“There was no greater torture than feeling your anguish.” There was a part of him that hated bringing this up, especially after all his effort to make her forget what she saw, though she knew just as well as he that there was no forgetting the Forest of Despair. “I knew I was somehow responsible, and I could do nothing about it.”
Persephone was less inclined to speak on what happened, because she touched his lips while dragging her tongue over her own and said, “You can do something about it.”
She arched beneath him, then her hand found his cock, which she tugged generously, sending a wave of pleasure to his head, and he understood. As much as they had to talk eventually, this was what they needed, what they did.
So he settled between her hips and entered her. The first few strokes were slow and deep, and his reward was watching Persephone, breathless, beneath him, but he found it hard to maintain this pace when what he really wanted to do was fuck, and if they were trying to make this far more memorable than their exchange in Tartarus, then it had to be different.
So things shifted between them, and Hades kissed her harder and moved harder, and Persephone’s fingers dug into his skin. Neither one held on to their cries of passion, pleasure—and pain.
This was it, the vessel through which they released and processed their emotions, and it was raw and wild and desperate.
Persephone came first, her entire body clenching around him, even her nails, which pierced his skin.
“Fuck!”
He drew in breath between clenched teeth, but not from the ache of breaking skin. It was more from the pleasure of it and a fierce need to come inside her, to claim this moment, and he took her hands and guided them over her head, holding her in place as he slammed into her. Moving inside her was its own euphoria, and the pressure built in his cock and the back of his throat until he came so hard he collapsed atop her.
They were still for a long moment, just breathing. Persephone’s hands came around him, fingers trailing down his back. He got the sense she was looking for injuries, but they had already healed. When he had collected himself, he rose onto his elbows and stared down at Persephone.
“Are you well?” he asked, drawing pieces of her hair from her face.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Did I… Did I hurt you?”
It occurred to him that he hadn’t been completely grounded or aware at some point during their coupling, but then she smiled and touched his face, her finger dancing lightly over his features.
“No,” she said. “I love you.”
Those words flooded him with a sense of relief. He had said before that words held no meaning, but that was before Persephone had uttered those three.
“I wasn’t sure I would hear those words again,” he admitted, unprepared for the shock those words would have on Persephone, who immediately began to cry.
“I never stopped,” she whispered.
“Shh, my darling,” Hades comforted. “I never lost faith.”
But his words did nothing to quell her tears. Her body shook with them. Maybe she needed this—another form of release. He lifted her into his arms and carried her inside, where he laid her on their soft bed and kissed her until she was calm.
“I love you,” he said, because he had yet to say it back, and then, “I am sorry.”
She shook her head. “Things have been hard.”
It was true for both of them in very different ways.
He bent to press his lips to her forehead and settled between her thighs. Despite the fact that they had just come together outside, he wanted to make love to her, and he wanted it to be both delicate and desperate. At the end of it, he didn’t want to know where he ended and she began.
She widened her legs as he guided himself to her entrance but froze as a knock sounded at the door. He met Persephone’s gaze, then grinned.
“Enter,” he said, and Persephone’s eyes widened.
“Hades!”
He chuckled as he rolled off her into a sitting position, and she rose too, pulling the blankets to her chest right as Hermes entered.
The god gave a lopsided smirk.
“Hey, Sephy,” he said, a note of warmth in his voice.
“Hermes,” Hades said, and his gaze shifted to him.
“Oh yeah.” For a moment, Hermes’s smile widened, then he took on a more serious expression. “I found the nymph, Leuce.”
“Bring her,” Hades ordered, and the nymph appeared before their bed, looking stricken and pale.
“Please—” she began, already sobbing.
“Silence!” Hades’s voice was like a lashing, and Leuce immediately quieted, tears tracking down her face. “You will tell Persephone the truth. Did you send her to the Forest of Despair?”
At his question, more tears spilled down her cheeks and she nodded. There was a very small part of him that felt remorse for Leuce—not for what she had done to Persephone but for how sorry she truly seemed.
“Why?” Persephone asked. The betrayal in her voice made him feel terrible for bringing this to her, but she needed to know.
“To tear you both apart,” Leuce answered in a whisper, her eyes on the floor.
Hades could not tell what Persephone was thinking, but he thought she might be in shock, because all she could ask was “Why?”
Leuce pressed her lips tight and shook her head, body shaking with renewed sobs.
“You will answer,” Hades commanded.
She collapsed in a heap on the floor. “She will kill me.”
“Who?” Persephone asked, looking from Leuce to Hades.
“Your mother,” Hades said. “She’s talking about your mother.”
