He had targeted and stalked her. He had taken pictures of her in her home, where she was meant to be safest. He had felt entitled to her body for no other reason than the fact that she existed.
And he would be punished eternally.
“He wanted to use his cock as a weapon,” she said. “And I want it to burn.”
Hades grinned wickedly.
“No! Please, Persephone,” Pirithous screamed, struggling violently against his restraints. “Persephone!”
“Then make him burn.”
He let her go, and she lifted her hand, which burned with magic, sending a current of energy straight to Pirithous’s cock. He began to writhe, his body jerking against the ropes that restrained him, cutting into his skin. His head snapped back and he bared his teeth. Hades imagined her magic felt much like being electrocuted. Even he could feel the current, like the residual heat from a fire, and it raised the hair on his arms and the nape of his neck.
“This…isn’t…you,” Pirithous ground out.
Hades felt Persephone stiffen at his words, and she straightened, lifting her chin as she stared at the demigod, and while he could not see her full expression from where he stood behind her, he knew she must look like a queen, because something changed even in Pirithous’s contorted expression—something that made him realize just how futile his appeals were.
“I am not sure who you think I am, but let me be clear,” Persephone said, her voice clear and resolute. “I am Persephone, future Queen of the Underworld, Lady of Your Fate. May you come to dread my presence.”
Her words tangled in Hades’s chest, stealing the air from his lungs. He had never felt so in love and so desperate to protect someone in his life, and while he had desired for so long to hear her embrace this part of herself—the title and power he had to offer—he wished it had come under different circumstances, that it had been born out of a love for the happier parts of the Underworld and not the darkest.
But there were few in this world who learned the truth of their power without strife. He and Persephone were no different.
“How long will he stay like this?” she asked.
Hades looked at Pirithous, who was still convulsing.
“Until he dies,” he said, and for a moment, he wondered if she was disturbed by the sight of his torture, if she would ask him to end it, but instead, she turned to him, tilting her head back to look at his face. He knew in that moment she was changed. He couldn’t exactly say how, but it lingered between them, as tangible as the violence that had punctured her magic.
His goddess was no longer made up of innocent things, and there was a part of him that did not know how to feel about it, that wondered if she had never met him if that would still be the case.
“Take me to bed,” she said.
Hades touched her cheek and then threaded his fingers through her golden hair. There were things he wanted to know, things he wanted to say. Did she still love him the same way she did before they came here? Would the trauma of this night fester in her mind until she realized she had become someone she did not wish to be? And would she blame him?
But he said none of those things and instead bent to kiss her. She welcomed him, her lips parting as his tongue sought hers, and his desire, which had not ceased, grew stronger than ever. He groaned and his arm tightened around her back, sealing every part of his hard body against every soft part of hers, and he considered that perhaps Pirithous’s greatest punishment of all might be that he had to watch them make desperate love to one another as he died for the thousandth time.
But that was a desire he would not speak, and instead he drew away and met her gaze.
“As you wish, my darling,” he said as he transported them away from the depths of Tartarus to their room, where he let her lead them to release.
Persephone slept.
She lay on her side, her hands folded under her head, her breathing easy and even. Hades sat on the edge of their bed, watching for signs that another nightmare had taken root within her dreams, but she remained quiet and still. There was a part of him that feared leaving her unattended. What if Pirithous returned? What if he was not here to comfort her when she woke?
He felt a keen sort of turmoil roiling within him as he wondered if her sleep would take on a new horror. Perhaps it would no longer be Pirithous that haunted her but the torture she had inflicted on him.
Hades raked his fingers through his unbound hair.
He was restless and anxious, and he had only found reprieve while he was with Persephone. His comfort came with her, whether she was astride him or beneath him. He wanted to be near her, inside her, filling her. The need was acute and primal, and in the hours after, it gave him the greatest pleasure to know some part of him remained within her.
