Chapter XXXVII: Hades

CHAPTER XXXVII

HADES

“I don’t see why I need to be here,” said Apollo.

Hades had summoned him to the island of Lemnos.

He had come to discuss weapons with Hephaestus, and he needed to know what Apollo had found during his examination of Tyche. This was necessary given their eventual movement against Theseus, but he also did not think he could face Persephone so soon. He was still reeling from how quickly everything had escalated from something so erotic and right to an utter nightmare.

He felt embarrassed but mostly completely horrified that he’d managed to trigger her so badly, and at a time when they’d been most intimate.

Perhaps worst of all, he didn’t know how to handle what had happened. An apology did not seem like enough, and the thought of pushing her too far again was agonizing. In some ways, he’d prided himself on knowing how her body responded to his, and yet last night, he’d been wrong.

“You are quiet,” said Aphrodite as she walked them to Hephaestus’s workshop.

He wasn’t sure why she felt the need to play escort, but he thought it might be so she could catch a glimpse of Hephaestus.

“He’s always quiet,” said Apollo. “Unless he’s reprimanding you for taking his lover away to fulfill a bargain.”

“Shut up, Apollo,” Hades said. “I…didn’t sleep.”

“Are you worried Zeus will deny you your marriage?” she asked.

“I was,” he said. “But now I am more worried Persephone won’t make it to the altar.”

He didn’t look at Aphrodite or Apollo as he spoke. They’d both borne witness to her attacks. Aphrodite had been there that night at the club, so lost in her own need for vengeance, she hadn’t helped Persephone either.

“Are you…angry with me?” Aphrodite asked after a long pause.

“Hermes swore an oath to protect her,” Hades replied.

“That is not what I asked,” she said.

He didn’t answer. There was no need. Would he have been indebted to Aphrodite had she saved Persephone? Yes, but perhaps it was better that he wasn’t.

To Hades’s surprise, Aphrodite did not leave once they were at the doors of Hephaestus’s workshop. Instead, she followed them inside.

The God of Fire was at his forge. He stood before the fire, his hair knotted on top of his head, bare-chested and sweaty as he removed a piece of metal from the fire. He turned to lay it on the anvil, intent on hammering, but he caught sight of Aphrodite, who had walked ahead into the shop.

Hephaestus’s eyes locked on her and darkened, and his whole body went rigid. Hades wondered if Aphrodite would interpret his reaction as anger or frustration at her intrusion, though he saw it as something else—obvious desire.

“Are you in need?” Hephaestus asked her.

“Whoa,” said Apollo under his breath. “It’s hot in here.”

“No,” she answered. She had her arms behind her back as she leaned against one of his tables. “Hades and Apollo are here to see you.”

Hephaestus’s gaze shifted. He hadn’t even realized anyone else had accompanied his goddess into his workshop, he was so consumed by her.

“Hades…Apollo,” Hephaestus said, tossing the piece of metal he’d been working into the quench tank nearby. “What can I do for you?”

“We must discuss weapons,” Hades said. “My first concern is the net.”

He hesitated to bring it up because he knew Aphrodite had accused Hephaestus of being responsible for Harmonia’s attack, believing that only his magic was strong enough to capture a god. The problem was, she wasn’t wrong.

He had built an unbreakable net, and all the gods knew it existed, including Demeter.

“I think we can agree that the net used to restrain Harmonia and Tyche was likely modeled after your own.”

Hephaestus did not speak, and the tension in his forge grew heavy.

“So how does one escape it?” Apollo asked and then looked pointedly at the Goddess of Love. “Aphrodite?”

Hephaestus’s posture was rigid, and Aphrodite narrowed her eyes.

“You don’t,” she said and then looked at her husband. “You must be set free.”

“Is there no weapon you could forge to cut it?”

“Nothing is impossible,” Hephaestus replied. “But I would need to know how they forged their net.”

Hades exchanged a look with Apollo. He wasn’t so certain that information would be easy to come by. He wished Ariadne had been willing to help with Theseus. He was certain she knew his operations, and if not how things were being created, she knew who was doing it.

