The Dark Wife (4 page)

Fear and anger bubbled down my spine as I looked up, up, up at the shining countenance of the king of all the gods. Zeus.
Zeus, who had destroyed my life.

Zeus, my father.

“She is beautiful,” he boomed in syllables like crashing bells. They rung across the palace, reverberating again and again, so that conversations paused, words clipped, and every god and goddess pressed forward to see who Zeus complimented. He took my hand and kissed it, and the only thing I knew was his lips were wet, and I stared too long at the mark they left on my skin. I shivered, hid my hand away, and his great silver brows raised. He inhaled as if to speak, but my mother stepped between us. I gaped at her hand on his wrist, petting the shining hairs there.

“She looks like you, Demeter.” Zeus held his arms wide, face beaming. “Welcome to Olympus, my daughter!”

I shrunk into
myself,
wished I could shimmer and go, fast as Hermes.

But I couldn’t, and my father gathered me into an embrace so tight that the breath left me, and dark circles spun before my eyes. He was laughing—oh, I
knew
that laugh, and I felt it like a kick to my stomach. My hands drew into fists.

He’d laughed when he was done with
Charis
.

I hated him so much in that moment that I didn’t know what to do.

It was instinct, the struggle out of his grasp, how I lost myself easily in the crowd. I slipped back between the columns on the balcony and waited for a long moment in the small space between marble and railing and never-ending blackness and stars. My heart pounded, and my ears buzzed, and I didn’t know what to think or how to feel. Hermes said “rebel,” as if it were a simple thing to thwart Zeus, to escape his infinite reach and power. How could I? It was impossible, everything was impossible, and I was so tired, so angry, so sad.

I rubbed my eyes and stared down at the revolving, shimmering globe. From here, it seemed a pebble that I might cradle in my hand.
Tiny.
So vulnerable.

There was nothing I could do. I was trapped.

Neither Zeus nor Demeter came looking for me, and it was just as well. If I’d offended him, if I’d angered him, I would fall to his wrath soon enough, wouldn’t I? I dropped my head into my hands.

There was laughter just behind the column, and despite myself, I turned to look, peeking around the marble edge.

I had met Athena once, when she visited my mother. I remember thinking she had laughed a great deal for someone rumored so somber, and she had kissed my mother very tenderly goodbye. Here, now, her jet-black curls were swept up beneath a glittering circlet, and she draped an arm about a mortal girl’s shoulder. A goblet appeared between them, and Athena drank deeply, tilting her head back until the goblet was emptied. She tossed it over her shoulder, and quick as a hawk, she drew her companion’s smiling mouth down for a kiss.

I watched, bewitched, breathless, heart pounding out a rhythm I had almost forgotten. Athena and the girl broke apart for air, laughing, arms entangled together. I blushed; my skin felt slick. I breathed in and out and ducked back to my hiding place behind the column, on the balcony hanging over the earth.

Charis
.

I dug my nails into my palms and concentrated on breathing.

It was not sudden, how the room behind me grew dark, throwing long shadows from the torchlight upon the balcony floor. It was a gradual thing, and I almost failed to notice it, but for the silence. No one laughed or spoke; there was no clink of goblet or twang of lyre. Everything, everything fell to a silence that crawled into my ears and roared.

I shook my head, straightened,
peered
again around the column at the great room. All throughout the palace, a deep quiet crept, cold as a chill. I saw the gods and goddesses shudder, and then the darkness fell like a curtain, became complete. The stars themselves were blotted out for three terrible heartbeats.

There was the sound of footsteps upon the marble, and the light returned.

“Hades has come.” I heard the whisper—Athena’s whisper—and I started.
Hades?
I stood on the tips of my toes, trying to catch a glimpse.

All of us there had been touched by Zeus’ cruelty, in some form or another. We were meaningless to him, toys to be played with and tossed. But the story of Zeus’s ultimate betrayal was well known.

Zeus and Poseidon and Hades were created from the earth in the time before time—the time of the Titans. They cast lots to determine which of them would rule the kingdom of the sea, the kingdom of the dead, and the kingdom of the sky. Poseidon and Zeus chose the longest straws, so Hades was left with no choice but to reign over the kingdom of the dead, the Underworld.

It did not come to light until later that Zeus had fixed the proceedings to make certain he would get his way—to become ruler of the greatest kingdom, as well as all of the gods. He would never have risked a fair game of chance.
Could never have hidden away his splendor in that world of endless darkness.

I shivered, wrapping my arms about my middle. Hades rarely appeared at Olympus, choosing to spend his time, instead, sequestered away in that place of shadows, alone.

My eyes searched the murmuring crowd. Though I was uncertain as to Hades’ appearance, I assumed I would recognize the god of the Underworld when I saw him.

But where was he? Over there were Poseidon and Athena, whispering behind their hands. I saw Artemis and Apollo break apart as Zeus moved between them, climbed several high steps and staggered into his towering throne, hefting his goblet of ambrosia aloft.