If he could take refuge in her body every minute of every day, he would, but that was a sign of his addiction. It wasn’t healthy, but if he were to have a vice, it was the best of the lot.
He sighed and rose. It was too warm, his body still slick with sweat. Unlike Persephone, who drifted off after sex, he’d remained awake, his body a live wire.
He poured himself a drink and then stepped outside onto the balcony where the night was mild and breezy. The reprieve from the heat was pleasant, and he felt at ease, knowing he was near in case Persephone spiraled into another nightmare.
He looked out on a fraction of his realm where silvery moonlight pooled in the shadowed garden outside his palace. It was the garden where everything had begun, where he’d brought Persephone to plant the seed of her bargain. Create life in the Underworld, he had instructed, or be mine forever.
Gods how he’d hoped she would fail, because at the time, he’d believed that was the only way he’d get to keep her. She’d been so angry, and it had only gotten worse when he’d brought her here, to the Underworld.
She, like so many, had expected a barren landscape of ash and fire. What she had gotten instead was a lush world full of color and flora. It had also been the first sign that what her mother had told her about him over the last twenty-four years was not the truth, and that had devastated her.
She’d fought him. Hard.
But the more he’d learned about her, the less it surprised him. She had been so traumatized by her mother’s control, she’d resisted the idea of belonging to anyone. The stronger her feelings for him grew, the more she refused to love him, except there was no way to stop it once it had started, and when she finally succumbed, she’d opened the most powerful part of herself.
This…it went beyond love. It was devotion. It was worship. It was the power that began and ended worlds, and if he had to, he would do so in her name. He knew those words were true because he felt them so deeply, it hurt.
“Why are you naked?”
Hades was drawn from his thoughts and looked down into the garden where Hecate lingered, nearly invisible in the darkness.
“Would you really like an answer to that question?” he asked. “I can give details.”
She scrunched her nose in mock disgust. “I think I can guess. It is not as if you are quiet.”
Hades chuckled and Hecate arched a brow, though he could not help being amused at the thought of Persephone’s cries of pleasure echoing throughout the Underworld.
“Come off your high horse,” she said. “It is not as if you excel at giving pleasure. Some of us are just sensitive to sound.”
He rolled his eyes. “Fearful I will become too arrogant, Hecate?”
“I do not have to fear it,” she said. “You are.”
“Arrogance does not make something untrue,” he said.
“No, but it does make it annoying.”
He could not help laughing. “No one said you had to endure it,” he said. “Why are you here anyway? Aren’t there some pathetic souls in the Upperworld deserving of your haunting presence?”
“No one is deserving of my presence,” she said. “I am a plague upon men.”
“You are definitely a plague,” he muttered.
“I heard that,” she snapped.
“I’m aware,” Hades said.
“And you? Why are you sulking on your balcony instead of lying with your love?”
“I am not sulking,” he said.
“You always sulk,” she said.
Hades glared, unwilling to argue with the goddess. “I cannot sleep, if you must know.”
“Worrying too much?” she asked.
He did not respond.
“Perhaps you should not worry when you are with her,” said Hecate.
“That is when I worry most,” he said, because he thought of what he stood to lose if anyone got in his way.
“Trust that your love is stronger than any god,” said Hecate.
“It is not our love I worry about,” he said. “It is what I will destroy to keep it.”
“Since when have you ever worried over carnage?” she asked.
“Since I decided to marry the Goddess of Spring,” he said.
“Foolish man,” Hecate said. “You never had a choice.”
Her words made him uneasy. There was something he disliked about the truth of the Fates and their threads. He’d have liked to think he would have chosen Persephone no matter the weaving of their lives and that perhaps she would have chosen him, though he knew she feared that all they had was what Fate had given them.
He wondered if she still thought that or if she had begun to believe their love might be greater than ethereal thread.
There was a part of him that did not wish to know.
“Do not pretend Persephone does not know who she has chosen to love,” Hecate said. “She sees all of you. She is the Goddess of Spring after all. She is used to life and death.”