Persephone walked forward silently and the thousand shadowy dream creatures, the Tribe of the Oneiroi, alighted in the fields and bowed before her. Nyx hovered next to Hecate, Hypnos and Morpheus stood at their side, the torch lighting their faces. Persephone’s shoulders drew back, relief and burden warring within her as she stood before all as their ruler.
Demeter stood aghast, the color leached from her skin. The hosts of the Underworld surrounded her and her daughter. Persephone picked up her skirts and walked to Hecate, embracing her. The crone smiled as her wrinkled arms wrapped around her. “It is good to see you, child. My queen.”
“Why have you come here?” Demeter blurted out. Persephone moved to stand with the hosts of Hades. Kore was slipping away from her…
“Sisyphus has captured my son, little one.” Nyx’s voice wavered when she spoke to the earth goddess. “Your daughter must come with us.”
Persephone contemplated what this meant for the world above, then quaked when she felt her husband’s presence beside her. Aidon’s index finger reached ever so slightly forward and trailed along the tendons of her wrist. Persephone shivered and felt her skin prickle with gooseflesh and her insides grow molten. His touch became deliberate, his finger stroking the delicate skin. She glanced up at him. His face was still set in stone. She moved her arm out of his reach and clasped her hands in front of her. She felt sadness and alarm emanate from him for a moment before he held his emotions at bay.
“We will bring her back once this is done, Demeter,” said the Lord of the Dead. “I promise.”
“This was not part of the agreement, Aidoneus,” Demeter seethed, barely leashing her rage.
“The agreement was that she stay above. Which she will. She is not returning below.” He placed his hand on Persephone’s shoulder and she turned to him. Aidoneus flinched back from her stony expression before he spoke to her. “My queen, Sisyphus holds Thanatos in Ephyra. If he escapes, it might take months to find him again. Months that no one will survive if this imbalance continues. Hypnos has a plan, but—”
“But it is the night of the feast and festival, Kore. You and I were going to celebrate together— the first time we’ve been able to relax for months. This cannot wait another day?”
“Great goddess, if you’ll pardon my interruption, it is the celebration of that very festival throughout Hellas that gives us our necessary distraction,” Hypnos piped up.
Demeter ignored the winged God of Sleep. Her lip quivered. “Kore, you promised me…”
Persephone felt her insides twist. Her husband stared at her, his eyes awash in sadness and longing, his face set with purpose. Nyx was calm, but Persephone could sense her distress at her son’s kidnapping. Hecate looked on expectantly. Persephone took hold of Aidon’s hand. “I’ll go,” she said quietly, trying not to look at her mother’s face contorting with hurt.
“Thank you. I cannot do this without you,” he said, and gently squeezed her fingers. His thumb traced over the ridge of her knuckles.
“Just like that?” Demeter said. “He comes to you out of nowhere, with no warning, and you disappear with him on one of the most important nights of the year?”
“Mother, I’m sorry. I truly am.”
“This is preposterous,” Demeter said, her voice level. “Here you stand, Hades, with all the hosts of the Underworld—”
“Not all of them,” he muttered, still eying Persephone. She felt a chill crawl up her spine and knew immediately what he meant. The Keres.
“—and you expect me to believe that you absolutely must put my daughter in danger. And for what?”
“How little credit you give—”
“Mother,” Persephone said, “the viability of the first harvest, the offerings at the festival, everything I told you about… it cannot exist without Death,” Persephone answered, interrupting her husband and letting go of his hand to stand in front of Demeter. She thought about the crow with the three holes through its heart. There was no time to waste. “Sisyphus escaped from the Underworld just days before I returned to Eleusis. You must understand how important it is that the King of Ephyra be sent to Tartarus. He seeks to bring down all the deathless ones. He tried using the winter famine to his advantage to do so and now—”
“But Kore, why must you go?”
“Because I must.”
Demeter scowled. That was the kind of answer Hades used to give her during the Titanomachy when she asked him questions. She clenched her jaw and glared at Aidoneus. The Lord of the Dead had irrevocably tainted her daughter. “Can’t someone else—”
“It’s my responsibility, mother.”
