Receiver of Many

by Rachel Alexander

  “Shh…” was all he replied, then stroked her hair gently and stood her up. He dipped the water thief into the basin and held it over her head, showering her with its cool contents. It soaked her scalp and fell through her coronet of braids, running in rivulets down her body. He paused to loosen her tresses once they were drenched, then took the sponge in his hand again and stroked her back rhythmically, calming her body, but not her mind.

  Aidoneus moved to her front and washed her neck and collarbone. The sponge rasped against the tender flesh of her breasts and she sucked in a breath. He held her at the small of her back and knelt in front of her, staring up at her with his serene, dark eyes. When the sponge trailed over her stomach, she shivered, though not from the cold.

  Her mind filled with the visions she had received in Tartarus: Aidoneus and Persephone, crowned King and Queen of everything above and below. His hand was upon her swollen belly, his fingers twined with hers. Everything changed to tatters of a ripped chiton and dirt and soot stains, embers flying around her and scorching her matted hair. The perspective in her recollection was different— terrifyingly real and different. Cold stone grated against her back. Her heels kicked against his muscular hips, her efforts to struggle in vain. Above her was Kronos, his eyes flinty and dark as he held her down and violated her.

  Persephone sputtered a loud cry, doubling over, unable to hold it in, her face red and her body shaking. His arm wrapped around her hips, holding her up, her knees wobbling. Aidon worked faster, brushing the sponge over her thighs while she balanced her weight on his shoulders. She wrenched forward, tears falling on his head as he knelt before her and washed her calves and feet. Rising quickly, he tossed the tinged sponge into the hearth, and held her fast against him, her cheek resting against his bare chest. Her ragged sobs mingled with the hiss of the flames in one ear, his heart beating against the other.

  “It’s over. Shh, Persephone, it’s over.”

  Her voice was muffled against the side of his arm, and she choked around another cry before she was able to speak. “Kronos-s,” she finally managed to say.

  “He cannot harm you,” he said. She felt his arms tense and his skin flush with heat. “I’ll see the world break before he lays a finger on you.” Aidon knew this pain far too well, having struggled to deaden himself to it over the aeons. Her breath hitched as it came out and she gasped in between each cry. “Sweet one, breathe with me, alright?”

  His chest rose under her head and he stroked her back until she mimicked him, taking in first large gulps of air, then long inhales through her nose. “It hurts,” she exhaled.

  “I know.” The same agony had washed over him a thousand times, every time he journeyed into the Pit or came face to face with his father. There were ways to remove it, and he could do so for her, if she let him. He brushed his hand over her hair and swayed with her in his arms, calming her. “Do you trust me?”

  The pools of her eyes were wet and deep when they met his. “What do you mean?”

  “I can help you sort through the pain. Not take it away entirely, but at least help you pass through it. It’s an exercise I learned as Hecate’s student,” he said quietly. “I don’t have her gift of foresight, but I can at least help you through this. Can you trust me?”

  She nodded silently and cast her eyes down. “What do I have to do?”

  He stepped back and bent slightly to rest his forehead on hers. “Open yourself to me.”

  Persephone shuddered and looked up at him, his eyes dark and fixed on hers.

  “Your private thoughts are yours,” he whispered. “I will not pry into them or take them. But I can at least help ease your turmoil.” Aidoneus waited for her to consent and heard her sniffle before she nodded and closed her eyes.

  She felt his fingers thread into her hair beside her temples. Beyond his touch she felt his presence sink in even deeper. Memories and visions were given a place and a name. She exhaled as the one containing the vision of her defilement was unwound and pulled apart, its power over her removed. Her shoulders slumped forward and she rested her support entirely upon him.

  “That’s it…” he whispered in encouragement, his eyes shut. “Just let it go.”

  Aidoneus sifted through her thoughts as though they were grains of sand. Within her consciousness, he found scattered yearnings for larkspur and roses, for her mother, the sunlight… and looming large, the well-guarded boundaries of thoughts and feelings tied to him. He couldn’t reach all of her pain. Much of it was inextricably tied to places he’d promised not to go. He felt his chest constrict when he realized that the pain was tied to him. Aidon scowled for a moment. His place in her thoughts was filled with fear and mistrust. Disquiet and sadness. He didn’t venture further. He’d promised her. His heart wanted nothing more than to strip that doubt and pain away from her, to sort through it all and reveal in perfect clarity that she had nothing to fear from him, and show her how much he loved her. But if he were to do that, he might as well have given in and lain with her by the Lethe after she’d temporarily lost her memories. It would be just as much a violation of Persephone as what Kronos had forced her to watch— worse in fact, since she’d put her trust in him.

  Persephone felt her breathing match his, slowing, her mind calming. He opened his eyes and she followed suit, feeling him gently retreat from her thoughts. His hands moved from the sides of her head and stroked her cheeks before his arms wrapped around her shoulders, drawing her to his chest. He exhaled and swayed again, rocking her.

  “Thank you,” she said, her voice small.

  “Of course.”

