Page 47 of Hades and Persephone: Crown of Souls

Hecate is close now, so close she could touch me. And yet I am not afraid.

Now, I am just hurt.

Her head tips to the side in that eerie way she does. “What did you see?”

“Me,” I rasp. “With Adonis.”

“Oh, yes. Yes, you liked him very much.”

I want to vomit. “No.”

Her brows rise. “No?”

“No, I didn't.” My free palm lays flat against my roiling belly. “I don't understand why I was with him.”

“You were with many, Persephone.”

A sheen of sticky sweat coats my skin as the reality of her statement sears me.

I know it's true, I have pieced that much together.

Hades saying he shared me. The visions of me with others, Hades always in the background. Me always desperate for a reaction that never came.

It's the worst kind of miscommunication.

And I just don't understand it.

I ask Hecate, “Did he sleep with others? Did he have affairs like I did?”

My hand trembles as I stroke Aethon. Touching him calms me, if just a little.

Hecate takes a moment, and then she tells me, “He entertained others, but never without you. Your pleasure, your release, your desires were his only concern.”

I don't know why I expected this answer, but even as I did, the blade of it cuts me.

“I remember…” The words drift off into the ether of shame and hurt.

Hecate moves even closer. I can smell her now. She is smoke on the wind and deep, deep red berries whipped into a warm spread. It's an eccentric scent all her own, and it fits.

“What do you remember, Persephone?”

I shake my head. “It won't make sense.”

“Tell me, and I'll tell you if you if it makes sense.”

“Demeter,” I begin and pause. “She—my mother—the thing I didn't tell Hades.” I pause again, trying to collect myself and my thoughts. Trying to assemble the fractures of memories I can’t seem to place.

Hecate is patient for a long moment before she urges, “You didn't tell Hades, what?”

“I—um—before she killed me, Demeter alluded to the fact that I had failed.”

“Failed what?”

“I had failed to make him love.”

“That is absurd.”

“No, listen.” I need to make her understand what I sense has happened in the past, even as it makes little sense to me now. “She tutored me in the ways of love. It was under her instruction; I took men to my bed. Women, too, I think.” I frown, drawing a shaky breath. “I was to draw enough emotion from him—to pull him from his control—to make him claim me for his own, and if I failed it meant that he did not love me. I was to seduce others in the effort to make him see that the girl he took was worth his love and affection and obsession.” I shake my head. “I was tomake him crazy with love. I think that's all I was ever trying to do under her tutelage. I was trying to make my husband fall in love with me, and in my mind, until the very end, I believed he didn't.”

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