Chapter 16

Chapter

Sixteen

P ersephone

“This is different.” Hades glances over a shoulder to where I stand in the open door of his studio, leaning against the frame. His energy has felt somehow off this last week. Or maybe it’s not his energy, but my own. Maybe I’m projecting the off-ness I feel onto him. Moving deeper into the room, I can’t take my eyes off the canvas, with its warm splashes of blue, golden-yellow, and sandy brown. The blue of the sky blends into a calm sea that laps at a sandy beach, and in the far, far distance I see the glitter of a Santorini-white building. A home, I realize .

It's so shockingly unfamiliar to all the other pieces Hades has ever painted.

I can’t help but ask, “What sparked the change?”

“A bargain. This is my end.”

“I’m confused,” I admit, as Hades picks up the bowl of shocking blood red. A red I know is owed to the spill of his own blood that he ceremoniously pours into every piece he creates. At first, I’d been horrified. It’s funny how quickly we come to accept that which strikes horror in us.

I wonder what he intends to do with the color now, in this lovely, bright work of peaceful art that stands in glaring contradiction to all the other doom and gloom pieces he crafts.

My question is answered as a gathering of red flowers is painted into the side of the small white home. A garden of blood red. A sliver of purgatory in bliss.

I frown, uncertain where the thought came from or why it formed at all. Purgatory in bliss? What the Hell, Persephone.

Again, I’m struck. Not only by my unexplainable thoughts, but the fact I’m thinking of myself as Persephone and not Annie, as I’ve always thought of myself.

The man before me is changing me. Altering me.

He stands, dropping his brush to the table as he wipes his hands with a rag. My eyes can’t help but drop to the small rise where the already healing slice across his palm sits. My poor brain still can’t make sense of that. How, when he cuts into his flesh, it heals so quickly.

“Any news on the new temple?” Hades asks gruffly, and I blink up from the closed wound to dark eyes that study me intently. He always looks at me with such intensity.

Sometimes, it feels—it feels like he could devour me and still be unsated.

I swallow. “We’re getting there. It’s not easy to uncover this while maintaining the structure and integrity of the temple. It—it is built into the ground, and some time long ago, someone filled it with a lot of earth. That earth solidified over the centuries,” I explain. “But we’re getting there.”

His eyes continue to study me. “Why do you think the temple was filled?”

I shrug. “The people probably stopped believing in the Gods. Probably came to realize that they weren’t all that they once thought, and in anger or maybe even grief, they closed the temple.”

“Any theories on who this temple belongs to?”

“You mean which God?” Hades nods and I tell him, “Beth thinks it could be another temple for Demeter. There seems to be so many already. She’s considered that it could potentially be a passageway for Persephone to travel between the realms.”

“That is an unexpectedly interesting and intelligent observation,” Hades observes. “And what do you think?”

I frown. Quietly, I say, “Taking my obvious insanity into consideration here, I feel oddly connected to it. With every step we uncover I feel more and more drawn to the descent. Like I am being pulled deeper into…”

“Into?”

I blink, blushing. “I feel like the stone is trying to guide me from this world into something darker. Somewhere darker. I—I—” I laugh. “Well, we know I’m a couple marbles short of sane, but I feel like if I kept on going, I’d eventually walk right into the arms of the God of the Underworld.”

Hades is silent for a long moment. I fear I’ve said too much, revealed too much of my insanity, when he finally asks, “Have you had any more visions?”

I had, in fact. I’d had one just today. The experience was out of body. As though a spirit hovering over my body, I’d seen myself walking from the depths of the tunnel my team worked to uncover. I wore a gown of revealing gauzy white that slit straight to my hip. Although I recognized myself as myself , I looked notably different. Gone were the freckles that dotted my skin. My green eyes were darker, the emerald veined with the dark green of a malachite crystal, and my blonde hair was a deep, shocking fall of rich red, the color of a red maple under cover of moonlight. My lips have always been rose-pink, but in the vision, they looked kissed by blood—or stained the red of a forbidden fruit. A pomegranate.

