He turned slowly and brushed his hands over his face and back through his hair, trying to quiet the despair raging within him, to salvage some shred of dignity in front of her. This might be the last he would ever see of her. Persephone brought her hand to his cheek and he closed his eyes.
“You know that I love you.”
He shook, his words coming from behind gritted teeth. “You bound yourself here, to me, without knowing the whole truth. I destroyed any chance you ever had to bear children.”
“I forgive you.”
He opened his eyes, his voice a harsh whisper. “Why?”
She smiled at him. “You’re behaving like you forced me to eat the seeds.”
“Isn't that what I did? Slowly and methodically? By seducing and tempting you and letting you fall for me without telling you all of what I knew? What would you have done if I had told you?”
“Aidon, had you told me all you knew, I would have eaten the seeds anyway.”
He stared blankly at her, not sure he’d heard her correctly.
“My lord, I love you. More than any… possibility, more than any future plan. The Fates laugh at our plans, anyway. I love every flaw, every virtue that outweighs those flaws a thousandfold. You were afraid I would reject you; you were only trying to keep your heart safe.”
“I don’t deserve your forgiveness. You’ve never withheld anything from me.”
“Did you wade into the Lethe while I was gone?” she guffawed. “Don’ t you remember? Until the last few days I was here, I hid my heart from you because I was afraid. I feared many things— that you would tire of me once you’d won me. You know that. I slept beside you, I made love to you, I spent every free moment with you, but I couldn’t admit aloud that I loved you.” She bit her lip and stared at the floor. “But what you didn’t know was that after we returned from Tartarus, I discovered that I hadn’t bled while I was here and because of that I thought I was with child by you.”
“Oh, sweet one…”
“I didn’t tell you what I suspected. And it made telling you I loved you so much more complicated.” Her voice cracked. “I didn’t know what to feel, or what to say, and I didn’t want to say anything to you because I was afraid you would abandon me, that you didn’t want that responsibility. I was afraid that our child would grow up as I did.”
“You must know that I would never do that to you. I would cherish any children we had.”
“And I would never leave you or stop loving you for not giving me a child.”
The fire crackled in the hearth and they stood before each other for a long moment, saying nothing. Aidon took a step forward and reached for a loose tendril of hair falling down her breast. He brushed it behind her back and pulled her tight against him, feeling her sigh in relief as she wrapped her arms around his back.
“Don’t you understand?” she said. “You asked me if I wanted to marry you. I accept. I freely choose you, Aidoneus.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Even if it means we cannot have a family?”
“You shouldn’t believe everything the Fates told you.”
“I’m afraid I have no choice.”
“Even if they told me something different?”
He scowled. “Their words are never meant literally. If they gave you any hope, you need to let it go. It will only ruin you.”
Persephone shook her head and took his hands in hers, guiding him back to the bed to sit beside her. “When you spoke to the Fates, what did they say to you?”
Aidoneus thinned his lips. “They told me that those who rule Chthonia do not have heirs. That is the fate of ‘those who share in the bounty of the souls’.”
“What if our child is meant to rule the sky instead?”
“Zeus said that to—” He calmed his angry voice. “It was an empty oath meant to silence and shame me.”
“Or he unknowingly speaks the will of the Fates. Tempting them…”
“Please don’t let their words go to your head. Curiosity about my destiny nearly destroyed me. The Fates told me that I would bring you here against your will, that I would have you but not have you, all of which has come to pass. They said that I would bring sorrow and destruction to the mortals…” He shook his head. “Gods above… I ate the fruits of the Underworld, the ‘bounty of the souls’, just as they predicted I would. Ananke is inescapable.”
“They also told me that you and I would have not one but three children, Aidoneus.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Is your continuing love for me bound up in this idea that we might have children?”
Persephone stroked his arm. “My feelings for you are unchanged whether we have no children or a thousand. I loved you before the idea was ever planted in my head.”
