Persephone

by Kitty Thomas

  Chapter Three

  Hades was enraged that she would try to flee him. At the same time, seeing her snuggled up with Cerberus took the worst of the angry edge off. Of course she’d try to get away—at least until she realized how futile it was. The guards had known but hadn’t attempted to stop her. They all knew the dog would. And the farther she was allowed to get before the trap shut, the more quickly she would come to understand her predicament.

  The sooner she accepted things, the better for her.

  She stirred when he picked her up. “Hades?”

  He didn’t reply. He simply waited for her to finish waking up, and then he helped her onto his horse. Hers had become untethered and gone back to the castle on its own. Hades climbed on the horse behind her and urged the mare toward home.

  Tension radiated off her, but he didn’t seek to ease it. They were both silent during the ride through the forest and the meadow. He spent most of the trip thinking about the business in the Eastern Sector, mostly to keep his mind off the slim warm body pressed against his own.

  The problem could have been handled by someone else. It was a minor dispute between some of the beings that lived there, extremely boring. He could have left someone else to handle it and come back sooner, but he’d wanted to know what Persephone would do in his absence. And now he had his answer, though he couldn’t blame her. He’d try to escape this place, too.

  When they reached the castle, Hades helped her down from the horse and handed the reins to the groom to take care of, then he led her back inside the stone walls and up to his room.

  He left her and went out onto the balcony to think. He looked out over the edge. It was a huge and deadly drop-off into an abyss with jagged stalagmites waiting to rip open any fool who fell down there. Or it would be if anyone mortal and alive were to fall.

  Hades looked up at the sky then, at the moon and stars all maintained by magic. It was beautiful, but it was a dark and dreary sort of beauty. He couldn’t help wishing that he could enjoy the sunlight just once. Persephone felt like the closest he would ever get to sunlight, the closest he could ever get to life itself.

  He heard her tentative footsteps on the stone floor of the balcony. “Sit,” he said, forcing the hardness back into his voice. He didn’t turn until he heard her sit on one of the plush black loungers. Hades pulled up a chair and joined her. He looked at her for a long while. For once, he wasn’t bothered that so much in his world was black.

  The robe made her skin look luminescent in the moonlight. And that hair. He wanted to reach out and run his fingers through that hair.

  Instead, he crossed his arms over his chest. “Where exactly did you think you were going today, Persephone?”

  She looked down at her hands and shrugged.

  “Really? You insult me with lies on top of everything else? Tell me the truth.”

  “I wanted to go back home.”

  “You are home.”

  She flinched at that.

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to punish you for trying to escape.”

  “Are you going to chop off a finger?”

  She sounded more bitter than afraid, and he found himself unexpectedly relieved by it. He wanted to punish her. He wanted to turn her into a dark thing like him, something that craved all the things he did. But she seemed so fragile, so breakable. And some part of him couldn’t seem to remember that he was supposed to be getting even with Zeus and that he shouldn’t be soft with her.

  “Nothing so grim as that,” he said. But he could tell from the look on her face that she didn’t believe him. That was probably wise. From minute to minute he couldn’t decide what he wanted to do with her—what he was prepared to do with her.

  Hades withdrew a large slim box from his coat, it was the one thing he knew for sure.

  “What’s this?” she asked when he gave it to her.

  “A finger.”

  She dropped the box. “What?”

  Hades chuckled. “I’m fucking with you. It’s a collar. For you.” He picked it up and opened it to show her there were no body parts inside. She didn’t seem much more enthused by the box’s actual contents.

  “A collar?” she said uncertainly as she looked at the smooth silver band of metal cushioned inside the box. “I don’t understand.”

  Was she that naive or only playing at it?

  If Zeus hadn’t kept her from him, Hades wondered if he would have given her a crown instead. It would have been a more appropriate piece of jewelry for a queen, but all he’d been able to think about for hundreds of years was possessing her. And over time that desire for possession had turned to an irrational need for absolute ownership.

  He didn’t want some sweet delicate thing that he would pamper and shield from his darkness. He wanted his lovely goddess on her knees.

  “So I’m to be your slave.”

  She did understand. Good.

  Hades removed the collar from the box, unlatched it, and locked it around her throat.

  Quiet tears moved down her cheeks, but she managed to speak without the tears reaching her voice. “You should talk to your people. They think I’m the queen.”

  She shivered as Hades ran his fingers through her hair. He knew she would be unable to resist now that he was so close to her.

  “You are the queen to them. And they better treat you like it. If I find out anyone has shown you even the smallest disrespect, they will pay dearly.”

  Persephone seemed confused by this, but why should she be confused? Couldn’t she be his slave and their queen? Hades didn’t see the complication. It made perfect sense to him.

  “Will I ever see my family again? Or friends? Or Lynette?”

  She was being remarkably brave. For as fragile as she looked, it was as though there was a strong core of steel inside her.

  “You can never go back.”

  Her bravery faded almost as quickly as it had come on, and she began to sob in earnest. Hades fought against the urge to comfort her. There were places inside him, places frozen for centuries that this tiny creature could melt if he allowed her to get too close.

