by Aimee Carter
“I know. They should’ve listened.” He pulled me into a hug. The weight of his arms around my shoulders was a comfort, and I managed to relax against him. At least I had someone on my side.
A moment later, the breeze picked up again, and I sensed a second presence in the meadow. The sun dipped beneath the horizon, and Hermes stiffened. I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was.
“Please,” I whispered one last desperate time. “I’ll do anything.”
“I can’t. I’m sorry.” Hermes’s voice was low and his words rushed. “Listen—I’ll visit you all the time, I promise. You won’t be alone. Just do me a favor and give yourself a chance, all right? Do whatever you have to do to be happy, even if that means upsetting the council. They’ve already had their say. Now it’s your turn.”
I pressed my lips together. Being that kind of selfish went against everything Mother had taught me. Be there for others; place their happiness above my own; be content with my life; don’t be greedy or envious or unkind; appreciate the warmth and love around me, and don’t covet what I don’t have.
But how could I appreciate what wasn’t there? Hades may have loved me, but what did that mean if I couldn’t feel it? He could love me more than anyone loved anyone else in the entire world, and it still wouldn’t help if I didn’t love him back. Maybe in time I would adjust and grow to love him, but right now, all I could think about was the rock weighing down on me and the feeling of Hades’s body over mine. And I didn’t have the patience to wait.
“Promise me, Persephone,” whispered Hermes, and at last I nodded.
“I promise.”
Behind me, something—rather, someone—cast a shadow over me with what little daylight remained, and I shivered. “Hades.”
“I am sorry to interrupt,” he said quietly, and there was something about the way he said it that made me think he really was. “If I could speak with you alone, Persephone?”
Hermes nodded, and before I could protest, he untangled himself from me and stood. “I’ll see you around,” he said to me, and at least I knew he wasn’t just saying that. At sixteen, he was training for his role on the council, as I was, and part of that included guiding the dead down to the Underworld. Chances were good I’d see him often, and that one reminder was enough for me to breathe easier. It wouldn’t be just me and Hades down there. I had to remember that.
Once Hermes walked off into the woods, Hades knelt beside me. His long, dark hair, usually so impeccable, was mussed, and his fingers dug into his thighs. “I owe you an apology.”
Not this again. “You don’t owe me anything,” I mumbled, staring down at a lopsided blossom. “I’m sorry I ran up here.”
“Do not be,” he said. Neither of us could look at the other. “What happened last night…I promise you it will not happen again, not unless we are both willing and prepared.”
His words twisted something in my gut. I’d been willing last night. Nervous, but willing, and determined to get it over with. Had he not been? Had I taken that from him? Was that part of the reason why things were so terrible between us?
“I don’t…” The words stuck in my throat, and I struggled to swallow them.
Just tell him.
Hermes’s voice echoed through my mind, gentle but unyielding, and finally I opened my mouth and blurted, “I want a separate bedroom.”
Hades blinked, clearly startled. “Is there something wrong with—”
“Yes,” I said before I lost my nerve. “I’m scared of you. I’m scared of this. And if I can’t stay up here, then I don’t want to stay with you down there.”
He stared at me, speechless. For the better part of a minute, his eyes searched mine, and I refused to look away. I couldn’t back down no matter how much it hurt him. Maybe this was a step in the wrong direction, maybe this was exactly what we didn’t need, but I needed a space of my own. If I stayed with him, I would crumble. And I rather thought he would, too.
“All right,” he said, his voice cracking. “If that is what you want…”
“It is,” I said. “I’m your queen, and I’ll rule at your side as much as you need me to. But if you want me at my best, then I can’t be your wife. Not yet. Not until things are better.”
For the briefest of moments, his expression shifted into pain and self-loathing, and guilt rushed through me as I nearly took it back. I could try. I had it in me. But even as I opened my mouth, that wall reared up inside me again, forming a barrier between us so strong that no amount of guilt could break it. I couldn’t be his wife. Not now. Not if I wanted to have any chance of surviving this.
“Someday they will be,” I said. “We can work toward it. Just—give me a chance to adjust, okay? And in the meantime, we’ll be friends.”
His expression relaxed enough to let me know I’d said something right. “Very well. We are friends.”
Hades stood, offering me his hand, and I reluctantly accepted. Not because I needed his help, but because he needed some small amount of hope. I couldn’t crush him completely.
“I want you to be happy,” he said as the warm breeze danced around us. “From the moment your mother introduced us, my joy was tied with yours, and I promise you that despite my mistakes, everything I do is to please you.”
I nodded, wishing I could say the same. But my happiness was my own, and I couldn’t be responsible for his, as well. “Thank you,” I said quietly. “Before going back, could we go somewhere warmer and walk around a little?” It was dusk here by now, but it was still morning back home, and I was desperate to feel the sun on my skin again.
