He knew it, too. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t. It’s what we needed.”
“Fates, when I first took you here I brought you nothing but pain. And now when you’re about to leave forever, I…” He couldn’t finish.
“My sweet Aidoneus, all will be right. I’ll find a way to return. I‘m wearing an immediate way back to you on my left hand, remember?”
“And then what? Your mother plunges the world into famine and ruin again?”
“There has to be a way.”
“Not with the Key. The moment you use it they will know. And you must never let on that you have it. I don’t want to think about what the Olympians would do to you if they wished to possess it.”
Persephone saw visions of Prometheus bound to rocks, Hera chained in the heavens, Hephaestus’s lame leg coursing through her husband’s thoughts. “They won’t ever know. It will only look like a few trinkets I decided to keep. To… to remember you by.”
He held her as she started shaking, her fingers tightening on his shoulders. “There’s a way to spare you this, wife.”
She held her breath and looked up at him. “The Lethe?”
Aidon nodded.
“How can you even suggest that?” she whispered, shaking her head.
He couldn’t bring himself to say anymore about it out loud. It would be easier on you, Persephone. You could just… believe whatever they told you about me, he said, shutting his eyes. Whatever they need to say to justify this— that the Lord of the Dead took you from Nysa and ravished you. That he kept you prisoner in the Underworld, then stole your memories away. It will be easier. Your life can go back to how it was before, or as close to it as possible. You won’t be forced to endure centuries of—
I don’t want my life to be as it was. I don’t want to forget you, Aidoneus. No matter how painful losing you will be. She sat up part way. “Were you planning on doing this to yourself after I left so you could forget about me?”
“No, not ever,” he answered aloud. “I don’t want to think about you in pain. Especially since I cannot be there to comfort you.”
“I won’t do it.”
He sat up and she rose to her knees, then stood with him. He wrapped his arms around her, his forehead leaned onto the crown of her head. She pulled loose an asphodel that had fallen into the waves of her hair and twisted it in her hand. The light started to change outside, the Styx transforming the mist into a wash of pinks and reds as light faded from Chthonia and dawned in the world above. They had only hours left.
Aidon… She looked into his eyes. They burned with a potent mix of determination, frustration and loss. Without another word, he picked her up and strode across their antechamber. Hades kicked open the door, then deposited her on their bed.
Laying beside her, he held her close, just as he had last night after she told him she loved him. Aidoneus clenched his jaw. Everything within him screamed to pin her to their bed and keep her here with him. He would create powerful wards against the Olympians, fortify the Underworld, make it impossible for anything to come in or go out. He would defy Zeus— whatever the consequences. His thoughts explored every possible path he could take, but they always found their way to the same place— scorched earth, ruination, the end of all things etched in fire and ice. What Persephone had described in the throne room was inevitable. He pulled her against him and silenced her approaching sobs and his dark thoughts with another kiss. And another; and another.
Before long, he was ready again and lifted her thigh to his waist, effortlessly sinking into her as they lay on their sides. She trembled with pleasure and sucked gently on his tongue, their voices muffled by their lips.
At least I can be as close to you as possible tonight, he said, not moving just yet. At least I can have this before—
Aidon… She clung to his back and pulled away from him, then returned, drawing him out and pushing him in again. I’ll come back to you; I will. My mother cannot watch me all the time.
He looked her in the eye and frowned. “And act as if we’re having some sort of tryst? Is that what you want?”
“There’s nothing else can we do!”
“You are my wife. Not my mistress. I don’t want to make our marriage into some sort of shameful secret. It would only be a matter of time before they caught us, anyway. Then what?”
“I don’t know,” she whimpered.
“Sweet one… we are bound by laws. I won’t sneak around with you like the Olympians do with their whores. It’s beneath your dignity. And mine.”
“But at least I could see you!”
“Persephone, there’s only one way around this, and that is to overthrow the order of things. And we cannot.”
“Then what should I do?”
“Just be with me now,” he whispered in her ear. She nodded and felt him move within her, then sighed and clung to him, wanting to wash away everything that was happening outside this room. Persephone wrapped her leg around his waist and dug her fingers into his shoulders as he took her in long strokes, leaving her breathless. Every part of her started to wind and tighten, then it burst apart, shaking her to her very core, and him inside it. Aidon groaned against her forehead, his entire body seizing. He tilted his head back and came apart, slackening his grip before he held her tightly again.
And then it was over. He pushed in again and again, as far as he could, until the intensity of the sensation bordered on pain and he could bear no more, and collapsed against her. He diminished and slipped from her, then lay on his back with her drawn into the crook of his arm.
It was easier this time for Persephone to hold back her tears and quiet her sadness-strangled voice. She simply had no more energy to cry; she just stared at her husband’s profile. Aidon’s eyes were shut and his breathing steady, but a teardrop caught by the light of the fire meandered from the corner of his eye, then lost itself in the hair at his temple.
“I cannot grow anything,” he finally said. “But I promise I’ll take care of our pomegranate grove. I won’t let it fall into disarray.”
“I know.”
“That at least will give me something to remember you by…” Aidoneus trailed off, the path of the tear refreshed by another. His throat pinched shut. “I tried to be a good husband to you.”
