As her hand passed over his nose and in front of his lips, he quickly kissed her palm.
Persephone drew her hand back, startled and relieved, and listened to the sound of their breathing, the only noise now as the horses charged silently forward into the abyss. Persephone felt the heat of his face, the shortening of his breath against her cheek. She angled her head as he turned toward her and captured her lips. Aidon’s arm closed tighter around her and she melted into his embrace with a tiny moan, feeling his mouth hot against hers, sighing against her lips in relief. She kissed him back, shy at first, then eagerly when he responded to her.
Her fingers bunched in the dark curls of hair cascading across his cloak. His lips possessed hers gently, nipping and pulling, his kiss filled with relief, need and an anxious hesitancy that flowed into her from every place her skin came into contact with his. Persephone was suddenly very aware of her naked body wrapped around him. Her hands felt the pulse and cord of tendons in his neck and shoulder. Her ankle brushed against his thigh. His free hand pressed into her back and she leaned onto his breastplate, shaking nervously. Aidon broke away from her to kiss her cheek and neck, and then lightly pulled on her earlobe with his lips.
“Don’t be afraid, sweet one,” he said quietly, sending a shiver through her. “We’re only passing through Erebus. The light will return.”
“My dress—”
“—and your crown. I apologize. Nothing mortal from your world can pass through the fire on the way to the Other Side.”
“Wh-why… Aidon… Why did you take me like this?”
“You were in grave danger,” Aidon said, relieved to hear his name on her lips. “I had no other choice.”
He tightened the reins and leaned toward her, feeling her legs locked around his waist. Persephone pressed against the front of him, and need started to consume him. Heat flowed from between her legs, and the scent of her body enveloped him. She was still drenched from their time together in his sacred cypress grove. He felt the muscles of his stomach clench as instinct drew his entire body closer to the source of that heat.
Aidon kissed her, relishing the softness of her lips, the feel of her fingers weaving through his hair. Locking her arms and legs tightly, she copied him, kissing his cheek and earlobes. She pulled on one of them with her lips, tasting the edge with her tongue. Persephone listened to him take a long, ragged breath as he arched toward her, his hissed exhale grazing the shell of her ear and sending heat through her.
Persephone shivered, repeating his words in her head. Erebus… the Other Side…
“Who are you?” she whispered low into his ear.
“I am Aidoneus,” he whispered back.
Ice ran down Persephone’s spine.
Aidon…
Aidon…
Aidoneus…
Hades Aidoneus Chthonios, Polydegmon. The Unseen One. Receiver of Many. Ruler of the Other Side and Lord of the Dead…
Aidon crushed his lips against hers before she could respond. Persephone surrendered, opening to him and racing her tongue across his teeth, trembling. He moaned and smoothed his hand down her back to calm her. He is… he is… Her mind couldn’t, wouldn’t process it.
I am your lord husband. The lover from her dream, who possessed a tender fire, who had inflamed her, entranced her, awakened her, was none other than… She felt herself burning for him as her mind battled between the truth of the man encircled by her naked body and the feel of his tongue tasting and possessing her.
His hand rounded over one cheek of her rear and gripped her flesh as she returned his deeper kiss, savoring him. Persephone mewled a soft moan into his mouth, feeling his hand drift lower, fingers brushing lightly over her vulva. He pulled back on her bottom lip with his teeth, before plunging his tongue into her mouth. As he canted his head, he curled one digit forward to caress the wetness of her crease, cupping her intimately, hearing her mewl at his touch. He sighed and broke off the kiss suddenly, leaving her gasping.
“I’m sorry.” His hand left her for a moment, reaching below her sex as he lifted the front of his short tunic and moved his loincloth aside. Persephone felt him grasp her below the tailbone, his fingers burying into her flesh. “I wish there were more time and some other way.”
She didn’t understand what he meant until she felt herself sliding imperceptibly down his body, a hard heat butting up against her entrance. Every jump of the chariot slid her closer to him until that heat parted her folds, perched outside her gate. She remembered the wedding in Eleusis and the feel of him pressed against her in the dream. Her eyes shot open and she searched in the dark for his.