  “How d-did you— H-how come you’re so calm after… and I…”

  “Practice.” He brushed his thumb over the line of tears dried onto her face. “Experience. You witnessed what happened to me in the grove— Tartarus doesn’t leave me entirely unscathed. I just push most of it to the forefront instead of delaying it.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that, Aidon.”

  “You’ll find your own way. Leaving Tartarus in the Pit, sloughing off its hold, didn’t come easily to me at first, either. By the very nature of the place, it’s bent on chipping away at you and filling you with fear and grief every time you go down there. I should have prepared you for that better. But I was used to it— immune to it— and have been for aeons. You… you’ll get used to it too, sweet one.”

  Her eyes watered again at the tainted endearment.

  He looked down and thinned his lips, anger rolling through him at the thought of him saying that to his cherished wife. “You want I should call you something else now?”

  Persephone bit her lip. “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe a shortened name? I like it when you call me Aidon,” he said, smiling. “Sephia, perhaps?”

  “Sephia…” A diminutive of Persephone. She wrinkled her nose.

  “No?” He chuckled.

  “It’s pretty, but it’s not— I don’t want your name for me taken away from us. Especially not by him. I like that you call me ‘sweet one’.”

  “Then I will continue to do so until you tell me not to.”

  Aidoneus stroked her cheek and kissed the top of her head. This might be the extent of his role now, he considered, in her realm and in her life. To catch her when she fell. To heal her when she hurt. To comfort her when the burden of ruling the Underworld became too great. But he wanted more than that. His need for Persephone, his love for her, demanded it. Perhaps he would grow accustomed to this, just as he’d grown accustomed to the vivid nightmares that preceded and the emptiness that followed any visit to Tartarus. But knowing their relative status in each other’s lives, could she ever love him as thoroughly as he loved her? Did she think that his feelings for her were just a causality of the role given to him by the Fates? She had so much sadness attached to him, how could she truly care for him? Aidoneus put it out of his mind for now. Despite their weariness, he wanted to wrap himself up in her— to feel that intimacy with her that had become as necessa
ry as air. Without another word, Aidon supported her around her shoulders and scooped her up by the back of her knees, then carried her across the room to their bed.

  Persephone felt calmed by him, curled up against his chest, and comforted when he set her down and lay beside her. His caresses were warm and soothing, and didn’t arouse right away. Her body ached. She’d spent too much energy trying to be strong, trying to be Queen. Aidon shaped his hand to her curves, from her hip to her waist and upward. Removed from the heat of the fire, her skin had started to cool; his hand reached the side of her breast, and both their tips peaked. A throb started low in her belly when he traced her thighs from her knee to her hipbone. The palm of his hand was warm, and his touch feathered across her. This was soothing, but it usually set her ablaze, caused her legs to wriggle and her back to arch, and drew her closer to him.

  When she tilted her head up to accept his kiss, it was gentle, but distant. Persephone looked into his eyes when she pulled away from his lips. Nothing. She remembered last night, how he’d passionately gripped her shoulders and locked the backs of her knees into the crook of his elbows, his lips devouring hers with insistence as though there weren’t enough of her that could possibly satisfy him. It was also a far cry from the tenderness and reverence he’d shown her the night before that. This was detached— almost like he wasn’t there. And with that detachment, she feared his resentment.

  He lowered his lips to one breast, pulling the peak into his mouth and sucking upward, making it rise to a point before his tongue ran a quick circle around it. This never failed to inflame her; he’d taught her every favorite touch. Even now, her body was responding, and she knew that if she hadn’t already shared such a deep connection with him, this would suffice. But intuitively, it didn’t. It lacked the bond they had so carefully forged this past month, the connection she craved. Did he resent her enough that this was how it was always to be? Mechanical and reserved?

  Aidon traced her curves, his mind a maelstrom, his face a mask. After what they’d learned, he felt there wasn’t any reason for her to love him equally, the way he desired. At best, he was her consort, her servant. Her pet. He worried that she merely tolerated his affections and reluctantly surrendered to what cravings he could rouse in her body. Or worse, that this whole time she had only submitted to whatever husbandly rights she assumed he had over her body, and had learned to make it enjoyable, but ultimately he had been taking her against her will. His stomach turned at this. He recalled her puzzlement as to why he didn’t assert himself over her after their fight. True, she had initiated sex many times in the last month. But now, Persephone had no reason to need him, or want him. Or love him. The desire for pleasure was there, to be sure, but without love she would tire of his attentions eventually. They would curl up next to one another in listless familiarity and obligation until the awful, inevitable day came when she grew bored and left his private life altogether.

  His hand rounded under the curve of her other breast and trailed down her stomach, finally stopping at the contour of her mound. Fingers trailed gently over the soft hair of her outer lips, petting her, stroking her. His touch was wispy and gentle, making her insides ache until she could take the light caress no more and rocked her hips forward into the heat of his hand. A digit sunk into her crease, drawing a long sigh from her. When it delved further into her, her muscles involuntarily clenched and twitched around it.