“Then that leaves the weapon used to kill Tyche,” he said and looked toward Apollo.

“At first, I thought she had been stabbed by Cronos’s scythe, but her wounds had a different shape. More like an arrow, but a simple arrow would not have killed a god.”

“What makes Cronos’s scythe dangerous?” Aphrodite asked.

“It’s made of adamant,” said Hephaestus. “But adamant only wounds. It will not kill us. Whatever Tyche was stabbed with had to be…laced with something. A poison.”

Or venom, Hades thought.

“Heracles had arrows poisoned with hydra blood,” said Hades.

Before the hydra had come to reside in the Underworld, it had been in Hera’s possession. He wondered how much of its venom Theseus had sourced before Hades killed it.

“Well,” said Hephaestus. “It seems you did not need me at all.”

“That isn’t true,” said Hades. “I need armor.”

“You have armor,” Hephaestus said.

“Not for me,” Hades said. “For Persephone.”

---

Hades returned to the Underworld, though he felt anxious facing Persephone. He wasn’t exactly sure what he would say when he saw her. Would either of them be ready to talk about what happened? He didn’t think he could verbalize anything beyond an apology, which seemed useless here. He couldn’t even promise it would never happen again, because he had no fucking clue how to prevent it. Maybe the only thing to say was that he would do better, but that did not feel like enough either.

His heart beat strangely in his chest. It was not hard or fast but irregular, and it only grew worse when he found Persephone in the library, sitting in her usual place, a book in hand. She seemed to sense him almost instantly and looked up when he entered the room. Beneath her gaze, he felt trapped—unable to retreat or even move forward. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she looked haunted, and he knew he was responsible.

They sat in strained silence for a moment, and he scrambled for words, but none of them seemed right. Finally, Persephone spoke.

“I spoke to Tyche today,” she said. “She thinks that the reason she could not heal herself was because the Fates cut her thread.”

“The Fates did not cut her thread,” he said simply.

The Fates had never cut a god’s thread, save Pan. Even those trapped in Tartarus were not dead, just imprisoned.

“What are you saying?”

“That Triad has managed to find a weapon that can kill the gods,” he said.

“You know what it is, don’t you?”

“Not for certain,” he said, hesitant to say until they had an actual arrow in hand, but it was a good lead.

“Tell me.”

“You met the hydra,” he said. “It has been in many battles in the past, lost many heads—though it just regenerates. The heads are priceless because their venom is used as a poison. I think Tyche was taken down by a new version of Hephaestus’s net and stabbed with a hydra-poisoned arrow—a relic to be specific.”

“A poisoned arrow?”

“It was the biological warfare of ancient Greece. I have worked for years to pull relics like them out of circulation, but there are many and whole networks dedicated to the practice of sourcing and selling them. I would not be surprised if Triad has managed to get their hands on a few.”

“I thought you said gods couldn’t die unless they were thrown into Tartarus and torn apart by the Titans.”

“Usually, but the venom of the hydra is potent, even to gods. It slows our healing, and likely, if a god is stabbed too many times…”

“They die.”

Hades nodded. “I believe Adonis was also killed with a relic.” He was hesitant to admit this information, given that he had it for so long, but he added, “With my father’s scythe.”

“What makes you so certain?”

He should tell her that they’d found a piece of the blade inside Adonis’s body, but Hades was not eager for anyone to know that he’d handed it over to Hephaestus so he could forge a new blade. It wasn’t that he thought Persephone would tell. It was that he didn’t trust anyone not to pry the information from her mind.

“Because his soul was shattered.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I suppose I had to get to a place where I could tell you. Seeing a shattered soul is not easy. Carrying it to Elysium is even harder.”

His eyes dropped to her book, uncomfortable with this conversation, though it was better than the alternative.

“What were you reading?”

She looked down at the book as if she’d forgotten it was there.

“Oh, I was looking up information on the Titanomachy.”

“Why?”

“Because…I think my mother has bigger goals than separating us.”

Hades already knew that, but even he had to admit he couldn’t quite understand her motive. It seemed to have moved beyond her initial wish of separating him from Persephone, and it appeared she preferred to end the world.