Page 121 of Queen of the Underworld

“You will.” Demeter lunged for her, seizing hold of her arm to grip it so tightly that it hurt. Persephone flinched as her mother dragged her towards her, and then along the corridor, towards her room. “Hades has brainwashed you, weaving spells to make you foolishly believe you feel something for him, and I will not hear it. You do not love him.”

“I do!” Persephone wrestled against her mother’s hold, twisting her arm in her tight grasp and not caring that her skin burned from the friction. “I love him.”

Demeter scoffed and glared over her shoulder at her. “Foolish child. You only think you do. It only takes a look at you to know he seated himself between your thighs and took the only thing you had to offer in a marriage, and now you believe you are in love with him. Many a girl has fallen for a male’s charms in the way you have, and found themselves thinking that meant the male loved them, and then—”

Persephone stopped dead, pulling her mother to a stop too as it hit her. “And then you find yourself with child and with no father for your baby.”

Demeter glanced at her again, the anger and hurt in her eyes confirming it. Her mother had trusted a male, believing he loved her, and he had used and discarded her, saddling her with a daughter and no chance of wedding another.

“Hades is not like the male you trusted. He loves me, and I love him.” She gripped her mother’s arm and pulled on it, forcing Demeter to look at her. “Just give him a chance to prove it to you.”

“No.” Demeter wrenched free of her grip, her expression dark and unrelenting. “You will wed Aristaeus tomorrow and I will hear no more about it.”

Hurt arrowed through Persephone, a cold dagger in her chest. Her mother meant it. She was going to force her to marry someone she didn’t love, forsaking someone she did, all because she couldn’t believe that Hades could love her, and that she loved him.

Or was it because marrying Hades would place her above her mother in the hierarchy of the gods?

That seemed the more likely reason. If a lesser god had taken Persephone, her mother probably wouldn’t have cared. But it had been Hades who had taken her and desired to make her his queen, a god so far above Demeter in standing that her mother couldn’t bear it, even though he made her daughter happy.

Persephone clenched her fists. She wouldn’t stand for it. She had allowed her mother to control every aspect of her life for too long.

It was time she made her own decisions.

Starting with this one.

She pivoted on her heel, grabbing her skirts and lifting them at the same time, and ran at the guards. She felt Demeter turn behind her and everything seemed to slow as she sprinted towards her freedom. The guards drew their swords.

Persephone focused and summoned vines to hurl them out of her way.

And nothing happened.

Persephone turned horrified, wide eyes on her mother, struggling to believe that she would go as far as sealing her powers to trap her here and force her to do as she bid.

“Are you that desperate to ruin my life and destroy the only happiness I have ever known?” Persephone clenched her trembling fists, not feeling her nails biting into her palms as rage and hurt consumed her and she stared her mother down, needing her to see how much this was killing her and hoping to see she regretted what she had done.

But not a single drop of regret coloured Demeter’s dark green eyes as she signalled the guards.

Two of the men marched forwards and grabbed Persephone, and she fought them, punching and kicking them, her heart thundering as she tried to escape their hold. More of the guards joined them, the four of them combined making them too strong for her to break free from.

All her fight left her as she realised she was trapped again.

In a prison far worse and more dreadful than the tower Hades had constructed for her.

She slid her mother a cold, hard look she hoped conveyed her raging emotions—all the hurt and the anger, and the dismay.

“Zeus will be furious with you,” she hissed at Demeter. “You manipulated him. You have made him go back on his word to Hades. He promised me to his brother!”

Demeter’s expression darkened further, her lips becoming a thin line as her eyes narrowed on Persephone, rage that might match Persephone’s own anger blazing in them.

“He will find out what you have done. Mark my words,” Persephone bit out and glared at her mother. “Zeus will have no mercy to show you, and Hades—”

“Lock her in her room!” Demeter snapped.

Persephone’s gaze darted to the door at the end of the corridor, the one that led to her room, and the desperation that had been mounting within her became full-blown panic. No. She couldn’t let them lock her away. She had to escape.

She had to get back to Hades.

She summoned all her strength and smashed her elbow into the face of the guard to her right, knocking him into a second male, and stomped on the inside of a third guard’s ankle with enough force that he howled in pain and released her. She broke free of them, running towards her room, aiming for the corridor that branched off to the left near to it. There was another route out of the building there.

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