  Persephone felt frissons of pleasure course through her body, her stomach tensing from his touch, curling her forward. When she’d first arrived here, when they had made love in the dark and barely spoke to one another, this was how it felt. They had been so untried and so very unsure of one another, their bodies alone acting in the roles of husband and wife without sharing their thoughts, their passions, their souls. She couldn’t go back to that. Aidoneus kissed her neck and moved over her, parting her thighs with his knees. She sighed at the feel of his chest brushing against hers, his weight propped up on one elbow. He reached down and positioned himself to join with her. When she felt the tip press against her folds, she looked up at him, searching for something, anything. His face was still blank, the barrier he’d created around himself impenetrable.

  “Wait,” she said, pushing her fingers against his forearm. “Stop.”

  Aidon halted and slowly sat back, his face as empty as when he was touching her. He rested on his knees and said nothing.

  “Please, Aidon. Just talk to me,” she said.

  He moved to sit beside her, covering himself with the sheet. She could read him so easily, he realized. It was foolish to believe that she couldn’t see through him when they were so intimate. Aidon mulled over what he was going to say, and how he could say it, chewing on the inside of his lip. He’d sworn on the Styx to tell her the truth. But he had also promised not to force her to put into words the feelings and sensations he felt radiate from every part of her being when he was with her. “This past month, we’ve been friends and lovers, Persephone.”

  “And it’s been wonderful.” She swallowed and hesitated for a moment, remembering the fight that nearly drove them apart. “Hasn’t it?”

  “In so many ways, yes. I obviously didn’t have time during our brief courtship to… befriend you. And this time we’ve had together, where I’ve come to know you fully, has been the happiest month of my life.”

  “But…” she said for him.

  He stayed silent. The words lay unspoken and heavy between them.

  Persephone’s eyes grew wide and her next words rushed out all at once, stumbling over each other. “Listen, Aidon… I wanted to tell you when we were in Tartarus, but it didn’t seem like the right time.”

  No, he thought, closing his eyes. Gods, not pity. Anything but pity. “Persephone…”

  “My feelings for you have only grown—”

  “Not now—”

  “Aidoneus, I—”

  “Persephone, please!” Aidon raised his voice and stopped her abruptly. “Please…”

  She curled forward despondently and sat up, pulling a pillow in front of her, shielding herself. His forehead was etched with sadness, and it twisted further when he saw anguish wash over her face, her eyes wet with tears. Aidoneus felt as though a spear were piercing through him, knowing that he was the cause of her pain that this would only add to the hurt he’d seen wrapped up in her consciousness. But worse injury for both of them lay ahead if he allowed her to continue.

  “Please do not say anything now, under duress, that you cannot take back later. That you would regret having said.”

  “How could I regret—”

  “Please do it for me. It’s all I ask of you.”

  “Aidon.” She thinned her lips, her frustration rising, her heart sinking. “If you’re trying to distance yourself from me because of what they said to us in the Pit today, don’t tread lightly around me for my sake. Just out and say it: I am the reason you ended up here and you hate me for it now.”

  “What? How could I—”

  “If you want us to,” her voice hitched, “live separate lives from now on, don’t put the full burden of that decision on me. Please…”

  “Why would I desire such a thing?”

  “You’ve treated me, looked at me differently since the moment Kottos said that you were here because of me! I can understand why you would resent me, why you would no longer feel for me as you once did, or question why you felt anything for me at all in the first place. If you’re trying to put distance between us without hurting me, I appreciate your kindness, but please don’t—”

  “Resent…” His eyebrows raised and he tipped his head toward her. “Is that what this is about?”

  “Well?” She shifted her feet but still held the pillow to her chest. “Isn’t that why you won’t hear me say that I—”

  “No,” he sharply cut her off. “No, sweet one. It’s not because of that.” Aidon looked away from her. “The reasons I have for stopping you don’t come from any waning affection on my part,
I promise. I love you, Persephone. This last month, I’ve let those words slip out when I— at the height of our most intimate moments… but I’ve painfully resisted saying them to you directly. I feared that you would feel forced to answer my feelings, but it doesn’t change the fact that I love you. Deeply. No matter what we heard today, that remains undiminished. If you worry that I resent you, that I somehow think that you damned me to rule here, that’s just not true.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “What we heard today was… unexpected. But know that I would have accepted far less than ruling the Other Side if it meant spending eternity with you.”

  Her eyes watered at his words, but she still scowled at him and shook her head. “This isn’t fair, Aidoneus. If that is how you feel, why not let me say what I feel for you?”

  “Because when I first said that I loved you—” He stopped and shut his eyes, briefly praying to the Fates for the right words. “I should have waited to say what I did. It just all came out at once because I had never felt such a thing before. I had been with you for less than a day. I fully meant it when I said it, but you are far dearer to me now than you ever were then. And just expecting that you would immediately feel the same for me did us both great harm. You should take some time. Process what we heard. For both of our sakes.”

  She nodded, and he visibly relaxed as she spoke again. “But what I was about to say… I’ve known what you wanted to hear from me since the first night we spent together. But now that I can say it to you truthfully, you back away from it, Aidon. From me. Why?”