“Then why are you trying to convince me of this, Persephone?”
“Because they mentioned more than just children. They first told me about our role in this cosmos. You are not bound to this realm, to its ‘bounty’ and rule alone. You are not just the Lord of the Dead.”
He snorted and looked away from her. “Of course I am. It’s what I was fated to be… Well, after a fashion. I am the consort to the actual ruler of the Underworld.”
She leaned against him. “But that’s the very thing they said, Aidon. You are neither greater nor lesser than I. The Fates said we hold dominion over the earth and everything beneath it as equals.”
“As I said, their words are not meant literally.”
She reached for the plate Aidon had set at the edge of the bed after he had fed her dates and figs for breakfast. She held an olive up to his mouth. “Then consider this.”
He nibbled it from her fingers and bit into the briny fruit. “What about it?”
“It wouldn’t be here if you didn’t share in my role in the world above. You aren’t just the King of the Dead. Poseidon has the sea, Zeus has the sky…”
“We all thought the third lot would be the earth,” he said, chewing the olive. “It wasn’t.”
“Perhaps that’s because the earth is too big. Maybe it needed to be governed by something greater than just one of the Deathless Ones. Perhaps it needed to be ruled by a union of opposites.”
He spat the pit into his hand and set it on the plate, then raised his eyebrows at her. “Intriguing, but if you’ll please forgive me for doubting that…”
“There is a new order to the cosmos. Nothing will ever be the same again and we’d be fools to think anything would be after a union as significant as ours.”
“Which would be?”
“Well…” she braced herself, ready to feel her husband’s antipathy. “Demeter is responsible for the harvest. The season of harvest, no?”
He thinned his lips and grunted in acknowledgement.
“And you discovered that since the order of all things has changed, the earth cannot renew itself without me returning to the world above in the Spring.”
“True,” he said.
“The Fates told me that we are the ones who bring fertility up to the earth. Because of us, together, I… carry the seed of the earth when I return to the world above each spring.”
“Carry the seed of the…” His ears grew hot and his throat closed.
She licked her dry lips. “Symbolically, of course…”
“S-so by virtue of us…” he tried to clear the growing lump in his throat. “When— because you and I… the earth is fertile?”
She fell to the side, giggling. His face burned and she could feel the heat from where she lay. “After this afternoon, and all we’ve done to ‘ensure the fertility of the earth’, you still blush, Aidon?”
A smile curved one side of his mouth, revealing a few white teeth. She sat up, relieved that his embarrassment wasn’t worsened by her teasing. His eyes widened and he rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, I had never considered that the… consummation of our love had meaning to anyone beyond you and I.”
“It wouldn't have, before. But the cosmos has shifted. Forever. For us, for t
he mortals, for the Olympians… What do you suppose it will mean for us down here?”
“Well, for the immediate future, it means I will gladly… perform my part in our new divine role eagerly. And vigorously,” he said, his eyes lit with passion.
Persephone bit her lip as her mind conjured images of Hades eagerly and vigorously fulfilling their divine purpose.
“After all, the mortals depend on us!” he said, raising his voice and eyebrows in mock urgency. Persephone doubled over again, holding her sides as her laughter pealed through the room.
He gathered her up in his arms and scooted them back toward the pillows, lying down side by side. Aidon brushed Persephone’s hair away from her face while she spoke. “As for marriage, there is something I would like to ask of you.”
“Name it and it’s yours,” he said, smiling.
“I want to see you more often. In a more permanent place. A home for us in the world above.”
The corners of his mouth tensed. “It’s bad enough that you’re away for half the year. My prolonged absence would be dangerous.”
“I’m not suggesting that. And I don’t intend to make you shoulder the burden alone.” She held up her left hand, the Key sparkling in the sanguine light of the hearthfire. “I have an instantaneous way back here and could come for a night or two or if I am… urgently needed. But not while the mortals are sowing crops or during the last days of harvest.”