“I couldn’t ask for anything better than what you did. This isn’t your fault, my love.”
“It is, though. I should have spoken to Demeter directly instead of involving Zeus. I shouldn’t have been so stubbornly devoted to the proper way of doing things. I should have consummated our marriage right there in Nysa instead of taking you below, then made an arrangement of some sort with her— I just wasn’t thinking clearly. Maybe I could have traveled back and forth between worlds for a year to make it easier on her— and you— to somehow prove that I’m not an unfitting husband before taking you here. The Underworld wouldn’t have fallen apart in my absence.”
“What about now? Come above and stay with me.”
Gods, how he wanted to live under a blue sky with her. Aidon would gladly trade the palace for a humble mud and straw house on Sikelia, or further west, shaded from the sun by willows and sheltered from the wind by rows of cypress. She would tend a garden, he could herd sheep and gather wood. They’d have nights together by the fire, and live the passing centuries apart from gods and mortals, their lives quiet and free of the weight of the cosmos.
He realized that he was sharing his vision when he heard her weep again. Aidoneus shut those thoughts away and tightened his arms around her. He needed to be strong for her tonight, as she had been strong for him this afternoon.
“I can’t, my love,” he said. “There’s too much to mend here. Our world has been weakened, as you said, though not as catastrophically as the world above. The Olympians cannot comprehend the extent of the damage, much less fix it, so the responsibility falls to us. I will set everything right below, and you above.”
“But our marriage will be over! And by going back,
I will have tacitly agreed to the lies they will say about you, and what we are to each other.”
Aidon opened his eyes and managed a smile for her. “Sweet one, I have spent most of my existence ignoring what they say about me up there. I’ll manage.”
When will I see you? she asked. Please…
“I don’t know,” he said, trying to muster strength from within his grief. He couldn’t say the undeniable truth out loud without breaking down again. We need to resign ourselves to the idea that we might never see each other again.
“I’ll find a way…” she said under her breath, her limbs and eyelids heavy.
“Perhaps,” he whispered and kissed her forehead. “But for now, rest. Sleep. You have little time to do so, and tomorrow will be… exhausting.”
“I don’t want to waste time sleeping. How can I?”
“With how far you must go and how much you’ll have to endure tomorrow, what sort of husband would I be if I didn’t insist that you did?” He grinned at her.
She shook again, and he kissed her face.
“Don’t cry, my love,” he said, settling behind her and wrapping his arms around her. Her heart drawn and her body exhausted, she started to drift off. I’m right here. I’ll always be here, and I’ll always love you.
***
“My dreams,” they whispered together, standing in the grove just after their return from Nysa.
“You’ve seen these too,” she said.
“I hardly sleep as it is, and I see them every time I shut my eyes,” he said. “They started when I brought you here.”
“Last night, when I woke up and you held me,” she whispered, “I saw these trees; then fire.”
Praxidike…
Dark flames from the Pit twisted in the center of the grove, then filled with brilliant sparks, transforming them into blinding light. She saw the lifetime of the trees unfold before her. They grew from seeds that had lain dormant since the cosmos was created. Branches split away from sapling trunks which grew to twice the height of her husband, then filled out with broad leaves and blossomed in bursts of red. The petals fell to the ground and fruits crowded each other, weighing down the boughs, seeds darkening and ripening within.
“Don’t.”
“I am already bound here, Aidoneus.”
Persephone and Hades were in the grove, where they had awoken this morning. She couldn’t see him clearly, though— only his pale hand holding her wrist.
“That is by choice. But this grew in the Underworld.” The recollection wavered, the seed held in her fingertips and the glint of the Key on their hands the only things clearly visible. “Those are rules governed by the very order of the cosmos itself,” his voice echoed. “Ones that supersede the will of all others— the Gods, the Fates…”
She saw the fruits open themselves above them, seeds bursting and dripping blood red juice. It rained down upon them and stained their skin.
“I choose to stay with you,” she said as crimson overwhelmed and washed away the vision. “To love you. To be your queen.”
“I won’t let it fall into disarray…”
The trees withered. Their trunks became hollow gray shards sticking out of the sterile ground. This was the Underworld, and her husband wasn’t able to keep them alive on his own, no matter how desperate his desire to do so. The grove only thrived in their shared dreams, and had waited dormant for aeons for her to arrive and for them to join together. Without both of them ruling over the Underworld, it would cease to exist. She saw Hades sitting in the middle of what remained, stock still, his expression as lifeless as the six dead pomegranate trees.
“Aidon!”
She tried to reach out to him, call to him, but he couldn't see or hear her. He blinked, his only movement, then stared up at the shroud of mist above and further still into the darkness of Erebus. He lowered his head, studying the soil dispassionately, then sunk his arm into the gray ground.
“Husband, don’t… Don’t!”
She watched Aidon roll forward, color seeping out of his skin. A splash of dark smoke engulfed him, then dissipated. He was gone— as much a part of Hades as Erebus was part of the darkness that encompassed it.
“No! Aidon, no! Please!” She cried out fruitlessly as the vision faded to white.