Persephone’s eyes widened and she looked at Leuce. “Is this true?”
Hades didn’t like the shock in her voice. This was a woman who had taken Leuce in. Not only had she invited her into her home, but she had offered to mentor her. Even if Leuce hadn’t wanted to, she still deceived Persephone.
“I lied when I said I didn’t remember who gave me life,” Leuce said. “But I was afraid. Demeter reminded me over and over that she would take it all away if I didn’t obey. I’m so sorry, Persephone. You were so kind to me, and I betrayed you.”
There was a moment when no one spoke—not even Hermes, who still stood by, watching this interrogation take place. But then Persephone shifted, wrapping the sheets around her as she left the bed, exposing his nakedness, though he did not care as he watched her approach Leuce and kneel before her.
He wanted to protest. The only person he would ever kneel to was her, but Persephone was not like him, nor did she need to be.
“I don’t blame you for fearing my mother. I feared her for a long time too. I won’t let her hurt you, Leuce.”
Persephone spoke with a note of understanding in her voice that Hades did not share, but her kindness comforted Leuce, and the nymph fell into her, sobbing. Hades watched the strange display, his feelings mixed. On the one hand, it was what he had expected of Persephone, but he was angry with Leuce and frustrated that she had received such an easy pardon, though he supposed she had been punished enough by him.
“Hermes,” Persephone said once Leuce had collected herself. “Will you take Leuce to my suite? I think she deserves some rest.”
He smirked, bowing as he accepted her instruction.
“Yes, my lady.”
Persephone rose with Leuce, and they shared an embrace before Hermes led her from their room. Once they were gone, Persephone’s gaze returned to Hades, her eyes dipping to his exposed flesh, as if she’d just realized he’d been sitting there naked.
Then her eyes darted to his face.
“What?” she asked, likely because he was staring and smiling at her.
“I am just admiring you.”
She raised a brow, her eyes momentarily darkening, but then she sighed. “I suppose we should summon my mother to the Underworld.”
“Shall we call on her now?” Then he suggested, “Perhaps we should make love so that she has no reason to suspect her plan worked.”
“Hades!” she scolded playfully as he reached for her, pulling her between his thighs. She dropped the sheets and pressed against him skin to skin, and they fell back onto the bed, descending into their madness once more.
Chapter XXVI
Survival of the Fittest
Later, they dressed, and Hades sent Hermes to summon Demeter.
“I think you just want her to disfigure my face,” Hermes said. “She will bite my head off when I tell her you’ve commanded her appearance in the Underworld.”
“Then don’t tell her Hades sent for her,” Persephone replied. “Tell her I command it.”
Hermes smiled at that. “Will do, Sephy,” he said and left the Underworld.
“Are you nervous?” Hades asked as they walked, hands linked, to the throne room, where they would receive her mother. Hades thought it was the second-best option, the first being their bedchamber, though Persephone had shot that idea down. And to be honest, he looked forward to witnessing this—Persephone looking radiant in her Divine form, wrapped in a white peplos, being who she was meant to be, a goddess and queen.
“No,” she said and looked at him, and as their eyes met, a warm smile spread across her face. It felt like a long time since she had looked at him that way, and it made his throat feel tight. “Not with you by my side.”
His lips curled, and he squeezed her hand. It was all he could manage for the moment. Anything else and he would pull her to him, kiss her, and he wouldn’t stop.
“Remember what I taught you in the meadow,” he said.
“With your hands or your mouth?” she countered, breathless.
“Both,” he said. “If it helps you with your magic. Plus, I will take great pleasure in knowing you are thinking of my mouth while you put your mother in her place.”
They entered the throne room, which while dark was not cast in the red light that had made Persephone’s wounds look so much worse. Instead, his halls were brightened by the glow of Hecate’s lampades.
Leuce already waited at the base of the steps to the dais where Hades once sat alone, where two thrones now stood—his a jagged obsidian and Persephone’s a smooth ivory embellished with gold and florals. When Persephone saw it, she looked at him.
“You missed an opportunity, Lord Hades.”
He quirked a brow in question.
“I could have sat on your lap.”
He grinned as he helped her up the steps, and as Persephone turned, he asked, “Is that a suggestion or a request, my queen?”
“Something to consider,” she replied. “For next time, perhaps. I fear we may have pushed my mother too far with our request.”
“She has little power here, my darling.” Hades guided her to sit and did the same.
“Stand beside me, Leuce,” said Persephone, and as she did, the nymph shook.
Persephone frowned. His goddess had far more sympathy for Leuce than he did, though he was not surprised. It was in her nature, but Persephone also knew what it was to live beneath the constant and critical eye of Demeter.