“That leaves us a fairly narrow span of time. And I doubt that a few nights every six months will suffice for either of us.”
“Not nearly.”
He bit at his cheek. “I’ll come above. But for Fates sake, I don’t like risking Demeter or her priesthood walking in on us in the Plutonion. I can’t imagine that would endear me to your mother. Nor would it strengthen her truce with me.”
“So not there, then?” Her face fell. “That’s our home among the living.”
“We could meet there sometimes. And the Telesterion is… not what I had in mind either. What about Nysa?”
“Mortals can’t go there. We might as well be at Olympus.”
“I’d as soon drink the blood of a hydra than go there.”
She smirked and pinched his side. “I wasn’t suggesting that. But one of the reasons we should make time above is for the humans. We— I need to be among them in Spring and Summer.”
“Thera?”
“It’s so remote…”
“The mainland, then.”
“What about Locri or Sikelia?”
Aidoneus snorted and tucked his hand under his head. “And you think Thera is remote…”
“There’s farmable land there.”
“This might not be to your liking, but Thesprotia is distant enough from Eleusis. Its rivers are named for mine, and before the Mysteries, most of the sheep and oil sacrificed to my kingdom came from there.”
She ground her teeth. “Leuce’s resting place.”
“Persephone…”
“I know.” She sighed. “Besides— it’s still within Hellas and not too far from Mother. But in terms of permanently settling, we might as well take advantage of the fact that Sikelia is mine now.”
“How did that come to pass?”
“A wedding present, from Zeus.”
He rolled his eyes. “An island for a goddess queen’s bride gift? You merit nothing less than a continent.”
She giggled, rolling onto her stomach.
“It’s a silly thing to say, I know. You know my feelings on that subject.”
“I hope that our world and our ways will have at least some influence on the mortals. They already have, but not how you would prefer, I think.”
“How so?”
“Athena told me that men in her city have been taking their brides away in chariots. Some will toss their new wife’s flower crown— and one time a girdle— to the crowd before whisking them away into their house.”
Aidoneus flopped onto his back and covered his eyes with one hand, massaging his temples.
She poked his side. “Not what you had in mind, I take it?”
“The furthest from,” he said. “They re-enact when I rapt you away from Nysa?”
“Apparently.”
“I fear that despite all your efforts the mortals will never really understand anything about me, or this place, and that things will only grow worse.”
“They may,” she said. “But that might depend upon you. Come above. Be who you truly are to them— Plouton— the God of Riches and Fertility. The God of the Earth.”
He gave her a strained smile. “I can try.”
“Be my husband in this,” she said, grasping his hand. “If you detest the way things are above, then help me change those things. Look at what I did in six short months. Mere words to a handful of people. I thought they didn’t believe me, but they know the truth now: death is not the end.”
He examined her, watching her eyes flare with possibility. “I will. I’ll be your husband, your king and your consort. In this and in all things.”
She laid her cheek on the pillow and relaxed when he stroked her back. “Tell me your thoughts on the ceremony.”
He nestled closer to her. “Which part?”
“The full ceremony.”
***
“Cerberus! Cerberus, down!”
The great guard dog skidded to a halt in front of his mistress and sat on his haunches. Persephone gathered up the little black lamb that huddled at her feet for protection. It shook, wobbly legged, and curled up against her bosom. She patted its head and it gave an indignant bleat to its pursuer. Cerberus barked again, snarling, his fangs bared. The lamb squirmed in her arms.
“No! Stop scaring him,” she commanded her husband’s dog. Cerberus flopped to the ground, resting his center head atop the other two. He let out a rumbling whine. “You can chase after the others, but this one is Menoetes’s pet! You know that, you adorable beast.”
Persephone reached for one black head and scratched behind his ear. Cerberus’s tail thumped on the ground, shaking the Fields of Asphodel and scattering the shades away from them. He stretched his back legs and yawned, then shook himself and trotted away to watch over the Acheron.
