Page 70 of Hades and Persephone: Keeper of Sins

Thirty-Two

Hades

I meantit when I said I’d burn the world for her. I would. All of it. I would loose the flames of Tartarus and watch them spread across the realms, devouring life in all its forms. I spent centuries thinking Zeus got the better end of the deal, living in his golden city high above the earth. For a long while, I even envied Poseidon his command of the seas. The freedom my brothers were granted to spend with the living was a luxury I had not been awarded.

For a long time, I resented themfor it. For the dank darkness of my realm. For the pain and fear I lived within. For the souls who would come to me ruined by a painful life and meant to linger in my dark realm to heal from that life which they lived under Zeus’ rule. For the evil I’d been forced to face, the sins I’d been made to endure upon judgement of a soul who would learn their lesson—who would repent—in the flamed land of Tartarus.

I resented them until her. Until Persephone.

She breathed life into the God of Death, as Hecate said, and birthed the God of Afterlife.

When she’d been taken from me, I had begged Zeus to stand against Demeter. To punish her for her crime against her daughter, and against me. He’d failed me.

And I’d stewed. I’d been stewing for centuries.

But in that time, I’d come to realize that I wasn’t the God who drew the short straw after all. I may not be the God who lived in the golden city of Olympus, or commanded the magical cities below the sea, but I am the God—the only God with the power to end it all. Including them.

For when the Underworld was cursed to me to rule, I became the only creature with the ability to handle the flames of Tartarus. It was my responsibility to contain them. To ensure they thrived. I had been doing both for a very, very long time.

It is not a thing that escapes me, as it escapes the other Gods who have forgotten me as I linger in theshadows of the Underworld, that I have the power to begin everything again.

Isn’t that what flames are for, after all? Without flame, old life lingers to snuff out the new before it even has chance to grow roots. Without flame, the sins of life would be left to rot the souls.

Flame is like a hot shower for the earth. It can scorch away even the vilest of dirt so that new and vibrant life can take its place. And the Gods who stood back and watched Demeter’s heinous crimes against her daughter might very well be the most vile there is. After all, Zeus had been her father, and he’s not acted in the aftermath of her tragic death.

If I’d been blessed with the life of a child, there is no act I would not do to see its survival. Unlike my father, and clearly my brother, I would not see my own suffer so that my life would remain as it was.

If I had planted life inside Persephone…

“Hades?” she whispers beneath me, and I blink. I don’t realize I’ve lowered to an elbow, my forearm slipped beneath her neck as though to cradle her in my arms, beneath me. My other is holding her hip in a brutal grip that I loosen immediately.

“I’m sorry.”

“Where were you?”

I cannot give her the whole truth. I am tired of not giving her the whole truth.

She is not ready for the truth.“I was thinking about someone taking you from me.”

She laughs, her smile bright and innocent. Her lashes are still wet with emotion, and there is a lovely pink flush to her cheeks. “No one will take me.”

She says it with such confidence. “How can you be so sure?”

“Hades, no one wants me.”

She’s wrong.“You’re wrong.”

“I’m really not.”

I don’t want to bring up the reborn Adonis. I really don’t. “Addison.”

She touches a hand to my face. It’s so gentle, so unlike the way most touch me, if they even dare, that for a moment I feel like I could crumble in her hand like dust.

“He doesn’t want me, Hades. He might want ten minutes with my body, but me—” She shakes her head. “No.”

“No one gets any minutes with your body.” I can’t help the way the words growl from the deep of me.

She laughs again. It’s a sweet and innocent sound. It’s far too light for the God of Death. There is a moment that I think I feel the heat of sunlight within the sweet warmth of her laugh. It’s jarring.

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