by Lianyu Tan
Persephone grabbed Demeter’s wrist and pried it away from her. “Don’t touch me.”
Demeter smacked her. “Never forget where you came from. Never forget who gave you life.”
“This is not living!” Persephone said, pressing her palm to her cheek.
Demeter looked at her and thought about how much more pleasing she would be as a poplar. Her children of the earth were never so disappointing. “You’ve always been ungrateful.”
Persephone let her hand drop. “It’s true. I have neglected my duty to you, as a daughter. But then that fault is mine, isn’t it? It’s mine. Not Hades’.”
She’d changed. Her sweet and stupid girl, grown thorny like a weed. The underworld had ruined her, planted ideas of rebellion in her mind which had lain fallow for so long.
“Your punishment will come, be not concerned about that.” Demeter stood. She had wasted too much time here.
Persephone remained on the bed, her hands clasped in her lap. “Mother,” she said softly, mumbling as she so often had in the time before the underworld.
“Yes?”
“You cannot... You would not truly harm Hades, will you? There must be three. Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades. The underworld needs its ruler—”
“It shall have a ruler,” Demeter snapped. “That is no concern of yours.”
Persephone stared at her with her dirt-brown eyes, set in her too-pale face. “I was named queen-consort of the underworld. Its ruler is my concern.”
Oh, the airs! Demeter could not believe what she was hearing. “You may cling to that fantasy as much as you like.” She snatched the torch from its sconce. “Good night.”
When she shut the cell door, she slammed it with more force than was strictly necessary. The drakon glanced briefly in her direction, its forked tongue flicking, but otherwise paid her no heed as Demeter stormed out of the cellar.
A year of solitude would not be enough to teach Persephone humility. She could see now that it would be an uphill battle.
Well... enough of that. There was still the matter of Hades and the annulment. Demeter held all the cards; the gods could do nothing to stop her, not when she’d discovered the extent of her hold over them. Not even Zeus could stand against her now.
Demeter smiled in relief to herself. Yes, a few more decades and she would have back her sweet, pliant Persephone. No more talk of the underworld, no more pining for power beyond her station; that would be forgotten, like a bad dream. Demeter could scarcely wait.
25
The Drakon
Her mother had gone mad, Persephone was sure of it.
A weapon? Or some kind of poison? What was she thinking?
Demeter could not harm another goddess, surely. And yet she’d seemed so certain...
Persephone paced back and forth in her cell, staring at the marks on the door. She hadn’t made an imprint this time around, though she had the means to do so—a rusty nail, pried from the boards of the chest. Perhaps it was hubris, but she hadn’t yet felt the need. She wouldn’t be here long. Someone would think it odd for her to be absent from daily life, now that she was an adult, and shower Demeter with difficult questions. Wouldn’t they?
She wondered if Zeus’s true-born daughters were treated as such, whether Hera locked up her children for years on end.
Probably not. They probably weren’t as wicked as Persephone—
No. She had to stop thinking like that. In all the plays and poems she’d read in Hades’ domain, the children were never locked up like this, save by a villain, or an evil step-parent. That meant it wasn’t right.
But what were those tales except mere stories and allegories? Maybe Demeter was right and she was in the wrong. Maybe—
She reached the end of the cell, the tip of her sandal stubbing the wall. This could not be right.
She went to the door, pressing her ear against it. “Hello? Can anyone hear me?”
No response.
Persephone slid down until she was sitting with her back against the door, one knee bent. She looked at the slender lines the moonlight cast on the floor, reaching in through the bars. At least she had moonlight now.
No! She could not sit here and bear this, whilst Demeter hatched her schemes and threatened the very order of their pantheon. She could not wait for Hades to rescue her this time. Persephone simply had to rescue herself.
Easier said than done.
She stood up and pressed her hands against the door. It was oak, ancient and worn. She closed her eyes and listened.
It had been a seedling in the days of Kronos and Rhea, its years beyond measure. It scarcely remembered the touch of the sun, its bones scattered into pieces and trapped here for all eternity. Its spirit rested in Elysium, providing shade to mortal heroes and a home to an unkindness of ravens.
Persephone gasped and drew back, her fingertips trembling. She never would have gained such depth of feeling from an unliving thing before—glimpses and sporadic images, perhaps, but not this. And never would she have known of its presence in the underworld.
It was another sign of how the underworld had changed her, and that might have disturbed her once, but now she only looked around herself with new eyes. Demeter might have burned all the vegetation within spitting distance, but the door, ceiling, and furniture were all made of wood, though the walls were brick. The floor was stone, edged in lime mortar to prevent even a sliver of earth from being accessible. That left Persephone with few options.
She jumped onto the bed and stretched her hands up to the edge of the rafters. Oak as well, though not as ancient as that of the door. She’d transplanted its spirit into her grove, from elsewhere near the palace. She’d tended and watered it and read beneath its branches.
She clambered down from the bed and went once more to the door, placing her hands upon it. “Hello?” she called out again, her ear pressed to its surface.
