will look into each other’s eyes, will be as Kronos devours my violated body.”
He stared up at her. Aidoneus was motionless, his eyes staring through her, fixed and dark and distant.
“Is that what you want?”
Silence filled the room. Then Hades Aidoneus Chthonios, Lord of the Underworld, crumpled forward, his forehead falling into his wife’s lap. His entire body wrenched and shook, and he wrapped his arms around the small of her back. A long, tortured wail echoed through the hall, a sound she’d never heard before from him. Persephone ran her hands through his hair and huddled over him, shaking, tears pouring down. Aidoneus gasped in air around each sob. Hermes held his breath and took several steps back, the scene before him terrifying and unsettling. Hades shuddered quietly, going silent.
“I was finally happy,” he whispered, his words muffled as his hands balled into fists in the skirts of her peplos. She sucked in deep breaths, trying to steady her voice and calm her heartbeat. She needed to be strong for him. Tears spilled out anyway. Persephone stroked her husband’s back and hunched forward to kiss him on the back of his head. He whispered it again. “I was finally happy. Fates, for the first time in my life…”
“I will come back to you. I will find a way back to you; I promise…” she whispered against his neck. “They cannot keep us apart. I’ll find a way… I love you, Aidoneus! I’ll find a way, I love you… I love you…”
Hermes turned away as bile crawled up his throat, sickened at himself and his orders. He’d listened to Apollo singing about love, he’d used the word enough times to lay with nymphs and mortal women, and had even bedded the goddess of love herself. This was different.
Aidoneus wasn’t his king, but he’d always deeply respected him. Having seen all that the gods did to mankind and to each other, even what he himself had done, he doubted he could say the same for many of the other immortals. Even his own father. Hermes walked out to the terrace and bent down to retrieve his hat. Hades was willing to tear down Olympus and end the world to keep her. Could he have ever said that of a woman, except when he was in the middle of seducing one? Who among the others loved their mate enough to not only stay true to them, but to wager their immortality to stay with them? Hermes looked out at the swarms of souls crowding the far shore of the Styx. He could do it, the Messenger thought with a shiver. Not easily, but he has no idea how weak we truly are right now…
He toyed in his mind with the idea of ‘we’ a bit longer than he should have. Hermes knew his history. Prometheus and Epimetheus, the Titan sons of Iapetos, along with Helios and Selene, Hyperion’s twins, had sided with the Children of Kronos during the Titanomachy. Turning against his kin and king wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. He paused, grinding his teeth, trying to picture a cosmos ruled by the austere masters of this realm. It doesn’t matter, he thought. If it came to war, there would be nothing left to rule over.
“Messenger,” a low voice rasped from inside the throne room, breaking him out of his grim musings. Hermes felt every hair stand on end as he turned to walk back inside. Had she relented? Had they changed their minds?
His stomach dropped, wondering what was about to be asked of him… or done to him. Charon’s veiled threats on the River Styx were still fresh in Hermes’s mind. He nauseously recalled his encounter with beautiful and terrifying Tisiphone, when she had wielded her scorpion-tipped scourge against a man who’d viciously murdered his own mother. He tried in vain to drown the memory of the condemned mortal’s screams, and the sounds of ripping flesh that accompanied them. He had ducked quietly behind a tree to empty the contents of his stomach, the buzzing in his ears not enough to drown out Tisiphone’s sultry laughter. Words like flay and burn and geld played on the edges of his mind no matter how h
e tried to will them away. Somehow, his knees still worked enough to take him back inside the great chamber.
Hades and Persephone Chthonios, rulers of the Underworld, sat on their thrones, their hands clasped tightly between them. They were as somber as they had been before Hermes delivered his message, except for the redness swelling around their eyes.
“Y-yes, Lord Hades?”
“My wife and I have made our decision,” Hades said, his voice grinding hard against the lump in his throat. “Persephone is to be escorted by both you and Hecate through the passageways of the Underworld until you find your way to Eleusis. There, she will be returned to Demeter.”
Hermes sighed, his shoulders dropping in relief.