“She will lash out,” Leuce said, her voice trembling. “I am sure of it.”
“Oh, I expect it,” Persephone replied with no hint of dread in her voice. “She is my mother.”
There was a strange anticipation to this, one that wasn’t unpleasant but almost freeing. Hades wanted this, he realized: to present to Persephone’s mother united, to show her they were stronger than her ploys and games.
“Hermes has returned,” Hades informed them when he felt the god’s magic erupt. It was like sweet citrus and fresh linen, clean and crisp, and it mingled with Demeter, who should smell like a rotting corpse flower but instead smelled like fragrant wildflowers.
The doors at the end of the room yawned open, and Demeter strolled in ahead of Hermes with a confidence that faltered. The air grew heavy and charged with her anger. It had been a while since Hades had looked upon the goddess, though he noted nothing about her had changed, except that perhaps she appeared far more resentful than before.
Hades wondered if she’d thought she had been summoned to retrieve her daughter, only to find her sitting at his side, a queen to his king. Her stony gaze slid from him to Persephone, bitter with contempt.
“What is this about?” she demanded, and there was a sharpness to her voice that Hades imagined Demeter had often used with Persephone, but if it had frightened her before, it did not now.
“My friend tells me you have threatened her,” Persephone said, and Leuce shook beneath the attention.
“You would believe your lover’s whore over me?”
“That is unkind,” Persephone said with an edge to her voice. “Apologize.”
“I will do no such—”
“I said ‘apologize.’” Persephone’s voice echoed throughout the chamber, and Demeter hit the ground with a loud crack.
Hades knew Demeter had felt Persephone’s magic rise but had not considered it a threat, which was evident in her stunned expression as she knelt on the floor before them.
Her shock quickly melted into fury, however, and when she spoke, the air vibrated with her animosity.
“So this is how it will be?”
“You could end your humiliation,” Persephone said. “Just…apologize.”
It was difficult for Hades to remain stoic when he had never watched anything more entertaining in his entire life than this—Demeter on her knees in his realm, seething.
At Persephone’s suggestion, Demeter’s lips had gone pale and pinched.
“Never.”
Demeter attempted to rise and sent her power barreling outward, a tremor that was likely an attempt to both break Persephone’s hold and call forth some kind of destructive magic. Whatever it was never manifested. Persephone managed to hold Demeter in place on the broken ground, and Hades’s magic lay in wait, ready to defend if hers failed.
Against Demeter’s suffocating wave of magic, Persephone rose and advanced on her mother, who had not relented in her efforts to break Persephone’s hold. As she drew nearer, her magic grew stronger and heavier, and it sank Demeter farther into the ground as if it were soft earth and not stone.
“I see you have learned a little control, Daughter,” Demeter said, allowing her magic to dissipate. Hades noted that it left her body shaking, and he wondered if the goddess was frightened.
He was.
Not of Persephone, but for her.
He thought of the power she had displayed in Tartarus. Her anguish had fueled that magic. It had overpowered him. Now she had managed to overpower Demeter.
It was an ominous prospect, a dreadful one, given that if she was a threat to them, she was a threat to anyone—to Zeus—and his brother liked to dispose of threats.
“All you’ve ever had to do was say you were sorry,” Persephone said quietly, but there was a power to her voice that commanded attention. “We could have had each other.”
“Not when you’re with him.”
Demeter spoke with venom. He had always known the Goddess of Harvest would not approve of a union between him and Persephone, but she took it a step further by refusing to have a relationship with her, all because of her choice.
“I feel sorry for you,” Persephone said at last. “You would rather be alone than accept something you fear.”
“You’re giving up everything for him.”
“No, Mother, Hades is just one of many things I gained when I left your prison.”
As those words left her mouth, she took a step back, and the hold she had over Demeter broke. The release was sudden, and it was clear Demeter had not been prepared, because she nearly hit the ground when it no longer held her up.
Hades watched the goddess stare up at her daughter with no hint of affection in her face, and his heart twisted painfully. He knew he would never fully understand what it meant to live beneath the reign of such a mother—one who could turn her love on and off at will—but he imagined it had left Persephone feeling very unworthy, and it was likely why she had so much doubt when it came to their relationship.
Sometimes he forgot the baggage she carried, forgot that her need for reassurance did not necessarily mean she had doubts, only that she needed comfort, and this was why.
It made him resent Demeter even more.
“Look upon me once more, Mother, because you will never see me again.”
Demeter’s expression changed, and a faint smile curled her lips. Hades did not like it, and he did not like what she said next.
“My flower. You are more like me than you realize.”