The Dark Wife (23 page)

It had happened so quickly, and so silently.
Charon
stared down at his hands, at his feet, at his body, his mouth open but unspeaking. He stumbled from the boat, placed uncertain feet on the shore, and walked by Pallas and me without a glance in our direction. We watched him move, unsteadily, over the dark plains.

“Freedom,” Hades sighed, returning from the river.
“Such as it is.”

She looked down at her fingers, still sparking with gold dust, and then held out her hand to me.

She was animated, brimming over with power and potential. Our eyes met, and I saw, felt,
knew
only love.

Treachery had been paid back with kindness: such was the rule of the queen of the dead.

“I’ll have to build a bridge,” she said.

Far in the distance, the palace gleamed, shifted, grew.

Eleven: Changes

We lay in the dark.  I could hear her breathing, heard the drumming of my own heart, the shift of cloth on our skin, the movement of her hand, brushing back her hair.

I closed my eyes, inhaled the scent of her, the earthiness, the deep water, the underground green. It had been a long time since
Charis
(not truly, but it seemed a lifetime, and then, only a moment), and I felt so young, so unproven—what if I disappointed her? What if, despite everything else, I wasn’t what she wanted, or expected? She had existed since the dawn of the world.

I shook my head, remembered to trust (I trust myself), and gently, so gently, I reached out in the darkness and drew her to me.

“Thank you,” she whispered into my neck, into my hair, as she gathered me in, pressed her lips against my skin in five, ten, a hundred places. “You saved my life, Persephone.”

“I didn’t…”

“You are, even now.”

Fire, fire everywhere.
I arched beneath her, skin on fire, and she traced patterns over me, ancient patterns, and I tasted glory when she kissed me; we moved like pillars of light in the darkness—we shone.

Hades worshipped me in her own chamber, held me, touched me,
knew
me. I closed my eyes and pressed back my head and cried out, once, twice, again and again, as she found secrets upon me, within me, that I had been keeping for her.

“Oh…” I whispered into her night-black hair when the star burst, shattered, into a thousand pinpricks of light all through me. I dug my fingers into her arm and moaned her name, and she stopped my mouth with a kiss like an ocean, a desperate, wanting kiss, and I knew, in that moment, that there was nothing but love in
all the
world, or under it.

We curled up, her stomach against my back, every inch of me a heartbeat, and our hair tangled together, and we lay in one another’s arms, a mirror image of each other—two souls shining, uniting, complete.

~*~

I woke to the cold. I shivered and sat up, alone, dread weighing me down. Hades was gone. Had I done something wrong? The fear lasted for a heartbeat, because Hades, beautiful Hades, came into the room, her face alight, glowing like never before, and she kissed me on my mouth, my neck, murmured my name into my hair.

In that moment, I felt the change in me, an opening,
a
ripening. It felt good and right. I was becoming someone different from the girl who ran wild through the Immortals Forest, daughter of Demeter. I was becoming myself.

“I love you,” Hades breathed against my ear, and there was a cough at the doorway. Pallas stood there, and I yelped and gathered my garments quickly, blushing, but she laughed, Hades laughed and helped me dress, and I found myself smiling, too.

“Incorrigible,” Pallas sighed, rolled her eyes. She had regained her solidity overnight; there was nothing wispy about her. She beamed at us, shook her head and left. We heard her laughter echoing in the hall of the throne room.

Hades turned to me, her lashes lowered, her mouth curved. “This, I promise, has nothing to do with last night.” She took my hands, kissed them both, and guided me to my feet. “Though I must admit, I have perfect timing.” Her smile melted something inside of me. “Come. I have a gift for you.”

“Another monstrous child?”
I laughed, as, half clothed, she dragged me out of the room, down the hall, and then down another. Cerberus, ever loyal, followed us around every twist and turn, and suddenly, impossibly, we spilled out of the palace—no, there was no palace behind us, only the Underworld plains, and before us, over us, towered a set of great double doors sunk into an earthen wall. They were intricately carved of a flashing stone; as we approached them, they changed color from black to brilliant green to cobalt blue.

I stared at Hades, speechless.

“Watch,” she said, and she opened the doors.

My heart fell away within me, and I stepped inside, awed.

It was the sun…but it wasn’t. Above us hung a globe that turned on a heavy chain, encrusted with tiny, glittering, golden gems. Hades must have hidden one of her golden spheres within it, because it flickered with light, cast off and fractured by the crystals.

And below, in the room, everything was covered with the little jewels, and I laughed, for there was a tree, as tall as I was, made of metal, covered with gems. There were flowers, perfectly formed and gleaming—not living, not real, but so vibrant that I imagined I could smell their sweet scents.

It was a garden of metal and stone. Trees, flowers, sun. And sky—the walls and ceiling were encrusted in crystals of
  a
bright blue hue.

If I blurred my eyes, I could imagine I was standing in the forest again.

“Do you like it, Persephone?” Hades asked me.

I turned to her, tears in my eyes, heart so full I felt it breaking.

“Yes, yes, yes,” I cried, pulling her against me, kissing her with the passion of a growing thing for its sun.