Persephone looked to Aidoneus and caught his gaze, tilting her head toward him with a pregnant pause. Hermes fidgeted, wondering what her eyes were telling her husband. The Lord of the Underworld pursed his lips and turned back to him. “I also want to express my regrets for how I reacted. You are only Zeus’s messenger, Hermes Psychopompos. I take back what I said earlier. You are still welcome here, and you are right— you are needed now more than ever to escort lost souls back to the Styx.”
He bowed low to the ground. “I thank you for your wisdom, Good Counsellor. You are a just king.”
“How long?” Persephone choked out, fighting back a sob as Hermes stood up. “How long do we have?”
Hermes pinched his fingers around the bridge of his nose to rub his eyes and looked down. “Demeter demanded your immediate return. But Zeus in his enduring wisdom, thought it might… take time to persuade your husband, if I didn’t find you alone— if I had to go before both of you.”
Persephone looked back to her husband in distress.
“Your Excellencies,” Hermes said, addressing them both, “the world will not end tonight. I must take Persephone back before first light on the Styx— sunset in the world above. That is the time all-seeing Zeus gave me to retrieve her.”
“Thank you, Hermes,” Aidon said quietly. “Now if you don’t mind, I wish to conclude this audience so I can say goodbye to my wife in private.”
“Of course, my lord. All I ask is a place to rest.”
“You are welcome here as our guest. Hecate will arrive shortly. She will show you to your quarters for the evening.” Aidon was guessing at that. The departure of Persephone toward the world above would not go unnoticed by the Goddess of the Crossroads. In hindsight, her crushed demeanor this morning likely meant that she knew this would happen. Aidon didn’t begrudge her silence. It would have changed nothing, and revealing her foresight would have likely made everything worse.
Aidoneus and Persephone rose. They nodded to the Messenger, who bowed low before them as they left the throne room.
10.
As soon as the door to their antechamber closed, he was upon her, kissing Persephone roughly, then breaking away from her lips and inhaling the scent of her hair. Aidon shuddered, and she realized that he was trying to hold back tears again, his breathing labored. He slid down until he was on his knees in front of her, holding her around the waist, his cheek pressed against her abdomen. His hands gripped her peplos, then untied her girdle and dropped it to the floor so his cheek was pressed against the soft cloth, not cold stones set in bronze.
Persephone cried, quietly at first, then with her whole body, shaking, unable to hold it back. “Aidon…” She could hardly breathe and slurred his name through her tears. “Aidon…”
“It’s all right, sweet one. I’ve got you,” he managed, haltingly. She realized that if he was calming her, it took his mind off the pain of losing her. Still, his grip on her waist tightened, and he buried his face in the folds of her peplos gathered above her womb.
Her womb. She felt him exhale into the fabric, the cloth warming as he tried to take a full breath and calm himself. If only he knew how close he was, or might be. Persephone needed to bury those thoughts as deep as she could. If Aidon suspected that she was carrying his child, he would reverse everything to which he’d agreed, regardless of consequence. The world would be undone and she doubted he would give her a say in it this time. He would be too consumed with defending the life they may have created together.
There had been no other signs that she was pregnant, but a measure of hope held strong within her. If she was separated from him forever, she would have that part of him to hold onto and remember him by. She thought about her mother and Zeus. She remembered Demeter constantly sheltering her, calling her back from danger, cosseting and protecting her from the cruelties of the world. Persephone was torn between potent anger and understanding, frustrated by the unfairness of it all.
In this moment, about to be separated from her love, Persephone finally understood. She knew why Demeter had felt compelled to guard her all her life. She understood why she would destroy everything living to get her daughter back. Persephone realized that she would do no less to protect any child she had by Aidoneus.
His hands found their way through the open splits along the sides of her peplos and touched her warm bare back before following the shape of her hips and pressing his fingers into her rear, made cold from sitting on her throne. Aidoneus tilted his head and looked up, gazing at her for a long moment. His forehead was creased with lines and his reddened eyes pleaded.
Stay.
I cannot.
“Please stay,” he whispered hoarsely.
“We cannot go back on our word.”
