Chapter XII: Hades

CHAPTER XII

HADES

Hades returned to the island of Lemnos, to Hephaestus’s forge, which was housed on an adjoining volcanic island. As Hades entered, something crunched beneath his foot. He paused and looked down, finding the floor scattered with pieces of metal and wires. He recognized the guts of what he’d just stepped on.

They were mechanical bees.

Hephaestus had started making the bees in response to Demeter, whose unpredictable mood often affected the earth, which, given the state of the weather, was not presumptuous. It was his way of waging war against ancient magic, and according to Aphrodite, he had been working on it for a while, so why were they now discarded?

Hades proceeded inside, careful of where he stepped. There was more than just the broken bees on the floor. There were chips of wood from shattered shields and broken spears, pieces of armor torn to shreds as if they were nothing more than paper, and a string of animatronic body parts, belonging to both human and animal creations.

Hades rounded the corner and found even more of a mess. Nearly everything in Hephaestus’s shop had been destroyed. Even his desk where he worked was split down the center, each half lying on its side, and at the center of it all sat Hephaestus.

Hades said nothing as he approached the god, who made no acknowledgment of his presence. Like his workshop, he was in shambles. His hair was unbound, wavy from always being pulled back, and his hands sat in his lap, palms up and bleeding.

He hadn’t even tried to heal himself.

“Are you all right?” Hades asked the God of Fire.

Hephaestus did not respond and did not look at Hades. Hades acknowledged it was a stupid question to ask; the answer was obvious. Still, he felt it necessary.

Hades cast another glance around the room and spotted a short wooden stool in the corner, flipped on its head. He swiped it from the floor and used it to sit at Hephaestus’s feet.

It was completely uncomfortable, and yet it was likely the only way he would get the god’s attention tonight.

“Tell me what happened.”

“There is nothing to tell,” said Hephaestus.

“Doesn’t look that way to me,” Hades said.

A long silence followed. Hades did not prompt Hephaestus again and he did not leave. Eventually, the god spoke.

“We fought,” Hephaestus said.

“Is Aphrodite all right?” Hades’s voice rose in alarm.

“She’s fine, physically at least,” Hephaestus said quickly. “I didn’t touch her. I’ve never…touched her.”

Hephaestus took a deep breath and then raked his fingers through his hair.

“What happened?” Hades asked again.

“She…accused me of being the reason Harmonia was injured,” Hephaestus said. “She said that whatever had been used against Harmonia had to have been one of my creations.”

So many relics had been stolen and funneled into the black market it wasn’t impossible but that did not make it Hephaestus’s fault.

After a moment, the god continued. “I left after she told me how miserable I made her and came here,” he said. “The rest you can guess.”

Hades had to admit, though he’d always known something seething lingered beneath the surface of Hephaestus’s calm and quiet exterior, seeing it in person was another experience entirely. He understood that the god was not proud. If anything, he seemed even more devastated that he had not been able to control his anger.

“Hephaestus, you don’t really believe—”

“I believe what she says, Hades,” Hephaestus said quickly. “I have nothing else.”

Hades did not know what to say.

These two gods had loved each other for most of their immortal lives, and yet they had never managed to learn how to speak the same language.

“She should have left me long ago.”

“Do you not know the woman you married?” Hades asked. “If she wanted to leave, she would have.”

“Then her only pleasure must be my misery,” Hephaestus said.

For the second time tonight, Hades did not have a response, and the hardest part was that he could not disagree with Hephaestus. It truly did seem that Aphrodite enjoyed misery, but not for the reason her husband thought. She chose to pine after him, to love him from afar.

The irony of the Goddess of Love was not lost on him.

“Does she know your anger?” Hades asked.

“No,” Hephaestus said. “No, I cannot let her know. What if I…what if I…” He could not seem to finish his sentence.

“Do you think you will ever hurt her?”

“I am not good, Hades,” said Hephaestus. “I never have been.”

Hades wasn’t sure what the god was recalling as he spoke, but whatever the memory, it still haunted him.

“Maybe you aren’t,” said Hades. “But neither am I, and tonight, another person close to Aphrodite has been attacked. One is already dead.”

“If you do not think I am aware…” Hephaestus said, he curled his bloodied hands into fists, his knuckles white, though Hades was not certain which thing fueled his anger—the knowledge that the victim of the first attack was Adonis, Aphrodite’s favored and lover, or that it seemed she was being targeted somehow.

