The Goddess Test Boxed Set

by Aimee Carter

  But we were happy. Even Hades eventually adjusted, and I no longer saw pain in his eyes when he met me in the meadow every autumn. Instead he seemed pleased to see me once more, and slowly I grew to be happy to see him, as well. I hated the Underworld, and that wall between us was as strong as ever, but his understanding made me more accepting of his world.

  Nothing changed for a long time. But one day, as I lingered in the observatory after we’d finished our judgments, I closed my eyes and did something I’d done thousands of times before: I found Hermes. Summer was only a short time away, and I was anxious to be with him again.

  He was in his chambers in Olympus, standing on his balcony as the sun reflected off his light hair. And he wasn’t alone. That wasn’t anything unusual—he was social by nature, the complete opposite of Hades, and he usually spent a great deal of time with our brothers and sisters. But this time it was Aphrodite who stood beside him.

  And she was naked.

  Not that that was anything unusual, either, but the way she hugged his arm to her chest, the way he touched her—

  I was going to be sick.

  Hermes and I had never talked about what he did during the winters. He knew I wasn’t with Hades, not like that, and I’d always let myself believe that he waited for me. Maybe most of the time he did. But we didn’t have any rules about our time apart, and I had no right to feel as furious as I did.

  It was Aphrodite though—the goddess who had everything. Love, satisfaction, a perfect life, a happy marriage. And now she was taking the one thing I had that was mine, the one damn thing in the world that gave me any amount of real joy.

  But Hermes certainly didn’t seem to be complaining.

  How dare you. I pushed the thought upward with every ounce of strength I had. It still took ages to reach Hermes, but when it did, his eyes widened, and he immediately moved away from Aphrodite. His cheeks turned red, and when she tried to rejoin him, he sidestepped her. So he knew he was doing something wrong, after all.

  “Persephone, please—I’ll explain everything later.”

  Like hell he would. Like hell I would let him. What would he say, that Aphrodite had accidentally slipped into his arms? That it was only a onetime thing? That he’d missed me and he was lonely, and he couldn’t wait any longer?

  This is over. Don’t bother to come by this summer, because you and I are done.

  “Persephone?” said Aphrodite, and she looked around. “She’s watching?”

  I didn’t bother to wait for Hermes’s response. I pulled myself back into the observatory so quickly that for the first time since mastering my powers, I grew dizzy. I sat there for a long moment, my head between my knees, and struggled not to break down.

  What else had I expected? He was Zeus’s son as surely as I was Zeus’s daughter. Cheating was in our blood. But no matter how many times I’d done it to Hades, that slap in the face—that complete and utter betrayal—had never hit home for me before.

  My face was hot, and tears prickled in my eyes, but I refused to let them go. Instead I forced myself to breathe in and out slowly, counting each breath. Hermes loved me; I was certain of that. But why had he gone to Aphrodite? Was half a year really so long to wait?

  Or had she seduced him? Were Ares and Hephaestus and Poseidon not enough for her?

  Of course not. This was Aphrodite. She could never have enough, and she took whatever she wanted without a second thought. Mother may have considered me selfish, but I was nothing compared to my sister.

  The door to the observatory opened and shut, and I wiped my dry cheeks angrily. I wanted to hurt something. I wanted to wrap my hands around Hermes’s neck and squeeze. It wouldn’t kill him, but it would help me feel a hell of a lot better.

  “Persephone?”

  And now I might have my chance. I straightened, my eyes narrowing as I focused on Hermes. He looked as if he’d dressed in a hurry, his clothing rumpled and his hair a mess. At least he’d bothered at all. “I told you not to come.”

  “Actually, you didn’t,” he said, shuffling his feet. “You said we were over, but—”

  “And we are, so you have no business here,” I snapped. His expression crumpled.

  “Persephone, come on. I’m sorry. It was just once—”

  “And I happened to peek in at the exact wrong moment?”

  “You never said I couldn’t see anyone else during the winter.”

  “I never said you could, either.”

  He exhaled. “What’s really bothering you? Did you have a fight with Hades?”

  I stared at him. He really didn’t get it, did he? “What’s bothering me is the fact that out of all the girls and goddesses in the world, you had to sleep with Aphrodite.”

  “And what’s wrong with her?”

  “She’s Aphrodite. She has Ares, she has Hephaestus, she has every damn person she wants. You’re mine. You’re the only person I have, and she—she steals you like it’s no big deal—”

  “Nobody stole me.” He knelt down in front of my chair, careful not to touch me. “I’m still yours. I’ll always be yours, and I’m sorry about being with Aphrodite. You’re right, it wasn’t fair to you, and I should’ve asked you first.”

  I took a deep, shaky breath. “It doesn’t matter. We’re over.”

  “Persephone—”

  “No.” I stood and moved around him, narrowly avoiding kneeing him in the chin. “I was happy because of you, and I can’t be that happy ever again, not when I know what you did with her. You stole that from me—you both stole that from me, and I will never forgive you for it.”

