The Eighth House_Hades & Persephone

by Eris Adderly

  Behind the judges, the Lord of the Dead stood and observed, only inserting his own opinions on rare occasion.

  Persephone had vague memories of Minos from his time as a ruler of mortal men, but that had been ages ago, and she could only recall his reputation as just, which she supposed led to his eventual appointment in the realm of the Dead. He and Rhadamanthys were brothers, both sons of Zeus, though she had long ago given over the idea of attempting to acquaint herself with every single one of her half-siblings. Of Aiakos, she’d heard only rumor, but, as with the others, she suspected Hades knew his mind when he chose them as servants of his realm.

  We all serve the Unseen Realm, Mate of my Lord.

  Kerberos’s words echoed back to her. They’d sounded so matter-of-fact, yet a central tone in them resonated with a sliver of something growing at the back of her throat.

  What was it? Disgust?

  For whom?

  Hades had designed her fall into the Underworld, certainly, but after the initial indignity at such an arrival wore off, how had she not used the situation to her own advantage? Out from under the purview of anyone who could enforce her mother’s edict, she had amazed even herself with the speed at which she had accepted the god’s offer.

  Perhaps she hadn’t foreseen every detail, but the intent behind his demand for obedience had been obvious enough. And while fear had often been a factor, there could be no question of her arousal—her undeniable attraction—at their every interaction.

  She was enjoying this. She was allowing it to continue. Allowing him to provide her with new pleasures, literally spreading herself wide for what Hades could give. On the bench in that first bedchamber, atop the Elaionapothos, high above the Phlegethôn where she dangled and shuddered under his touch.

  Every time she had wallowed in new sensation, yet he had attended to his own gratification only once.

  And the way he called out your name as it happened …

  If he glanced her way now, would he see the color in her cheeks?

  Was this who she had allowed herself to become? This passive figure, lying in wait for others to offer up satisfaction? Which of them had been giving thus far, and which had been happy to receive?

  She had no right to lament injustices when she hadn’t been behaving in an equitable manner, herself.

  From the other side of the hall, Hades caught her eye. One of his half-smiles trifled with the speed of her pulse. A silent thunderclap of truth cleared away all other thought.

  If Persephone wanted fulfillment in this existence, she was going to have to be an active participant.

  If her affairs on the mortal plain had taught her nothing else, it was that no one partner could ever complete the circle. The Lord of the Dead had come as close as any had ever done, but an element was missing.

  Her.

  She would not remain passive. She would serve. She would give.

  I am not impossible to please.

  Images of just how she might do so washed over her in a delicate shudder.

  “Goddess?”

  Persephone inhaled and her eyes snapped to the left. At the sight of the mortal man who dared an approach, they opened wider.

  “Iacob?”

  “Yes, Karporphoros.” He averted his eyes and clasped his hands together, but did not seem at all startled to hear her address him by name. “I believe my wife owes you many thanks, as do I.”

  The shade of Polyxene’s husband stood as near as he could brave, and Persephone was at a loss for words. Each time she had visited the woman, had they not met in private? How would he recognize her here? The statues and mosaics the Sons of Man created in her image rarely bore her much resemblance, and here in the Underworld, there was no wake of leafy growth following in a trail at her feet to make her identity plain.

  She tilted her head. Narrowed her eyes. “Your beloved gave her word not to speak of my visits.”

  “She kept it Green One, I swear.” His brow creased in protest, but he kept his gaze on the floor. “I returned to our home early one evening and caught sight through our window.”

  “And you chose not to enter your own house?”

  “Goddess, I did not wish to risk any favor you might have bestowed on my dear Polyxene. I was certain you appeared in secret for a reason. No. I found reason to pay my brother a visit. It seemed the wiser choice.”

  “You never told your wife?”

  “She never knew.”

  Persephone’s shoulders eased. “There is no need for you to stare at the stones,” she said. “It is not I before whom you should humble yourself in this realm, in any event.” She tilted a quick nod in Hades’s direction.

  The shade cast an uncertain glance around before daring to meet her eyes. “Thank you, Goddess,” he said. “May I … that is, might I be able …”

  “Speak. You have nothing to fear from me.”

  He approached the question with caution, as though its answer might bite. “It has been many years, I think. How … how is she?”

  Persephone smiled at this. “She is well, Iacob. I’ve seen her within the last month. There are perhaps more white hairs on her head, but she still laughs. The house you made together does not want. She speaks of you each time we meet.”

  The man’s eyes shone, and he sniffed. Were shades able to weep? “That is … to hear that makes me full.”

  The goddess felt a lump of emotion welling in her own throat. “I am glad to hear it.”

  Fates!

  She made discreet use of her thumb to rotate Polyxene’s ring so the stone faced her palm. For him to see it now …

  “Do you … believe you will visit her again?”

  “Unless I am prevented.”

  But how long will you be in the Underworld? Mortal time whirls like a chariot wheel.

  “Karporphoros,” he said, bowing his head, “will you tell her I think of her, as well? That I wait for her here?”

  Damn this man, but he was drowning her in sentiment!

  “I will tell her,” she said.

