The Eighth House_Hades & Persephone Read online

  The earth had opened up and swallowed her whole, and now she was beneath it. Some bizarre logic made this ring true, but it was a fact she would deal with later, once there were others to place beside it. She set it aside for her next question.

  “I’m neither mortal nor dead—as far as I know. What am I doing here?”

  “Oh, you will be delighted, Daughter of Zeus.” The male voice couldn’t have sounded more smug. The male immortal voice. “Your father has commuted your sentence of eternal maidenhood. You’re here to marry, by his approval.” Each sentence came as a shifting purr in the dark. As soon as she thought she’d ascertained his location, the sound came from somewhere else. Her eyes still sought light, but there was none.

  Persephone ignored the absurdity of the word ‘marriage’ for the feel of her heartbeat in her throat.

  “My father,” she said, rolling the bitter taste of incredulity around in her mouth. Her back slumped, confusion distracting from indignity. “Who in the Underworld would he have …”

  “You know who I am, Persephone.”

  The words were a deep velvet caress, so close in front of her now she might reach out and find a body with her fingertips. Her sightless eyes lifted to where she imagined he stood, and the blackness around her whispered the only possible truth.

  “Hades.”

  All reasonable avenues eroded to dust. Every rumor she’d heard about the most elusive of the gods gibbered about her in a black, flapping gyre. And then the cushions gave under his weight.

  “Exactly right.” His answer came slow and deliberate, a serpentine tail coiling into place, and so close the vibration of the sound heated her ear. “Your father has given you as wife to the Lord of the Dead.”

  Panic rose up, but she bound it down, securing it for the rough road to come. His proximity might have made her breath hitch, but his message brought a scowl.

  “Zeus hasn’t the power to ‘give’ me as anything, Polydegmon. I fail to believe this realm is so far removed from the rest as to render you ignorant of the nature of immortal marriage vows. Even Aphrodite had to choose Hephaistos of her own will.”

  Of all things, this made him chuckle, and the sound had her thighs clenching back an entirely unhelpful hum of awareness.

  Male. Immortal. Forbidden.

  And was he … was he leaning in to breathe her scent?

  Damnable Fates!

  “So she did, Flower of the Earth, so she did.” She could feel his smirk. “Not a detail escapes you, I see. Perhaps it would be more precise to say he has given his blessing for a courtship.”

  Had there been light, she might have looked him up and down in disgust. “Is that what this is supposed to be? A courtship?”

  “The Lord of Lightnings failed to define terms. It has been my privilege to do so in his place.”

  Persephone’s hold on sobriety fled. “Why am I in the dark?” Her cheeks and the tops of her ears heated in outrage. Outrage and something … else? No. “This is your realm, Unseen One, why do you hide? Is this how you earn your name?” Spite served as a distraction from the disturbing new warmth.

  “It might be one of the ways, yes.” That voice stroked her again. If that weren’t enough, something came in contact with her upper arm. Persephone bit back a gasp. When what felt like a knuckle went sliding along her prickling skin down to the inside of her elbow, the start grew into a shiver.

  The Lord of the Underworld is sampling me like an exotic wine.

  If Hades knew how her world wavered amid the surreal, he acknowledged none of it.

  “You are in darkness,” he said, “so you understand who holds the power beneath the Sea and the Sky. Do you understand?”

  There was no need to affirm the obvious. Persephone snapped at him instead.

  “Will you show yourself? Or am I to remain blinded indefinitely?” She played a tune of defiance, loud and brash, if only to cover up a second, lower harmony trilling along now. Would he hear it anyway?

  “Oh you will see me, little flower.”

  Hades shifted closer still; there couldn’t have been a finger’s breadth separating her shoulder and what was probably the wall of his chest. The space between them roiled with heat, but Persephone was frozen stiff. A whisper of movement on her left and a hand was brushing the mass of her hair behind her shoulder, exposing her neck.

  Creation spare me!