  She made him feel somehow powerless, and it was that feeling that strengthened his resolve. He would punish her. He would rule her. And she would submit sweetly to his every desire. Or else. He could never let anyone in who had the power to hurt him.

  You couldn’t trust people. Mortal or god. They would all find a way to take things from you. He’d learned that the hard way with Zeus and Poseidon.

  He couldn’t allow Persephone to become too much to him. He would enjoy her but keep her at a distance. He would break her just enough so that he could manage her—so she couldn’t manage him.

  “Come,” he said. “It’s time for your punishment.”

  “H-Hades… please. I won’t run again.”

  “Master.”

  “What?”

  “You will call me Master.”

  If she kept calling him by his name he was going to crumble and give her anything she wanted. And no daughter of Zeus could ever be trusted. Despite knowing she was an innocent in all this, Hades couldn’t help but feel the apple couldn’t fall very far from the tree. Underneath this sweet delicate exterior there must be something disloyal. He would never give her the chance to unleash it.

  “Persephone?” he prodded.

  She looked up, her bright blue eyes made somehow brighter by her tears. “Yes, Master?” she whispered.

  There was a mixture of satisfaction along with a tiny hard ball of pain inside him at hearing the helpless defeat in her voice. He could get drunk on that strange blend.

  He held out a hand. “Come.”

  She didn’t argue or beg him again. She just put her hand inside his and allowed him to lead her back inside. He took her out of the room and down the hallway to a separate large room he kept for play.

  There were souls down here who had arrived in the underworld so broken, so in need of punishment, that he’d brought them into this room to give
them what it was that they so desperately seemed to need. They were the lost souls—not quite bad enough to be sent to the lower realms, but not good enough to find any peace. It was mercy he offered them, a kind of absolution. And in those moments, he had been able to pretend he wasn’t so utterly and completely alone.

  Each of them had been resigned to her fate, whimpering sweetly under each implement of pain he wielded. When he was finished with each of them, they were able to move on to a better place in the underworld, having worked through their various issues and paid for their various misdeeds.

  But Persephone was something entirely different.

  She seemed far too innocent to deserve punishment for anything—even for running from him. Seeking freedom was hardly an unforgivable act. He could relate. He sometimes wanted it just as badly as she did.

  Hades kept the playroom bare when it wasn’t in use. All furniture, toys, and whipping implements stayed inside large closets, leaving the room one large open stone square. An enormous window on the south side of the room allowed the moonlight to shine in. He waved a hand and warm flames lit the torches along the wall.

  He guided her to the center of the room and unlatched the three silver clasps of the robe. She didn’t protest or fight him when he pushed it off her shoulders. He would give almost anything to know what she was thinking.

  He folded it and laid the thick soft fabric on the ground. “Kneel on the robe. You can lay your head down.”

  As if locked in a trance, she did what he asked. He crossed to the closet and took out a riding crop. When he returned to her, she was crying quietly, her small body trembling on the robe she knelt on.

  “You’ve never been physically punished for anything have you?”

  She shook her head. “No, Master.”

  He’d expected more fight from her, more resistance. But she must know it would only make things worse. The hopelessness of her situation must have settled in.

  “Is that because you never deserved to be punished or because those with authority over you were too soft?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Even if she had been punished for something, it wouldn’t have been like this, with her nude. He couldn’t pretend this wasn’t sexual for him—as it would be for her once she understood what had been taken from her just to keep her pure and hidden.

  “There was nowhere they could have hidden you from me that I wouldn’t have eventually uncovered. Fate doesn’t work that way.”

  She took a deep shuddering breath, and when it spilled out of her, Hades let the riding crop fall against her flesh. She gasped, as if shocked, but she didn’t cry or beg or speak at all.

  Maybe she was only trying to appease the man she no doubt still believed was crazy.

  Her pale skin reacted immediately to the bite of the crop, turning a lovely pink in the spot where he’d struck her. He wanted to run his tongue over its warmth and soothe the sting, but he wasn’t done yet.

  Hades made a row of pretty pink welts across her back. She flinched each time the crop sliced through the air. Each time it landed, he was rewarded with a new sound from her. A gasp, then a whimper, then a mewl. He wondered if he could teach and train her so that it turned into a moan.

  There were seven marks on her otherwise perfect skin. And now he knew. Not only did she need to eat like a human, she healed like a human. He was still reasonably certain her finger would have grown back eventually without her powers, but he was glad he wouldn’t have to find out.

  “Master, p-please,” she said.

  Ordinarily he wouldn’t allow begging to stop him. He couldn’t allow that manipulation. But she wasn’t manipulating him. It was a sincere plea from someone who had bravely accepted her punishment.

  He put the riding crop on the ground and sat beside her on the cold stone. There were far worse things he could have done, but he wanted to ease her into his world slowly. For as much as he wanted to use her to get back at her father, there was a piece of him that knew once his anger was sated, she’d still be here. And he needed her to be a whole being and not look on him with utter contempt and hatred.

