Last Petal on the Rose and Other Stories

by Stephanie Rabig

  Her conversations with Artemis and Aphrodite and Hestia were the only things keeping her sane. That and the nights, when her mother slept and she herself could do her best to imagine she was in a different bed.

  “Come in,” she said. “So what are the latest stories from Iris?”

  “It doesn’t matter right now.”

  Persephone swallowed. Normally when Aphrodite came by, it was just like it had always been— she’d pass on the latest gossip from the Goddess of the Rainbow, complain about how she still couldn’t make Artemis ‘get her priorities straight’, make a few not-so-subtle hand gestures as regards to Zeus, and they’d laugh and share some of Hestia’s cookies and things would feel like they once had.

  Aphrodite sat down on her bed and patted the space next to her, and Persephone reluctantly sat down next to her. She glanced around nervously, half-expecting to see her mother peering in her bedroom window again to try and overhear what was going on.

  “You’ve put on a fine act,” Aphrodite said. “One would almost think you don’t mind being home.”

  “I don’t,” Persephone said. Her mother too-happy was at least better than her mother moping around and griping at Zeus if she got a report from any of the other Deities that Persephone seemed ‘ungrateful for their efforts’ to bring her back home. Zeus had told her the last time it had happened that if she wasn’t happy here, it was probably just because she was feeling lonely, and he would be more than happy to help with that.

  Since then, it had been cheerful smiles and jokes anytime she was within sight of the others.

  “I have a charm from Hephaestus,” Aphrodite whispered, lifting up a silver-and-pink charm from around her neck. “To anyone listening, it sounds like we’re discussing Iris’s latest crush.” She took Persephone’s hands. “Speak freely, sweetheart.”

  “Oh, Aphrodite,” Persephone whispered, embarrassed but unsurprised to find tears coming to her eyes. “I…I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Then I will ask—is it true that you’ve brought the food of the dead to Olympus? I imagine it’s tempted you, but would you truly be happy in the midst of so much darkness? I have been there once and…frankly, it is not a place I would ever willingly return to.”

  “I would,” Persephone said.

  “Then eat the pomegranate,” Aphrodite said. “Bind your soul there.”

  “I can’t. His realm is…I know you don’t think so, but it’s beautiful. When you visited you must not have seen the Diamond Caverns; you would love them. I could hear the voices in Tartarus, and speak with Charon. I belonged there, Aphrodite. And the people…there are so many. Heroes and scholars and wonderful, ordinary folk. I can’t risk them.” Seeing the offended look on Aphrodite’s face, she smiled. “No, not even for love.”

  “I’ll forgive your blasphemy this once,” she teased. “Tell me about him.”

  “He’s a flirt,” Persephone said. “I never would’ve expected it. That still takes me by surprise sometimes. I know he can be intimidating, but he’s such a gentle man.” Then she grinned, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “Except when I don’t want him to be.”

  Aphrodite laughed. “Ares is the same way! I swear he believes he’s going to break me somehow.”

  Persephone blinked in surprise, unable to associate anything kind with the gruff God of War. But then, perhaps Hades wasn’t the only one most of the Deities held misconceptions of. “How did you two get involved, anyway?” she asked. “I never even suspected; the two of you are so different…”

  “Different like the God of the Dead and a daughter of the Harvest?”

  “Something like that,” Persephone admitted.

  “It was actually the night after Zeus engaged me to Hephaestus,” Aphrodite said with a frown. Though the two of them had been on perfectly friendly terms with each other before, after Zeus declared that Aphrodite needed to ‘settle down’ and ordered her married to the steadfast God of the Forge, she and Hephaestus had barely spoken to each other. “I was furious, he was keyed up after a fight with some mortal army or another, and, well…I don’t think either of us expected it to last past that night. But who can say, really?” She shrugged. “What about you two? Had you met before he took you away, or did you just leap into his arms and flutter your eyelashes?”

  “We’d met!” Persephone said with a laugh. “We talked several times in my meadow, and—”

  “Talked?”

