by Bella Klaus
“Whatever happens next, know that I love you more than anything and always will,” he murmured into my ear.
My heart stilled. “Are you planning on dropping dead?”
He laughed, the sound rich and deep. “What you’re about to see won’t be pretty, but you need to understand Persephone’s first century with me.”
I drew back, my hands rising to cup his cheeks. “You told me multiple times you’re not the same man you used to be tens of thousands of years ago. I love the person you’ve become.”
He lowered his gaze. “I’ve had two thousand years to work on myself, but having you here in front of me, looking so radiant, makes me think it’s not nearly enough.”
I gulped. “What on earth are you worried about?”
“Just remember, I’m no longer that man.”
Dread twisted knots through my insides, but I sucked in a breath and pushed down those feelings. Did I want to see what Hades was afraid of showing me? I slid a hand around the back of his neck and pulled him for a kiss.
Hades’ lips were soft and pliant for the first heartbeat, and then the kiss became firmer, more demanding, and he wrapped his arms around my middle.
My heart thundered, my head spun, and I melted into his embrace. I wanted this man so much that whatever he did in the past no longer mattered.
Healer Iaso cleared her throat. “My apologies, but the longer we wait to complete the treatment, the less time there is to restore His Majesty’s strength.”
I pulled back from the kiss and straightened. “Right. Let’s focus on what needs to get done.”
Hades’ features stilled, and he held his elbows close to his sides, looking like he was bracing himself for my violent reaction. Despite the sense of impending dread, he took both my hands.
“Close your eyes,” he said through our mental bond. “I’ll guide you through the process.”
Letting my eyes flutter shut, I opened up my mind to Hades, letting him in. I thought he’d send me a blast of power or bombard me with images, but instead, my mind flooded with a feeling of love and warmth and longing. Beneath it was a lukewarm dread, and beneath that was cold terror.
My breath caught in the back of my throat. I pulled back from those feelings, not wanting to touch on what lay underneath that. Part of me wanted to reassure Hades that I wouldn’t leave him, but I had no business making such guarantees. Not when he’d spent over two thousand years missing Persephone.
“I’ll skip over the memories of when I first saw you splashing about at the coast with a group of water nymphs,” he said into our bond. “But I watched you for a very long time without introducing myself.”
“So, when did you let me know you were interested?” I asked.
“You’re about to find out.” Hades sent me an image of himself standing within a chariot identical to the one we rode to the Devil’s Ball.
I couldn’t see what he looked like, because I was looking out through his eyes, but Hellsteeds pulled the chariot through a tunnel up toward the surface. The air was cold at first, turning warmer with each passing second, until the earth split open and light flooded my eyes.
“This is when you abducted her?” I asked.
Hades grunted. “If I’d had any sense of compassion, I would have introduced myself. Instead, I spoke to Zeus and let him talk me into stealing her away.”
In the vision, the chariot charged through the air, not touching the meadow. Persephone sat alone beneath a tree, creating a crown of wildflowers.
At the snort of one of the horses, she turned, her eyes widening, her mouth falling open with shock. She scrambled to their feet and ran toward the edge of the meadow, but Hades scooped her up and carried her away in the chariot.
Persephone screamed and cried and pounded at his chest, but he held her tight, ignoring her pleas to be released.
My heart sank at the heartless treatment. If someone had charged into the greenhouse, I would react exactly the same.
“Kora?” he asked, his voice catching.
“Keep showing it to me,” I said into our bond. “The more I can empathize with how she felt, the better I might make the panacea.”
The vision continued, and Hades threw Persephone in a white bedroom decorated with marble pillars and a pristine bed large enough for two. She threw herself on the bed and sobbed for Mother, making me swallow over and over.
“Persephone loved Mother?” I asked.
“Back then, Demeter was a doting parent, if not a little possessive,” Hades said. “Even I have to admit that losing her daughter like this eroded her sanity.”
“What happened to Persephone while she was in the Underworld?”
He sighed. “She wouldn’t eat or drink or move from the bed, even when I came in and ordered her to love me.”
“What?”
Shame slithered through the bond, passing into me with a painful twist of the guts. “I thought that was the way to win a woman,” he muttered. “I was brutal, clueless, and bent on conquering her heart.”
“By shouting at her?” I asked.
“I was a clueless oaf,” he said in a voice heavy with regret.
“Show me.”
Hades paused a moment before he passed on the feeling of his stomach sinking under the weight of a boulder. “Very well.”
The next scene was of Persephone lying on her back with her arms folded, her features twisted into a scowl. Minthe lay face-down on the floor with a bowl of some kind of soup tossed on her head.
Hades stormed inside, stepped over the unconscious servant, grabbed Persephone by the arm, and snarled a string of harsh words. My breath shallowed. This was the complete opposite to the man I knew, who would use charm and cunning to slip under a woman’s defenses.
Screaming, Persephone swung her fist at his face, but he caught her by the wrist and slammed her body against the mattress.