“Adonis was stabbed with Cronos’s scythe,” Hades said, and he pulled out the tip he’d kept in the pocket of his jacket.

He handed it to the god, who ran his thumb over the metal. It was not smooth, the surface etched with delicate designs.

“First this and now Harmonia’s horns,” Hades said. “These people have weapons that can wound gods, Hephaestus. It’s only a matter of time before they find something that can truly kill us…and given this pattern, who do you think they will come for first?”

Hephaestus met Hades’s gaze, his eyes stormy.

“You do not have to remind me of the threat to my wife to convince me to help you, Hades,” Hephaestus said and then looked at the adamant tip again. “Who are they? These people you speak of.”

“I suspect they are Impious,” Hades said. “But in truth, I do not know. Perhaps when Harmonia wakes, she can give us clarity. I’m certain now that they have her horns, they will flaunt their victory publicly.”

When favored mortals were killed, it often hit the media, and many Impious were willing to take responsibility for those murders. They saw it as a way to prove that the gods were not as powerful as they claimed and at the very least did not care for their mortal worshippers.

But obtaining a set of horns from the head of Harmonia—the sister of an Olympian—was entirely different. It illustrated just how close an everyday mortal managed to get to a god of relative power.

It demonstrated that the gods had weaknesses.

“And where did this come from?” Hephaestus asked, holding up the end of the blade.

“I suspect Poseidon,” Hades said, relatively certain of the source. “There is one other issue at hand that makes the threat against us even more troublesome,” said Hades. “The ophiotaurus has been resurrected.”

Once again, Hephaestus met Hades’s gaze, and his fingers closed over the end of the knife. The god had not yet been born when the Titanomachy took place, but he was well aware of the implication.

“Have you found it?” he asked.

“No.”

“When you do, let me kill it,” he said.

Hades could not help how he bristled, and the instinct made guilt bleed into his stomach.

“If I kill it,” Hephaestus explained, “I can make a weapon from the ashes.”

Hades stared. This conversation had taken a sudden turn, and it felt almost treasonous—not to Zeus but to themselves. He already knew the god was experimenting. He’d caught him fashioning a trident out of adamant—an attempt to recreate Poseidon’s most powerful weapon.

“It’s too dangerous, Hephaestus,” Hades said.

“It is no more dangerous than your helm,” Hephaestus said. “Or Poseidon’s trident or Zeus’s lightning bolts.”

“Except that those weapons are not prophesied to kill gods,” Hades countered.

“I will not pressure you,” Hephaestus said. “But the offer stands should it be needed.”

Hephaestus extended his hand in an attempt to return the tip of Cronos’s scythe. Hades’s eyes fell to it. Despite only being a small piece of a whole, it was just as deadly and still contained his father’s magic.

His eyes returned to Hephaestus.

“Can you make a blade from that piece?” Hades asked.

“I can,” Hephaestus said. “If you wish.”

It was not as if Hephaestus had not already begun forging weapons. The scythe was powerful, and it could wound a god severely, enough to trap them in Tartarus if needed.

“I wish it,” Hades said.

He felt a lot like he imagined Hephaestus had tonight—completely helpless.

He did not know how to keep it in, how to quell it, but he couldn’t let Persephone see this. He couldn’t allow her to bear witness to his horror when she had seen so much of her own.

So he did the only thing he knew to do—find Hecate. But when he appeared in her meadow, he could tell she was not home. Her cottage was dark and everything was too still. Normally he would have attempted to sense whether she still remained in the Underworld as she often left for the mortal world to carry out whatever she pleased in the night, but it had not really mattered.

This took him away from the castle.

He paced outside her cottage, attempting to expend some of the electric energy that raced through his veins, and started to consider other options.

Should he go to Tartarus and take his rage out on Pirithous who was partly responsible?

Usually, that would seem like the right thing to do, but for some reason, it did not seem so now.

This anger was different. It was not destructive, but it was terrifying.

And perhaps that was what worried him the most—he usually knew what to do with this feeling, but not this time.

This time, it was different, and he needed Hecate.

“Let me get my calendar,” she said. “For I must mark this occasion.”

Hades turned toward her as she came out of the darkness surrounding them in the meadow. She wore a cloak and pushed back the hood so he could see her face, though shadowed.

