Page 22 of Hades and Persephone: Crown of Souls

“I—I—” She scrubs her face with clammy hands. “I don’t know, Hades. I hope not—but?—”

Locking my hands on the railing in front of her, I cage her small body with my much larger one. Her scent curls around me, a drug I do not possess the strength to deny as I dip my head just a fraction to inhale. Sweet floral with undertones of somethingothernow. Something darker. Richer. Something that promises everlasting life drenched in hope.

The sun-baked wheat that had once clung to the undertones of her sweet scent has vanished to be replaced by this?—

I inhale again. I cannot place it.

It emanates from the core of her—and my body—my body aches to respond. The need is primal, primitive. It is baser and pressing. It is a need the like I’ve only experienced once before. A moment of broken will wrapped in an eternity of scathing regret.

I clamp my teeth and tighten my hold on the railing so that I do not reach for her.

I will not break again. I will not take that which she does not mean to give again.

She speaks into the silence, her voice dripping with confusion. “I don’t know what is real anymore.”

“If you tell me what you saw,” the words fall roughly from the chains of restraint in which I bind myself, “I will tell you if it is real.”

She surprises me when she spins in the cage of my arms. In my chest, I feel my heart respond with a contraction that is so violent, it threatens to drop me to my knees at her feet. But I would happily kneel for her. I would bow to her, a willing prisoner to the only woman who has ever existed with the power to be my undoing.

She tips her head back and my gaze meets the glass in hers.Fuck me, but I am too weak to face her tears.

“Persephone…”

“Did I—” A frown tugs at her lips, furrowing the smooth between her eyes. The glass begins to leak in shining streams that reflect prisms of silver against her night-pale flesh. An echo of building emotion rattles in her inhale. Her eyes lift to mine. “Did I birth the Underworld, Hades?”

I force my gaze to hold hers even as shame urges me to cut the connection. I know now the memory the Fates—the twisted Moirai—fed her. It has to be them. They are the only power great enough to counteract the poison of the Lethe.

“Yes,” I bite out, my gaze finally cutting from hers to burn on the mountain which harbours the three sisters. Anger simmers, boiling the very blood in my veins. Why, of all the memories to feed her, would they reveal that?

“You—God, Hades—” Her voice breaks as she shakes her head, as though to shake away the memory of our first joining. The force of it. The awakening of darkness within her. The hunger I’d been eternally incapable of feeding since.

Until now.

Fear kicks in my heart as I realize that now that she knows—now that she’s relived it—my deepest regret—will that insatiable hunger be reborn in her?

I want to fall to my knees and beg the Fates for mercy. I cannot watch her beneath another man. I cannot listen to hersighs of pleasure as her eyes hold mine, the claws of a rightfully vengeful woman shredding the very heart that beats in my chest.

She surprises me when she falls into my chest. Her body shudders violently with a force of emotion that momentarily paralyzes me. Until it doesn’t. Wrapping my arms around her, I hold her tightly as emotion leaks from her in rivers to run down my chest. Spearing my fingers into the silk of her hair, I cradle her head and soothe her with soft kisses.

When she finally gathers herself, the words she speaks against the heart that beats like a wrecking ball inside my chest shocks me. “I felt it all, Hades.” Her whisper is coated in despair I ache to kiss away.

“I’m so sorry, little goddess.”

She pushes back to peer up at me. Her hands shove between us to palm my face. Her eyes, filled with such resolute bravery, fasten on mine. “I felt everything,” she says again. “I felt the descent. I felt the vicious bite of your touch, your fingers digging into my skin.” I flinch. She holds me. “I felt the knife of your invasion, like I was splitting in two.”

“Please,” I beg.I haven’t begged in centuries.

“And I feltyou. I felt your desperation. Your agonizing loneliness.” Her voice is so soft, so gentle. “I felt the betrayalyoufelt. The darkness you’d lived with for so long. The death. I felt the hunger for life that burned inside you, Hades. And I fell in love with you then, even as I hated you for the weakness you fell to. I—” She rises onto her tiptoes even as she pulls my face closer. Her breath whispers across my lips. “I felt everything.”

“Persephone…” I haven’t felt so broken since the moment I learned I lost her to the Lethe. To the betrayal of her mother, my sister. Demeter.

Her lips touch mine, featherlight. “I forgive you, Hades.”

I am a God. I amtheGod of the Underworld, of death and afterlife. And yet this tiny human woman with the soul of aGoddess pulls unwilling tears from my eyes. Her gentle offering of forgiveness I do not deserve drops me to my knees.

“I don’t deserve your forgiveness.” I cling to her as though she is the only solid thing to ground me to this realm—my realm.Her realm. “It is not an excuse. There is never an excuse for the things I forced you to endure—for the rape—" My voice shatters on a broken sob as I press my face into her belly. “But I was lost to the madness of Tartarus. Lost to centuries of darkness and despair. Of agony. And you—you were the first thing I saw that made me feel alive. Made me feel hope. I—I was a monster, and I don’t deserve this. You. Your forgiveness. But I want it and I’ll take it anyway. Because maybe I’ll always be a monster.”

The sheet opens as she spreads her legs around mine, pushing her body closer to mine as we linger in a tangle of limbs on the cool stone of the balcony. Celebration is a distant, distorted thing in this moment of dark revelation. Her hands on my face are firm as she forces my eyes to hers.

---