  “Yes, talked,” she said, playfully bopping Aphrodite on the nose with her index finger. “Nothing happened. We almost kissed once. I think. I wanted to,” she murmured. “I miss him. But after the way I left, after what I brought down…I don’t know if he would want me to come back,” she confessed.

  Aphrodite straightened her shoulders. “You left, then? He didn’t throw you out after the attack?”

  “No. But—”

  “Persephone. He faced down Zeus’s wrath to keep you. Some of us can only dream of that kind of devotion.”

  From anyone else those words would’ve sounded envious, but Aphrodite was so purely, genuinely happy for her that she could do nothing but hug her.

  “I’ll help you,” Aphrodite said quietly.

  She didn’t give a full explanation for the words, simply gave her another hug and then left.

  *~*~*

  Without the Messenger God on his side, it was nearly impossible for Hades to gain any information on how Persephone was doing. He could guess, but he didn’t get any confirmation until Aphrodite herself ventured into his realm.

  For a few seconds he could only stare at the Goddess. She was bright and shining up on Olympus, but down here she seemed to have a full aura about her. Her close-cropped blonde ringlets shone like the sun, and he remembered staring up at the world above with Persephone and watching the snowflakes fall.

  “Aphrodite,” he said, bowing slightly in greeting. She looked around them, and he couldn’t help notice the slight wrinkling of her nose. For a Goddess who loved the finest of beautiful things, his realm must be a travesty. Normally he might feel at least a little insulted; right now he only cared about one thing. “You have news of Persephone?”

  “I had to grant Hermes a kiss to come down here without him tattling to Zeus.”

  He winced. “I’m sorry.”

  “There is still no guarantee he won’t change his mind about telling of my visit. You should act quickly.”

  “I cannot,” Hades said miserably. “If I do, Zeus will destroy every shade in my realm. They were still themselves, Aphrodite. They still knew their families; still loved. Now…”

  “I know,” she said, grief passing over her face. “And would that I could help, but even I cannot reverse the Lethe’s effects. Zeus knows you fear harm coming to your people. What does Zeus fear?”

  She watched his face as he thought for a moment, and then realization dawned. She smiled.

  “As I said, act quickly.”

  *~*~*

  When the ground opened up on Olympus, it nearly took one of the Muses down with it. Terpsichore tried in vain to get to solid ground, her squeal of surprise turning into a yelp of terror as she plummeted. A moment later she appeared again, Hades holding tight to her hand. The instant she regained her footing she scrambled away from him, inspecting every inch of her hand for the decay that was said to spread at his mere touch.

  Paying her no further attention, Hades looked around at the gathering Deities. “I’ve come for what’s mine.”

  At the back of the growing crowd, Demeter clutched her daughter’s shoulders tightly, cowering behind her. “Oh, Zeus curse him! After all these centuries, he’s after the throne.”

  “No,” Persephone said, her heart feeling lighter than it had in months. “He’s after me.”

  Aghast, Demeter pulled Persephone around to face her. “Come on, quick. We’ll hide you. We’ll—”

  “No!” Persephone exclaimed, stepping out of reach of her mother’s grasping hands.

  “Persephone…�
�

  “Mother.”

  There were so many things she could say, so many barbs and jibes that she’d thought of but never spoken. She could let them loose in a barrage now, insults and past hurts, telling her if she wanted to sleep with Zeus so badly then she should try it instead of sending her in as a surrogate. But then Persephone realized it would be pointless. Her mother would ignore them anyway, just like all of her other words.

  She didn’t need a wasted tirade. She had a chance to go home. “I’m done,” she said simply, and then she rushed to the front of the crowd.

  He was arguing with Zeus again, reminding her of the first time she’d ever seen him, but this time Zeus wasn’t wearing his usual condescending smile. He looked utterly furious, and lightning was crackling around his balled fists.

  “I am the one courting her,” Zeus growled. “If you think you’re going to steal her out of from under my nose again—” He didn’t finish the threat, simply took a couple of steps back, the lightning around his hands gathering into a solid bolt.