The faintest of light grew underneath them, finally showing Aidon’s face. He looked at her with a gentle intensity; his eyes dilated dark with passion and determination. She eased against him and sunk lower as he pressed closer, lingering at her core, throbbing against her, then a slow stretch as he slipped a fraction deeper.
Aidon looked at her as she stared up at him. The growing light framed lips swollen from his kisses, a thin Grecian nose, and wild and wide pale blue eyes. He heard her heart beating, listened to her shallow breathing. He felt her open to him with a shiver and a gasp, and her flesh start to envelop and close around his, heat pouring out from her in this final moment.
Eyes locked to hers, Aidoneus quickly thrust upward.
…and now she was his Queen.
Persephone cried out in pain and squeezed her eyes shut, stars trailing behind her closed lids. The length of him sent fire through her as she struggled to stay still and not make the throbbing of her torn barrier worse. The fullness stretching her made her legs shake around his waist, offering no quarter against how completely he possessed her. Persephone realized that he had not moved within her at all as she adjusted to him. She slowly opened her eyes and looked up at him; his head was tilted back, his face strained, his eyes shut, his breathing shallow.
Aidon lowered his gaze to her, pleasure and remorse feuding within him. But above all else, he could feel the exquisite pressure of her— surrounding, enclosing, the heat within her seeping into him. He gripped the reins with his free hand and watched her face, not moving until her pain subsided. Aidon kissed away a tear from the corner of her eye, and muttered half-formed words against her skin that wavered between an apology and a prayer. Her breathing started to grow ragged as his lips trailed down her cheek, searching for hers.
Trembling, she kissed him back, her heart at war with itself. Maiden no more. The man from her dreams that she desired so, who had caressed her in Nysa, who had just consummated his union with her in the dark, suddenly, fully, completely joined with her was… Hades.
Her anxiety melted in searing heat as he withdrew ever so slowly and reclaimed her gently. The pain dulled. She felt him touching every nerve within her, pushing upward, unfamiliar pleasure shooting through her. Her arms tried to gain purchase on his shoulders, holding him closer to her. Persephone willed herself to look at him, to know him, to see the face that had burned itself into her dreams— the face of the man who burned inside of her. His gaze met hers with the same intensity.
She instinctively squeezed around him and saw his eyes roll back and close. A low growl emanated from deep in his throat. Persephone met his next thrusting response to her with a sharp gasp of pleasure. The pain dissipated into the background as he pressed into her again, forming a rhythm between them. It was too much— too raw to look and feel and know all at once. Persephone closed her eyes and kissed him again, feeling— choosing to feel. She moaned into his mouth, everything but their joined bodies disappearing and falling away as he held her to him and she held him within her.
Persephone raked her fingers through his thick black curls of hair and felt his beard graze and chafe her chin as their tongues mated in concert with their bodies. She broke away and he gasped for air. He rested his forehead on hers and she locked eyes with him again. Aidon pushed into her, their breathing becoming one, her fingers interlacing behind his neck to pull ba
ck and see him. The angle forced him deeper and she cried out, feeling his fullness within her, her insides coiling again, reaching.
His eyes darted across every inch of her body, watching her breasts rock back, the liquid flesh moving of its own accord. Aidoneus saw surrender cross her face and felt her tightening around him with every thrust. He brought her against his body, looking deep into her eyes. “Persephone…”
Shuddering against him, she tilted her head back and exposed the long line of her neck. He kissed it as she rocked forward, moaning wordlessly, rippling around him, her fingers clawing his neck, heat pulling and stroking his shaft as he made his final thrusts into her depths. Molten fire shot through him rising from where they were joined, arching his spine and erasing all conscious thought, the sharp pleasure of it shocking him. Aidon threw his head back and cried out loud enough to nearly spook the horses. His shuddering body matched hers as she clung to him.
