Page 56 of Queen of the Underworld

If she told him that, would he look upon her with pity or with gratitude?

Or maybe he would rediscover his laugh and do so in her face.

She cursed the fear that held her back from saying or doing things she wanted. It was an affliction she couldn’t shake though. Too many times in her past she had tried to join in with conversations or offer some kind of insight or help, only to be mocked or scorned. Not always aloud. Sometimes the god or goddess in question could mock or scorn her with just a look.

Would Hades do such a thing?

The thought he might cut her deeply, far deeper than anyone else ever had and it was only the thought of him doing it. If she spoke up and he cut her down, laughed in her face or mocked her, or told her it wasn’t her place to speak in such a manner, she might never recover.

No amount of smiling would make her feel better.

“You are troubled again.” Hades sat up, drawing her focus to him and away from herself, and she blinked as she looked at him, unable to believe her eyes. The black slashes of his eyebrows furrowed above glittering blue eyes that held a wealth of concern and the red corona of banked rage. “I swear, Persephone, should you ever tell me of your dark thoughts… of the source of your hurt… I will see to it they suffer as you do.”

Something within her whispered that if he ever told her of his dark thoughts, if he revealed the source of his hurt, she might do the same. What dark beast had Hades awoken in her to make her think like that? Was it the influence of his realm? She wanted to glance at it, but couldn’t tear her eyes away from his.

Or was it her growing feelings for him?

She felt… fiercely protective of him, and she didn’t understand why. The thought of him hurting made her want to lash out at the world. It wasn’t like her. But then, she had never had anything she had wanted to protect before.

No, that wasn’t true.

She had wanted to protect her pet cat, and when her mother had taken it from her, she had been filled with rage and hurt, and had lashed out at the temple garden, filling it with black vines and making the plants wither. How had she forgotten that? She frowned as the memory crystalised, experiencing the distress and anger she had felt all over again. She had been in a black mood for days afterwards. She should have remembered.

Unless her mother had made her forget.

She looked at Hades, sure he hadn’t had anything to do with her missing memories, but aware that the power to suppress them came from his realm. The waters of the Lethe made people forget. Her mother must have taken some and given them to her, and Persephone was sure she hadn’t done it to ease her pain, but rather she had done it to stop Persephone from destroying her garden over and over again.

“Speak to me of your pain, Persephone. I will see to it that the one who caused it will suffer for eternity,” Hades snarled and shadows darkened the corners of the room, gathering there to blot out the light.

That crimson began to spread, devouring the blue of his irises, and his ears grew more pointed again. The stark ferocity of his expression, half-worry half-fury, bewitched her and almost had her speaking and telling him all the names of those who had plunged daggers into her heart, but she held back and pushed her pain back down inside her, deeply aware his words weren’t just words. They weren’t something he said to make her feel better as she had heard many people do in the past when listening in on private conversations.

They were no idle threat to appease the other party.

Hades meant every word he said.

If she gave him the names of those who had wounded her in the past, chipping away at her confidence and strength, he would hunt them down and drag them into the Underworld.

And slaughter them.

Even her mother.

“I do not want blood on my hands. You speak so easily of killing, as if it is nothing… when taking a life is a terrible thing to do,” she whispered and he flinched, his head rearing back as if she had struck him.

She realised she had in a way.

Guilt and regret swept through her and she ventured another step towards him, fighting for the right words, the ones that would make him see she hadn’t meant to wound him by insinuating he was a terrible person because of his duty. She kept forgetting his role in this world was death, the overseer of severing souls from their corporeal forms and ushering them into the afterlife.

Hades turned his noble profile to her and drank from the bottle again, a deeper draught this time.

“Hades—” she started, not wanting him to be angry with her, or to feel the need to drink himself to death over something she had said. It had been callous of her to say such a thing to him and to tar him with a brush that painted a black picture of him, when he hadn’t chosen his role in life.

Zeus had forced it upon him.

He slid a look at her, lowering the bottle from his lips, and she choked, the things she had wanted to say getting stuck in her throat as their eyes locked.

When a full minute had passed and she still hadn’t found her voice, he heaved a sigh and went back to drinking and feeding himself grapes, while she wrestled with herself, hating how weak she was.

Why couldn’t she speak openly to him?

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