CHAPTER IV
HADES
Hades returned to Persephone but did not sleep, a fact that did not escape her notice. She had risen around noon and frowned at him when she woke. She traced the high point of his cheek. He took her hand and kissed her fingertips.
“I am well,” he said.
“Why do you lie?” she asked.
To protect you, he wanted to say.
“What will you do today?” Hades asked instead.
She gave him a strange look. “I am assuming you are asking because you do not intend to stay?”
“I have business in the Upperworld,” he said.
“On a Sunday?”
He knew she did not ask because she was suspicious but because it was unusual. He normally spent the weekends sequestered in the Underworld with her. Sometimes they did not leave this room; other times he took her to explore parts of the Underworld she had never seen.
Whatever their day, it was time he cherished with her, and while he hated to give it up, he knew this could not wait.
He had to know if the ophiotaurus had reincarnated with a prophecy.
“I will make it up to you,” he said.
She did not respond, and there was something about her silence that made him feel like he had hurt her. She sat up and swung her legs off the bed. He kept his eyes on her bare back, mesmerized by the way her hair caught the light, glinting like spun gold.
“I will visit Lexa,” she said, answering his earlier question.
At the mention of her best friend, guilt and pain lanced through Hades’s chest. He had always liked Lexa, but he had to admit, he’d had no understanding of the depth of their relationship until Persephone was faced with her death.
It went beyond being friends. They were soul mates, and he had failed to understand that Persephone would need more from him in the face of her death than he had managed to give her.
That was something he would never forgive himself for, because it had led Persephone to seek help elsewhere, the worst of it coming from Apollo, whose arrow had healed Lexa’s wounds but not her psyche, which had effectively sentenced her to a different existence in the Underworld, one that ensured Persephone suffered just as much as Lexa.
Her best friend would never be the same, and Hades did not know how many visits it would take to Elysium before Persephone realized she wasn’t coming back.
The version of Lexa she had loved was dead.
“How long?” he asked, because he did not know what else to say.
“Until she gets tired,” she said, and he knew she was trying to keep the sadness from her voice. “Which will not be long…she tires easily. Is that usual for souls in Elysium?”
“Yes,” he replied. “It is usual.”
He did not wish to tell her that Lexa probably tired faster because Persephone challenged her. Though she’d been given instruction not to talk about their past together or speak long on the mortal world, it was something she likely could not help, which meant Lexa’s mind was working hard to process or relearn what it had forgotten. Even emotions were a new experience in Elysium.
Persephone was quiet, and after a moment, she rose, naked and beautiful, and entered the bathroom. The sound of the shower followed. Hades considered joining her, but he had the distinct feeling that she wanted to be alone, so he got up and dressed.
This day felt strange, contrary to his usual routine.
He hated it.
He considered just staying with Persephone, but there were greater things at work, and it made him anxious to delay. The ophiotaurus was not something that could exist for long in the world without consequence. It was not only a threat to his happiness but a threat to all gods, and while some deserved to die, he’d rather that power not fall into the wrong hands.
A cloud of steam wafted into the room as Persephone left the bathroom, wrapped only in a towel.
“You’re still here,” she said.
He frowned. “Since when do I leave without saying goodbye?”
She did not answer, and he approached, touching her chin.
“I know you are upset with me.”
“I am not upset. I just thought this day would be different,” she said and paused to take a breath. “Yuri and Hecate want to meet about the wedding.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No,” she said and hesitated. “I…just don’t know what you want.”
He studied her, and when she tried to look away, he brought his other hand up to cup her face.
“I want you,” he said. “You are all that matters.”
He did not like the way she looked at him, as if she were searching for the truth of his words in his eyes, but he likely only felt that way because of his own fears.
Fuck, he had issues.
“I love you,” he said and kissed her, drawing away quickly before he changed his mind and stayed.
The sounds of playful screaming reminded Hades of the Children’s Garden in the Underworld, though the comparison made his heart ache. He rarely grieved anyone who entered the Underworld, but children were the exception. He had never gotten used to it, and he never would.
He hesitated to even approach this park where clusters of children played on large, colorful toys despite the cold and the dusting of snow on the ground, their parents either participating or watching idly. He was not invisible to their eyes, and his presence would likely strike fear.
The mortals above did not always realize there was a difference between him and Thanatos, one the God of the Dead, the other the God of Death, and they assumed he arrived to reap souls, but he was here for one person, and he did not require her soul.
He was usually good at ignoring the unease that settled on the world when he arrived, but something about being here made it far less easy. Still, he kept his eyes on Katerina, who was dressed in a brown jacket lined with fur. She was one of his employees, the trusted director of the Cypress Foundation.
She was also an oracle.
“She’s gotten big,” Hades said as he sidled up beside Katerina, who stood a few feet from one of the playsets, watching her young daughter, Imari, play.
Katerina jumped at the sound of his voice and then laughed when she saw him.
“Oh, Hades, you scared me!” she said, pushing his shoulder. Her breath frosted the air as she spoke.
He chuckled while Katerina’s gaze returned to her daughter.
“She is big, isn’t she?” she asked and then sighed. “I can’t believe so much time has passed.”
“Six years?” he inquired, though he did not need to ask. He knew.
“Yeah,” she said. “You’re good at that.”
“Good at what?”
“Remembering,” she said. “Or is that a god thing?”
“Is what a god thing?”
“Can you just look at someone and know their age?”
“I suppose,” he said. “Though I have never really needed to.”
Death was death, no matter the age.