“What can they possibly do to us here?”
It’s not about what they can do to us if I stay, she answered. It’s about what they won’t do, and all who will suffer and die because of us.
His grip tensed and he leaned his forehead against her. Persephone watched his shoulders shake, and heard him draw in a ragged breath.
He kissed her belly through her clothes, and kissed her again lower, feeling the heat of her through the layers and against his lips. He inhaled her scent and kept kissing her through the dampening fabric until it clung to her skin, his hands massaging her thighs, parting them with his fingertips.
A tear rolled down Persephone’s cheek as she unfastened one fibula. Her peplos opened across the front and hung from her shoulder before she pushed the fabric to the floor. Aidon moulded his cheek against bare skin, first planting a kiss on one side of her triangle of curls, then the other. His lips trailed against her thighs until he came to her center. He buried his nose in the dark brown curls, and rasped his tongue against her.
Persephone doubled over, steadying herself on his shoulders. A last tear fell onto his head, and she shut her eyes, feeling him and only him, blotting out the sadness and loss with the heat of his mouth and the roll of his tongue against her folds.
She pushed his himation off his shoulder and lifted his crown from his head, casting the wreath of golden poplar leaves to the side. Persephone pulled out the pins holding up his tunic and it too fell into the heap of clothes pooled around them.
Aidoneus could lose himself here, surrounded by her taste, her heat, her scent. His mind could focus on this alone, let go, forget. But as soon as he consciously thought about it, the pain of losing her returned. He dove back in with redoubled fervor, like a starving man.
It became impossible for Persephone to hold back her sighs of pleasure, even though feeling bliss right now seemed strange, almost wrong. But there would be plenty of time— eternity perhaps— to dwell on loss. She put it out of her mind. Right now, Aidon was here, his fingers digging impressions into her hips as he held her steady, his tongue setting her on fire.
She reached the precipice, felt her legs shake, and knew that he could sense it washing over her. He wanted to feel her peak from within her. Aidoneus gripped her thighs and wrested them apart, her knees bending, drawing her downward. Placing his broad hand in the small of Persephone’s back, he eased her to the floor, sprawled and arched over his discarded cloak and her dress. Aidon rose over her and in an instant was inside her, hard and needy.
The w
eight and width of him pulsing within her launched her over the edge and she bowed her back, the tips of her fingers digging into his skin. He leaned against her, held himself deep within her warmth, and felt her tighten and convulse around him. She cried out and dragged her nails across his flanks, moving below him while he remained still and savored her every gyration.
Persephone‘s breathing slowed from its frenetic, gasping pace as she came down from her peak and felt him ready and waiting. She pulled at his hips, urging him forward.
“No,” he growled into her ear. “I’ll be damned if I have you here instead of in our bed. I’m not going to spend our… last time together embracing you on the cold floor.”
“Husband, we have the entire night. There’s time for that too,” she whimpered, trying to form words. “But please, Aidon. Stay… stay… Just take me now!”
He gritted his teeth and pushed forward, grasping her at the base of her spine, holding her up. His other hand removed a few pins holding her hair in place and pulled the asphodel out of her hair. He buried his face in her locks, giving a punctuated groan as he withdrew, then drove into her warmth again.
She anchored herself to him as he moved faster. Aidon wanted to feel her completely, to savor every slow movement, prolong this moment, stop time entirely. But he couldn’t concentrate. The only thing that drowned out the knowledge that he would lose her before dawn was raw intensity. He went faster. Harder. He gripped at her skin as though she would be ripped away from him at any moment. Persephone gasped and clung to him as he rose to a fever pitch, losing himself in her.
Soon— too soon, since he wanted this to last forever— he felt everything shatter. Fire raced up his spine and arched his back as he emptied himself into her. He gasped and shook, then buried his face in her neck, thrusting forward several more times as deeply as he could before he finally grew still. Aidon rolled onto his back, taking her with him.
He was desperate to stay within her, and kept pushing back until her body finally expelled him. Persephone felt sore and winced when she finally moved. It was a welcome ache, an aftereffect of how intensely he’d taken her.
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