Page 1 of Winning Back Persephone

Chapter 1

PERSEPHONE

I entered the bar, scanning the people waiting to try and find my mother. Not that anyone wouldknowshe was my mother just by looking at us, most people thought we were sisters, which was just a product of being several thousand years old and immortal. Aging was different for us, especially as both my mother and I were frozen in our early twenties.

I spotted her perched on a stool at the end of the bar, watching everyone who came in like she was worried I wasn't going to show up.

That was what I got for being Demeter's daughter. Even after nearly three thousand years, she wasn't able to relax and let me live my own life. Unless I forced her to.

Her entire face lit up when her gaze landed on me, and I headed over in her direction.

"My beloved," she said in Ancient Greek as she got to her feet to pull me into a hug.

"Hello, Μ?να," I responded as I patted her on the back. "How have you been?"

"Lost in the wilderness without you," she said dramatically.

I sighed and signalled to the bartender. I was going to need a drink if I was going to put up with a whole evening of my mother. I ordered myself a glass of wine and settled in for the conversation I knew was about to come. "That was years ago, Μ?να."

"And if Hades hadn't kidnapped you..."

"How many times? He didn't kidnap me." I hated it when she did this. I might have ended things with Hades a couple of years ago, but I still loved him, and I didn't want to hear her talking badly about him. The bartender brought over a glass of wine. I picked it up with a grateful smile, half tempted to tell him to leave the bottle.

"You don't have to defend him any more," she pointed out. "Everyone knows what he did, and you're better off without him. He's a waste of space."

My fingers tightened around the stem of my glass. "He was still my husband," I responded through gritted teeth. Technically, he was still my husband even now. It had only been two years, and I couldn't bring myself to formalise our separation.

My mother sighed. "Fine, we should stop talking about him."

I took a sip of my wine and hoped she meant that. Then again, no evening with my mother would be complete without at least a handful of insults hurled towards Hades, almost all of them completely baseless.

"I was speaking with Dale the other day..."

"Who's Dale?" I cut in.

"He's my new gardener," she said. "A dryad from a good family."

I raised an eyebrow. "Please don't tell me you're running after teenagers again?"

She scoffed. "I'm not your father. He's in his forties."

"Somewhat better." I took another drink.

"Dale was telling me that his sister signed up for one of the services the Jinx Dating Agency hosts. Now which one was it?" She tapped her nails against the bar in an annoying rhythm that made me want to grab her hand to stop her, but I didn't. She hated it when I did that. "It was the matchmaking service, that's the one."

"That's interesting," I lied. I really didn't care what her gardener's sister was doing.

"They found her a match within a couple of months. Isn't that impressive?"

"Jinx is run by love gods," I pointed out. "Doesn't it kind of make sense that it worked?"

"I think you should sign up," my mother said, picking up her glass of white wine and taking a long sip.

"I don't want to sign up for Jinx."

"Persephone, beloved, you can't stay single forever."

"Why can't I?"

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