Hades took Persephone to Tartarus, to his den of monsters. Some of the creatures here were dead while others were living and merely prisoners, but that did not change their usefulness when it came to torture.
Persephone looked around, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. The magic was heavy here, different, and it hung in the air like a winter chill, suppressing the power of the monsters within.
Now and then, the faint echo of a growl, shriek, or scream echoed outside the dungeon.
“There are monsters here,” Hades explained.
“What…kind of monsters?” she asked.
“Many,” he said, raising his brows a little. “Some are here because they were slain. Some are here because they were captured. Come.”
He led her through the gates and into the dungeon, down the darkened walkway, past shadowed cells. All the while, the animal-like sounds of the monsters grew louder, cut through with a horrible wail.
“The harpies,” Hades said. They were half-human, half-bird creatures who were often insatiable in their hunger for food and were used in punishments to starve mortals. “Aello, Ocypete, and Celaeno—they get restless, especially when the world is chaos.”
“Why?”
“Because they sense evil and wish to punish.”
They continued, passing cells occupied by chimeras, griffins, sirens, and the Sphinx. Persephone did not pause long before any of the bays and remained close to Hades as they made their way to the very end of the cell, which was barred by a massive gate.
“What is this?” Persephone asked.
“That is a hydra,” Hades said. “Its blood, venom, and breath are poisonous.”
He had been responsible for its death when Hera had forced him to fight the creature during her notorious Fight Night. It had not been easy. It had seven heads that grew back even after they were cut off. He’d only managed to defeat it with fire, and in the end, it had become a resident of the Underworld.
“And the mortals in the pool?” she asked. “What did they do?”
Hades’s eyes dropped to the men and women at the hydra’s feet. They were all sitting in a pool of black venom that dripped from the creature’s fangs, their bodies covered in horrible sores and burns as it ate away at their bodies slowly.
“They are the terrorists who attacked the stadium.”
“Is this their punishment?”
“No. Think of this as their holding cell.”
She was quiet and then looked up at him.
“And how will you punish them?” she asked.
“Perhaps…you would like to decide?”
He was a little hesitant to hand over the task, uncertain of how she might feel about torture. She’d been hesitant when it came to Pirithous. She’d asked him if it helped. He still wasn’t sure, but it was fair to say that in the moment, vengeance felt good.
Her gaze returned to the souls.
“I wish for them to exist in a constant state of fear and panic. To experience what they inflicted upon others. They will exist, for eternity, in the Forest of Despair.”
“So you shall have it,” he said, and then he offered his hand. As her fingers settled into his, the souls beneath the hydra vanished. “Let me show you something,” he said, taking her to the library, which contained a basin that acted as both an accurate map of the Underworld and a portal. “Show the Forest of Despair,” he said, and the water changed to show the souls that had sat in the hydra’s venom and their punishment in the forest.
The reality of the forest was that it became whatever one feared.
When Persephone had entered it, she had found Hades in Leuce’s embrace. When Hades entered it, he saw nothing.
Persephone watched for a while and then turned away, stepping down from the basin. “I have seen enough.”
Hades followed and reached for her hand, worried that he had gone too far in showing her the horrors of the forest even if she knew them.
“Are you well?” he asked.
“I am…satisfied,” she said. “Let’s go to bed.”
He did not argue, and they made their way back to their bedchamber, but he couldn’t help noticing the shift in her energy. It was dark and sensual, and he wanted to taste it on her tongue.
Hades hung back as they entered their room, and he watched as Persephone walked ahead. She slid out of her robes and faced him. His eyes roamed her body—from her full breasts, over her stomach, to the curls at the apex of her thighs. When he met her gaze again, her stare was dark and carnal.
She wanted to fuck.
“Persephone.”
“Hades,” she said.
“You’ve been through a lot. Are you sure you want this tonight?” He never thought those words would come out of his mouth. It wasn’t as if this wasn’t their usual way, but he wanted her to be sure. Today had been harrowing, full of emotions and experiences neither of them had processed.
“It’s all I want.”
He didn’t argue further and closed the distance between them, bringing his lips to hers. She opened for him, and it was easy to become lost in everything that she was—soft and warm and eager. He thought that perhaps this was what he loved most, her obvious desire. He felt it so often for her, and he loved when she could not be contained.
Her hands dipped beneath his robes, and he helped her remove them so he could feel her skin against his, liking the way his rigid cock felt against her coarse curls. He couldn’t wait to bury himself inside her, to feel her clench around him as she came. It was that feeling he was addicted to—that release he was chasing.