Demeter had never bothered posting a guard on her before. Why should she? With no seeds and no dirt, she must have thought Persephone defenseless.
Persephone stepped back from the door. “Please,” she said. “I know it may be... strange,” she continued, struggling to word her request. “This was your body. These planks were your branches, your trunk. Remember what you were. Help me.”
For a while, nothing happened. She stared expectantly at the door, and it remained just that.
She was asking too much. A kind of spirit possession—trees did have spirits, no matter how coy Hades had been upon the subject—but Persephone had no idea whether her request was even feasible. She trailed her fingertips over the surface of the door, hoping to feel something, anything.
She had begun to wonder if she’d gone mad with delusions of grandeur when the door exploded outward, away from her, its wooden frame collapsing and taking a few of the bricks down with it. Persephone jerked back and covered her eyes with her arms, then slowly lowered them, blinking in the faint glow of torchlight that now flooded her cell.
The light should have been brighter. It took her a few moments to realize it was being blocked by an enormous beast, large enough almost to fill the entire space in the cellar. Its scales glittered blue and silver, and it watched her with two slitted, yellow eyes. The ridge above its brow bone was bleeding, no doubt from the shrapnel of the exploding door.
The door might have formed part of her cage, but it had also been her protection against this creature. How fitting that Persephone could prove to be the source of her own destruction—not Hades and not Demeter.
“Easy,” she said, both hands extended in what she hoped was a placating manner. “You’re here to protect me. From intruders.” She wondered where her mother had found such a beast and how she could have possibly compelled it to serve in such confined quarters.
The drakon sniffed the air, then slithered forward, its nails clicking on the stone floor. It worked half its length into her cell, completely blocking the doorway and most of the light. Behind it, she heard the ominous rustling of its ta
il sweeping the cellar floor.
Persephone slowly moved sideways, and it turned its head to follow her movements. Several horns protruded from its rigid bone plate, their tips looking wickedly sharp.
Too nervous to take her eyes from the drakon, Persephone felt around on the floor with her foot until she bumped into a discarded waterskin. She slowly crouched, watching the creature the whole time, and picked it up.
Some drakons had poorer night vision than others; she did not know enough about this one to tell, but she hoped it was diurnal. She threw the waterskin to the other side of the room, where it bounced against the wall with an audible smack.
The drakon swiveled its head toward the noise, and Persephone ran toward it, hoping to leap through the small gap in the doorway between the drakon’s body and the ceiling.
The beast struck Persephone with its front leg, sending her flying across the room. She struck the far wall and groaned, falling to the floor. The drakon advanced, its claws gouging marks in the stone. She raised her head to see its jaws yawning open, exposing its muscular tongue and the red lining of its mouth.
Persephone rolled to the side as fire spurted from the drakon’s mouth, toasting the spot where she’d just been. The hem of her chiton caught alight, and she swatted at it frantically whilst climbing to her feet.
Heat radiated off the bricks behind her; she backed into them as close as she dared, as the drakon stared at her with its gleaming, yellow eyes. She didn’t know when she’d turned from its treasure into its adversary—whether it was due to Demeter’s command or simply that the beast was not terribly bright. She had nowhere to run.
The drakon took a step toward her, and its mouth parted.
There was no time for conscious thought. Persephone reached up into the air with a grasping motion, then brought down her hands into fists by her sides, summoning the ghost of the oak tree that had been felled to create the rafters. She didn’t wait to gauge the outcome of her command, but ran toward the bed. She slid the last few cubits on her stomach, then crawled until she was completely underneath the bed, her belly flat on the floor and her hands clasped over her head.
The rafters creaked, then buckled. The drakon closed its mouth for a moment, angling its head upward as though puzzled.
One beam snapped and then another. The drakon inhaled. Persephone whimpered.
The drakon exhaled upward toward the rafters, bathing the room in garish orange as flames spread across the ceiling. The ancient oak screeched as it fell, burning beams scattering across the room. The floor above must have been used for storage, as amphora fell down, too, the flames hissing as wine and pickling juice splashed against them.
Persephone screamed when a beam fell onto the mattress above her, causing the bed to sag. She heard the drakon roar and could not help but feel pity for the suffering in its voice.
After that, she heard only the crackling of the fire. When she breathed, she tasted smoke in the back of her throat.
Persephone uncovered her head and crawled out from under the bed. Her fingers touched something sticky, and she recoiled.
The drakon’s glassy eyes stared at her, accusingly, its head lolling on the floor. A massive truss crushed it to the ground, blood pooling all around it.
Persephone held her himation over her face, coughing. Sweat rolled down her back as she stumbled toward the door, skirting pottery shards and flaming beams. She heard another crash behind her as she entered the cellar proper and found the stairs, taking them two at a time.
The floor above was completely gone, except for the stairwell area. Persephone fumbled at the door that she knew from memory would lead her outside. It was locked.
She coughed again, her throat searing. She did not have time for this. Ash and elm—she raised her palm, and the door...
Did nothing.
She slammed her fists against it. “Help,” she croaked. She coughed and tried again. “Help!”