  “Perhaps,” he continued—and had he just bent his head to place his words against her throat?— “perhaps tomorrow we’ll have a look.” There were lips dragging along the skin beneath her ear. “Would you like that? Persephone?” Hades growled the last of his offer low against her flesh.

  He can see it! I know he can!

  Her brief flirtations with Apollo and Hermes had done nothing to prepare her for the attentions of a ruler of one of the three realms. The Lord of the Dead was another sort of force, altogether. His language, his movements: they all seemed to see past every veneer.

  Persephone wedged her palms between her knees to quiet herself. The inside of her lower lip knew the bite of her teeth, a warning against any sort of pathetic whimper.

  Is this who you are?

  Was it? Was this all the better she could do, confronted with one of her own at last?

  The most infamous of the gods let out a lazy laugh, a crimson leaf floating to an autumn floor.

  “Tomorrow then,” he said, uncoiling from the platform to stand again. Despite her attempts to retain control through scornful words, he was leaving her with parted lips, abyss-wide eyes.

  Before Persephone had time to win back even the narrowest of advantages in the moment with perhaps more questions or insults, Hades Nekrodegmôn, Receiver of the Dead, had willed himself out of the room, taking his unsettling shadows with him.

  *

  “Why do you deceive me, Artemis?” Demeter’s words for the immortal were poison darts, fired into the too-innocent breezes of Nysa.

  “I may be many things,” the tall goddess said, the arrows in her quiver bristling a warning over her shoulder, “but ‘liar’ is not among them. Perhaps you should seek out Hermes if you want to deal in those sorts of insults. We don’t know where she is.”

  “And you, Athena, will you pretend ignorance as well?”

  “I pretend nothing, Daughter of Kronos,” Athena flexed irritable knuckles around the shaft of her spear, its butt planted in the field where they’d reconvened. “We’ve explained several times all we saw that day—it is you who refuses to listen. What reason could we possibly have to hide our sister?”

  Demeter eyed the pair she’d tasked to accompany Persephone to Nysa. Let my daughter enjoy the flowers and trees that are to her as children, she’d said to them, but watch over her. Now they stood before her, in the shade of a stand of cypress, overlooking the same hilly terrain her daughter had walked only two days before, trying to tell her stories of tremors in the earth, of a great rift splitting the meadow in two. Of Persephone disappearing.

  “Perhaps I should be speaking to that tawny brother of yours,” she said to Artemis. “Why should I believe he hasn’t convinced you at last to aid him in carrying her off?” That golden peacock had laid the foundation for her worries in the first place. Him and that silver-tongued Hermes. She saw through their games, the pair of them.

  “My brother can attend to his own wooing,” said Artemis, “he doesn’t need any help from me. Tread carefully with your accusations, Goddess of the Earth. Your concern for Persephone is not without reason, but there are only so many barbs I am willing to tolerate.” Artemis’s jaw flexed, and the sleek hunting hound at her feet rose with the beginnings of a growl in its throat. The warning did little to blunt Demeter’s questions.

  “So where is this ‘great rift’ in the earth now?” she asked. “The field appears as it always has. You expect me to accept your account, but where is the evidence any of this took place?”

  Athena leaned down to take up her great shield from where it leaned against her hip, should
ering it in her readiness to put an end to the conversation. Her face had grown redder than usual. “It is as we’ve said, Demeter. The hillside healed its own wound only moments after it tore itself in half. You may choose to believe us or not as you will—stranger events have shaken our realm in the past—but as for myself, I will stand here and bear your insults no longer.”

  The Goddess of War turned on her heel then and strode from the shade of the cypress. A pair of dappled grey horses tossed their heads at her stiff-backed return to her chariot.

  Artemis ran a calming hand over the head and haunches of her dog, lowering its protective hackles. She hefted her bow and painted Demeter with a final assessing look. Her features softened, but only just.

