Page 25 of The Queen & the King

I take her hand. “This dream is beautiful.”

Her eyes dart to our hands, and I pretend not to notice. “Where are we?”

The Underworld. Say the Underworld, Persephone.

“I’m not sure. It’s perfect, though,” she murmurs, looking around.

I mask my flinch. Persephone doesn’t remember our home. Perhaps we didn’t have enough time together for her to feel the tie to this place.

“It could use more color,” I say. The gardens around the palace are shrouded in black. Only other areas of the Underworld display fantastical color.

She shrugs. “It’s a nice change from pastels, though.”

“You don’t strike me as a pastels person.” I laugh. “You need colors that speak to the passion inside.”

When Persephone worked at Plutus, all of her outfits were full of statement colors with maddening pencil skirts that made me fantasize of the sounds she’d make when I ripped the threads that held it together.

Her eyes sparkle, and for a moment, she’s that same woman who flaunted her body down the halls of Plutus. “And what do you know of the passion inside me?”

Everything. I know the sound you make when you want to play with me. The face you make when you provoke me so I can throw you over my knee. The taste of your kiss, of your cunt.

I lift my hand slowly, brushing my fingers slowly across her cheek. “I know it’s lurking under your skin, screaming to get out.”

Do you remember all the ways I’ve made you scream, my spring?

I step closer, breathing her in, hating that I can’t fill my lungs with her scent. “You think you must choose one or the other: the Goddess of Spring or the darkness inside. But you don’t. You can be both, no matter what anyone tells you.”

Her lips part slightly, her breath hitching. “Darkness?”

“Do you feel it?” I whisper softly. “A coiled power, like a serpent sleeping inside you. Are you scared to wake it?”

Am I telling her or myself?

Her breaths become shallower. “I-I don’t know.”

I shift even closer until our bodies brush against each other. “Close your eyes and feel.”

Her eyes close, and her trust in me is a balm to my bruised soul.

“You feel your power,” I whisper softly. “You can feel the trees and the grass, the flowers...”

Even in a dream, she’ll feel the echo of them.

She inhales deeply, no doubt feeling the flora around her. “Yes.”

I never saw this side of Persephone, the one who is just learning to embrace her power. From the moment I met her, Persephone used her abilities as easily as breathing.

“Feel what lurks beneath the flowers, into the soil, the very earth,” I cajole.

Her vines sprout from the ground, and I glance down, smiling as I see they’re not green, not purple, but black as night, with gilded leaves. They wrap around my ankles, stroking me. I close my eyes, luxuriating in the familiar feeling of their touch.

My shadows greet them, dancing with them. I watch Persephone’s face, whispering, “You’ve only scratched the surface. Break away from what you’ve been told you are. Become who you’re meant to be.”

The vines continue to dance with my shadows. It is an eternal dance of life and death.

Of a Queen and a King.

Eighteen

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