Receiver of Many

by Rachel Alexander

  “You said you loved me before you were shot,” she said, desperately trying to push those thoughts from her mind. “How long?”

  He sighed. “There’s no easy way to answer that. I was often and correctly referred to as cold and hard-hearted for most of my life. I buried the need to experience love, and with it every other emotion, so I could survive— so all of us could survive. And that instinct didn’t leave me once my imprisonment and the war were ended. But throughout the aeons it took to accept the lot I received, I would often reflect on who you would one day become— and how very much you would mean to me. I often thought about you. I even… I dreamed about you sometimes. If that was… as close as I could come to feeling love, then…” He trailed off and looked down. He’d swore on the Styx to tell her.

  “How long?” she whispered.

  “Persephone…” Aidoneus waited, made sure his wife’s eyes met his, that he had her full attention before he dared to say it. “Persephone, I have loved you and only you for forty thousand years. And I will love you and only you until the stars are shaken out of the sky.”

  She took in the full weight of what he said and blinked back tears, wondering how someone who called himself cold and hard-hearted could say that— or feel that. Hades had loved her since she was born. Since before she was born— since the moment she, Persephone, came into existence. “Aidon,” her voice finally cracked from her dry throat, “I don’t know what I can say to that. I mean, what can I say? Compared to how long you’ve… loved me, I’ve only known you for the blink of an eye. Do you think me cold?”

  “No,” he said, pacing away from her and looking at the floor. “Maybe. I can be patient, though. I’ve waited this long, haven’t I?” he said with a pained smile. “With every fiber of my being, I already know what you feel. But I should never have demanded that you voice it; that’s for you to decide when you’re ready. It was arrogant and presumptuous of me to force it from you. For that, I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry I slapped you; and I’m sorry for the things I said to you in anger,” she blurted out in return. Aidon cautiously sat down on the divan across from her and leaned forward.

  “Well, I wasn’t too happy about you striking me,” he said, eyebrows raised, “but I’m quite sure that what I said in the heat of the moment was unpardonable. Believe me, for your part you’re forgiven.”

  “No, Aidon, it wasn’t… unpardonable. I mean, you were repeating my words.” She relaxed, her worst fears unfounded and dissolved. She looked down at the pomegranate blossom and nervously picked it up again. “I was so afraid of you after I struck you. That’s why I screamed for you to leave.”

  “Why were you afraid of me?” he said softly.

  “Because of how you could have punished me.”

  “Punish—” He drew back in disgust. “I would never do such a thing. As for the slap and what I said to earn it, I honestly mistook our… ahhh… way of resolving our argument for forgiveness. I was caught up in lust, and didn’t realize you were still upset at me,” he said. Aidon closed his eyes. “I acted like a beast.”

  “Did… did you enjoy it?” she said meekly.

  Gods above, I’m only male, he thought. Of course I enjoyed it. “Persephone, I—” Aidoneus pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers before running his hand back through his hair. “Listen, I’m not going to bend my oath to you any further than this, but could you please grant me one favor?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can you answer that question before I do?” he said, visibly wincing.

  “I…” Her cheeks flushed a deep pink and she worried her bottom lip between her teeth. It was all the answer Aidon needed. They shyly looked away from each other, both aflame with the memory of it.

  He spoke first. “Obviously not the circumstances, but I enjoyed the passion of it.”

  Persephone nodded, still avoiding his gaze. “Same for me,” she muttered under her breath. “But… I feel like I shouldn’t have.”

  He cleared his throat and folded his hands in front of him. “Well, this is our marriage. I’m fairly sure that we get to decide what things we should and shouldn’t enjoy together.”

  “That’s not how it works, you know.”

  He looked up at her, confused. “How so?”