  “What will you tell?”

  The Lord of the Dead appeared at her side, black eyes appraising the mortal shade. Now Iacob did shrink, and did go to one knee.

  “My—my lord!”

  “I have seen what I need of the hall today,” he said, circling her shoulders with a charcoal arm. “Come.”

  “I will tell her, Iacob,” Persephone said again to the wide-eyed kneeling man. “I will.”

  Hades pulled them into the æther.

  *

  The space they arrived in was rectangular and deep, flooded with that nebulous light he preferred throughout his somber halls. This was another formal venue, like the Hall of Judgments, only enclosed on all sides, as she remembered from Olympos. Here were twisting columns, running parallel to the outer walls, a finished ceiling vaulting high overhead, and massive doors guarding an entrance behind her.

  Should I not have been speaking to Iacob?

  Ahead was what could only be his throne. Lords of realms had thrones. This one was serious and black, intimidating between two soaring stalagmites glossy with life in a dead land.

  Persephone swallowed.

  “So,” he said, meandering in the direction of the seat meant for him and him alone, “who was your ‘friend’?”

  Between them, above a medallion in the shape of his sigil in the stone floor, a misty likeness of Iacob materialized and hovered.

  Creation take me, is he jealous?

  “A mortal I know. Knew. During his last lifetime.”

  Hades turned, lips curling into the beginnings of a smile. “How well did you ‘know’ him, Persephone?”

  Her nervous laugh brought her an internal grimace. As if this god had any authority or right to an opinion over her activities on the mortal plane. He’d admitted to such indulgences, himself. “I knew of him through his wife. I was surprised he recognized me, as I was sure I’d never appeared before him in my true form. He claims to have seen me one evening when h
is wife and I imagined we were alone.”

  “More intriguing by the moment.” Hades lowered himself onto the bench of his throne and crossed one dark ankle over the opposite knee. “And why show your true form to this woman of his?”

  “She was … I was something of a—a matron of hers, I suppose.” Why did everything sound so foolish when she had to say it in front of him? Probably those black eyes flustering her now, as they followed her every movement.

  He let out an amused huff. “Interesting. Why bother? It can only last for so short a time, with their little lives. Come.”

  The Lord of the Dead held out a beckoning hand, and she fought the flush in her cheeks when her mind leapt at once to the last two times he’d told her to come.

  You’re in an awful lot of trouble, you know that, Persephone.

  Iacob’s likeness dissipated into the light of the throne room as the goddess made her way past to join Hades on the dais. When she took his outstretched hand, he gave a subtle tug.

  “Sit.”

  There was room enough for one, of course, and here she was again, on his lap. No, not again. The bench in that first chamber had left room for her to sit on the stone in front of him. Now, Persephone had to perch on a thigh.

  She was able to abandon at least some of her tension, though, as his questions had taken a casual turn, rather than the interrogation she’d been dreading. An arm slipped around her waist, pulling her right side against his chest.

  And he expects me to think, this way.

  “I suppose,” she said, “if I were a mortal, I would choose to be like this woman. Polyxene.”

  “Was it she who gave you the ring?”

  Persephone felt fingers come up and brush her hair away from her neck. Knuckles grazed along the top of her spine.

  “She is.”

  “And what is it that places this Polyxene ahead of so many others? That a goddess would trouble herself to emulate her.”

  His leg shifted beneath her and the subtle movement had blood rushing in Persephone’s veins. How did he do it? How did he keep her in this state, without even appearing to try?

  Her mouth and body were having two different conversations. The latter grew warm, wet, impatient, while the former answered his mundane questions.

  “She does something useful.” Her eyes were on the dip between his collarbones. “Something good. She is helping others, improving their lives.”

  She has known love.

  “You do not imagine yourself this way already?”

  Persephone frowned. Arrogance and seduction were far easier tones to handle coming from the Lord of the Dead than the hint of concern she heard from him now.

  “You are useful by your very being.” His thumb brushed her lower lip, muddying her impulses further. “You are an invaluable force in perpetuating the mortal cycles. We both are. I collect life as it collapses, and you push it forth as it renews.”

  “But what am I doing with intention for anyone?” she asked, waving him off with a hand. “Nothing. I am without purpose.”

  Hades caught up her dismissive fingers, lacing them with his own, a study in light and dark. He brought her knuckles to his lips and pressed them there, black eyes intense when she met them at last.

  I will give. I will please him.

  “You have at least one purpose in my realm, Persephone.” By their linked hands, he hauled her close; close enough to make her breath hitch and his next words fell in place of a kiss over her open mouth.

  “Would you like me to show you?”

  *

  VI Service

  Slow down. Slow down. Slow down.

  Did his chest heave visibly as the æther gave them up into his private rooms again? Hades hadn’t even bothered to stand. Persephone still sat on his thigh, and he’d willed himself to arrive sitting, the resting Elaionapothos taking the place of his throne.

  He needed to gain control of himself, but how with his senses drowning in green? The shift in venue hadn’t given the goddess pause any more than it had him. Alone with her at last in the Great Hall, he’d fought down a fever and lost. The heat of her mouth on his told him it was catching.