They stilled. In the distance, the outlines of his kingdom came into view. They were nearly there, and his shattered thoughts started to piece themselves back together, considering the gravity of what had just been done. He focused on her. Persephone. His wife. Aidon wrapped the heavy cloak around them once again, cradling her, protecting her. Her eyes fluttered closed.
Very slowly, he slid out of her with a shudder, the cool air hitting his softening flesh. Her shaking legs disentangled from his waist and her body started to go limp, overwhelmed and exhausted. Aidoneus held her close. The arm she had wrapped around his neck draped outside the cloak, her head craned back against his shoulder. Her breasts rose and fell in shallow breaths.
The River Styx came into view, its calm light caught in the afterglow of the setting sun in the living world above. The horses started to slow, the ground looming into view. Aidon landed them in the great stable courtyard and brought the chariot to a halt, finally testing his shaking knees. Behind the cover of his cloak, he adjusted his loincloth and smoothed down the front of his tunic, both stained with their combined essence and her blood. Persephone breathed lightly into the crook of his arm.
Aidon unclasped his cloak and brought the other side around her, covering her slowly so he didn’t wake her. He wrapped Persephone in its dark and heavy folds; her bare feet protruded from the edges. Kneeling down with one hand still supporting her shoulders, Aidoneus brought the other under the crook of her knees, lifting her into his tired arms.
Persephone turned toward him in her sleep as he crossed the length of the courtyard to the dark gates and corridors beyond.
6.
Waiting dormant for untold aeons, the seeds took hold of the gray earth. They burst upward, writhing through soil made alive and fertile only for them. Carefully, the sprouts broke the surface, stretching. One pale leaf appeared after the other as they took their first breath and came to life. Each gasp for air grew a new branch as fragile as the gray flowers above them. They quickened and strengthened; sprouting new life, green, thriving…
Warmth.
The first sensation that Kore could feel was warmth. She lay with her eyes shut against the dappled flickering light. It had been a dream. The scent of warm olives hung about her. She had fallen asleep in the sunlight, under an olive tree in Nysa, and all this had been a dream. Mother would be there any minute.
But the ground under her was soft— too soft. It bunched in Kore’s hands in waves of warm spun wool smoother than any chiton she had ever worn. Her feet lay under it. It was tucked around her breasts.
She opened her eyes. There was no sunlight. What greeted her instead was the light of small oil lamp flames, hundreds of them, each housed in a separate niche in the wall, stretching upward in a cascade of light and perfuming the room with olive. She shifted. As Kore moved she flinched in pain, feeling the heat of the path Hades had blazed inside her. She muffled a sob.
Kore. Maiden. Maiden no more.
Her hand flew over her mouth. All her life she had been Kore. But in the mortal tongue, Kore meant ‘maiden’, and as she felt the soreness overtake her center with every movement, she knew she was no longer a maiden. No longer Kore. Kore had burned away in the fires outside Erebus. She was Persephone. What was she now to this world when she had always been The Maiden? And where was she in it?
Surrounding her, walls of solid black marble with fine white veins reached upward to a domed ceiling above the bed, their smoothly hewn surface glowing in the flickering lamplight. The room was at least three times taller than Persephone. The vaulted ceiling above her was a translucent white onyx filtering soft light from outside.
At the base of the softly lit dome were intricately carved images of beautiful nymphs playing in the fields, carrying a garland of asphodel. Cascading down from the lower edges of the carved garland, six soft panels of white fabric draped down and pooled on the floor around the bed. The diaphanous panels caught and softened the lamplight, mimicking sunlight through leaves. She traced the panels down to the ripples of black sheets surrounding and enveloping her naked body, then looked back up to the thick base of one of the columns, its fluted edges framing one side of a great ebony door.
A woman sat against the column, her eyes shut.
Persephone gasped and shrank back, pulling the sheet up to her neck. The woman was barefoot, a cascade of selenite beads woven through her red hair. Wispy white curls framed her face, and crow’s feet stretched from the corners of her closed eyes. She listened to Persephone, feeling confusion sweep over the young goddess.