  “The husband decides the workings of the marriage.” She swallowed. “I mean, I was actually surprised that you didn’t come to my bed these past three days. You were within your rights to—”

  “This is not the world above,” he raised his voice pointedly, interrupting her with an irritated scowl, then shook his head. “The scales have been tipped so far out of balance, and my realm deals with the consequences of that disparity daily. Females are chattel up there, and it’s getting worse every century. I would betray every principle I ever held if I consigned you to that lot,” he said.

  “My mother, and the rest of the gods, they don’t see it your way.”

  “The Olympians see the souls for a few fleeting years. I spend aeons dealing with their problems when they come here, and trust me, the mortals’ lives are a mess.”

  “I know nothing else, though, and I don’t understand why you are so convinced that things should be different.”

  “Because I’m not like the other gods, Persephone.”

  “But Aidon, you do realize that I would expect you to say something exactly like that to try and win me over?”

  He pursed his lips. It was natural for her to mistrust him. “I’ll spend all the aeons this world has left proving you otherwise.”

  “You are not the only god who has tried to win over his wife with lofty promises. The Oceanids told me that when Poseidon courted Amphitrite, she refused him, saying that he couldn’t remain faithful to her. He spent centuries pursuing her. He said he would swear off all else, and would make her his consort. She eventually relented and married him. But she was a nymph of the sea and after the challenge of winning her was over, he tired of her and moved on. I know I’m not a nymph, but my divine role before I met you was so minor I might as well have been. What is to say that you won’t tire of me?”

  “Impossible. And to lay your fears to rest, let me assure you Persephone, you occupy no minor position in my life. You are my equal.”

  She blinked at him, wondering if she’d heard him correctly. “I cannot be your equal, Aidoneus. Three gods rule the cosmos. You, my father, and Poseidon. I hold no significance at all.”

  “Up there, perhaps. But you are with me, and the ways of the world above do not hold any sway down here. Persephone, everything I can possibly share with you is yours. In your own right, you are a goddess of the earth. But as long as you are with me, you will be queen of everything that lives and moves about, and you will have the greatest honor in the company of the immortals. Hera herself does not have one iota of what I wish to share with you.”

  She looked away from Aidoneus, shaking her head and set the flower beside her on the divan before she bruised its petals any more than she already had.

  “Sweet one, I do not want your place here to be ceremonial or merely as my bedmate. I want you to rule with me.”

  “It’s just not how it’s done…”

  “This is how it was done. It is the old way— the way things were before my father’s tyranny. And we rule a kingdom populated by old gods— far older than the Olympians. But by virtue of us being here, you and I are not Olympians anymore. You were born for this. The Underworld is our kingdom. Its rules are whatever we say they are, and it needs a Queen that sits as an equal to its King.”

  She felt her mouth go dry.

  “I forget these things sometimes; I let the ways of the world above, the way I spent the first half of my life, influence me too greatly. I should have told you the whole truth the moment I swept you into my chariot. I should have trusted you. You are not a little girl that needs to be sheltered— that much is plain and evident by the strength you possess and the responsibilities you’ve placed on your shoulders of your own accor
d. Doubting you, underestimating you, was my gravest mistake.”

  “So your solution to my… insignificance— and before you say anything, that’s honestly what I am compared to you, if you asked anyone in the world above— your solution is to make me your equal?”

  “I don’t have to make you anything,” he said, taking her hands in his. “What I’m saying, Persephone, is that you already are my equal.”

  She laughed nervously, wondering if he was truly out of his mind, driven to madness by his long years of isolation from the world above. She looked above them at the intricately arranged diamonds overhead.

  “Is it really so strange for you to hear? You and I know what they said to you.” His voice grew low and serious.

