The Eighth House_Hades & Persephone Read online

  Table of Contents

  I Fulcrum

  II Promise

  III Obedience

  IV Restraint

  V Trust

  VI Service

  VII Pain

  VIII Submission

  IX Limits

  X Equinox

  Table of Contents

  I Fulcrum

  II Promise

  III Obedience

  IV Restraint

  V Trust

  VI Service

  VII Pain

  VIII Submission

  IX Limits

  X Equinox

  Flames of Olympos Book One

  by

  Eris Adderly

  *

  Text copyright © 2014-2017 Eris Adderly

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Eris Adderly

  Acknowledgements

  Who don’t I need to thank? The first version of The Eighth House (the one that started this whole new life direction for me on Literotica) was the first story I ever wrote. I still don’t know the real name of my original editor, because sometimes you don’t ever learn these things about online friends. But he is out there, and should know I appreciate him.

  For this new version, I have to thank the lovely Myra and Eliya for their beta-reading love, and most, most sincerely, yet another wonderful author friend who contributed so much and has refused any credit, but knows I love her. So much less than three. The unstoppable Jennifer agreed to lend me her eyeballs for a final round of edits, for which I am ever so grateful.

  I’d like to thank my EAD friends for their fierce encouragement of me in publishing this story, especially Addison, and again Myra and Jennifer. You ladies had enthusiasm when all I had was doom and gloom. You’re the best.

  And, as with every book, I will thank my husband and my mom. My two biggest cheerleaders, and the two who have tolerated hearing about my writing constantly. I love you.

  I Fulcrum

  Amid purpling dusk and the late summer breeze and brine of a secluded stretch of beach just southwest of Smyrna, Persephone wore a false face. And, as she had for ages now, she offered a smile of false satisfaction to the world.

  Or at least to Klaudios, her lover for the afternoon.

  She turned blue eyes that weren’t hers, and blonde locks that weren’t hers, to gaze at the sated mortal man, gracing him with a stretch and a little groan of contentment that were not hers, either.

  “You see?” he said with a chuckle. “There are real men to be found here in the Eastern ports, Euthalia.”

  The handsome—and still quite nude—sailor gave his manhood a self-aggrandizing tug to illustrate his point. One of his bare feet pushed out to smooth their rumpled blanket atop the sand into some semblance of order.

  In her mortal guise as ‘Euthalia’, she could wound him, if she were cruel. As well-formed as his body was, she could prick his pride by pointing out how utterly forgettable his lovemaking had been. How bland and barely distinguishable from the trail of discarded men just like him stretching back an age.

  The faces changed. The languages. The climes. What did not, ever, was the handling. So solicitous, eyes on her face as they kneaded and poked, intent on gauging their own prowess. Secretly worried about the size and performance of their cocks. Their endearments, whether sincere or calculated, so soft, so toothless.

  It was enough to bore an immortal to tears, and yet what alternatives did she have?

  “Real men, indeed,” she said, running absent fingertips along the lines of Klaudios’s chest.

  They lay propped up on elbows now, facing each other, though she made a mental note of where she’d laid her sandals, preparing to take her leave.

  This was the last time Klaudios would be enjoying the company of the enigmatic Euthalia.

  “Will you be gone from the port long this time, my wandering pearl?” He reached out to toy with her nipple while she suppressed a roll of her eyes at the name.

  “I’m not sure,” she lied. “I never can predict these things.”

  The shush of waves beyond their extended legs repeated to him the truth, but the mortal man was too blinded by pride to listen.

  Persephone came to her feet and reached for his chiton, slipping the too-large garment over her head, fibulae still in place.

  “What are you doing?”

  “My peplos has washed out to sea,” she said, her smile too innocent.

  “And what do you expect me to wear?” He grinned up at her, waiting for her to admit the jest.

  She tied the second sandal in place, repressing a chuckle. “Will you not go naked before the gods?”

  “Euthalia, wait.”

  She was already on the narrow path up and away from the sand.

  “Euthalia!”

  The corners of her eyes crinkled in mirth. Sailors were adaptable. He’d figure it out.

  Poor Klaudios, she thought later, as she made her unhurried way back through the busy streets of Smyrna. He’d never see his fair-haired, eager lover again.

  Poor him? Poor me. He’ll be disappointed for a few weeks. I’ll enjoy my disappointment for an eternity.

  But her discontent hadn’t started in Smyrna. Nor had it originated from any of the other cities of men. Those were only where it had gone to fester.

  As she meandered, always toward her goal, Persephone let idle fingertips touch the crisp leaves of potted rosemary, gone dead in a drought year, outside this door and that. Bursts of new growth sprang up in her wake and morning would find the palest of blooms, impossibly full overnight. An unintended benefit for mortal gardens, grown from her inexplicable compulsion to touch everything.

  No, flirtation was never simple as all her green and growing things, was it? Well. Perhaps among mortals. On Olympos? She made a low noise in her throat.