“So many questions. You are full to overflowing, poor child. I have answers for you,” she said, opening her eyes and lifting them to meet Persephone’s. “You are in the Palace of Hades. I am Hecate. Aidoneus asked me to watch over you. Those answers come in a good order, I hope?” Hecate smiled gently. “I must leave you soon, though. Aidon wants to know as soon as you are awake, and I have that news to bring him now.”
While the questions to those answers had crossed her mind, Persephone had not yet said a word. She wrinkled her brow at this woman.
“Ah yes— your last question has an answer too. No, I have never coupled with him.”
“Stop that!” she snapped, realizing that the woman had been reading her thoughts.
Hecate inclined her head in a slight bow. “As you wish, my queen.”
“What is this place?” Persephone said, looking around the room again.
“This room was created for you long ago,” Hecate said, standing from her perch. Persephone gazed around the room. This was all hers? What did this woman mean by ‘long ago’? Hadn’t she just met Hades? She sat up again and winced. Hecate gave her a compassionate smile. “You will heal, and quicker than you fear. Stay here, child, and rest yourself well. The journey through the earthen depths is long and… tiring.”
“How long was I asleep?”
“A handful of hours. It’s the middle of the day,” she said, opening the ebony door.
“But the sun was setting a few hours ago. How can it be daylight?”
“This is the Other Side,” Hecate said as she left the room, “we pass our days when it is night above.”
Persephone swallowed hard. She was in the Underworld. Lord Hades rules the Land of the Dead…
She puzzled how a place deep under the earth could have any kind of night or day. She covered her body again with the sheet and looked through the opening door as Hecate disappeared from the room. The bedroom opened into a large antechamber, with ceiling and walls of solid, smooth amethyst illuminated by the soft light entering through the columns outside.
Persephone turned to the delicately carved ebony chair and raised table next to the bed. She gathered the sheet around her and slowly walked over to the chair, seeing a length of fine black cloth with a gold braided belt folded over it. Beside the garment, a necklace and two fibulae were laid out for her. The golden jewelry was set with rubies, fire opals, and garnets, and it glowed even in the gentle light. The gems were arranged in the same shape as the fateful narcissus she had picked in Nysa befo
re the earth cracked open beneath her.
Persephone wrapped the sheet around her and picked up the necklace with shaking hands. She raised it to her throat and jewels cascaded perfectly across her collarbone and the top of her breasts, as though the necklace were designed to fit only her. She looked up and saw her reflection in a long mirror of polished hematite. The sheet slipped from beneath her arms and fell to the floor, and she stood staring at her naked form draped with blood red jewels. She shuddered and unclasped the necklace, nearly dropping it on the table. Persephone picked up the sheet and pulled it around her, feeling more naked than she had ever felt in her life.
When I take you as my queen, Persephone, your crown shall be every jewel in the earth. Every ounce of its wealth will be your adornment…
She sat back down on the bed and shuddered. Was this how the Eleusinian woman had felt after her wedding? And was she even married to Hades, or had he merely enjoyed her in the dark of Erebus outside his bonds? There was no ceremony, no words that bound one to the other. Tears fell on the sheet she clutched at her breast. She lifted the black cloth in her hands, buried her face in it and silently wept.
Persephone felt a hand stroke her shoulder, and looked up to see Hecate. She sobbed aloud, leaning her head onto the strange woman’s hip.
“You burn in many ways, many places, dear child, I know. It will be no worse, and then it will pass, and you will heal,” Hecate said, stroking her hair.
“My mother—”
“—Ill prepared you for what to expect of this day, and fought the Fates too long trying to prevent it.”
“Expect? None of this was supposed to happen! I— one minute I was— I was with him, and he tells me he will come for me tonight, then— then I picked a flower and— and—” Words disappeared as tears ran down her face and collected on the soft folds of Hecate’s peplos. The woman stroked her hair silently, letting her cry. “My mother was coming back for me! He could have waited at least that long. I didn’t even get the chance to tell her or say goodbye! She doesn’t know where I am,” Persephone said. “I don’t even know where I am.”
Receiver of Many Page 8