  She shuddered, remembering the Hundred Handed Ones, the many voices of the one called Kottos calling her full name from the Pit— calling her their queen. She thought about everything Merope had told her. “You really do see me as more than just your consort?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” He gingerly ran his thumb across her knuckles, tracing each soft rise and depression, searching Persephone’s face as he spoke to see if this small display of affection would be acceptable to her. He would understand if it were not. “Only the Queen of the Underworld could have commanded the Hundred Handed Ones as you did. Only a true ruler of Chthonia could have comforted a misplaced soul. And only Persephone, She Who Destroys the Light, is brave enough to tell Thanatos, Death himself, upon meeting him for the first time, what his orders were and the speed at which he should carry them out for her,” he said with a playfully wolfish grin.

  “You want me to rule beside you as an equal, even if it means that you must give up—”

  “Sweet one, I’m not giving up anything. I have my place and always will. Your place was waiting for you. This realm needs a Queen— needs you as its Queen. And you, Persephone, have started stepping into your role with very little help on my part and in so much less time than it took me to embrace who I was fated to be. You’ve accomplished in less than a month what stubbornly took me aeons,” he said. Aidon squeezed her hands lightly, his thumbs now winding circles around the base of each of her fingers. “You are not the screaming Kore I pulled into my chariot.”

  It felt strange to hear that name pass through his lips, and the newness of it sent a thrill through her. Not because she wanted him to call her that, but because she knew he never did and never would. Kore was not who she was anymore. He had seen that from the first. Aidoneus was the only being in existence who didn’t see her as a child. His rough thumbs traced the contours of her hands. Here he sat across from her, the Lord of the Underworld, rightful ruler of one third of the cosmos, treating her as his queen— no— as his mate and his equal. In all the time spent growing up and the millennia she walked the earth as the Maiden of the Flowers, she had never embraced her role in the world above with nearly as much passion as she had down here. She was Persephone Praxidike Chthonios. The Queen of the Underworld. And, she thought with a delighted quiver, the Queen of Hades, her husband.

  Maiden no more.

  Persephone stood up in front of Aidoneus and put her hands on his shoulders. He looked up at her from where he sat, not moving, not even breathing. She could easily read the fear in her husband’s face. He thought he’d said something wrong, had touched her too much, that she was getting up to leave, and would never enter this room or his private life again. The fear of losing Persephone forever was written in his eyes and across his forehead, though he was trying so very hard to mask it. And she knew just how to dispel those fears.

  Taking a step away from him, she reached behind her back and started untying the sash that girded her waist. Aidoneus didn’t believe what he was seeing at first. “Persephone…”

  Her heart raced for him, and it didn’t stem from any acquiescence or submission to him, nor any seduction. She desired Aidoneus completely and wanted to claim him as hers. He stared up at her, confused. She said nothing and let the girdle fall to the floor.

  “Persephone, what are you…”

  His breath hitched when she pulled the fibulae away from her shoulders and let the entire length of her peplos fall to her feet. She flung the pins out in either direction, hearing each one bounce across the stone floor on either side of the room. Her husband sat in stunned silence. She looked down at him. His breathing was shallow, his eyes squeezed shut. Persephone stood there, watching as his brow furrowed, his knees shook.

  “Aidon…” she whispered, “open your eyes.”

  This is a test, he thought. She’s testing my restraint… Fates, help me, I’ve gone too long without her… Aidoneus tilted his head up before he looked, hoping that what met his gaze would be his wife’s face, and not the curve of her hips or, Gods help him, her breasts. It made little difference anyway— her scent enveloped him. He stared directly into her eyes and whispered back to her. “What are you doing?”

  “I am your wife, am I not?” she said softly and moved one knee onto the divan beside his hip, then brought up her other leg until she straddled him and settled in his lap.

  “You are,” his voice ground out, trying desperately to ignore the heat of her body pressing against his stomach. “But—”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him softly on the lips.

  “—Persephone—”

  She kissed him again.

  “—you said—”

  She kissed his neck.

  “Persephone, stop! Please…” His voice rose to an anguished peak, his face contorted and unsure. He was still too afraid to look anywhere but at her face.

  She pulled back and looked into his eyes, unnerved by the fresh tension in his body and voice. “Yes?”