She closed her eyes, her questing fingers fumbling around the door’s edges. Had she missed something? Was she just too exhausted to make this new ability of hers work, or had the first two times been some kind of fluke?
She banged on the door until her knuckles bled. “Help!”
Tears sprang to her eyes, trying to wash out the smoke, to no avail. Persephone coughed and yelled and knocked until her vision grew hazy and dark and she could no longer do any of those things.
26
Hades
“Help me understand,” Hades said. “You left her there. With Demeter.” With Demeter the oath-breaker; Demeter the traitor.
Hermes ran a hand through his blond locks, too craven to meet her gaze. “With her mother, yes—”
“Precisely what I told you not to do!”
“For Zeus’s sake, Demeter is her mother! She has a right!”
Perhaps Hermes had a right to keep his organs on the inside, and yet Hades longed to run the point of her blade from his neck to his navel. Still, even through her rage she could not forget that psychopomps were few and far between. The underworld needed him, even if Hades could no longer see any point to his existence.
“Go,” she said. “Get out of my sight.”
“I can still help—”
“Go!”
Hermes scuttled away like the lackey he was. Hades no longer had eyes for him.
Her gaze drifted down to the paperwork scattered across her table. Her mind flashed back to the sight of Persephone’s bared breasts, her knees spread and overhanging the edge of the desk—
Hades picked up Demeter’s letter of invitation and scrunched it into a ball. She held it out on her palm, and the papyrus ignited, burning with a blue flame that shot a cubit’s length into the air before extinguishing itself. She turned her hand, and the remaining ash gently floated toward the floor.
She so dearly misliked walking into a trap, but could see no way around it. She took a fresh piece of papyrus and began to write, her pen making short, sharp motions, the lines blurring slightly in her vision until she blinked. She dropped the pen and pressed the tip of her dagger to her thumb until ichor welled to the surface, then rolled a golden thumbprint at the bottom of the papyrus.
Hades scattered powdered bone over the wet ink to dry it, then shook it free. She tugged on a bell pull by her table, then re-read her document as she waited.
Xenia appeared, her face drawn and pale. “My queen?”
“Take this to Cottus,” Hades said, handing her the parchment. “Tell him to hurry. I intend to depart before he sees this.”
Xenia briefly looked down. “A release order? Surely you do not intend to leave here alone?”
Hades strode out of her study with Xenia trailing closely behind. “I must. An armed retinue would cause a diplomatic incident. I cannot let Demeter paint herself as a victim.” She went to her armory and stood in the anteroom devoted to her personal effects, considering her options.
Xenia reached for Hades’ cuirass.
“No,” Hades said. “No armor. No provocations.”
Xenia lowered her hand. “Except when you took her.”
Hades slowly turned her head toward her, and Xenia quailed. “I gave you a task, did I not?”
Xenia pressed her lips together, then dropped her gaze and left Hades alone.
No armor, but... she could not go defenseless. Her hand hovered over the hilt of her favorite sword, then moved across to another blade, shorter and lighter, its scabbard inlaid with gold. She could always say it was ceremonial. A wafer-thin defense, but she intended not to draw it, if that were at all possible.
She strapped the sword around her waist, already missing the comforting weight of her leathers. She had made the right decision—the only one, she told herself, as she led Alastor from the stables and swung herself over his back. Emerging from the depths with all the deities of the underworld at her side would bring a reprisal she was not prepared to face, not even for Persephone’s sake.
If Demeter hurt her, though...
Hades took the exit into the cave nearest Demeter’s estate, gritting her teeth as the air coalesced and then thinned as Alastor emerged on the other side. She inhaled, breathing in the dry heat. And they called her realm unbearable.
Alastor snorted, tossing his head. Hades held onto an enspelled lantern, using it to light their path through the cave. The naturally phosphorescent lichens seemed much smaller in number compared to the last time Hades had passed by.
She’d known even then that Persephone was something special.
Hades felt the siren song of Persephone’s necklace calling to her as a faint itch at the back of her neck. She nudged Alastor onward, trusting him to find his own way in the semi-darkness.
For miles she rode, pushing Alastor as hard as she dared. His flanks heaved for breath under her knees, but she didn’t dare stop.
She knew she had to be close when she could almost hear the necklace singing, like a hum running through her teeth. A building loomed in the distance, its thatched roof catching the light of the half moon.
She slowed and dismounted, briefly running her hand through Alastor’s mane. “Thank you,” she said and continued on foot, glancing around for any sign of Demeter’s guards.
Wait. That smell. Fire?
Hades broke into a run, heedless of the noise it caused. She reached the building, where smoke billowed out from a small grate set close to the ground.
She circled around the other side to reach the door, relieved to find it still felt cool to the touch. “Persephone?” She rapped on the door but received no answer.
She stepped back. A locked draw bar stood in her way, placed across the door to hold it secure. Hades unfastened the fibula on her left shoulder and stuck its pin in the keyhole, using the edge of the hole to bend the tip of the pin. She crouched down and inserted her makeshift pick further into the lock, bringing her ear close to hear the click of the tumblers.