  Persephone made her way through a netting of streets arrayed without any apparent plan or reason in that particular way of coastal cities, taking no care to avoid watching eyes. In her mortal guise, unless she willed it, the gazes of men would find an inexplicable reason to slide elsewhere. Unobserved, the goddess knew the lightest wrinkling of her borrowed brow.

  Somehow—somehow—in a way she could not put to name, there had been something essential lacking in Klaudios. By the Fates, something lacking in the scores of mortal men with whom she’d amused herself. She couldn’t take them seriously. So many of them had been almost … too gallant and bright. Was it possible to possess too much of what others prized as desirable qualities?

  Down and away from the mount to the southeast she went. Away from the agora, away toward the eastern gate, away, away, away from all she’d reached for that had left her wanting.

  If all their so-called charms did so little to keep her attention—let alone fever her dreams, as the songs and poems all claimed would happen—what then, was wrong with her? If traditional appeals failed, should she what? Search for their opposite?

  Maybe you should seek out just that, Persephone. A darker, more wicked partner.

  But who would want such a thing? More irrationality. Answers were nowhere, and yet here she was. On the mortal plane, resorting to this. Again.

  Yes,
my most bountiful thanks, Mother.

  She grimaced to the slap-slap tune of her sandals on the hard-packed earth.

  Her solitary path led her at last to her goal and she put the thoughts to one side. Here, now, was a final familiar haunt before she returned to the realm of the deathless gods. It had been too long.

  One low house of baked earth, indistinguishable from any other on a dim street crowded with windows and doors and awnings, was what held Persephone’s eye as she approached.

  Warm light showed itself from a tiny window, shoulder high against the blue-black of evening shadow. Here was the other indulgence the goddess allowed herself while she walked among mortals.

  She rapped on the door, three times in just such a way. After a moment, a voice came muffled but firm from the other side.

  “What flower blooms this evening?”

  Persephone smiled, the clouds of her mood parting. “The eternal one, Good Mother.”

  The door swung into the house on generations-old hinges and a woman stood in the golden light, beaming.

  “My goddess! Come in, come in!”

  Polyxene stepped back into the nest of her rooms and Persephone entered, releasing her intention from the blonde, mortal façade and reclaiming her true form.

  The woman before her, perhaps just beyond her childbearing years but still full of feminine life, hurried to prepare a tea while her unlikely guest soaked in the surrounding room. There had been minor changes, but the feel was the same as ever. Humble. Honest. Good.

  “It has been at least a year, has it not?” Persephone said.

  “I have counted five, Green One.” The woman didn’t accuse, but Persephone cringed all the same. It was all too easy to lose track of mortal time. More strands of wiry white, she noted, threaded their way through Polyxene’s dark curls than had at her last visit.

  Every wall and beam in the cozy space bristled with hanging herbs in various stages of drying. Earthen jars and tight-woven baskets littered every available surface, and some of these the woman reached into for pinches of this or that for the tea.

  Polyxene was the only living woman to have seen the goddess undisguised more than once.

  Persephone had only just arrived on the mortal plane during one of her secret excursions. She’d stepped from the æther just outside a sunlit copse of cedars, anticipating a private entrance into the world of men, only to find a teenage Polyxene trembling and staring wide-eyed back at her, a basket of gathered boughs scattered across the ground.

  After a series of stammering promises extracted from the girl never to speak of the presence of the goddess that day outside the temples, Persephone had calmed and taken an interest in the flora the mortal had been collecting.

  For a mere bud of a woman, Polyxene had impressed even the Goddess of Growing Things with her knowledge of and enthusiasm for the same. She had been learning from her grandmother the ways of healing. Persephone had been so delighted with this mortal after her own heart that during her returns to Smyrna over the years, she’d become a sort of silent matron.

  The woman with the greying hair before her now, who moved about her home with such a quiet confidence, had become the only mortal to whom Persephone dared show her true self. Eyes too green, hair too lustrous, skin too eerily luminous to be human. There would be no way to slip among the streets and markets of men without attracting unwanted attention. Recognition would cause a riot.

  And it was a relief.

  A relief not to have to lie, and hide, even if her lies bought her some semblance of her own pleasure when she used them to lay with men.

  In exchange for the gift of this unlikely and infrequent friendship, and out of sheer admiration for the woman’s dedication, Persephone would bring her the occasional cutting from the deathless realm. A blossom, a branch, a tuber, all superior to their mundane counterparts.

  It was these rare gifts that had grown Polyxene’s reputation over the decades. Polyxene’s cures worked better than anyone else’s, the people would say. ‘Take your mother to Polyxene. She will know what to do.’

  Persephone smiled as the woman offered the steaming cup, taking a step back to clasp work-worn hands in anticipation.

  It was, as always, hot perfection.

  “Mmm,” she said. “What have you today, Mother? Ginger?”

  Polyxene tried to hide the making of a face. The woman had objected before to Persephone’s use of the fond name out of fearful respect for Demeter. The goddess, however, felt more warm sentiment toward this mortal, despite their dizzying inversion in age, than she had for her own mother in decades.

