The Eighth House_Hades & Persephone

by Eris Adderly

  Persephone paced cloud-white stone amid one of the many gardens surrounding her father’s palace. It was midday and the brightness made her squint. Her steps carried her back and forth across a mosaic of the great Circle of Houses while hedges and fountains stood about, waiting for her to make a decision. The equinox was upon her. Time was running out.

  The Circle bounding her steps lay in the ground in twelve equal portions, rays of bronze dividing them from its center. Different precious stones worked into glittering tiles set apart each of the twelve Houses, honoring a portion of the balance allotted to each of the most powerful gods.

  The houses, the houses, the houses. But where am I going to be? Which one is mine?

  The first house, in bloodstone and iron, was the House of Ares. The God of War had nothing to do with her.

  The second, in glittering emerald and copper, belonged to Aphrodite, the goddess who’d set this disaster in motion. Hermes followed, third, in agate and silver. She skipped forward to her mother’s House, the sixth. The warm olive green of peridot picked out Demeter’s sigil on the floor, the sickle and cross of the harvest.

  And how will there be crop to harvest if you are not here to make it grow in the first place?

  Persephone forgot the other Houses, though, and even her pacing as polished obsidian drew her eye. The dark void in the Circle was the eighth House. His house.

  The arms of the many, bringing the one back into their fold from below, the symbol of Hades, leapt at her in stark white quartz just as it had marked his private chamber doors. Passing through those doors was only the first step of many that had led her here. To this.

  Duty or love. Guilt or loneliness. Her mother shamed her to take one course, Hades pled for the other. And Zeus? She made a noise of irritation. Her father was unhelpfully neutral. How generous of him to leave the decision up to her.

  And what was she becoming? At Nysa when she’d called the Underworld to stand against her mother … she should not have been able—

  “Troubled, Green One?”

  Persephone whirled on a voice like silk and the tinkling of copper bangles. The Goddess of Love sauntered near with a smirk, the æther closing behind her.

  “Troubled?” It had been some time since she’d been in the presence of Aphrodite, but Persephone had no further use for delicacy. “Why did you do it?” she said. “You could have the attention of any eye on two planes, if you wanted it. Hermes was such a prize you had to turn me into … into this?”

  “Into what? An immortal in love?” Her laughter rippled, musical and self-satisfied. “The heart is an irrational master, Daughter of Zeus, as I’m sure you’ve discovered. Hermes belongs to mine and I did what was necessary to have him back. Just as you will do.”

  A noise of disgust rattled in her throat and Persephone looked the goddess from sandal to shoulder. “Perfect,” she said, hands coming to her hips. “You have him back. And I have nothing but ugly choices. My sincerest thanks, Fair One. However will I be able to repay you?”

  Aphrodite ignored the lash of Persephone’s tongue and stepped around her, beginning a lazy circuit of the mosaic with one dainty foot in front of the other. “There are plenty of unwed immortals in whose path I could have thrown you,” she said. “Do you know why I chose Hades?”

  “Because his realm would have nullified the power of anyone interested in stopping you?” Persephone said, her voice rising. “Because you enjoy watching others suffer?”

  “That’s Oizys, and isn’t she a tiresome thing. No,” the goddess said, continuing on her path, “although that first reason was rather convenient. No, I only ever make these choices for a single reason.”

  Helios rode high overhead, and Persephone frowned. The Goddess of Lust strolled as if she had all the time on this plane.

  “Lord Hades keeps to his own counsel on most matters,” said Aphrodite. “Unlike some, he doesn’t spend time flaunting his”—she cleared her throat and wore half a grin—“proclivities. But if a god is going to enlist help from Lust herself to fashion certain ‘instruments’, he cannot expect every one of his preferences to remain a secret. I imagine you’ve come to understand the inclinations of which I speak?”

  Persephone’s arms folded across her chest while her face tried not to be red. “And that has what to do with me?”

  “By the Fates, you’re even beginning to sound like him.” Green eyes glittered from across the Circle. “Can you ever recall any rumor, any evidence of Hades pursuing a mate? Now, or in the tales from before your birth?”