“What are you doing here?” Katerina asked after a moment. “It’s Sunday.”
He took too long to answer, and Katerina’s smile faded.
“I need your assistance,” he said. “I would not ask if…”
“Hades!”
He turned his head to the sound of his name as Imari jumped from the play set to the ground. He laughed and knelt as she raced into his arms.
People had stared before, but not like they did now.
“There’s my girl,” he said, and she laughed as she pulled away from him, taking his hand in hers, which looked like a giant’s in her small one.
“Come play with me,” she said, tugging on his arm.
“Imari,” Katerina began. “Lord Hades is busy.”
“It’s all right, Katerina,” he said.
A wide smile broke out across the young girl’s face, and she pulled Hades along toward the play area. He felt far too large and awkward, but Imari was too young to see him like that—too young to know what others feared.
He watched as Imari climbed a set of steps to a platform and reached over her head.
“Help me on the monkey bars, Hades!”
“Up you go,” he said, and as he took hold of her legs, Katerina approached.
“What is it you would not ask?” she said.
As Imari swung from bar to bar, they followed.
“I need your gift of prophecy,” he said.
Katerina wasn’t in the habit of using her abilities as an oracle to help him outside the work she did for his foundation. She might comment on the potential success or failure of one of his endeavors or organize timelines for the greatest outcome, but he had never asked her for anything like this.
He continued. “There is…a creature called the ophiotaurus,” Hades said, his voice quiet, his words slow. “In ancient times, a prophecy foretold the death of the gods with the burning of its entrails. I need to know if that prophecy still exists.”
Katerina stared at Hades for a long moment and then looked away.
“The ophiotaurus,” she murmured and then was quiet.
Imari came to the end of the bars.
“Catch me, Hades!” she said and let go.
He snatched her about the waist and spun with her in his arms. Her screeching laugh filled the park and made Hades smile.
As he set her down, she ran for a swing.
“Push me, Hades!”
As they followed, Katerina spoke. “If a person slays the creature and burns its entrails, then victory is assured against the gods,” she said.
Silence followed her answer.
It was as Hades had feared—the prophecy remained true.
Imari began to swing, and Hades pushed. She giggled as she rose higher and higher, a happy backdrop to their somber conversation.
“What will you do?” Katerina asked.
“Try to find it before anyone else,” he said.
The creak of the swing filled the quiet between them.
“What if you don’t?” she asked after a moment.
“Then I suppose we will all die,” he replied.
Hades realized as he vanished from the park that he had left Katerina with an ominous prediction.
In truth, he did not know what would happen if someone found the ophiotaurus before him. It was possible that anyone might kill it out of fear, not realizing the true importance of the creature or the danger they would suddenly find themselves faced with.
If the ophiotaurus died, it would not be as important as the person who killed it according to Katerina’s prophecy. Whoever slayed the creature must burn the entrails. Then victory would be assured against the gods.
The gods.
He knew there was no sense in trying to figure out who would be a victim of the prophecy. The Fates would not divulge the future they had woven, and it was possible they had only done this for their entertainment. During the Titanomachy, the ophiotaurus had caused such a melee as both sides scrambled to find the creature that would end the war, but in the end, it had all been for nothing. The Titans had managed to slay it, and Zeus’s eagles had stolen the entrails, foiling the prophecy.
The Fates’ message had been clear: there was no easy end to this war.
But things were different now, and it was possible they wished to usher in a new era faster. He could only guess as to their motives. His fingers curled into fists as he felt his control slipping away. That was the worst part of dealing with the Fates.
Their future was final.
But that did not mean Hades would not attempt control. He would protect the few who were closest to him—Persephone most of all.
If she would let him.
Hades manifested in a wooded meadow, and he was immediately overcome by the oppressive smell of Demeter’s magic. It bore down on him like a weight on his back. He could feel his body curling in on itself. The only reprieve was Persephone’s magic—a sweet undercurrent that called to his soul.
Something crunched beneath his feet, and when he looked down, he saw shards of shimmering glass amid blooming carex and foxglove, all sprouting from a bed of green grass, untouched, as Hades suspected, by the winter storm ravishing New Athens.
His gaze shifted to the ruins of a greenhouse. It was the source of Persephone’s magic. Her early magic too, for the thing that blossomed from the earth was a strange, black trunk with long limbs that curled around the metal frame of the greenhouse, and crushed beneath those branches were many of Demeter’s flowers—prisoners who found themselves at her mercy and found none.
Now he understood where the glass had come from.
He wondered at what point she’d come to wreak havoc on her crystalline prison, and for a brief moment, he let himself marvel at how far Persephone had come—from creating life that mimicked the dead to coaxing blossoms from the earth as she stepped.
Hades took a step, and as he did, the glass beneath his feet was like thunder in the quiet meadow. He was well aware he was not alone. He could feel eyes tracking him but was not surprised that fear had driven any living thing from the meadow.
He turned, eyes roaming the scattered tree line.
“I know you’re there,” he said. “Come out.”
There was no action that followed his words.
“Come out or I shall come to you,” he said.
It was not an idle threat. He knew exactly where the nymphs had taken refuge. Beyond the tree line was a river, and from its banks, they watched.
They were naiads like Leuce.
He waited with far more patience than they deserved as they negotiated.
“Lady Demeter will murder you,” said one.
“She will turn you into a bird as she has always threatened,” said another. “And force us away from our home to the sea.”
“He would not harm us,” another countered. “He loves Lady Persephone.”
“It is not his wrath we fear,” said another.