  “Persephone, come on, don’t be like this—”

  “Don’t be like what? Angry? Upset? Hurt?” I whirled around to face him. “Why did you do it? Out of all the girls you could’ve slept with, why her?”

  He hesitated, looking to his left for a moment. “Because—I don’t know, all right? It’s Aphrodite. If she wants you, you can’t say no.”

  I balled my hands into fists. “Wrong answer.”

  As I stormed toward the door, the sound of his footsteps scrambling behind me echoed through the long room. “I’m sorry, all right? She was there, you weren’t, and it isn’t fair, but it won’t happen again. Ever. I love you.”

  “If you really loved me, you would’ve never touched her in the first place.” I flung open the door. “Hades would’ve never done that to me.”

  I glanced over my shoulder in time to see the stunned look on his face. “Hades? You’re really going to compare me to Hades now? You don’t even love him. You don’t even want to be with him.”

  “If you’re my only other option, then maybe he isn’t so bad after all,” I snapped. “Leave, Hermes. I don’t want you here anymore.”

  With as much dignity as I could muster, I walked out of the room and down the spiral staircase that led to the lower floors. My eyes brimmed with tears, but by the time I reached my destination, I’d blinked them away without shedding a single one. Hermes wasn’t worth it. I would’ve given him everything, but if he couldn’t spare me honesty or fidelity—

  I was an idiot for expecting him to stick with me. No one ever did. Not even Mother had much love left for me anymore, not after my failed marriage and centuries of being with Hermes. The only constants in my life were the seasons and Hades. No matter what I did to him, no matter how I acted, he was there for me without complaint. Always.

  I should have loved him. I should’ve loved him so much that I ache
d over the thought of having hurt him. I wanted to so badly that part of me did, but that wall was still there, preventing anything real.

  I hated that wall, and if it were possible, I would’ve ripped it down with my bare hands. Loving Hades should’ve been the easiest thing I’d ever done. He was a good man. Better than me, better than Hermes, better than every god and goddess who dared to call themselves Olympians. In a pit of deceit and jealousy, he was the one thing that hadn’t been tainted by time. And I’d hurt him again and again.

  Without bothering to knock, I burst into Hades’s chambers. He sat at his desk, shuffling through scrolls and parchment, and he looked up as I strode over to him. “Persephone?” he said, a hint of confusion in his voice. No wonder, either, since I hadn’t stepped foot in his chambers since our wedding night. “To what do I owe—”

  Before he could finish, I crawled into his lap and kissed him. Not the kind of hesitant kiss we’d shared few times before, but the burning kisses I’d shared with Hermes. The kind that filled me with fire, all-encompassing and eternal. The kind that begged for more no matter how much I’d already fed it. It was the kind of kiss that no one, not even Hades, could ignore.

  And he didn’t. For a long moment, he didn’t move—he didn’t touch me, he didn’t kiss me back, he didn’t react at all. But at last his hands found my hips, and his lips moved against mine with equal fervor.

  That wall inside me loomed, as dark and resentful as before, but despite the way my entire body screamed for me to stop, I kept going. His touch burned my skin, and that hatred wrapped around me so completely that I could barely breathe. But I needed this. I needed to be loved, even if the only person who could do it was the man I couldn’t stand.

  “Bed,” I whispered between kisses, leaving no room for negotiating. He lifted me up without protest, and I wrapped my legs around his waist as he carried me across the room. I’d sworn to myself I would never go back here, but as he laid me down amongst the silk, I steeled myself against my body’s protests and pulled him down with me.

  I don’t know how long we kissed—long enough for both of us to get undressed, long enough for us to be seconds away from doing something neither of us had thought we’d ever do again. But before we got that far, Hades broke the kiss, his eyes searching mine.

  “You’re sure?” he whispered, and after a split second, I forced myself to nod. He loved me—I could see it in the way he looked at me, feel it in the way he touched me, everything. He loved me in a way Hermes never would, and I was an idiot for throwing all of that away without even trying. I knew what love was supposed to feel like now, and I could have that with Hades if I tried. I just had to want it bad enough.

  He kissed me again, gentler this time, but he still didn’t close the gap between us. “Why now?” he murmured, brushing his lips against the curve of my neck. I let out a frustrated groan.

  “Because—because,” I said, my voice breaking. “Because I want to, and you love me, and—can’t we at least try?”

  Hades pulled away enough to look me in the eye. “And what about Hermes?”

  I swallowed, and something must have flickered across my face, because Hades frowned. “It’s over with him,” I said. “Please, can’t we just…?”

  “Do you love me?” he whispered. I blinked.

  “I—I want to.” I ran my hand down his bare arm, feeling the muscle beneath his warm skin. “Please give me the chance to try.”

  He exhaled deeply, as if he’d been holding in a breath for eternity. “I made that mistake once.” He kissed me again, this time with aching gentleness. “I will not make it again.”

  Suddenly the weight of his body was gone, and he turned away to put his clothes back on. I lay there, exposed and shivering in the open air, and the tears I’d been holding back all evening finally broke through. “Don’t you love me?”