  Persephone shook her head.

  “It is because he hasn’t,” said Aphrodite. “Not that he confessed to me in so many words, but I do believe the Unseen One never expected to find a consort accepting of his particular tastes.

  “And you, Persephone.” The goddess began making her way back, steps like a clever dance. “I saw your lack of interest in what the other gods had to offer. Even without your mother’s edict, I doubt you would have chosen any of them. Not for long, at least.”

  “Oh?” Aphrodite was right, of course, but her smug certainty had Persephone’s hackles up.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “I know the signs. The hunger. You sought and failed to find a certain type of lover, even if you did not recognize it yourself.” Aphrodite’s grin showed teeth at what she must have seen as the neatest dovetailing of her many schemes.

  “That’s all very well,” Persephone said, pivoting on her heel to watch the Fair One circle close again, “but I cannot desert my duties here. What respect for myself will I have left, if I abandon my calling for the … the thrill of a bed?” She nearly spat the last words on the ground.

  “ ‘The thrill of a bed’, so crude. That is only the narrowest part of what pains you now, and you know it.” Green and blue linen fluttered as Aphrodite stepped up to face her. Copper hair drifted on the breeze. “Of all the unwed immortals, you, Karporphoros, are the only match for our very singular Lord of the Dead. The two of you must have this union. Creation demands it.”

  “D-demands?” The fine hairs on the backs of her arms were standing up as the goddess began circling some unavoidable truth.

  “Yes, ‘demands’,” she said. “Life culminates in Death, Death pushes forth new Life. The Balance is incomplete otherwise. You accept each other for who and what you are in a way no others can. And I tell you, I understand this well, Green One. Do you imagine before my marriage to Hephaistos I had any hope of knowing a mate who could embrace Love and Lust, herself? Knowing what that would entail, and all the very rigid notions of loyalty promising no such thing? But he and I are as much a match as you and Lord Hades. And neither of us cares at all what the rest have to say.”

  Persephone was backing away, the realities too large to confront. Why would no one, no one, let her escape?

  “But … I can’t …” She shook her head. Answers were nowhere.

  “I see your struggle,” Aphrodite said, pursuing her at a deliberate pace. “But if you force yourself to choose between one unacceptable alternative and another, you will be miserable all the time.”

  “I know that, w—” Persephone swung hard from indignant to anxious as the goddess grabbed up her hands. “Whaaat are we doing?”

  The Goddess of Love held her at the boundary of the Great Circle and stilled her retreat with emerald eyes. “Everything is portioned out according to its Lot, my conflicted immortal.” She nodded left and right to the Circle’s twelve parts. “Perhaps there is a way you can divide your desires according to theirs.”

  Persephone’s gaze followed the Fair One’s to the ground. Her left foot stood on obsidian. On the House of Hades. Her right foot, however, rested on the sky-colored turquoise of the ninth House, her father’s. She stood astride the two Houses like the horizon straddled the night and the day.

  The night and the day. The equinox.

  Her knees were weak and Persephone wanted to stagger, but the goddess held her upright. When she could meet Aphrodite’s eyes again,
the smile beneath them was genuine. Determination tightened her grip.

  “Help me gather them,” Persephone said. “I will not go and tell him alone.”

  *

  It could have been moments, it could have been days. Hades had spiraled to such depths within his power, his will so entwined with the amassing fury of the Elaionapothos, that all sense of time had receded to a nagging thrum, somewhere at the outermost fringe of his senses.

  The wrath built and built, bending reality around it like some black horizon, and once he gathered enough … Once he gathered enough, oh …

  But there was some ripple. Some imperfection coming at a drone, a rumble. From within the sway of the fugue, Hades could feel his face again, and it was frowning.

  Closer the noise came, and clearer. Closer, clearer

  Closer.

  “Polydegmon. My Lord!”

  The bridge over the Phlegethôn was under his feet. Kerberos drove his thoughts into Hades’s mind with the force of a shout.