  “We know you speak with such fire out of a Mother’s desperation, but—”

  “Is that what you know? Two virgin goddesses with not a child of their own between them? So much experience, I’m sure.”

  “—but she is Zeus’s daughter, as well. Our father is unlikely to have let any harm come to her, Demeter. I’m sure she is well, and I am sure you will discover where she has gone. If we learn anything new, we will find you.”

  With this, Artemis jogged away, her hound trotting at her heels, to join Athena at her chariot. Demeter watched the pair mount the cart and, with a flourish of the reins, Athena’s horses thundered from the field, carrying the goddesses who should have protected her daughter with them.

  Now she stood alone, knuckles popping one by one, a scowl fit to blacken acres of grain to the root carved between her nose and chin. Like everything else, she would have to take care of this herself.

  This had better not be your own doing, daughter of mine.

  *

  Hades made his patient way through the bare stone halls of what others might call his palace. His formal dwelling in the Underworld could claim only the most distant kinship with its cousins terracing the slopes of Olympos. Any signs of frivolity—those curtains and tassels and busts preferred by much of the pantheon—were too ashamed to even begin manifesting in his domain. Fripperies and distractions, the lot of them. Austerity helped him to focus.

  And focus he did.

  His legs knew their destination. He might will himself there, but walking allowed him time to plan.

  He’d given her time. A whole night—as it were—for her thoughts to run rampant. More games? Hades sighed. Yes, but he did so enjoy them, didn’t he?

  The wall of the corridor he moved through opened on his right to overlook one of the greater caverns. Here it became more of a recessed walkway, and the molten line of the Phlegethôn glimmered far below in the dark.

  Something of interest among all this sameness, hm? And why not?

  How would he present himself? Simply appear in the room? Hades grimaced. No. He wanted her many things, but startled was not one of them. And how, for example, would that help if he found her asleep? Perhaps darkness again, if only to begin.

  The speed at which his motivations had changed was troubling. He’d gone from irritation to lust at the mere sight of Persephone. And at the sound, the scent of her? The way she’d dared to upbraid him all while trembling away in that darkened room? Hades had moved straight past lust to something far worse.

  Interest.

  You have to retain the upper hand, Immortal.

  The walkway tunneled back into the rock, a corridor once more, and Hades clasped fingers around the opposite wrist behind his back.

  She didn’t have to know what he was. Not right away. A god could take whatever form he chose, could he not? There was Zeus with all his bulls and swans, for whatever sick thrill that got him. And Hades had disguised himself as a mortal to appear to the daughters of Man on many occasions.

  Perhaps some unruly golden curls; wholesome, tawny limbs? Blue eyes like one of the sky-dwellers? He smirked and only stone walls were there to see it. An entertaining choice.

  Persephone might drop her guard when met with a more familiar breed of immortal. He could buy her instant ease, perhaps even ready affection. Who knew how badly Demeter’s edict might have made her hunger by now? His steps slowed as he lost himself in it.

  There she was, lidded eyes, parted lips, embracing her false God of Light. Hades would cast off his fair façade in the midst of it and she would shriek at the truth. The sound of it would finish him off then and there.

  And after? What then?

  He turned left down the last of the vacant hallways and exhaled, shaking off the remaining images of a mere few moments’ amusement. Since when did he fail to consider the long game?

  The idea of Persephone’s submission was tempting, her dread a useful tool with which to bargain—if that was the way the wind blew once she saw him—but everything between them would be clear and straightforward.

  To entertain fantasies of trickery? Was he no better than Hermes, that flighty charlatan? No. Ruses and tricks were mere sleight of hand, and even the audience knew them for lies. The real sorcery lay in honest, naked power, which enthralled without doubts or dispute.

  And one of your own kind deserves better from you, Clymenus.

  Yes. He would show her his truest self, physically and otherwise, and judge her reaction. This was no delicate mortal he prepared to sport with: this was a goddess. She had earned, at least, the respect of sincerity.