“Of course.” He slipped his hand into my elbow, and while that small amount of contact was enough to make my skin prickle, I didn’t pull away. I hated the resentment and anger that prevented me from loving him the way he loved me, but no matter what Hermes said, I lacked the strength to conquer it. All I could do was open myself up to my new life and hope that in the end, it would be enough.
* * *
I tried.
I tried harder than I’d ever tried anything before. Every morning I let Hades bring me breakfast in my new bedroom two doors down from his. Every day I forced chitchat as he taught me more and more about what it meant to rule the Underworld. Every evening I sat with him as we read or talked about our shared day, and I tried so damn hard to love him that as time passed, I grew more and more certain that one day my heart would burst.
But the wall of resentment inside me didn’t budge. Nothing Hades did or said wore it down, and no matter how hard I tried to work around it, it was always there. It was as if someone had cursed me into never falling in love, or at least never falling in love with Hades. We’d been friends before this, as much as we could’ve been, but even that was gone. Every tie that connected us had been severed, and that wall in my chest blocked every attempt I made to create new ones.
I was stuck. We were stuck. Whenever I looked at Hades, I could see the pain he carried with him, building up slowly from our restrained time together. But how could I explain my unnatural hatred toward him? Wouldn’t it hurt him more if I told him that I didn’t want anything to do with him? That I hated him so much it physically hurt me?
I had to pretend to care. And part of me did—I cared about how badly I was hurting him. I cared that I was lying to him. I cared that he was just as miserable as I was, if not more so. But every time we could have moved into the realm of something more, that wall was there, ever looming, ready to stop me.
&nb
sp; Hades tried everything. Breakfast in bed, lavish gifts, even giving me free rein over the palace’s interior decorating. I had a large patch of rock to work with outside as well, and over the years, I created a jeweled garden. It wasn’t anything like the real thing, but it gave me time alone, time I needed to think, and Hades showered me with praise for it.
But nothing worked. We were frozen, not because of him, but because of me. And I didn’t know how to fix it.
The days were endless, and though the seasons passed on the surface, nothing but my hair color changed in the Underworld. The rock pressed down on me constantly, trapping me without mercy, and the few times Hades brought me to the surface didn’t make up for my prison. Mother only visited once, shortly after my tantrum in Olympus, and even then it was simply to make sure I was behaving.
Hermes, however, stuck to his word. Whenever he came down to train with Hades, he spent a little time with me. Playing games, talking, exploring what few parts of the Underworld I was willing to see—he was my lifeline, and things seemed a little brighter when he was there. He was the reminder I needed that life hadn’t stopped completely. That there was still a world up there teeming with it.
One afternoon, I sat in the middle of the observatory, a long room at the very top of the palace that looked out across the vast cavern. It’d been empty when I’d discovered it, but I’d created an armchair for comfort, and the fireplace crackled with flames every time I entered. The entire length of the outer wall was made of glass, and I spent as much time up there as possible. One of my gifts was the ability to see the present, and sometimes, especially after a hard ruling, I liked to sit up there and go from afterlife to afterlife, reminding myself that what we did wasn’t all bad. People lived whatever lives they wanted on the surface, and as Hades reminded me again and again, it wasn’t our job to judge that. It was our job to judge what they thought was right. What they thought their afterlife should be. Most of the time, a soul went directly to their afterlife without any contact with Hades and me. But sometimes they were confused or didn’t know or couldn’t rectify their beliefs with their actions, and that was where we came in.
It was exhausting, judging eternities. But I did the best I could.
A soft knock cut through the room, and I pulled myself back into the present. I’d been watching a girl walking hand-in-hand through the woods with a young man. She’d clearly loved him in her life, and the fact that they’d found each other even after death…I envied her. I envied her so badly that I hated her. “Come in.”
Someone slipped inside—no, not just someone. Two sets of footsteps too light to be Hades’s echoed through the room. Frowning, I twisted around in my chair. Hermes walked toward me, and behind him, Aphrodite followed.
“Afternoon,” said Hermes, giving me a boyish grin. “You look like hell.”
“I feel like hell,” I muttered, trying to push the thought of the girl away. She was mortal and dead, and she’d probably never held a jewel the size of a fist in her life. She was happier than I would ever be though, no matter how many gifts Hades gave me. “What are you two doing here?”
“What, I’m not allowed to come by anymore?” he said, perching on the arm of the chair. Aphrodite wandered toward the window, setting her hand on the glass and smudging it. I winced, but the unseen servants who staffed Hades’s palace would clean it later.
“You know what I mean,” I said. “Why did you bring Aphrodite?” She practically glowed with eternal satisfaction, and seeing her only made the fire of jealousy inside me burn even hotter.
“Because I think I can help,” said Aphrodite, turning to face us. “If you let me, I mean.”
“Help how?” I said warily, finding Hermes’s hand. I didn’t trust Aphrodite, for all her good luck and happiness, but I did trust him.