  The Lord of the Dead turned to the voice and saw with altered eyes. He maintained the Oil in such a state, alive with the vengeance of a Deathless God, that the image of the Guardian appearing before him now streaked away from itself like windblown piles of ash. He blinked and shook his head.

  Hypnos lay in a heap at the foot of the opposite railing, no longer able to stand in the vortex, but the three-headed beast ignored him. Ears pinned back and teeth bared against the flux of power, Kerberos managed a growl.

  “Hades, they have come,” he said. “The Lord of Lightnings approaches with the Ferryman.”

  For several heartbeats, the words were just sounds. A string of syllables. But as his senses continued to merge, they condensed into meaning.

  The Lord of Lightnings …

  “They dare.”

  His words still echoed with enough residual power to send the great hound back a step. Hypnos began to stir, but Hades was already drawing in everything he’d extended out into the Cavern.

  It happened at a violent speed, and the air of the Unseen Realm filled the empty space with a boom. The sum of his terrible will collapsed back into the Elaionapothos, the density of it a gaze-repelling void. Hades wore it about his forearms in the form of twin bracers, its nature concealed, but at the ready.

  What they would expect to see was his bident, and he had a gateway to the Styx open the moment he drew the now lesser weapon to its length.

  “Prepare yourself, Guardian,” he said as he stepped through the rift. “The Underworld is about to change.”

  Black sand was under his feet and the pulsing well of power darkened his brow as the lanterns bobbed nearer through the mist. The ferry approached on phantom waters, inexorable under Kharon’s poling, as Hades strode toward the dock.

  Kerberos snarled through the æther on the land side of the shore, a recovering Hypnos leaning on the Guardian’s massive shoulder. Closer to the ancient pilings ahead, a pair of red lights bloomed into view, followed by the trio of Hekate’s overlapping faces.

  They all wish to bear witness? Fine.

  The Elaionapothos all but hummed above clenched fists as the distance closed between Hades and his interloping brother. Zeus had set foot in the Unseen Realm, and for what? To be powerless? To set off ancient rivalries? It was a mistake, and it would be his very last.

  The ferry bumped against the dock and, through the clearing mists, Hades could see it carried three. Three aboard the ageless craft, aside from Kharon, and none of them was Persephone.

  A void whirled between the tines of his bident as he came, and the Oil began to quiver against the boundaries he attempted to hold. Against the whispers in his ear that he should let go. He should become every terrible thing they all believed him to be.

  “You will come here now?” he called out across the narrowing divide. “After you’ve torn her from my realm?”

  The unwelcome passengers disembarked: Aphrodite, Demeter, and Zeus. The one who’d blackmailed him into this disaster. The one who’d demanded an end to his newfound joy. And the one who’d allowed it.

  The Elaionapothos boiled, unstable, merging with his flesh. It winged out from the contrived bracers in unnatural, parabolic arcs, unable to maintain a form as Hades lost his grip on control.

  Then the Olympians parted and the Lord of the Dead couldn’t breathe. His bident thumped to the sand, tines dark.

  She stepped up out of the ferry, accepting Kharon’s gnarled hand for help onto the dock. For a teetering heartbeat, Hades lost all connection to will, and the Oil snapped back along his arms, as inert as its master was dumbstruck.

  He had seen her in a torn grey chiton. He’d seen her in the red linen of his own choosing. And, by the Fates, he’d seen her bare and perfect. But today …

  Today, the day of the equinox, Persephone came to him in bridal white. The drape of her peplos was intricate, and it hung from her curves sashed in vivid purple. Her hair was mass of dark braids and golden chains, piled atop her head. A whisper of a veil in the traditional yellow brushed the lower half of her face.

  She … she has chosen.

  What was this feeling? It hurt. It hurt and he wanted it never to end.

  She took a step toward him and Hades vaulted up onto the dock, sweeping straight past the others as he would mere shades. Self-mastery was gone and he seized his goddess in an embrace, heedless of who stood by, or what things they waited to say or hear. When she curled into the crush of his arms, he nearly convulsed at the full reality.