  “What are you doing?” he repeated, his tone tempered but still strained. “You told me very clearly that you didn’t want to have sex with me tonight. I’m bound to honor that, but… I…”

  “My sweet Aidoneus,” she said, brushing her hand across his worried forehead. She stroked her fingers over his scalp until they reached the clasp holding back his raven black curls. She pulled it loose and heard it hit the floor twice and roll away. “I don’t want to have sex with you.”

  Frustration licked through him. “Then why are you—”

  “I want to make love to you.” She silenced him, and watched his eyes go wide. “And, and I want to…” Persephone swallowed hard and looked away, embarrassed, before leaning closer to his ear with a fevered whisper. “And I want to fuck you.”

  He felt lightheaded. Blood rushed from every part of his body to his loins so quickly he might have collapsed if he wasn’t already leaning back into the cushion of the divan. That word had never sounded so innocent or full of promise as when she whispered it. His fingers dug and twisted into the fiber of the sheepskin fleece underneath him. He refused to touch her just yet, instead enjoying the return of her soft lips to his, the taste of her tongue as she explored his mouth. Her hands caressed the sides of his face and brushed over the stubble on his cheeks and neck. She threaded her fingers through his hair, tilting his head back. Aidon shrank away from her. “Wait.”

  Persephone cupped his face in her hands. “My husband… it’s alright. In case there was any doubt in your mind, I forgive you for everything you said… everything we did. Do you forgive me?”

  “Of course I forgive you. But why now, Persephone? Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I can trust you now. Do you want me in your bed tonight?”

  “I would be lying if I said ‘no’.”

  “Aidon.” She moved to kiss him again, but kissed the bridge of his nose as he leaned away at the last moment. “Aidon, I want this. Please. You are the only person I’ve ever had in my life who has treated me as anything other than a child. I can see it in your eyes— when you look at me, you see a woman. You love me; you actually love me. And not as your bedmate, or your queen consort even, but as your… your…”

  “Goddess,” he finished.

  She ran
her fingers through his hair. “I would never toy with your heart. But until I truly understand what I feel,” she said, her voice cracking, “can I at least try to love you the best way I know how? If you don’t want this, if this is too much for you…”

  He stared into her pleading eyes, then let go of the fleece covering the divan. His hands moved slowly over her thighs, and almost shook when they reached her hips, before finally encircling her waist. Persephone kissed him again, and Aidoneus met her with equal fervor this time, embracing her, his fingers tracing the ridges of her spine. She scraped her fingernails over his scalp and let them tangle at the nape of his neck once more to tilt his head back. She leaned over him as his arms locked around her bare skin and pressed her to his chest. Her lips came away from his and he whispered softly to her. “What way would you have me, my queen?”

  She pulled away and looked down at him, his eyes heavily lidded. “In your room—”

  “Our room.”

  “In our room,” she said, smiling. “Laying on our bed.”

  She pulled away from him, so he could stand up. He looked down at her and took her hand, bringing it up to his lips and kissing the back of her fingers before leading her to the carved ebony door on the opposite end of his— their antechamber.

  He pushed open the door and Persephone felt warmth flood out from inside. Unlike her room, or even the soaring vault of his antechamber, the ceiling was lower here— more intimate. It and the walls were embedded with innumerable large chunks of resinous amber, each piece a captured portrait of seeds and ferns, insects and leaves, and other once-living things now preserved forever in time. Their trapped figures danced and flickered in the light of a low fire burning on a raised obsidian hearth in the center of the room. The bedroom smelled of ancient evergreens, cypress, cedars, musk and spices that were all at once masculine and foreign. She shivered, feeling enveloped by aeons of his presence here. The fire consumed no fuel, but Persephone didn’t have to ask him how it burned. After the freezing night they spent in Nysa, she would recognize those orange flames anywhere. It was a small piece of the river of fire, the Phlegethon.