  Kissing! He could have laughed if he wasn’t busy trying to devour her whole. A goddess of the upper realms, squirming in his lap, delicate fingers at the side of his face, lapping up kisses from Hades Nekrodegmôn with abandon. Had Aphrodite promised any such impossibility in the first place, he would have banished her from his halls on the spot.

  The Fair One had been cautious enough to make only the vague prediction that Persephone would be ‘quite suited’ to his ‘proclivities’. He’d been so dismissive.

  He had to make a fist in her hair to break the thrall of their kiss. Green eyes stayed trained on him, her lips swollen and parted. His free hand cupped around the knee she bent closest to him, lewd fingers dipping in suggestion into the press between the back of her thigh and calf.

  “Shall we play a different game?”

  She nodded, eyes locked on his.

  Selfish. She confesses her woes and you bend them to suit your own ends?

  But he would go mad as Dionysos if he waited. Perhaps the effects of the blood union lingered, to have him wrestling with impulse this way. It didn’t matter.

  He stood, bringing her to her feet with him.

  The goddess’s waiting posture spoke her apprehensions. What would he demand of her today? Would he stoke her fears again? Challenge the limits of her trust?

  No. His needs were baser today. The hunt still sang in his veins. He’d shown that mortal a mercy on the shores of the Styx, a beast that had caught but not killed. A call to claim victory hung unanswered.

  Persephone could fill this void for him.

  In rapid succession, he yanked one fibula after the other from the shoulders of her chiton. “You won’t be needing this.” Red linen rippled to the floor and she did not hide herself.

  She stood there, challenging him with the nudity he’d wrought, tension in her stance, as though she might leap at his next word.

  “The rest,” he said, eyes flicking down to the sandal straps binding her calves.

  The goddess sank to a knee and pulled loose leather lacing, refusing to surrender her hold on his eyes as she did it.

  She knew.

  Perhaps not all of it, but enough. She saw his barely checked restraint, the way his gaze raked her curves while she knelt and he stood. While she was vulnerable and he was not.

  Aren’t you?

  As she rose to her now bare feet, he twitched a nod to the Elaionapothos. “Up here.”

  A series of deft movements saw her kneeling atop the black gloss of the platform, petal pale flesh in the most perfect contrast to the dark surface. She sat on her heels, palms atop her thighs, and waited.

  No objections. No questions.

  No idea how the blood rushed in his veins at this new, ready obedience. He’d announced no detail of his intentions, but the candid lines of her mouth, her shoulders, told him she would accept whatever he gave.

  And he would give.

  Hades came to stand at the edge of the platform.

  “Closer.”

  A few shuffling movements on her knees and she did as he bade.

  “More.”

  She came as near as the Oil’s resting edge would allow, the wool of his chiton grazing the tops of her thighs. With both hands, he gathered the mass of her hair and piled it atop her head. “Hold this.”

  Her fingers laced in under his to secure the flowing burden, and Hades bit the inside of his cheek. Arms poised above her head, breasts raised and presented, throat exposed: she was going to destroy him, and it would be his own doing.

  He removed the iron ring and called forth his bident. Its tines touched the ground at his side and a sound like falling sand whispered into the silence.

  Persephone’s chest rose and fell at the sight of a glittering black flow rising with a purpose along the weapon’s haft. When it reached a suitable height, Ha
des drew the material off into the air.

  To her credit, the goddess held her position fast and didn’t balk when the black ribbon followed his gestures to settle around the stem of her neck. Her breath was audible, however, when she felt it solidify into the form he intended.

  He drew the malleable fruit of his realm through deliberate fingers, the essence hardening as he went. The line swung in a satisfying clatter while he spent a last gesture forming another of his desires into stone.

  The finished implement lay in his hand. Like the collar circling her throat, and the black chain spanning the distance, an obsidian hook a handspan wide gleamed at her from his palm. Hades smiled.

  “Is that not fine?”

  Her eyes moved along the chain to where it disappeared out of sight beneath her chin. To watch understanding slacken her jaw made his cock stir.

  “You can let go your hair.”

  Olympian fingers descended to the ring of Underworld stone. She made a tentative exploration for a closure, but there was none to find.

  “You will have freedom at my pleasure,” he said, gathering more of the chain back into his grip.

  “Do you expect me to run?” Her question came at a gentle tease. “Or am I being punished for speaking to that mortal?”

  Hades doubled the chain around his fist. Hauled her to her knees.

  “I expect you to submit,” he said, “because that is my pleasure, as well.”

  Green eyes searched his and he jerked the goddess closer, still, earning a quiet gasp.

  “You will stand for me.” He fed her the words.

  “You will kneel for me.” And she swallowed them down.

  “You will beg for me,” he said, “and you will begin now.” He lowered his fist and her collar with it.

  “Hands and knees.”

  And so she went.

  Her movements were smooth, accepting of his commands. In a breath, she was on all fours, the curve of her spine presenting that perfect immortal shape to such advantage that Hades wanted to dismantle her piece by piece and absorb every mote of what she was into himself.