She kissed down his chest and stomach until she knelt before him. Taking the base of his erection into her hand, she let her lips close over the tip where his come beaded.
“Is this okay?” she asked, looking up at him from the floor.
It was almost comical to him that she would ask, given that he wanted nothing more than to watch her take him into her mouth.
“More than,” he said and was rewarded with the touch of her tongue again. She took her time, kissing along his shaft, drawing her tongue over every ridge she could find, and then she took him to the back of her throat, swallowing around the crown of his cock.
He threw his head back, gritting his teeth, muscles tensing, his body on the very edge of release, but he wasn’t ready for this to be over.
As he came down from that first intense high, he looked at her, her lips still wrapped around his cock.
“You don’t know the things I wish to do to you.”
The thing about her mouth, about her magic, about her, was that it made him want everything with her—things that went beyond anything he’d considered doing with anyone before.
She rose to her feet, holding his gaze.
“Show me,” she whispered.
He wanted to groan. Fuck. She was perfect.
His hand slid behind her neck, and he gripped her there. As he kissed her hard on the mouth, he guided her back to the bed and lay her at its center. He hovered over her, her body trapped between his thighs as he continued to kiss her, his tongue lapping at hers. The longer he kissed her, the more she writhed beneath him, arching against him just to feel the friction between their hips.
She was making this harder, and he was trying to make this last longer.
His fingers clamped down on her wrists, and he drew them over her head before she could reach for him, before she undid every reason he’d had for bringing her to this bed in the first place, and called on his magic to restrain her.
When she felt the brush of his magic, she pulled away and looked up at his bindings.
“Is this okay?” he asked, his voice quiet.
He couldn’t tell by her expression, and that made him uneasy, but one word from her and he would take them away immediately. It was only something he wished to explore with her, not something he needed.
She nodded and he took that chance to appreciate the way she looked. She was art and he wanted to make her feel like that beneath his hands. This was a type of embrace, a way for her to truly feel how he saw her—as the center of the universe.
“I will make you writhe,” he said, stretching out over her body. “I will make you scream. I will make you come so hard, you will feel it for days.”
He kissed her mouth and then down her body, starting with her breasts. He took each hard peak into his mouth, teasing with this tongue and grazing with his teeth. Beneath him, she squirmed, and he wondered how wet she would be when he finally reached her center. He could feel her heat, and as her hips ground against him, her slick center moved over his knee.
It made him far more eager for the descent.
But even as he hovered between her thighs, he still took his time, holding her gaze as he kissed every part of her. Her body was flushed from frustration, likely because if her arms weren’t pinned over her head, her fingers would be tangled in his hair, and she would pull him against her heat.
He spread her thighs until her legs were flat against the bed and dragged his tongue along her wet heat. Her body arched against the bed, her hands fisting in the restraints.
“Hades,” she moaned, and he pressed into her deeper, tongue caught between the walls of her silken flesh, his fingers teasing her erect clit.
He held her harder as she began to move against him, chasing her release. She was on the edge—he could feel it in the way her body strained, the way her muscles tightened. It made his blood rush to the head of his cock, which lay heavy and rigid against his own stomach.
“Hades!”
It was the way she said his name this time that alerted him that something was wrong. He drew back as her heels dug into the bed and she yanked against the bindings. Her eyes were open and wide, but it was like she wasn’t seeing anything—not in this present moment anyway.
Fuck. He wished he’d never had this idea.
He banished the bindings quickly, wishing he’d done so sooner.
Fuck.
“Persephone.” He tried to reach for her, but she lashed out, and her hand came down on his cheek, full of thorns. The pain was biting, and blood dripped between them onto her skin. She seemed to be awake now, her face pale and her horror evident. She started to reach for him but realized her hands were still full of thorns.
She burst into tears, holding her hands away from her body.
For a few brief seconds, he was too stunned to move, too confused by what had happened. He was trying to remember exactly when things had gone wrong. How had they gone so wrong? He’d thought she was enjoying this. Was it possible she never had?
Finally, he moved and pulled her to him, though he wasn’t sure he was what she needed or wanted. He’d been too self-concerned to even realize that she was suffering.
“I did not know,” Hades said. “I did not know. I’m sorry. I love you.”
But there came a point when even he couldn’t speak.
CHAPTER XXXVII
HADES
“I don’t see why I need to be here,” said Apollo.
Hades had summoned him to the island of Lemnos.
He had come to discuss weapons with Hephaestus, and he needed to know what Apollo had found during his examination of Tyche. This was necessary given their eventual movement against Theseus, but he also did not think he could face Persephone so soon. He was still reeling from how quickly everything had escalated from something so erotic and right to an utter nightmare.