  He might be afraid to let her in, but he still had to protect her to some degree. She’d been meant for him from the start. How could he break his toy in a fit of childish rage? He couldn’t. He had to be careful with her.

  ***

  Persephone had thought once Hades started he might never stop. He didn’t always seem altogether sane or present. She tried to be brave, hoping it would appease him, but the uncertainty of how far he might take things… She hadn’t wanted to play on his mercy—or the small bits of it she’d seen so far. Begging had worked to stop him from cutting off her finger. And now it had worked to stop the strip of leather he’d struck her with.

  But for how long would it work?

  She was afraid to overplay her hand, afraid he might work past whatever ambivalence he felt about hurting her. It was beginning to dawn on her that she was going to have to find a way to exist with this man in this awful underground place where the sky was just another lie—and not even a comforting one.

  She couldn’t convince herself that things would be better in the morning. There was no morning—no dawn to soften the edges of the fears that creep in at night. Somehow, she was sure the darkness was the worst of it.

  When Hades sat next to her on the ground and pulled her into his arms, she didn’t resist him. It was the first moment of real tenderness he’d shown her. She couldn’t even argue with herself about this. She didn’t want to resist or fight. This place just by virtue of its absolute crushing darkness was too exhausting all by itself. She had to have an ally here. Even if it was her captor.

  Escape was impossible. Since that was the case, all she could do was figure out how to make her existence here more tolerable. He seemed content for the others to see and treat her as the queen. That meant there was only one being down here she had to fear, so it seemed smart to her to get him on her side as quickly as possible, before he changed his mind about how the other beings here were to treat her.

  She jumped in his arms when his tongue moved over the welts he’d left on her. She couldn’t see them, but she could feel them. Each of them had been a sharp, penetrating sting at first and then a strip of bright hot warmth that felt like the only warmth in the underworld.

  His tongue was followed by lips, pressing soft kisses, then fingers stroking along her back.

  He’d made some of his intentions with her clear already. When he took her, would he be gentle like this. Would it be in his bed? Would he give her the illusion of romance? Somehow, she doubted it with the way he talked about hurting Zeus. And he was still convinced she was this goddess of spring he’d been looking for.

  The only hope Persephone now held of getting out of this place was that Hades would realize she was just a normal mortal and release her—if he didn’t feel she’d somehow tricked him.

  The longer he held her the more it felt as though inside the circle of his arms was where she was meant to be. She wanted to fight that thought, but fighting was so exhausting. Even the idea of it made her want to sleep for a thousand years. She wanted to make this easy on herself.

  And the way Hades was touching her right now made it so easy to want to get lost inside him, to pretend he was a man who could love and care for her and that this place wasn’t so bad.

  “Master?”

  “Hmmm?”

  Would her petty human needs begin to annoy him? “I’m hungry.”

  It didn’t seem like it was possible, but it had been hours since she’d last eaten. She couldn’t be sure with no sun to mark time and guide her but she felt as though she’d slept for a very long time with Cerberus. She must have for Hades to have been away dealing with whatever business he’d had before he’d come for her and brought her back to the castle.

  And how long had they been here in this room? It felt like forever.

  “Come downstairs to the dining hall when you’re ready. I’ll hav
e something good for you.” He got up off the ground and left her alone.

  When he’d left, it was like a fog of cold sadness swept over and around her. She felt so tired and sad all of a sudden.

  Persephone wasn’t leaving a big exciting life behind. But it had been warm and safe and comforting. She’d loved everything about it. She’d had a small studio apartment over a Chinese restaurant a couple of blocks from the flower shop.

  It was on a corner with a park right across the street. Because of this location, her apartment got a surprising amount of sunlight for being in such a big city with so many buildings everywhere fighting to crowd out the light.

  The rent had been low, they said, because of all the cooking smells she’d have to deal with. But she loved it. She’d filled the place up with plants that seemed to like the smell of the food as much as she did.

  The couple that owned the restaurant ran a special on lo mein and egg rolls on Wednesdays, and the old Chinese woman always overcooked that day. She always brought leftovers upstairs to Persephone along with a handful of fortune cookies.

  “Open the right one, you might find a husband,” she’d teased each week.

  They both knew a fortune cookie couldn’t do that, and Persephone hadn’t had the heart to tell the old woman that she didn’t think a husband was in her future. It didn’t feel like anybody else in the world fit her.

  Even in a city so big, she’d never felt that excited swept-away feeling she thought she was supposed to feel. She’d admired her fair share of male models and actors and construction workers as they’d drifted past the door of the flower shop, but it had never been more than a passing aesthetic admiration.

  She’d never felt the wild urge to try to flirt or get to know one of them or to do something more carnal.

  She hadn’t spoken to her dad in a couple of years, not since her mom died. They’d had a fight. They’d said some things. And they’d both been too stubborn to apologize and make it right. She’d run off to New York and left him with the farm. She knew her dad needed her—at least to talk to her. And now more than ever she wished she’d made things right while she’d had the chance.