  He came to an iron glyph set into the deep grey of the corridor wall. A circle above a crescent, bisected by a cross: his personal mark stretched an armspan wide, gleaming against dull surroundings. On the other side of the stone was the first challenge Hades had looked forward to in a very long time: Persephone.

  *

  The light Hades left behind might have been worse than its absence at their first meeting. It forced Persephone to relinquish denials, to confront reality.

  She walked the length of chamber, restless after a fitful sleep of indeterminate length. Who could account for time without Helios or Selene riding the skies overhead?

  So. The Underworld.

  She was in this place at the blessing of her father and the will of a monster—or so other immortals were wont to name the Lord of the Dead down here in his hidden realm.

  A monster whose words had curled against her skin under the veil of darkness, whose voice had taken license with her body’s reactions where she gave none. Persephone’s arms condensed around her in a shudder. The way he’d established power, blinding her in shadow … Was it fear that made her cringe? Or something … worse.

  But why necessarily worse?

  Why, indeed. Her knowledge of Hades came only from whispered tales, passed among gods and men alike as so much contraband.

  Harsh. Cold. Unfeeling. His reputation on Olympos hardly spoke of a desirable partner. Her mother would be … horrified? No. There were no words hyperbolic enough for what she would be. Zeus had to have given permission without Demeter’s knowledge, but why? Why now, after all this time?

  Persephone went again to the basin on the ledge, taking up the cloth and wetting it to scrub away dirt from her fall yet another time. Any traces were imaginary now, but between nerves and a severe limit on distractions in the sparse chamber, her obsessive cleansing knew no difference.

  Why had Hades chosen her, of all the goddesses to pursue? He wanted to … to court her? Persephone made a little huff of disdain in the silent space. What sort of courtship started with an earthquake and proceeded to imprisonment? And, more important, could she escape if matters became more ridiculous than they already were?

  She stopped her scouring and pacing long enough to stand in the center of the room. As she’d tried several times already, Persephone reached within to touch that part of her godhood so inextricably tied with every growing thing in the realms. She let it fill her, churning and green and immense, and cast it up and out through the rock surrounding the chamber.

  Again, she felt nothing. The will of living growth was enough to push apart stone and, amplified by an immortal, could have served to wedge open a crevice into t
he sealed space. The beginnings of a way out, if only she could find it.

  Persephone had never experienced such an absence of life. Not a stem, not a root, as far as her will could reach.

  And what did you expect? This is the realm of the dead.

  The Underworld was either too far below the surface—if indeed its location was as literal as all that, which she doubted—or divine abilities flowed by rules of their own in Hades’s domain. Either way, it was one more failsafe she couldn’t rely on to—

  The ambient light fled the room. Again.

  Something almost imperceptible had changed in the quality of the air.

  He was with her.

  “In the dark again, are we?” Did she sound as jaded as she hoped? Anything was better than nerves, weakness.

  “For the moment.”

  “You promised yesterday to show yourself. What has changed?”

  “I said perhaps.” His voice was moving, but in which direction she couldn’t tell. The space, along with its lord, was playing tricks. “You’ve had a night to change your mind,” he said. “Are you certain you wish to see?”

  “Games,” she spat. “Does my Lord Hades still intend to court me for a wife?” She heard his hum of amusement at her insinuation. “Then face me, Nekrodegmôn. The Sons of Man have managed to do that.”

  “Hah!” Her challenge earned a bark of laughter. “Very well. Meet your fate, Persephone.”

  In the space of a breath, he restored the light to the room.

  The gods of Olympos were, with few exceptions, a tanned and golden lot, or sometimes sanguine and ruddy, depending on temperament. They spent their immortality basking in sea or sky, kissed by the light of Helios.

  Hades, Lord of the Dead, was not a god of Olympos.

  Before her stood a figure so pale it might as well have been carved from marble. If it wasn’t for him speaking to her moments ago, Persephone couldn’t have said whether life flowed in his veins at all.