Demeter held her daughter’s arms lightly. “If Sisyphus captured Thanatos, then you know what he has. What he could do to you…”
“Yes.”
Nyx spoke quietly. “Aristi, we must leave soon. The—”
“So you willingly put yourself in that kind of danger?” Demeter raised her voice, ignoring the Goddess of Night. Her grip tightened. “Sisyphus has the very sickle that Kronos used to castrate Ouranos! Daughter, please. Please listen to me. I cannot— I will not allow you to come to harm!”
The Goddess of Spring sighed and took a step back. She plucked an asphodel from the wreath in her hair and twirled it in her fingers for a moment. Demeter relaxed her shoulders. Perhaps Kore was coming to her senses.
Persephone flung the bloom to her side. She held her right hand outstretched while it settled to the earth. As soon as it touched the soil, embers radiated from the anthers, blooming into a great ring of flames. Demeter’s eyes grew big and she staggered back. Persephone met her gaze serenely, her eyes rimmed with orange fire. Through her haze of fear Demeter maintained her dignity enough to cover her mouth with the back of her wrist and stop herself from screaming.
“Sisyphus is dangerous, mother.” Persephone said as the Oneiroi lifted into the air and circled about them again. She reached out toward the circle of flames and pulled their destination closer. The walled citadel of Ephyra appeared before them in the widening pathway through the ether. The Queen of the Underworld took a step toward it and looked at her mother one last time. “But so am I.”
***
The first sounds to enter his ears were light footsteps and the scrape of a staff along the limestone floor, drawing a circle and six lines. He smelled frankincense and winced as he breathed in, feeling the chains constrict around his chest. His arms hurt the moment he moved them and he remembered that his chains laced through bone and skin, held taut to the wall on either side.
Directly below him was an ornate seat gilded with every jewel imaginable. Sisyphus’s throne. He’d been hung above it as a trophy— the triumph of the sorcerer king over Death himself. Sisyphus had led a parade of nobility past him, exclaiming to all in Ephyra that he as god-king held all power in this world over life and Death.
Thanatos blinked his eyes open, his cheekbone still aching and swollen. Yesterday a woman who’d lost her son and husband to the harsh winter had hurled a heavy kantharos at him. He could still smell the stale wine dried on his skin. The room was windowless, and he had no idea whether it was day or night. The back of his head stung, and felt wet when he leaned back. Through the pain, he marveled that he was still injured. He’d never stayed injured— or powerless— for this long in all the numberless aeons of his life.
It had been a grand chase across continents— Europa, all the way to the eastern shores of the vast ocean, down through the deserts to mighty Aegyptus, whose people embraced the afterlife without fear and called the god of their dead Osiris. Then through the vast plains and mountains of Asia all the way to the lush valley of many rivers where the king of the dead was known as Yama. Then back to Hellas, until finally Sisyphus led him to Ephyra and snared him in a pit strung with the refashioned Chains that the sorcerer had stolen from the Underworld. Thanatos had fought hard and lost. To his vague recollection, at least three men had died at the touch of his sickle. He’d struggled until a mighty blow landed on
the back of his head, sending him reeling into a dark and dreamless sleep. When Thanatos awoke a day later, he was bound in the throne room, immobile. His sickle— his own weapon— sat at the side of the throne, out of reach, right next to the man he desperately wanted to kill. He wondered for a moment if this was how Tantalus felt, with the illusory water and figs a finger’s length away.
The scene before him had been repeated several times this week. Sisyphus was preparing for yet another mockery of the hieros gamos, and his intended mate in the ritual stood by, cloaked under a heavy saffron himation and veil.
“Ah, you’re awake again,” the god king said with a smile. “You see? It is as I told you a few days ago.”
“You talk a lot,” Thanatos ground out, “yet never seem to say much. But I’ll humor you. What great truth do you have to impart upon me this time, suagroi?”
