Time passed and Persephone slipped between the Underworld and the dream world. Pain and oblivion came in turns, but when she finally woke from her slumber she felt different. The pain had subsided and she felt the slight tingle of refreshment as an appetizing spice warmed the air around her.
“Who’s there?” she asked wearily before opening her eyes.
“It’s always me,” Hades answered somewhat dully.
Persephone wasn’t angry when she heard him. It was mildly comforting that he had not left her to suffer entirely alone.
Then she opened her eyes and was startled at what she saw. She had always believed that the bedroom for whores was the grandest room in Hades’ palace. She was mistaken. She could only be in one room now, the bedroom meant for wives. The walls were white marble with gold and gray veins running along the surface. The floor was carpeted in scarlet and the molding throughout was solid gold. The bed she had awoken in was made up in white silk with elegant pomegranate blossoms and gold leaves embroidered on the cover. The bed and all of the other furniture in the room was formed out of pure gold. The walls had three enormous paintings reaching up to the vaulted ceiling. The one to the left was of Hades. He looked the way he had for hundreds of years. The one to the right was of her before she came to be his wife and the Goddess of the Underworld. Finally, the one in the center, across from the bed, was of the two of them together on the day he took her home to Olympus. It was the day she wore the red dress.
Persephone didn’t know how to respond to this majesty. It was grander than any she had been in on Olympus. Not only that, but it seemed she had rested in this room the entire time. There was evidence: bandages in the wastebasket. He must have been talking to someone in a different room.
She scratched the back of her neck and felt her progress. She was almost healed, but it itched terribly.
Hades stood next to a trolley littered with desserts. They were warm and if Persephone focused she could smell each one individually: chocolate, baked apples, cold lime pie, and everywhere the intense scent of vanilla bean. They smelled heavenly. Hades selected a piece of pumpkin pie and sat down in a gilded chair next to the bed. He shifted his chair close to her and sliced off the tip of the pie wedge with his fork. Then he bent and offered to feed her.
Persephone recoiled. This temptation was too much for her. Even if she was immortal, she did not like going without food. She was ravenous when she woke up after her five year fast, but did not eat because she knew that Seth was going to bite out part of her stomach that night. She hadn’t eaten and the tantalizing aroma of the pie was driving a part of her mad.
“Oh, Hades,” she nearly wept, her voice croaking. “I can’t eat that.”
“Why not?” he asked gently. If he was provoked by her refusal, he kept it completely hidden.
“I don’t trust you. You said you had a promise to collect on from Zeus. Maybe you used it to remove my title as Goddess of Fertility, or maybe you used it to remove my immunity against the food of the Underworld. I can’t eat anything you offer me.”
He set the pie on the bedside table and leaned forward to look in her face. “There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a peace offering, but it’s fine if you don’t want to accept it. It’s practically a tradition for you to refuse everything I offer you.” He paused and then said, “I have wanted to talk to you and you’ve been asleep for months. It has given me a lot of time to put things in order.”
“What are you organizing?” she whispered.
“Love,” he replied. His red eyes were so dark, they almost looked black. “We never talk, so I’m going to use this moment when you’re so weak to talk to you about my love. When I first saw you soaking wet in the pool on Olympus, I can only try to describe my feelings. You were radiant. The world of the dead is dreary, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, and I thought that if only I could bring you here, you would magically light it up. Maybe then, I wouldn’t mind being the Lord of the Underworld.”
Persephone shivered.
“Naturally, you didn’t like it here. I exhausted myself, trying to make it pleasant for you. I brought you everything I thought a woman could want and fitted this room up hoping I could excite you by leaving a mystery for your discovery. This room is your unopened present.” He sighed. “You were never going to open it. You were never interested in my presents.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“There’s no use apologizing now.” He took a deep breath and leaned away from her. “In truth, once you got here, you were so demented with depression that all the magic was drained from you. I was the one who did that to you. You were never impressed with any of my brands of lovemaking, no matter how many I tried. Food? You refuse it,” he said, indicating the mouth-watering pie. “Clothes? You always looked tortured. Space? You took too much and abused it. When you went away, you never missed me. Sex? You always called it rape. I’m left with no way to win you.”