  “I knew it!” Hera crowed, grabbing his arm and dragging him back before he could fling or even fully create the weapon. “Since when would you care about Persephone otherwise? You don’t care about anyone except yourself, certainly not me, sitting here on Olympus while you’re gallivanting around with every nymph and dryad and—”

  “Enough!’ Zeus roared, turning back to Hades. The other God was smiling.

  “Before you try that again,” Hades said quietly, “you should know that if I do not safely descend back with her to the Underworld within an hour’s time, Charon will lower a rope ladder into Tartarus.”

  Zeus paled, and even Persephone balked a little at that, at the idea of the murderous Titans walking free among them again.

  “You’re bluffing,” Zeus said, as the other Deities whispered and fretted around him. “The Titans wouldn’t stop with us. They’d murder you as well.”

  “Let them. I’d rather face death than be without Persephone.”

  There was a wild light in his eyes, like he couldn’t quite believe he was saying such things in front of everyone, but even Eris, who was an expert at twisting people’s words, would’ve been unable to doubt the sincerity of his.

  “Fine,” Zeus snapped. “You can take the girl. But that doesn’t mean we won’t get her back.”

  Persephone took the enchanted pomegranate out of her pocket, thumbs digging into the skin and peeling it back, enjoying the dawning realization on Zeus’s face of what exactly it was she held. She removed several seeds as Zeus took an instinctive step forward, but before he could even say a word to stop her the seeds were in her mouth.

  As she swallowed them, she watched her skin change tone slightly, a little more blueish and a little less pink. She smiled at the change, and looked up to see that Zeus was glowering down at her.

  “You dare defy me?” he bellowed.

  “Yes.”

  “You have your realm, Zeus,” Hades said. “So long as you don’t interfere with ours, that won’t change.”

  Ours.

  She ran to him, giddily pressing her mouth to his, leaving no doubt in any of their minds whose idea this had all been in the first place. His arms tightened around her back, lifting her off her feet, and she grinned, lacing her arms around his neck as she kissed him again.

  “’I’ve come for what’s mine’?” she asked, arching an eyebrow. “Feeling a little possessive, were you?”

  “If the situation were reversed, I’m sure you would’ve said the same,” he said blithely.

  She had a vision of herself as the Queen of the Underworld, striking and powerful, demanding her will be obeyed. It made her smile.

  Several feet away, Aphrodite was smiling as well, a glowing aura of rose-gold surrounding her. Persephone had seen the glow before, when mortals she’d aligned gave in to the love she’d predicted for them.

  Glancing to Zeus, he saw her looking at Aphrodite as well, looking more grumpily resigned than angry. It was hard for anyone, even the King of the Gods, to hold on to fury when Aphrodite looked so happy.

  Demeter, however, managed it. Her mother glared at her, betrayal and pure hatred shining in her eyes. Though Persephone told herself that it didn’t matter, that she wouldn’t care, she had to look away, was suddenly overwhelmed with the wish that things between her and Demeter had turned out differently. If only she’d been the sort of Goddess her mother would’ve found it easier to love without conditions, then—

  No. She was her child. That should have counted for something.

  “Let’s go,” she told Hades quietly. He nodded, and the ground opened up beneath them, the ethereally familiar sensation of slowly falling distracting her from the loathing on her mother’s face.

  “You threatened Zeus,” she said, still not quite able to believe it.

  “I did,” he said, his tone very similar to hers. “Charon will be quite happy to see how this turned out.”

  She looked up at him. “He’s really at Tartarus? You mean you weren’t bluffing?”

  “No.”

  She should have been terrified at the idea of what everything could’ve come to; frightened at the depth of feeling that would cause someone to risk the entire world for her sake. Instead, she pressed closer to him, toying with the hair at the nape of his neck. “I love you.”

  Persephone wished that everyone who’d ever characterized him as hardhearted or cold could have seen the smile he gave her then. “I love you, too.”