Sisyphus smirked at the insult. “That this is the way power changes hands. Nearly all of the Olympian children were begat on the daughters of Titans, all of whose fathers and brothers are in Tartarus, no less. Spoils of war, I suppose. The Children of Kronos handed Zeus the cosmos after the Titanomachy, and he filled it to the brim with his divine children. A wise move, to cement his claim over that of his brothers. Not a single drop of blood needed to be spilt, and all the former domains of the Titans were handed over to those loyal to him by birth.”
Thanatos managed a brittle chuckle. “Is that what this farce is all about? I thought this was the only way you could get it up anymore.”
The king smiled, his blue eyes sparkling. “You’re awfully clever up there on your perch. If only you had been that clever when I captured you.” Sisyphus motioned to the woman at his side. She let the cloak and veil fall from her shoulders, revealing long flaxen hair and perfectly curved hips. “No, Death. In truth, this is the only way one of my kind should ever copulate with lesser women.”
“Your kind?”
“A father of gods.”
Death laughed again until his chest ached. “Oh, where do I even begin? You honestly think that your blithering at your judgement is true, you great fool?”
“Of course. And it would have benefited your king then, in all honesty, to listen to me then. I pleaded my case in the throne room. ‘Return me to the sunlit world, and I will consider you an ally and trouble you and yours no more.’ If I had turned my attentions to overthrowing Olympus it would have been a boon for him. I can’t imagine that Hades is terribly happy with Zeus after the King of the Gods stripped him of his bride for half the year.”
“You expected us to make an exception for you? After all you’ve done?”
“I already explained why you should,” he said. “I wouldn’t have been condemned in the first place if I hadn’t interceded on Asopus’s behalf. But I suppose stopping the rape of a goddess isn’t worth your king’s consideration. Not that I should expect it would be, given what Hades did to Demeter’s daughter.”
“You know nothing.” Thanatos narrowed his eyes. “By the by, do you call your bedmate a ‘lesser woman’ to her face? Or are you fucking yet another girl who doesn’t speak Greek or Theoi?”
Sisyphus ignored him and started reciting the words of the ritual in Minoan. The woman lay supine in the center of the circle, propped up on her elbows, her legs apart. The sorcerer knelt between them.
“You know that it was women who created the hieros gamos, who chose their consorts, you mange-ridden dog, and allowed them to participate. Whatever this farce is, it is for your amusement only.”
The woman spoke her words, responding in Minoan and following Sisyphus’s lead. Her voice sounded familiar.
“Times change,” the king replied. He removed his robes and positioned himself over the woman, reciting the last part in the ancient tongue.
“I watched that empire rise and fall as you would watch a day and night pass. You think that saying those words in a dead language makes them more powerful? Or your actions more legitimate?” He winced, the Chains tearing at his arms with every breath he took. “You can pour perfume on kopros all you want, but it’s still shit.”
Thanatos looked away when the Ephyrean king penetrated her. The woman gasped, but made no sound beyond that. Death turned back to see him rutting above her, propped up by his wrists and knees on the floor, his hips smacking against the girl’s thighs as she tried to hold her position on the cold limestone. She let out a soft moan.
“Seem that’s the most you can get out of her.” Thanatos started laughing.
Sisyphus looked up at him with a glare.
“Am I breaking your concentration?”
The king smirked at him then dropped his gaze back to the girl, redoubling his efforts, driving harder into her.
“You’re doing it wrong, you know,” Thanatos called out over their rutting. “Not just the fact that you’re obviously a pitiful fuck. The position’s all wrong and there’s words that should have been said during this part. If you or your poor partner knew anything about—”
The woman’s spine arched and she let out a long sustained groan, her body thrown into extremis— faked, as Thanatos could easily tell— and as she arched, she looked at him with her wide violet eyes. Thanatos went cold. He knew that face. What was her name again? Philinnia? Lyra? Voleta…
Voleta! One of Hecate’s Lampades. A nymph he hadn’t seen since he’d had her almost four months ago. Clever girl, he thought. I underestimated you. If Voleta was here, that might mean she was using the ritual to distract Sisyphus… and lead her mistress, his mother, and his many brothers and sisters straight to them. They were coming to rescue him. He would only have to endure this humiliation for a matter of hours— perhaps minutes.