Persephone’s breath came in tortured gasps. He made his crimes sound light and her ingratitude sound immeasurable. She couldn’t stand much more of his speech, but she had no choice but to let him talk. Her brain was too muddled after her injuries to even try battling with him. She was not even strong enough to raise her voice, let alone think of some cutting way to respond to him.
“I’m a patient man,” he said, looking into her face and noting the rising tension. “Living with the dead teaches patience. The man who wanted to kill his rival didn’t get the satisfaction, but three generations down—blood is spilled in his name to his satisfaction. The man who doesn’t get the woman he wants—his son gets her daughter. I believed that if I waited long enough, I could get what I wanted, too.”
“How many hundred years have you have been waiting?” she asked, her voice a hideous rasp.
“Over twenty six, and even now, I feel like it hasn’t been that long. I could go on waiting... except that I won’t.”
Persephone sat paralyzed and wide-eyed. What had he just said?
“In the midst of your fight, in the moment when Cerberus got you. Did you see her?” Hades asked, peering into her eyes.
“I didn’t know who she was.”
“It was Taylor. She said that Seth gave her your four pomegranate seeds. She ate all of them and came here.”
Persephone gasped.
“I am overcome,” Hades whispered. “You never excited me like that.”
She nodded. Never in her whole life had she wanted to arouse anything in him, other than his compassion. “Did you really love her, when you played the part of her brother?”
“Indeed, I did. It was different being part of a normal family, with a mother and father who cared about me. Taylor was a revelation about love and forgiveness all by herself. Rylan was horrible, but I knew that when I decided to make that deal with him. He did all sorts of terrible things to her and she forgave me for them because I was kind to her. Unlike you, she liked my brand of kindness.”
“Go on.”
He rolled his eyes dismissively. “She was my sister in that world. Mortals are forbidden from having romantic relationships with their siblings. In that body, there was nothing for it. I have excellent restraint. In fact, I did not think of her that way. To hear from her own mouth that she cared for me—that intensely—was new. And to see her come to me at that moment... my feelings are inexplicable. There you were, trying so desperately to get away from me that you were practically willing to behead yourself, and there she was, sacrificing one third of her life just to be with me. I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone love me that much.”
Persephone’s heart fell in her chest until it lay motionless on the bottom of her inner self. “You shouldn’t have raped me.”
“It was never rape, Persephone,” he said calmly. “The way you looked at me across that starlit pool the night before I took you, I believed you wanted me too. I thought you felt the way I did. I thought you would love my grand display with lava and rock. Letting you say no with your mouth when your heart wanted to say yes. I thought I was giving you everything you wanted, but couldn’t have asked for.”
“I was just looking at you. It didn’t mean anything,” Persephone rasped.
His jaw was rigid. “It meant something to me. I thought that was what we were doing all these years. We play a game. You play the virgin and I play the pillaging warrior.”
“How could you misinterpret me so completely?”
He looked down, vaguely ashamed. “I think it’s because the idea of that game made me feel like all this,” he said, indicating his underground palace, “had a romance to it that couldn’t be found anywhere else. That was why I let you go home to Olympus every year. So, you could be the virgin all over again and come down to me again, where I ravished you in the dark, reliving that beautiful memory all over again.”
“I never felt that way,” she insisted.
“That’s why I’m going to let you go.” He stretched out his hand and conjured a long knife. He took hold of the silver handle and looked at it in his palm.
Persephone stared at it with great eyes and literally trembled as the fear of the pain overtook her. Her mouth went completely dry and she thought she would vomit if she swallowed, except her stomach was empty. She closed her eyes and prayed for strength.
“More than anything, I don’t want to do this,” Hades continued. “I wasn’t going to do this.”
“What made you change your mind?” she stammered.
“I am never going to make you happy. My doubts were confirmed that night when you were Juliet and I was Rylan. I killed the vampire and we were in your dorm room. I couldn’t think why you wouldn’t want me to make love to you. It was the perfect night for it. At least, it should have been. If it had been possible for me to win you—you would have fallen for me that night. Since you didn’t, I knew I was not pursuing the right course. My doubts were cemented the night you baited Cerberus and Taylor arrived. What kind of mad woman baits Cerberus to rip her head from her shoulders? He hasn’t stopped crying.”
