Page 5 of Hades

A green vine grew from the cooling lava, a bud forming at its tip. Leaves unfurled, stretching towards him rather than the slender light, as if he was the source of their nourishment and life, and then the bud opened.

A red rose that bloomed for him.

So delicate and beautiful.

Too delicate to belong in this grim world he ruled.

Hades stared at it, calm suffusing him, and felt to the very depth of his wretched soul that it was too delicate—that this war would finally crush that sweet flower which brought him light and balance.

Who made his life worth living.

An ache grew inside him.

An ache to see her, to dip his head to her shoulder as he crushed her to his chest and breathed in her subtle fragrance of lilies.

To find his strength in her as he had so many times before.

“I will question the demigoddess too.” Thanatos broke into his thoughts and Hades focused on him again.

He caught the guilt that flared in the god of death’s eyes.

Again, Thanatos felt deeply responsible for something. Two things in fact. One: that he had spawned the necromancer breed from his forced union with the demigoddess in question, Harleena, when he was her captive—a breed that played a part in the current uprising.

Two: that one of that breed had taken Hades’s twins captive and had faked Calindria’s death, causing her brother Calistos to suffer brutally in a way he had never recovered from. Harleena had then imprisoned Calindria and a daemon able to construct illusions had made Hades and his family believe the body they had buried in the Elysian Fields had been hers.

A ploy by his enemy to weaken them and drive Calistos to kill himself.

That had failed.

Just as Hades had failed Calindria.

He couldn’t hold Thanatos’s gaze, was looking at the crimson rose again before he could get control of himself as familiar guilt filled him. He should have known she was alive. He should have found her sooner. The thought that she had suffered so many centuries alone, believing her own family had betrayed her and left her to rot in that cage, and that her beloved brother was dead, cut a piece of his heart from him each day, slowly chipping away at it. The thought that she might have gone on suffering like that if his eldest son, Keras, hadn’t stepped too close to the veil during a foolish dive into the mind of an enemy and had seen her as a grown woman, discovering she was alive… Hades couldn’t bear thinking about it.

Thanatos stepped closer and Hades didn’t need to look at him to feel the silent offer of support the god extended to him, and knew he didn’t need to look at Thanatos to show him that he would be eternally grateful to him for his role in finding Calindria and bringing her home.

Hades still wasn’t fully on board with their relationship, but he had watched Thanatos and Calindria together, and it was clear that his daughter adored the dark god and that Thanatos adored her too.

Would do anything for her.

Needed her as if she was the very heart in his chest—the thing that gave him life.

The rose’s petals opened further, blooming brighter.

For him.

Because Persephone had felt his rage and his agitation, and she was trying to calm him in the only way she could while they were apart.

And by the gods, he loved her for that.

He loved her for all the times she had pulled him back from the brink, for all the times she had wrapped her arms around him and crushed him to her chest, and her lips had brushed his ear as he had whispered that she loved him.

Him.

A fiend who had stolen her from a world filled with light and colour and plunged her into one of darkness, where she should have withered and faded, wilting as any other female would have.

But not his Persephone.

She hadbloomed.

---