  Persephone was the Balance. He would never let anyone take her from him again.

  “Hades. Sýzygos.”

  Her words in his ear were the sweetest torture. They brought back every laugh, every exquisite sound she’d ever made for him, and channeled them all into a single name: Beloved.

  Hades held her and held her, his face buried in her neck, inhaling the scent of green, losing himself to renewed possibility, until a throat cleared behind him and brought him back to the present.

  “I was sure they had driven you from me,” he said, relaxing his hold to look down into shining eyes. “That they’d forced your choosing.”

  “I choose for me. No one else.”

  He tipped his head in acknowledgement, accepting the jab he’d earned. When Hades could bring himself to wrest his gaze anywhere else—if only his gaze; his arms stayed locked at her waist—he found Persephone’s escorts in a tapestry of states.

  Zeus wore a knowing half-smile, tawny arms folded over his chest, sandaled feet planted at shoulder-width. Demeter stood with a silent scowl, arms also crossed, but for far different reasons. Aphrodite flashed teeth in the most satisfied of grins. They could all look however they wanted: the Underworld did not answer to Olympian gods.

  “Did I not tell you?” said Aphrodite, twitching a copper brow his way. Hades allowed her the slightest dip of his chin, grudging her the right of her predictions. When the Fair One’s eyes slid past him, he followed to see her give a single nod and receive a burning trifold one in return from Hekate. He felt his jaw slacken.

  Did they … did those two …?

  Persephone was trying to untangle their limbs. She’d only just now returned and sought release so soon? But the goddess extracted herself with a purpose, and took a formal step back to stand with shoulders straight.

  Before he could ask, she swiped a delicate finger through the air in front of her breast and opened a hand spanning rift in the æther. Hades could have choked at the sight.

  The Underworld answers …

  She reached across planes and came back with a handful, closing the tiny gateway in her wake. The Green One splayed her fingers and invited the gathered immortals to see.

  “Persephone.” It was all he could do not to stammer, not to reach out his hand for the pomegranate. “It can’t be the same one.”

  She had a smile for him that had ichor singing in his veins. “Am I the Bringer of Fruit, or am I not?” She palmed the red globe, cupping it in both hands at her w
aist. “I left with it when Hermes came, and I’ve preserved it since.”

  “You told us you’d eaten it, Daughter.” Demeter’s voice rose, and Hades turned to see her taking a threatening step in their direction. “You told us you were bound.”

  Something under Hades’s eye twitched and the Elaionapothos promised satisfaction with an eager thrum, but the Lord of Lightnings laid a hand on Demeter’s shoulder. The god leaned in, murmuring something at the ear of his one-time lover and her arms dropped. Cheeks went red. The Goddess of the Seasons returned to crossed arms and a tight jaw, and if she had any further thoughts, she bit them back into herself.

  Persephone, however, stood unperturbed. “I am bound,” she said, green eyes only for Hades, yet words carrying enough for all. “I’m bound by duty and love. You must know this, Consort of my choosing, for my decision comes only with sacrifice.”

  Consort. Sacrifice. A kiss, then a blow. But Persephone had more.

  “I cannot abandon my duties above the earth, but I will not exist apart from you below it. My heart lies in two places, and so shall I.”

  Hades swallowed. “I don’t understand.”

  “I will remain with you here,” she said, “until the next Day of Balance, and then I will return to the upper realms. Every equinox I will travel. When the leaves of the trees let go their branches in death, I will join them in the Underworld. When their time to bud circles back, I will push them up to the Skies again, and I will follow. Please understand, Hades. This is what a union between realms must be. This is the Balance.”

  Her compromise felled him. How could he keep it all from bursting out through his ribs? She was right. She was everything. And if this was the way she could allow herself to be his, then by the Fates …

  Hades tilted her a slow nod, black eyes locked on green, accepting it all. “The Balance,” he repeated.

  She closed her eyes and exhaled. Some tension left her shoulders and they fell. But when Persephone looked at him again, he saw the intensity of her purpose doubled.