“Persephone.”
I jumped, heart racing, and Hermes grinned down at me, his face a handbreadth from my own. “You have a habit of startling me,” I whispered to him, but he shook his head, pressed a finger to his lips. My brow furrowed as he took my hand and led me out onto the floor of the great room, to linger again amidst the gods. I felt naked, misplaced, but Hermes stood behind me and elbowed me forward. I yielded and
stumbled
a step, two steps. Finally, my frustration rising, I turned to admonish him but paused mid-motion because—I had run into someone. Life slowed, slowed, slowed. I muttered, “Excuse me,” looked up at the woman I did not recognize, had never before seen, my heart slack until it thundered in one gigantic leap against my bones.

Everything stopped.

 Her eyes were black, every part of them,
her
skin pale, like milk. Her hair dropped to the small of her back, night-colored curls that shone, smooth and liquid, as she cocked her head, as she gazed down at me without a change of expression. She wasn’t beautiful—the lines of her jaw, her nose, were too proud, too sharp and straight. But she was mesmerizing, like a whirlpool of dark water, where secrets lurked.

I looked up at her, and I was lost in the black of her eyes, and I did not see her take my hand, but I felt her hold it, as if it were meant to be in the cage of her fingers, gently cradled.

“Hello,” she
said,
her voice softer than a whisper. I blinked once, twice, trying to shake the feeling I had heard her speak before—perhaps in a dream.

And then, “I am Hades,” she said.

My world fell away.

Hades…Hades, the lord of the underworld…was a woman.

“But, but…” I spluttered, and she watched me with catlike curiosity, head tilted to the sound of my voice as I attempted to regain my senses. “They call you the lord of the Underworld.  I thought—”

“It is a slur,” she breathed. I had to lean forward to hear her words. Her face remained still, placid, as if she were wearing a mask.

I didn’t know what to say—that I was sheltered? Should I apologize that I hadn’t known? She still held my hand, fingers curled into my palm like a vine. “I’m sorry,” I managed. There was nothing else within me, and the moment stretched on into an eternity as my heart beat against the door of my chest.

I’d forgotten Hermes was there, and he cleared his throat now, stepping alongside us, staring down at our hands, together.

“Hades,” he murmured, chin inclined, smile twisting up and up. “It’s begun, now that you’ve met her.”

“What?” My head spun; everything was happening too fast. Her eyes had never once left mine, two dark stars pulling me in. My blood pounded fast and hot, and I didn’t understand what was happening, but my body did. No, she was not beautiful, but she didn’t need to be. I was drawn to her, bewitched by her, a plant angling up to drink in her sun. Still, still, she had not let go of my hand.

 “Hermes, may I have a moment with her?” she asked, turning toward him. When her eyes moved away, I felt
an emptiness
, a hollow, a great, dark ache.

Hermes frowned, shook his head once, twice, and shimmered into nothingness.

She raised my hand, then, so slowly that I held my breath until her lips pressed against my skin, warmer than I’d imagined, and soft. Something within me shattered as she swallowed me up again with her dark eyes, said: “You are lovely, Persephone.”

I stared down at her bent head, spellbound.

“Thank you,” I whispered.  She rose.

Where Zeus’s lips had been wet, rough, pushing hard enough against my hand to leave a bruise…she was the opposite—gentle. Yet I felt her everywhere. I shivered, closed my eyes. She did not let go of my hand but turned it over, tracing the line of my palm with her thumb.

“It has been a deep honor, meeting you, seeing you. You defy my imaginings.” A small smile played over her mouth as she shook her head, traced her fingers against the hollow of my hand. “I hope to see you again.”

She looked as if she might say more—she looked hopeful—but something changed, and her eyes flickered. She sighed, pressed her lips together,
squeezed
my hand. Hades turned and disappeared into the crowd of Olympians.

 “No—” I put my hand over my heart, breathed in and out.

 
“In front of all the others.”
Hermes was shimmering beside me, leaning close; he shook his head. “She’s either stupid or very brave.”

I felt as if I were waking from a very long sleep. I stared at the floor, wondering what was real, what was a dream. “I don’t understand. That…she was Hades?”

 “In the death,” he snickered, and he held up his goblet of ambrosia to me, as if in a toast. “It has begun.”

 “I don’t understand…”

 “You’d better start understanding, and fast, little girl.” Hermes laughed at me, grinning wickedly. Quick as a blink, he grabbed my hand and turned it over. Where Hades had kissed me, where her skin had touched my own, was the lightest dusting of gold. It glittered now, beneath the light of the stars.

 “You, Persephone, Demeter’s daughter, daughter of Zeus…you will have choices to make.
Very soon.”
I could smell the sickly sweet ambrosia wafting from his mouth. “Everything that will be, or could be, is dependent upon what you choose to do,” he told me. “
You must choose wisely
.”

“But why—“

He draped an arm about the shoulders of Artemis, who had just moved near, her brother at her side. Both stared at me with apologetic smiles.

As one, Hermes, Apollo and Artemis turned toward the ambrosia-laden tables, speaking to each other in hushed voices, and I cherished the moment, the moment I’d been seeking all the night long, to be alone.

I watched my hand, watched the gold dust sparkle. Above, beyond the columns of the titanic Olympian Palace, the stars still shone and sang.

Was I enchanted? For the remainder of the night, no one spoke to me, touched me. I hadn’t even met Hebe, Hera’s daughter. Along with
Harmonia
, she was my rival, according to my mother. Rival for what? It all seemed so absurd, so irrelevant.
All of this opulence, this false camaraderie.