  When they finished their descent to the Underworld, Persephone looked around and abruptly found herself near tears.

  “Are you all right?” Hades asked, hugging her to his side.

  “Yes. Yes, I’m fine,” she whispered, reaching up to dash a tear off her cheek. “I’m just… I’m home.”

  *~*~*

  So it was that Persephone became Queen. Remembering the mortals she once knew, she gave a fair chance to those who were brave and skillful enough to enter the realm of the dead. Others who descended but who showed a pompousness that reminded her of Zeus were unceremoniously thrown out, if she were in a forgiving mood. She was loved and feared by humanity in equal measure, and ruled fairly with her husband at her side.

  Dragon's Curse

  The brave Knight charged up the stairs, intent on reaching the sleeping Princess at the top of the tower. His Undead squire plodded up the stairs after him, barely affected by the weight of the Knight's provisions.

  She had a vague memory of her body Before, when its limitations would have left her red-faced and panting by now. Instead, she reached the top room of the tower only a scant moment after Alaric, feeling none the worse.

  He was standing next to the bed. Though the enchantment that poured life and strength back into her dead body had done away with much of her higher brain function, 432 still felt a flare of curiosity, and stepped closer to see the sleeping Princess.

  An enchanted rest had kept her young and beautiful, kept her body in the same type of stasis as 432's. But the magic behind her sleep was stronger than the submerging liquid that 432 had to revisit every year; the Princess's skin was a healthy brown, not faded to the same blueish-gray color like 432's, and her chest still rose and fell with breath. Her black hair shone in the sunlight coming in from the window, as thick and healthy as it had surely been when she'd fallen under the spell.

  Alaric spared her a perfunctory glance. "Fine job, squire. You may sit and rest, if you need to."

  She didn't need to, but it was still a request from the one who'd bought her, and so she was compelled to obey. There were no chairs in the room, so she merely slid the heavy pack off her shoulders and dropped to the ground.

  Their trek through the Great Forest had been a hard one. Alaric had fought off Cave Trolls, wild boars and, in one memorable instance, an irritated water sprite. And their journey was but half over. They had to make it back to the castle with the Princess.

  At one time, Alaric had told her, he would have had f
ar more company than just hers. When Princess Anneliese's family had still been alive, Princes and dozens of Knights and warriors had helped each other through the Great Forest,, traveling in enormous entourages, certain that one of them would prove to be Anneliese's true love.

  But nothing had come of their efforts, and as the years turned to decades, the King and Queen lost all hope that the curse could be lifted. The Princess's younger brother had grown up and eventually taken the throne, and then his daughter ruled, and then that daughter's son. In time, waking the Princess seemed less like a dangerous challenge and more like an exercise in futility.

  "Luckily," Alaric had said with a grin, "I happen to love exercises in futility."

  The sound of a low curse snapped her out of her thoughts, and she came very close to cursing herself. After all the work to get here, and she'd nearly missed the moment they'd come for.

  Granted, she was almost certain Alaric's kiss wouldn't wake the Princess, but what if it did? He would be hailed as a hero. Some of the attention would fall to her since she'd accompanied him, and perhaps one of the well-wishers would be able to restore her to life, or at least help fill in these damnable gaps in her memory. If it wasn't something Alaric had directly told her then her memories seemed to flutter just out of her grasp, teasing her with brief images or snippets of conversation, never holding still enough to let her make sense of it.

  Then she realized that Alaric had cursed because he'd come to a particularly stubborn knot in Anneliese's bodice.

  "Sire?" she gasped, and he turned, thankfully looking more startled than angry at her outburst.

  "Yes?"

  The words 'don't do that' lay thick and heavy on her tongue; she well knew the punishments for challenging your owner. Being sold to a different buyer was the best possible outcome. She'd heard tales of Undeads being dropped back into their graves while still conscious, left to wait in the ground until the submerging liquid wore off and left them dead once more. "You... Are you—" she stammered, and he smiled.