  “And citron, is it?”

  “Yes! You are right on both, my Goddess!” A flush of pleasure colored the tanned cheeks. Oh, how Persephone had fought to win such an easy discourse from the woman. So much insistence, so many assurances to do away with the bowing and scraping.

  There was a movement at the edge of her vision and Persephone glanced to see a sleeping cat stretch its striped legs and send a yellow basket toppling. Polyxene rescued the container on its way to the ground, muttering at the small beast, and Persephone smiled.

  “I’m sorry to say I have no cutting for you this day,” she said to the woman between sips of her tea. “My mind was elsewhere, I’m afraid.”

  “It is nothing. Nothing.” Polyxene made some habitual supplicating gesture, always uncomfortable with immortal apologies. “That you bless such an insignificant home with your presence is more than any could pray for.”

  Persephone was less impressed with herself by far than were mortals, but made yet another attempt to remember that anything might become tedious if one were to see and live it every moment.

  “How fares your home these last years?”

  “Well,” the woman said, folding her hands at her waist. “Perhaps as I get older, the years fly for me, too. It is much the same. I enjoy an ease, my Goddess. Thanks be to you.” A wistful smile. “People need healing. Green things need tending. My son returns from the sea with news and wild tales every few months.”

  And, after a pause: “I do miss Iacob. It can be lonely, of a night.”

  Persephone saw just the lightest dusting of fatigue over the woman’s features. Her husband had made his journey to the Underworld perhaps ten? Fifteen years ago, now?

  “It can be lonely,” Persephone said. “Can’t it.”

  Her own weights burdened her words.

  The surface of her tea rippled under her breath in the lamplight. When would she be in Smyrna again?

  “And how do you fare, Karporphoros?”

  Bringer of Fruit. Somehow she didn’t mind the epithet when it came with Polyxene’s warmth.

  “We are too alike, you and I,” she said, perching on a tall stool and holding her cup on her lap. “Little changes. My mother will not relent. I expect she feels some relief that I have stopped asking.” Persephone’s eyes went unfocused, working at knots beyond the clutter of the little room.

  “Will this be my immortal life?” she said. “To come and go, dissatisfied, alone, from now until … until …?” Her free hand made a vague fluttering and Polyxene bit her lower lip. “And were I to fall in love with one of these men, what then? I watch them fade and die, a flickering of a candle while I go on and on?”

  “My Goddess …”

  Worry creased the woman’s brow and Persephone felt instant shame. There was no excuse for putting this mortal in such a position, to pose questions in front of her which had no answers. Polyxene only wanted to do good, and had such a short time in which to do it.

  Persephone’s gaze waded around the room. So much gathered in one place. From seed to stem and rind to root, such deliberate cultivation. Who, of the two of them, was making the best use of her available years?

  Her eyes landed at last on Polyxene and, again, her hands. Something at her center became very still. Very quiet.

  “Mother,” she said, “will you lend me your ring?”

  “Goddess.”

  With
wide, sober eyes, the woman slipped the jewel of black onyx and silver over a weathered knuckle. She offered it in an open palm and dipped the sort of nervous bow Persephone hadn’t seen in decades when the goddess took it.

  The stone was long and narrow, meant to span half the length of a finger; the bezel and band worn worry-smooth over most of a life. The young Polyxene’s face when Iacob had given it as a gift had been the warmest sunrise in spring. The two had known such love.

  This was useful. This was better than unchanging eternity.

  Persephone let it well, and the room dimmed away, at least for her.

  The dormant, still thing inside her woke. Stirred. A sleeping hive coming alert to the call of its queen. The soles of her feet, her lips, the crown of her head, buzzed with a tingle, electric.

  Just how much did I inherit from the Lord of Lightnings?

  Her fingertips grew cold as the humming force gathered. Then her forearms, the tops of her ears.

  The ring grew hot.

  Scalding.

  The black stone knew the opposite of becoming. It trembled on the cusp of something … else.

  Could they feel it? On Olympos? Would any of the deathless ones sense some subtle shift?

  Did she care?

  It could have ended with some dramatic burst, but it didn’t. When Persephone opened her clutching hand and now heavy-lidded eyes, she only felt … scoured? The slightest bit raw? It was the sort of sensation that would heal, she sensed. Like a mortal sunburn.

  Polyxene stood frozen, fingers gripped her own crossed arms from a few paces further back than when the goddess had closed her eyes.

  Persephone held out her palm, the ring in it almost seeming to breathe now, like a live thing.

  “Come,” she said. “Look.”

  The woman stepped forward, cautious, as though she held an adder. She leaned to peer at the ring, but only for a heartbeat before coughing and turning away in a hurry, a palm bracing herself on a high table.

  “Goddess!” Polyxene wiped at her mouth with the back of a hand.

  The shape of the onyx remained, but it was now formed in a stone of such a vertiginous and unearthly green the mortal woman couldn’t bear to look upon it without being vibrantly ill.