“Aristi! Aristi,” the bondsman called out. His shepherd’s staff smacked against the tall stalks as he ran. Menoetes was out of breath by the time he stopped, and hunched over. “Thank the gods you found him, my queen.”
“You should really build a better fence for little Rodi,” she said, smiling.
He chuckled and took the tiny lamb from the Queen’s arms. “He continues to be nothing but trouble. You know that he was the reason I ran into Askalaphos and discovered your half-eaten fruit, milady?”
“So the King told me,” she said with a smile. “How is your mother, Menoetes?”
“Still feasting, along with the rest of the nymphs,” he said as they strolled back to the gardens. “You were most generous, sharing everything the world above gave to you with all the nymphs and daimones in the kingdom.”
She laughed. “Did you expect me to eat a palace full of fruit by myself?”
“Well, no,” he said sheepishly. “But Askalaphos and I weren’t expecting that you would give us so many olives. He’s quite fond of them, milady.”
“I heard he’s been sharing them with Nychtopula.”
“Ahh, yes…” Menoetes said with a smile. “If he can stop lamenting that he cannot get olive trees to grow in Chthonia, and if he can get it through his thick head that she wants more from him than olives…”
“Perhaps I should tell him there will be more next year.” Persephone opened the garden gate and walked ahead of Menoetes. Rodi drifted to sleep in the crook of his elbow, content to be home. She looked at the pomegranate grove, the fruits ripe and red, and took a deep breath. Aidoneus stood within, speaking with Hecate. He glanced in Persephone’s direction and she could feel him smiling at her. They had spent the last few days opening their thoughts to each other, even further than they nat
urally could. They were able to feel each other from across the palace, across the Fields, even on opposite sides of the Styx, just as easily as they could when they were intimate. She smiled back at him.
“Pardon my asking, but shouldn’t you be preparing for tonight’s ceremony, my queen?”
“We have been preparing all week.” Persephone had spent the first few days sleeping, trying to readjust herself to the cycles of day and night in Chthonia. The rest of her time she’d spent consulting with Hecate and Nyx, and practicing the vows and words of the ritual with Aidon. After discussing the details of the ceremony and the hieros gamos, Aidoneus and Persephone had agreed to abstain until the night of the wedding.
It hadn’t been easy, especially with their thoughts consumed with the details of the ritual. Three nights before, they’d awoken flush against each other, and without thinking Persephone nipped at his lower lip. Aidon firmly kissed her back, their mouths greedy for each other, their tongues rehearsing the motions of lovemaking. His hands had swept across her body, touching and electrifying every inch of her skin, liquid fire spilling from her womb. His phallus was as hard as stone between them. He delighted in her moans, teasing her mercilessly with quick fingers, no matter how much she tried to gyrate out of their path. Her body wanted something besides fingertips.
When her nails dug into his flank and pulled him closer, he’d separated from her with a growl and leapt out of bed. Aidon stormed over to the wash basin and quickly doused himself with its contents. Persephone barely suppressed a laugh when he yelled and cursed at the shock of cold water. He stood drenched and breathing hard, his passion dying down, then mumbled something unintelligible and grabbed his himation, slamming the door behind him. Persephone lay on the bed, letting her heartbeat slow, and drifted off. When she awoke, she found him curled uncomfortably on the divan outside their bedroom, his cloak muffling his snoring.
The following night, Persephone decided it was best to retreat to her old room to avoid temptation. She hadn’t been there in months— not since they began sleeping beside each other. The memories of that first month together made Persephone toss back and forth for half the night. In the wee hours of the morning, Aidon threw open the bedroom door, stark nude in the dim light. Despite her protests, he hoisted her squirming body over his shoulder and carried her all the way back to their bedroom, a hand planted firmly on her bottom. Aidoneus tossed Persephone on the mattress and pulled the covers over them both, then promptly fell asleep, his arm heavy across her waist.
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