“Hermes mentioned you’ve been having trouble adjusting,” she said with a hint of mischievousness that probably drove every man on earth wild. “How often do you and Hades sleep together?”
Just the thought of sleeping with Hades again made my skin crawl, and I narrowed my eyes. “Once. To consummate the marriage. If you tell my mother, I’ll rip your hair out.”
Aphrodite blinked, clearly stunned. “Why haven’t you two slept together since?”
I shrugged. I’d spoken to Hermes about this a few times, but it never got easier. And I didn’t know Aphrodite half as well as I knew him. “I don’t know. It’s just—I don’t love him. And every time I think about doing that kind of thing with him, it’s like a wall forms. I can’t move past it no matter how hard I try.”
“A wall?” she said, frowning. “But weren’t you two friends before you got married?”
I nodded. At least someone understood how little sense all of this made. “I don’t like the Underworld. It makes me feel trapped. And sleeping with him—it was horrible.”
“Everyone’s first time is horrible. Except mine, but, you know. Goddess of sex. Can’t really help it.”
“How did you do it?” I blurted. “How did you make yourself fall in love with Hephaestus?”
“I didn’t make myself,” she said. “I didn’t want to at first, you know. I mean, that’s why Ares and I ran away. But in the end…” She shrugged. “Heph and I just fit together. We work, you know? There’s really no substitute for that. I have lovers on the side, of course, but in a way it helps us.”
Hermes snorted, and Aphrodite gave him a look. “I’m serious,” she said. “I love him. I love what we have together, and he’ll always be my home. At the end of the day, it’s because of my affairs that I stay with him. It’s because of them that I don’t feel trapped.”
If only it were that easy for me. I stared at my hand intertwined with Hermes’s. “Hard to have an affair when I’m stuck down here the entire time,” I mumbled.
“They’re not for everyone,” she agreed, twirling a lock of blond hair around her finger. “But there are other ways I could help you, if you’ll let me.”
“Help how?” I said. “Make me fall in love with him?”
She scoffed. “No one can make anyone fall in love with someone else. In lust, sure—Eros is really good at that. But I mean trying to help you break down that wall. Giving you a little nudge in the right direction.”
I had no idea what she meant, and the more she talked about it, the tenser I became, until Hermes had to practically yank his hand from mine. While he was busy flexing his fingers, I said, “I don’t know.”
“Of course you do,” she said. “You want to love Hades, right?”
I hesitated. I wanted to have the chance to choose for myself, and if that included falling in love with Hades, yes. But what if it didn’t? What if, given the choice, I would’ve fallen in love with someone else? “I don’t know what I want.”
“You want to be happy. That’s what everyone wants. And if you can’t get out of this mess—”
“You don’t know that I can’t. Maybe Hades will change his mind and—”
“It isn’t his mind to change,” she said, and the moment she said it, her eyes widened, and she pressed her lips together. What the hell was she talking about?
“Aphrodite,” said Hermes in a warning voice. “Spill. Now.”
She sank onto the other arm of my chair, her expression falling. How was it possible that she could look so damn pretty all the time no matter what mood she was in? “Daddy decided you had to marry Hades because he was jealous that Hera was spending so much time with him, and he didn’t want
her to get any ideas.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Wait, what?”
“It’s exactly what it sounds like,” said Aphrodite. “Hera spent some time down here, remember? And Daddy was afraid she was having an affair. She wasn’t, of course, but it’s obvious she loves Hades—”
“As a brother,” I said. Everyone knew that. “Not as a husband. She’s married.”
“Yeah, well, so am I.” She gave me a little grin. “And whether Hera likes it or not, she’s as fallible as the rest of us. She just doesn’t act on it, that’s all.”
I shook my head. The idea of Hera being in love with Hades was ridiculous. “I don’t believe you. She might love him, but that doesn’t mean she’s in love with him. He’s a nice guy, and Zeus isn’t. No wonder she ran down here to get away from him.”
Aphrodite inspected her nails. “If that’s what you want to believe, so be it. I could be wrong.”
“You are,” I said. “And even if you aren’t, Hades loves me.”
She arched an eyebrow. “So although you don’t love him, you relish the fact that he loves you.”
“Not relish.” The word sounded bitter on my tongue. “Just—it’s a fact. He does.”
“Yes, he does,” she conceded. “More than he’s loved anyone. And this is hurting him as much as it’s hurting you—”
“You think I don’t know that?” I snapped, my temper frayed. Whether it was from her spreading lies about Hera or the way she treated all of this like a game, I didn’t know. Maybe it was jealousy. But either way, the thought of accepting her offer made me sick to my stomach. “I don’t need your help, Aphrodite. If this is going to happen, it won’t be because you decide it should.”
She frowned. “That’s not how—”
“I don’t care, all right? All I want is my life back. And if you can’t give that to me—if the only other alternative is tricking me into feeling like I love him even though I don’t—then no thank you. I don’t want to be a slave to illusion.”