“Six seeds are missing.” Hecate spoke, but the voice was none of her three familiar aspects. It was a dark fourth: a blend of the brittle last words of a dying old woman and a girl child so young her syllables were still unintelligible.
Then the clear, airy voice of Nyx. “They will look to you, Aristi Chthonia…”
The grove was alive again, consumed by fires that didn’t burn the trees or ground, and Aidoneus stood in the center, his arms wrapped around her.
“I choose to stay with you…” Persephone’s words reverberated.
Her vision filled with asphodel amidst the fire, the crown she had worn as she descended through the earth, made queen that day with the loss of her maidenhead. They were in the chariot. Persephone clung to Aidoneus and he whispered into her ear. “If you taste even one of those seeds, you might as well stay.”
“To love you…” Kore was in the world above, lilacs strewn through her hair. She was lying with him in her shrine under the oak tree, the silvery light of the full moon shining on her skin.
Aidon was gently, carefully caressing her. They were seeing each other for the first time. “With everything so precariously hanging in the balance, let’s not alter the order of things any more than we already have.”
The scene changed again. They were lying in the pomegranate grove, entangled in each other’s arms, markings gouged into the ground around them. Saffron robes lay cast to the side. Their heads were crowned with laurel and asphodel, narcissus and pomegranate. Their skin was anointed with sacred oil.
Six seeds.
“…To be your queen.”
All went dark.
“I choose to stay…”
Persephone awoke suddenly and opened her eyes, then took a deep breath. She turned when she heard a halted groan. Aidoneus was sleeping, but not peacefully. His breathing was unsteady and his limbs jerked. He settled and rolled away from her before falling into a motionless stupor.
She climbed out of their bed and closed the curtain. She was terrified of what could happen if she failed— and moreso if she succeeded. The door to their bedroom was still open, and she saw silvery moonlight flooding in from the Styx. She’d almost forgotten: Hecate had wished them a good full moon this morning. The last time the moon had shone through the river she had coaxed her husband’s seed from him on the terrace next to the waterfall, the roar of the water drowning out his half-hearted protests, then his jubilation as she loved him with her lips.
Persephone’s arms were cold and gooseflesh prickled her skin and hardened the tips of her breasts. She picked up her dress and held it for a moment before dropping it to the floor again, deciding to wrap herself in Hades’s heavy wool himation instead. Persephone walked out to the terrace, the edges of the long cloak dragging on the ground.
She listened to the rush of the falls to calm and steady herself, resolved about what she must do. Persephone contemplated waking Aidoneus to tell him of her plans, that he should join her and witness this. She knew him too well, though. His rigid sense of duty and honor would compel him to stop her. He would remind her that they had already decided and agreed, for the sake of the cosmos, to obey Zeus and Demeter’s decrees.
There’s only one way around this, and that is to overthrow the order of things.
She couldn’t tell him. Not even after the fact. If he knew that she’d done it surreptitiously, he might try to keep her here. And if Zeus and Demeter thought that she had eaten the seeds with his knowledge, they would accuse Hades of having forced Persephone to do so. It would, as he said, undermine everything. No, she needed to do this alone.
Walking back from the terrace, she very carefully shut the door of the antechamber behind her, tracing the outline of
the poplar tree with her finger before making her way down the steps to the throne room. She heard a mournful howl in the distance, then a second and a third. Cerberus. He must know what was happening. It was little wonder, since this realm was its masters’ through and through. What she and Aidon knew, it knew. What they felt, it felt. Stopping before their adjacent thrones, she concentrated, listening for the voices of Asphodel.
They were crying.
No, no… Metra, please don’t leave us… You only just arrived, Annessa… Soteira, please, we waited so long.
Her throne would stand cold forever if she failed to do this. This wasn’t just a matter of returning to her mother and never seeing Aidon again. It was the injustice of denying the Underworld one of its rightful rulers for all eternity. This place would stay as incomplete as it had been for aeons. And like their realm, Persephone and Hades would each be incomplete without the other. They’d already spent so many millennia apart.
Her walk took her to the great hall and past the tapestries of the Titanomachy, her parents, her husband. She ran her fingers over the white and gray threads of Demeter’s chiton, and the bulge that represented herself, unborn. When she reached the door to the portico and garden beyond, she stopped, almost light-headed with the gravity of what she must do, and wrapped her fingers around the heavy bronze handle. There was no turning back once it was done. But if she faltered, she would never see Aidon, her realm, this very door in the palace, the Fields, the Rivers, ever again.
Persephone cracked the door open and peeked through, making sure that neither Menoetes nor Askalaphos, nor any of Nyx’s sons, nor any of Hecate’s Lampades was about. They mustn’t know either. Not yet, at least, otherwise they would go running to Hades and tell him too soon. She realized she’d forgotten her sandals when her feet touched the rough gravel. Light reflected off the clouds and bathed the asphodel in silver. Poplars and myrtles stood silent, shadows dancing in the flicker of garden torches.
The twitching flames shed a warm light on the palace walls and garden gate. Persephone extended her hand and slowly, finger by finger, closed it into a fist. The light followed suit, dimming around her until the flames barely smoldered. No one should see her.
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