“Oh?”
“I’m sorry. Even now, the very memory of you stretching your neck out for him to bite fills me with horror. I shouldn’t have driven you that hard. It was also the night that I realized that you were never going to make me happy. The conflict between us will never end unless I end it peacefully now. Death is the way to repair any injury and the time has come for our love affair to end that way also.”
“I’m grateful,” Persephone said, her eyes overflowing with tears. “Thank you.”
“I thought we were meant for each other,” he said as he maneuvered next to her on the bed. “I’m sorry that winning your heart became a game. Please remember, I thought that you liked it, too. I thought that if I got you to accept me in Rylan’s skin that would show that it had been me you wanted all along. I was a fool.” He brushed her neckline aside so the flesh above her breasts was visible. “You never wanted me.”
Persephone quaked from head to foot in terror.
“Don’t you want this?” Hades asked in a low tone.
She nodded, but could hardly bring herself to speak. “I’m scared. It’ll hurt.”
Hades covered her eyes with his palm like he was closing the eyes of a corpse. Then she felt his breath in her ear. “Don’t be afraid. This will be different. This incision won’t rip your flesh the way you let Cerberus tear you. Seth’s scratches will seem crude. I know every cell of your being. And I know the exact position of the seed in your heart.” He placed his hand on her chest and between his fingers; he pierced the knife through her ribcage.
The sensation took her breath away. She couldn’t move or breathe or bear the pain. It was too much. It was too strange. Hades was muttering something and the knife’s point inside her seemed to grow arms as it spindled around the tightest part in her chest.
Then suddenly, he pulled it loose and the pain in her heart abruptly ended.
Hades held the knife, the top split like needle-nose pliers. The seed rested in its grip. He dropped the seed into a bottle on the bedside table, containing the seed Cerberus had freed.
Hades pulled a handkerchief out of his front pocket and covered Persephone’s wound with it. “You won’t need more than that,” he said calmly as he wiped the blood from the tool he had been using. Then he got up from the bed and, extending his hand, he let the knife disappear back into thin air.
“Hades,” she rasped with tears spilling down her cheeks. “Thank you.”
“Think nothing of it. I got you into this mess to begin with, so I fetched you out. That’s all.” He stood at the end of the bed and held onto the bedpost and looked at her wistfully. “Now I must tell you of the consequences of what we’ve just done.”
Persephone felt like dying. As if she hadn’t been through enough. Now he was going to tell her how she screwed up the whole order of the cosmos and how all Heaven was going to come down on her head.
She groaned.
“I paid a visit to Demeter. After all, she is the one who governs the seasons on Earth. She is the Goddess of the Harvest. I asked her if it would be within her control to keep things the way they are if I let you go. After all, they only have winter and summer on Gaia because she longs for her daughter.”
Persephone’s eyes were wide in expectation.
“Of course, she willingly gave her consent.”
Persephone exhaled in relief.
“I also spoke to her about the sirens. I don’t want to see any of those creatures again, so I told Demeter of their involvement in freeing you. She was impressed and grateful, so she decided to show her appreciation. Their curse is lifted.”
Persephone sneezed. “How long ago was that?”
“It was done a few weeks after I returned Juliet’s soul to her body. I’m not sure the exact time.”
She gasped. “You did that, too?”
“After a solid drink from the waters of Lilium, I think she’ll be able to live a fine life there. Don’t you agree?”
Persephone clutched at the handkerchief on her chest and moaned, “This is too much goodness, Hades. I’m confused. If you had the capacity to be this good all along then why are you only showing it now?”
“It wasn’t you,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“It wasn’t you who opened my heart and showed me how to love. It wasn’t you. It was Taylor.”
“Taylor?”
He nodded.
Persephone couldn’t stop weeping. “Is there anything I can give you in return?”
“Yes,” he said, returning to her side of the bed.
She waited for him to tell her with her eyes wide as chasms.
“Kiss me—once.”
She nodded through her tears. With her heart as light and full as a hot air balloon, she bent her head to kiss Hades, and for the first time, she felt something like love.