  He flinched, staring at the floor. “I love you, Persephone. More than my own existence. But it is because I love you so much that I cannot do this. In time, if we were to take this slowly, I would be honored. Under these circumstances, when I am nothing but a release to you…” He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him he was so much more than a release, but I couldn’t force the lie out. If anything, he wasn’t even that. He was a way for me to feel loved. A way to get back at Hermes. And I didn’t care if it made things worse, so long as the pain of Hermes’s betrayal disappeared.

  But whether I wanted to admit it to myself or not, that wound was far too deep for anything to mask it, even sleeping with Hades. I hurt in a way I’d never hurt before, and Hermes had created a gaping hole in my chest that nothing could fill. I curled up in a ball, not caring that I was still naked, and I let out a choked sob. Hades must have been halfway to his desk by then, but instantly he touched my back. It was a comforting gesture, not a romantic one, and it was something I desperately needed.

  “You’re all right,” he murmured, and he wrapped a blanket around me. “Everything will be okay.”

  He could say that as much as he wanted, but he didn’t know. He couldn’t. I buried my face in his pillow, making a mess of the deep blue silk, but he didn’t seem to mind. Instead he lay down beside me and gathered me up in a gentle embrace. “It will get easier,” he murmured. “It may not feel like it now, but it will.”

  That only made me cry harder. Of course he knew what this was like. I’d done this to him again and again throughout our marriage, and never, not once, had he broken down in front of me. He’d kept that pain bottled up, refusing to take it out on me no matter how much I may have deserved it. Between him and Hermes, there was no contest. Hades would’ve never been with Aphrodite. He would’ve never even thought about her that way. He would’ve been there for me every moment of every day—he had been there for me, and I’d just never seen it before.

  And now that I did, now that my eyes were open and I finally understood, I couldn’t be with him. I’d messed it all up. I’d hurt him too badly for us to ever move beyond it. And that wall of hatred and resentment—it would never disappear. Whatever was causing it, whatever had made me feel that way to begin with, we were long past the point of fixing it. That wall was as much a part of me as Hades’s love for me was a part of him. There was no getting around it no matter how hard I tried. If sheer willpower alone could’ve made it crumble, I would’ve managed that a long time ago.

  Eventually I fell asleep, and during the night, Hades never left my side. When I awoke, his arms were still wrapped around me, and his eyes were open. He’d spent the entire night holding me, knowing we could never be together the way he wanted, knowing I would almost certainly go out and hurt him again as soon as the pain from Hermes’s betrayal healed.

  No. I wouldn’t. Not this time. Hades had already given up too much for me, and no matter how miserable I was, even if it meant an eternity alone, I would never let that wall—I would never let myself—hurt him again.

  * * *

  Centuries passed, and then eons. Every spring equinox, Hermes was there waiting for me when Hades dropped me off, and I walked past him without a word every single time. Eventually we began to exchange glances, and then smiles; after the first thousand years, he finally came to visit me one summer, and we spent the day tending the garden with my mother. Although we began to talk again, it was never as anything more than uneasy friends.

  Without Hermes’s companionship, my summers weren’t much better than my winters anymore. Hades built me several home
s scattered across the world, and while I visited each and admired them all, my summers always began and ended at my mother’s cottage. But over time, she grew increasingly distant. Some summers she could pretend nothing was wrong, but I still felt the heat of her disappointment when she thought I wasn’t paying attention. Every glance, every absent hug and kiss—I felt them all, and they wore me down faster than my winter tomb ever could.

  Hades and I never became anything more than we were, though I kept my promise to myself: I didn’t cheat on him again. And that faithfulness gave me what small amount of happiness I could find. I’d made mistakes, I’d been a terrible person, but I could at least give Hades my loyalty now. We ruled together, side by side, and we may not have been deliriously happy, but we were content. I grew better at appreciating the small things, finding joy in our routines, and eventually I accepted my fate. This was my life, and the time to change it had long since passed.

  All of that shattered the day I saw him.

  I was up in the observatory, but instead of watching the afterlives of the dead, I’d let my mind wander to the surface. Though I would’ve rather died than admit it to anyone, occasionally, when I was at my worst, I watched Aphrodite. While I languished in loneliness, she had lover after lover, a whole host of men who would have died for her—and some who really did. She had everything I wanted, and no matter how I tried to console myself, my hatred for her only grew.

  But I never stopped watching her. Sometimes to live vicariously through her; sometimes to convince myself that I had it better. I didn’t, of course, but once in a while I’d stumble across moments that let me fool myself into believing it, if only for a short while.

  This wasn’t one of those moments. As the last vestiges of sunset stretched across the horizon, Aphrodite splashed in the ocean with the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. He was tall and strong, his face perfectly proportioned and his coloring fair. His smile seemed brighter than the sun, and when he glanced in my direction—unable to see me, of course, but still—my heart pounded, and warmth filled me from head to toe. It was the way Hermes had made me feel so many lifetimes ago. The way I wanted Hades to make me feel.