“How did you do this? Why—” 

“I call it a sun room,” she smiled, laughing. “Pallas helped. Does it remind you of your earth? Is it similar? Close? Close enough? Does this make you feel more at home?”

“Oh, Hades, you… You created this for me, to make me happy? Hades, I’m already happy.
So happy.
You’re too good to me.”

“Never,” she whispered, drawing both of my hands up, kissing the palms so tenderly, softly, it was like a whisper. I shivered, and she drew me close.

“You have made of my life something beautiful,” she said. “I am blessed beyond measure by your presence, and love… And I will spend the rest of my forever making you happy. I promise you that.”

It was a bold, shameless declaration, and I folded her into my arms, drew her mouth down, kissed it until I couldn’t breathe and my heart beat too fast.

I didn’t want anything but this moment. Could we live for an eternity like
this,
sequestered away, untouched by all other fates save the one we created together? I didn’t want to ask these questions, didn’t want to think about the possibility that our lives could ever change. I wanted to live in this moment, this golden, perfect moment, for always and forever. I wanted Hades, here, now, and nothing else in all my life. I could be content forever, until the stars fell and the world ceased to be.

I held my goddess against my heart, willing time to spare us, to release us—two small souls—from its relentless, forward
march
.

“Hades, Persephone,” Pallas said, and we both turned, surprised to find her standing behind us. The smile faded from my face as I took in the sorrow of her expression.

“What’s wrong?” Hades asked her.

“Hermes is here. He needs to speak with you, Persephone.”

My stomach contracted; my heart froze.

The moment was lost.

I knew why he’d come.

The path to the sun room, the hallways of the palace itself, had seemed so long and winding—but we traveled them too quickly now. Hermes waited for us in the throne room—Hermes, who never ventured beyond the banks of the Styx. He sat on the floor, legs crossed,
his
face grim, withdrawn.

“It’s Zeus,” he said, without a greeting.

The name provoked a violent tremor within me. I leaned against Hades, who stood behind me, and she wrapped her arms around my body, across my chest.

“He got to Demeter. She’s made an ultimatum, Persephone. He knows where you are, has known for ages, and when he told her, finally, he must have spun more lies.” Hermes paused, bit his lip.

“She has frozen the earth, and she has vowed to freeze the world in a forever winter if you do not return. She will not allow anything to grow. In time, the earth itself will die. You must return in three days’ time.”

Oh, Mother. Oh, Mother, Mother, Mother. Zeus spun no
lies,
didn’t have to. He’s hurting you; I know he’s hurting you. He wants me back, and it terrifies me so much, because I don’t know why, and you can’t stand up to him, Mother, because he’s the king of the gods, and he gets what he wants. I left—I ran away because he forced me to, and now he wants me back. But, Mother, I can’t go back, not now. Not ever. I love her, mother. I love her so much.

I sunk down to my knees and collapsed on the floor. I forgot to breathe, and it didn’t matter. I covered my face with my hands. It was too much, too much, everything, all of it. It was too bright and too dark and too painful, and I had fallen in love and could not bear to leave. I would die if I left. For a moment, I wished I could die, because then I would have to stay here, with Hades, forever, and Zeus would have no claims to me.

“I’ll go,” Hades said, stooping over me, touching my shoulders with her gentle hands. “Persephone, please… It will be all right. I’ll go—I’ll talk some sense into Demeter, tell her the truth of what’s been happening, which I’m certain Zeus left out, or distorted.” Her mouth was set in a firm, hard line. “I’ll go, and you’ll see—she’ll change her mind. I’ll fix this.”

I laughed, then, a sad, hopeless laugh, shaking my head, but the words wouldn’t come, the words to tell her that she was
mistaken,
that my father was forcing my mother, that this wasn’t my mother’s doing at all…

“You have been down here for six months, Persephone,” Hermes told me.

I blanched, put my hand over my mouth. It had seemed like days or weeks, not months—but time paced differently in the Underworld.

“If you don’t come up, Demeter will freeze the earth so deeply that it will never thaw. People, everything, will die.”

“It’s Zeus, not my mother,” I insisted, standing, drying my eyes, though I didn’t remember crying. I turned to Hades and nearly crumpled again; she looked so lost.

“Hades…” I squeezed my eyes shut, forced out the words. “I’ll go up, and I’ll explain—I’ll explain everything.” I wondered where my resolve had come from, but I swallowed and carried through with it. “I’m not afraid of Zeus. He has no power over me, not anymore.”

“The moment you leave the Underworld, the moment that your feet touch the earth,” Hades whispered, gripping my arm, “Demeter will sense you. She will find you. And if Zeus is with her, nothing that you say will sway him. He…he may keep you against your will.
Or worse.

“No, Persephone—” She looked at me, and I fell into her eyes, wanted to lose myself to their darkness. “It makes the most sense that I return with Hermes, that I seek out Zeus, and your mother, too. I can mend this. I will.”

I buried my face in Hades’ chest, and my heart broke. “What if you don’t return? What if this is what he wanted, all along? Zeus tried to kill you.”