My pulse quickened as he pinned her onto the bed, and all the moisture escaped my throat. “Hades,” I said into our mental connection. “Please don’t tell me you—”
“No,” he said. “Before Persephone, I’d never had a woman. It hadn’t even occurred to me to force her.”
“But would you have?” I stared down through Hades’ eyes and the familiar face, which twisted into a rictus of hate.
“I wanted her so much, but I wanted her to want me.”
“You didn’t make her do anything against her will?”
He chuckled. “Apart from staying in the Underworld? No,” he said. “Persephone was stubborn. No force in the universe could compel her to act against her will.”
My heart stilled as Hades shook her the way Mother did when she chastised me for being thick headed about the dangers of the outside world. This wasn’t as terrible as I had originally imagined, but without watching dark romances on television like 365 Days, I would have found this scene absolutely terrifying.
“Is this helping?” he asked. “Are you connecting with Persephone’s misery?”
I rubbed my chest. “It’s easy to see how she could have been heartbroken.”
Hades didn’t say anything for a long time, but instead showed me scene after scene of him keeping her confined, chastising her for not eating the food of the dead, and cursing at her. Persephone fought back with her fists and feet, but she was no match for Hades’ bulk and strength.
Throughout this scene, the despair I’d felt from him earlier reared to the surface, making me turn my attention back to him.
“Hades?” I asked. “What’s wrong?
He blew out a long breath. “I hope you can forgive me when I show you what I did next.”
Chapter Fifteen
I stilled atop Hades with my legs wrapped around his hips, and our heads pressed together. Until this moment, we had been inhaling and exhaling in sync, but his breaths became shallower, faster, more urgent.
“What’s wrong?” I squeezed his larger hands.
“While I kept Persephone starving and confined in that room, someone h
ad told Demeter what I’d done, and she created a famine that killed tens of thousands of humans,” he said in a voice as quiet as the breeze. “I knew Zeus would make me return her.”
I pressed a soft kiss on his lips. “You told me this before, and you said that you’d tricked Persephone into eating pomegranate seeds.”
“But I didn’t tell you what it did to her body.”
My stomach twisted into an array of tight knots. “What happened?”
“Back then, the weather was constant, and there were no seasons. Food was plentiful, and the population grew fast,” he said.
I bit down on my bottom lip. This irrelevant comment had to be Hades trying to stall, but why? In my softest voice, I murmured, “Show me.”
Another image filled my mind’s eye. Hades sat on a similar throne to the one we’d shared, except it was made of an intricately carved stone as opposed to gold. Instead of the room being filled with demons, I spotted Hermes, who wore the same white cloak I’d seen on him before, and a bunch of people in colored robes.
The guards opened the door, letting a white-haired woman hobble down the red carpet. Her features were corpse-like, her eyes milky-white, and the skin around her mouth had shrunk, revealing long teeth and shrivelled gums. Worst of all, she was semi-transparent.
A gasp slipped from my lips. “That was her?”
“She must have fought desperately against the pull to return to the Underworld.” Grief filled our bond, tinged with the ache of guilt. “When I told you that the pomegranate seed had set back our relationship a century, I hadn’t been exaggerating.”
“Hades.” The word echoed through my skull. I had promised not to judge his actions, but the sight of Persephone as a wraith made my insides hollow. In her position, I’d probably want the man who had done this to me dead.
“Is this what prompted her to create the panacea?” I asked.
“No,” he rasped. “It took fifty years to work out that having a garden of her own might make her happy.”
“How did she return to normal?” I asked.
“By staying in the underworld, eating its food, and breathing in the air,” he said. “It took several years to work out a balance of how long she could stay on Mount Olympus without damaging herself. In the end, half a year in the world of the dead gave her the power to withstand spending the other half of the year with Demeter.”
As Persephone reached the throne, she hurled insults after insults at Hades and swore revenge.
“Did she ever attack you after that?” I asked.
“Several times,” he muttered. “Each year, she became more devious and occasionally got close to ending my life.”
“Didn’t she know how to kill a god?” I stared at the wraith, who swiped at Hades, her fingers curled into claws.
“Fortunately, nobody had shared that knowledge until much later,” he said. “Otherwise, Persephone would have succeeded in her assassinations.”
I rested my forehead against his. “So, you abducted her, imprisoned her, and made her dependent on the Underworld to continue living. Is there anything else?”
“One more,” he said with a sigh. “Persephone truly loved her mother. At least until she fell in love with me.”
The vision of the throne room faded away, replaced by an image of Hades standing within the shadows of a huge atrium within an even larger building. Light streamed down from a vaulted roof into a rectangular pool, around which musicians played stringed instruments.
Hades peeped behind one of the tall columns surrounding the water feature toward the back of the room, where servants fanned the occupants of five golden chaises.
Aunt Juno sat in the middle, wearing a golden crown and sipping from a golden goblet. Mother sat to her left on a chaise, her blonde hair piled to the top of her head. Persephone shared the chaise with Mother, her head on her shoulder.
Lounging around them were Aunts Vesta, Minerva, and Diana.
“I don’t want to go back,” Persephone said in a small voice.