“Hecate,” he said. “I—”

“Need me?” she asked, smiling and arching a brow.

Hades opened his mouth, but he wasn’t sure what to say.

“I don’t suppose you have to say it out loud,” she said. “I have already heard your thoughts.”

Hades slammed his lips together, but after a moment, he spoke. “I do not know who else to ask.”

“Well, I am wise beyond my years,” she said. “What troubles you?”

“I thought you could read my mind?”

“Do not be cheeky,” she admonished.

Hades narrowed his eyes. He knew she was well aware of how he felt. She only wanted to hear him say it, and if he didn’t, there would be no moving past this. After a moment, he sighed heavily and scrubbed his hand over his face.

“I’m angry,” he said.

“What’s new?”

“This is different,” he said and paused as he tried to seek words to make her understand. “I…I can’t…make it go away, and nothing I usually do is working.”

“What made you feel this way?”

He explained what had occurred tonight—Harmonia’s brutal attack and how he suspected it was connected to Adonis, how he feared it would encourage other Impious to start attacking gods publicly, as had happened with Persephone while she worked at the Coffee House.

“Perhaps you are not so much angry as you are afraid,” she said. “It is not unusual to not know the difference.”

Fear seemed…ridiculous. It was much easier to be angry.

“Easier because it is familiar,” said Hecate, once again responding to his thoughts.

Hades curled his fingers into fists.

“If I am afraid, it means…I am…helpless.”

It took him a moment to meet Hecate’s gaze after his admission. He did not like this…whatever this was.

“It’s called being vulnerable,” she said. “And of course you hate it. You don’t like to feel out of control, though you often are, especially where Persephone is concerned.”

“You’re not helping,” Hades said.

“Give me time,” she said. “We’ve only just begun.”

He groaned. What more could he possibly need to say?

“I…don’t know what to do,” he said.

If he could, he would lock Persephone in the Underworld and risk her wrath to protect her. There was so much above working against them. If she never ventured out, at least she would be safe.

“And she would grow to resent you as she resents her mother,” Hecate said.

“I know,” he said. “I do not wish to hold her prisoner, but it is the only thing that makes me feel…at peace.”

That wasn’t completely true. While it took one emotion away, it gave birth to several others—dread and anxiety, mostly.

“Perhaps you just need to feel it,” said Hecate. “It is all right to honor fear, to acknowledge that it has a place inside you, even if you are a brooding alpha male.”

Hades glared.

“It is not as if you do not have a plan to protect Persephone or to find those responsible for Adonis’s and Harmonia’s attacks. As far as action is concerned, you have done everything possible.”

“But will it be enough?”

“Enough for what?” she asked. “To protect Persephone from further harm or trauma? The only world where that is possible is here in the Underworld, and if she is here, it means she is dead.”

Hades felt like he was being suffocated.

“If you are to live life with her, all you can do is be the person she needs in those hard moments, no matter how much it hurts you, and she will do the same for you.”

He couldn’t look at Hecate, so instead, he stared into the dark wood surrounding her meadow. He knew what she was saying, and after all that he and Persephone had been through, it should be easy to lay his burdens at her feet, but it wasn’t.

It felt…unfair. What if he gave her too much?

“Has she ever given you too much?” Hecate asked.

“No,” Hades said. “She could never…”

“She feels no different about you, Hades. You must cease thinking that your love is somehow greater than hers just because you have lived longer, yearned longer.”

He held his breath as she spoke, feeling as though she were attacking him in some way, and yet he knew what she said was right. He did think that way and often.

A sudden gnawing guilt overtook the fear.

“Persephone has chosen you, and she accepts you in whatever way you choose to offer yourself, but is it fair that she cannot see you struggle when so often you must bear witness to hers?”

“I am protecting her,” he said.

“Are you protecting her or yourself?”

Hades was quiet.

“Persephone has grown because at some point, you made her feel safe enough to be vulnerable with you. As a result, she has come to see your side of things and respect your decisions. If you do not offer her the same, can you truly respect her?”

Hades’s teeth ground so hard, his jaw hurt, and the pain was spreading to the back of his head.

“If you expect the world to tear you apart, it will.”

“Then what do you want me to do?”

“I want you to stop being an idiot,” said Hecate, though her voice held no scorn. “I want you to recognize the importance of being vulnerable with Persephone, because apart, you are both powerful, to be sure, but together, you are unstoppable.”