He felt embarrassed but mostly completely horrified that he’d managed to trigger her so badly, and at a time when they’d been most intimate.
Perhaps worst of all, he didn’t know how to handle what had happened. An apology did not seem like enough, and the thought of pushing her too far again was agonizing. In some ways, he’d prided himself on knowing how her body responded to his, and yet last night, he’d been wrong.
“You are quiet,” said Aphrodite as she walked them to Hephaestus’s workshop.
He wasn’t sure why she felt the need to play escort, but he thought it might be so she could catch a glimpse of Hephaestus.
“He’s always quiet,” said Apollo. “Unless he’s reprimanding you for taking his lover away to fulfill a bargain.”
“Shut up, Apollo,” Hades said. “I…didn’t sleep.”
“Are you worried Zeus will deny you your marriage?” she asked.
“I was,” he said. “But now I am more worried Persephone won’t make it to the altar.”
He didn’t look at Aphrodite or Apollo as he spoke. They’d both borne witness to her attacks. Aphrodite had been there that night at the club, so lost in her own need for vengeance, she hadn’t helped Persephone either.
“Are you…angry with me?” Aphrodite asked after a long pause.
“Hermes swore an oath to protect her,” Hades replied.
“That is not what I asked,” she said.
He didn’t answer. There was no need. Would he have been indebted to Aphrodite had she saved Persephone? Yes, but perhaps it was better that he wasn’t.
To Hades’s surprise, Aphrodite did not leave once they were at the doors of Hephaestus’s workshop. Instead, she followed them inside.
The God of Fire was at his forge. He stood before the fire, his hair knotted on top of his head, bare-chested and sweaty as he removed a piece of metal from the fire. He turned to lay it on the anvil, intent on hammering, but he caught sight of Aphrodite, who had walked ahead into the shop.
Hephaestus’s eyes locked on her and darkened, and his whole body went rigid. Hades wondered if Aphrodite would interpret his reaction as anger or frustration at her intrusion, though he saw it as something else—obvious desire.
“Are you in need?” Hephaestus asked her.
“Whoa,” said Apollo under his breath. “It’s hot in here.”
“No,” she answered. She had her arms behind her back as she leaned against one of his tables. “Hades and Apollo are here to see you.”
Hephaestus’s gaze shifted. He hadn’t even realized anyone else had accompanied his goddess into his workshop, he was so consumed by her.
“Hades…Apollo,” Hephaestus said, tossing the piece of metal he’d been working into the quench tank nearby. “What can I do for you?”
“We must discuss weapons,” Hades said. “My first concern is the net.”
He hesitated to bring it up because he knew Aphrodite had accused Hephaestus of being responsible for Harmonia’s attack, believing that only his magic was strong enough to capture a god. The problem was, she wasn’t wrong.
He had built an unbreakable net, and all the gods knew it existed, including Demeter.
“I think we can agree that the net used to restrain Harmonia and Tyche was likely modeled after your own.”
Hephaestus did not speak, and the tension in his forge grew heavy.
“So how does one escape it?” Apollo asked and then looked pointedly at the Goddess of Love. “Aphrodite?”
Hephaestus’s posture was rigid, and Aphrodite narrowed her eyes.
“You don’t,” she said and then looked at her husband. “You must be set free.”
“Is there no weapon you could forge to cut it?”
“Nothing is impossible,” Hephaestus replied. “But I would need to know how they forged their net.”
Hades exchanged a look with Apollo. He wasn’t so certain that information would be easy to come by. He wished Ariadne had been willing to help with Theseus. He was certain she knew his operations, and if not how things were being created, she knew who was doing it.
“Then that leaves the weapon used to kill Tyche,” he said and looked toward Apollo.
“At first, I thought she had been stabbed by Cronos’s scythe, but her wounds had a different shape. More like an arrow, but a simple arrow would not have killed a god.”
“What makes Cronos’s scythe dangerous?” Aphrodite asked.
“It’s made of adamant,” said Hephaestus. “But adamant only wounds. It will not kill us. Whatever Tyche was stabbed with had to be…laced with something. A poison.”
Or venom, Hades thought.
“Heracles had arrows poisoned with hydra blood,” said Hades.
Before the hydra had come to reside in the Underworld, it had been in Hera’s possession. He wondered how much of its venom Theseus had sourced before Hades killed it.
“Well,” said Hephaestus. “It seems you did not need me at all.”
“That isn’t true,” said Hades. “I need armor.”
“You have armor,” Hephaestus said.
“Not for me,” Hades said. “For Persephone.”