Mother rubbed her back. “You remember what happened the last time you tried to stay away from the Underworld?” she crooned. “I hate for you to leave, but I can’t see you waste away.”
Persephone tilted her head up to meet Mother’s eyes. “I’d rather die than spend another day with that bastard.”
Mother tapped Persephone’s nose. “Language.”
“You can hardly blame the poor girl,” Aunt Juno said from the chaise in the middle. “Hades is awfully dull.”
“And he’s a rotten old man,” Persephone added.
The other aunts murmured their agreement. Hades remained in the shadows, watching them all tear apart his gloomy personality and lack of sex appeal. The insults became more and more exaggerated until Persephone burst into peals of laughter.
“You’re right,” she said. “His breath stinks and his manhood is smaller than a pomegranate.”
The aunts applauded, and Persephone sat up to list Hades’ shortcomings. The tirade went on and on and on, the insults becoming pettier, such as his thick eyebrows and copious nostril hair, but the women in the room kept cheering her on. Even the servants and musicians snickered.
I cringed. Both for the Hades lurking about like a creeper and listening to that bullshit, and for the man who I’d married.
“One day,” Persephone said through clenched teeth. “I’ll work out how to kill him, and when I do, I will devour his soul.”
“Wonderful, darling.” Mother brushed her red hair aside and placed a soft kiss on her cheek. “And I’ll research his weaknesses from over here. If I find anything, I’ll send a message.”
Instead of stepping out of the shadows as the man I knew would have done, Hades teleported back to Hell and brooded in a dark room.
“What happened after that?” I asked.
“She continued to despise me,” he said, his voice surprisingly light considering the upsetting scene. “But I listened in on hundreds of those vile conversations, each time building into a rage.”
“Can you at least see why she was so upset?” I asked.
“I can, now,” he replied with a harsh laugh. “But these insults behind my back continued long after we had reconciled our differences, and long after we’d fallen in love.”
My stomach tightened. Part of me wanted to see the progression of their romance, but we didn’t have the time to linger. Not when the purpose of sharing these memories was for me to connect with Persephone’s motivation for producing the panacea.
“Did you ever confront her?” I asked.
“Many times,” he growled. “But she told me it was hard to admit to Demeter that I made her happy.”
“Gosh,” I murmured. “It’s hard to know what to say because I can’t imagine being so two-faced for such a stupid reason.”
“I nearly fell into my old pattern after taking you from the courtroom, but when you killed those two demons, I realized we had to do this differently.”
“Why?” I asked.
“That was the moment I realized you would be more than the woman I loved,” he said. “You wielded the power of Zeus, you were resourceful, and you could help me protect the Fifth.”
“That’s when you saw me as an equal?”
“I never saw you or Persephone as lesser beings,” he murmured. “Underneath her sometimes prickly exterior, she was a nurturer. You should have seen her with Caria.”
“And me?” I asked.
“You’re so much more,” he said, his voice lilting with a smile. “Warrior, lover, ally, friend. The connection we’ve formed has been deeper than I could ever have envisaged.”
“So, that bargain you made with me paid off.” I squeezed his hands and pressed a soft kiss on his lips.
“Don’t think I didn’t hear you complaining to the Fire Queen about having seen my cock.”
Heat rushed to my cheeks. Maybe I hadn’t changed so much after all. “You listened?”
“You know what they say about old habits.” Hi
s laughter filled my head.
I snorted. “It’s not like I could say you’ve got a small dick, especially since you already flaunted your huge erection in Queen Mera’s bedroom.”
“Let me try one more thing.” He released my hands, drew back and pressed his palms on the front and back of my head.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“This is the longest we’ve stayed connected, and I thought I caught a glimpse of black string in your mind.”
My brow creased. “Does it represent something?”
“Only that it shouldn’t be there. Can I pull it out?”
I shuddered. “Please.”
I felt a dull tug at the back of my consciousness, and images spilled out. Most of them mirrored what Hades had shown me before, but they were from Persephone’s point of view. My breaths turned shallow. I had no idea if these were memories or my imagination.
“Are you all right?” Hades asked.
“Keep going,” I whispered into the bond. “I think I’m remembering something.”
“Good.”
With a few more tugs, even more recollections filled my mind. There were too many for me to grasp and cascaded though my consciousness like a tidal wave threatening to pull me to the bottom of the sea. I swam against them, trying not to drown, but everything went still.
“Kora?”
“I’m all right,” I said, my breaths ragged. “But there are too many memories for me to process.”
“Your Majesties?” Healer Iaso’s voice pulled me out from being submerged. “I would advise against unleashing thirty thousand years’ worth of experiences at once.”
Hades released his hands from my head, withdrawing his warmth. My entire body sagged against him.
“How did you manage to do that?” I stared at him, my eyes wide, my pulse pounding between my ears.
“You’ve reunited your soul with your body.” Hades’ eyes were penetrating, as though he was trying to sift through my mind to see which of my memories he’d unleashed. “The younger vessel didn’t have anything of me in her head.”
“Of course.” I blinked spots from my eyes “Thank you for this. It’s going to take a while, but at least I have something of my past.”