Sisyphus grabbed her chin and forced her gaze back to his. “Not at him,” he growled. “Look at me!”
Voleta shook, obviously afraid of the man using her body, trying to beget on her to further his ends. Sisyphus pushed her back to the ground, knocking the air from her and pinning down with his hand at her throat. Thanatos clenched his jaw when her cries turned to pain. Anger renewed his purpose, pushed the discomfort of his bindings out of his mind enough so he could think clearly.
This mating would come to nothing, he knew. If a woman lay down with Death, she arose infertile. It was one of the many reasons Hecate didn’t want him copulating with her acolytes. That thought gave him some solace, knowing that she wouldn’t have to carry this abomination’s seed, but having witnessed Sisyphus with the kedeshah on Chios, Thanatos knew there wouldn’t be enough time for the Hosts of Hades to find them. He would have to help Voleta, lest her sacrifice be for naught. Like the well-aimed kantharos from yesterday, it hit him.
He’d waited. He’d waited days to wield his greatest and most cherished weapon against Sisyphus and thanked the Fates that he hadn’t revealed it too soon. He knew it would enrage him. Thanatos might suffer greatly for wounding his pride. But if it did anything to blind the Ephyrean king long enough, it would be worth it. He heard another cry of pain from Voleta as her shoulders scraped across the floor, her hips bruising. Thanatos was resolute. A sacrifice for a sacrifice.
Sweat beaded on Sisyphus’s back and his face contorted, close to attaining his pleasure. Death smiled. It was worth it— worth whatever suffering he would endure. “By the way, Sisyphus…”
He grunted, at the crest of his plateau.
“I haven’t had a chance to tell you…”
The king gave a penultimate thrust.
“I fucked your wife!”
Sisyphus doubled over with a shudder and a halted cry, his eyes wide. He fell to his elbows, his satisfaction ruined.
Thanatos grinned, laughter bubbling up from deep within, and finally spilling out. He didn’t care how much the Chains shook and strained. Sisyphus seethed, his jaw clenched. He pulled away from Voleta and stood, staring at Thanatos, saying nothing, donning his robes as the God of Death hooted.
“And she loved it,” Thanatos laughed. He felt a twinge of guilt. Merope didn’t deserv
e to be shamed in such a way, but it was a means to an end. If he could use the night he spent with her to triumph over her murderer and send him to Tartarus, he would do just that. “My favorite part of Merope was that little mole next to her navel. And your wife tastes so, so very sweet. Like honeyed dates and wine, don’t you think? Though judging by her reactions to me, I doubt you ever tasted her as thoroughly as I did. She begged for my cock… four, maybe five times that night. I lost count, honestly.”
“Enough…”
“I fucked the very memory of you right out of her, Sisyphus!” He yelled over the shaking chains. “Merope loved it so much that she forgot all about you and had enough peace to finally drink from the Lethe!”
“Be silent,” Sisyphus snarled, pacing towards the throne.
“Keratas!! You might have me in the Chains now, you pathetic suagroi, but I’ll be out of these bindings eventually. But you, Sisyphus, will burn in Tartarus for eternity wearing a cuckold’s horns!”
“I said be silent!” Sisyphus yelled. He grabbed a gold ceremonial doru from the wall beside his throne and thrust the long spear under Thanatos’s ribs.
His abdomen seared and trails of light flashed behind his eyes. Pain radiated down his leg and through his lungs as he struggled to take in a breath. The wound made by the doru couldn’t kill him, he knew. If anything could, he’d have been dead from the injuries he’d sustained already. He looked down to see Sisyphus still holding it. He laughed, painfully, his guffaw coming out with a wheeze of air.
“Is that as far in as it can go? No wonder they all feign pleasure with you!” Sisyphus responded as Thanatos predicted, jabbing the doru in further. He gritted his teeth, but couldn’t hold back a yelp of pain. Take it, he thought, take it as Voleta took it to help set you free. Keep him angry. It’s the least you can do.
The king smirked and propped the butt of the spear against a tile line on the floor. He stepped back and shook his head. “Arrogant, foolish boy…”
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