I’d been hauntingly, dangerously beautiful. So beautiful that, if I hadn’t watched the transformation as I stepped from the dark of the tunnel into the light of the day where a regally clothed woman waited, I might have argued that she wasn’t, in fact, me.

But as sunlight touched my leg, bared by the high slit in my gown to travel the length of my body, I watched as the sunlight washed away the paint of the darkness. It started first with the tendrils of my hair that swept the small of my back. Maple red under the fall of night faded into the white blonde of the hair I have today. My skin, drenched of the freckles I am so familiar with bloomed gold under the warm glow of the sun, and my lips paled from the shine of blood red to a pink I have known all my life. Last to change were my eyes, as I tipped them to the high sun, the veins of dark malachite swallowed by bright emerald.

Then I dipped my eyes to the regal woman and said, “Mother.”

I shake myself from the vision, rattled, as I stare up at a waiting Hades. I could swear the man isn’t breathing.

I swallow hard and lie, “No. No other visions.”

I can see he doesn’t believe me, but I hold my ground all the same. I’m not ready to share further proof of my slipping mind, instead, I am hoping that this isn’t a slip, but instead the fanciful daydream of a very average girl.

Hades says nothing as he leans into me. My heart drums in my chest as he stretches an arm around me to nab the phone that sits on his desk. I blow a breath of relief that wars with disappointment from between my lips as I watch him touch the screen and lift his phone to his ear. I’d thought he would touch me, force me in a way that only he can, to reveal all my secrets.

He speaks deep and gruff, “Leuce.” His eyes never break from mine. “Bring me the painting from the gallery.” There is a pause and he says, “The unrelenting storm, yes.” Another pause before, “Hyperion.”

Leuce appears not long after his call with the painting in hand. Hades takes it from her and, giving us his back, says, “Join us for dinner. I’ll meet you in the kitchen soon.”

He’s dismissing us, I realize, on another swell of disappointment I hide with a pinched smile I flash at Leuce. Straightening my shoulders, I try for unbothered as I say, “I have a bottle of red open and waiting.”

Leuce’s smile widens. “I like red.”

The sound of her heels follows me as I move from Hades’ office and down a long, wide hall. The kitchen smells of grilled chicken and herbs with grilled veggies and rice. It’s a simple, but wholesome dinner. After a long week, even though I’d had the first couple days off, I’m exhausted. My mind is exhausted and my body is—it’s humming with an energy I can’t explain while simultaneously feeling, well, exhausted.

I don’t understand myself anymore. I’m not entirely certain that I’ve ever understood myself.

At home on the farm, a day like this would have called for comfort soup. Something like baked potato soup or lasagna soup. Something full and rich and delicious. Here, after a day in the hot sun, the idea of eating something so heavy can make a girl turn from exhausted to nauseated really darned quick.

As though called into reality by the direction of my thoughts, my phone on the counter begins to vibrate. Mom’s name lights up my screen before I ignore the call. Again.

I don’t want to talk to her about why I haven’t been talking to her.

I also don’t want to talk to Leuce about why I’ve ignored the call. I pour wine into two glasses and turn to Leuce, who has slid onto a barstool at the kitchen island. The cut of her slightly transparent, silver-threaded top parts to expose a lot more of her breasts than would have made me comfortable a mere month ago.

Now, I’m used to Leuce’s outfits. I’m used to her overgenerous flashes of skin. I’m also used to the odd, entirely unexplainable pinches of arousal that sprout from the deepest seeds of me when she’s near. It’s the same seed that sprouts when I’m close to Minthe.

Even as I refuse to pay the feeling any mind, I can’t ignore the fact that it’s there. It floats in like déjà vu, and leaves on the same wave. It’s there now, even as, like usual, I ignore it.

Sliding a glass over the counter to her, I lift my own and sip. I should really know better than to imbibe while I’m trying to keep the very few threads of sanity I possess, but…it’s Friday.

I also want to probe her about Hades. She might know what’s going on with him, considering she spends her days at his side, his true working assistant, while I am— his companion .

I trace the rim of my glass with my fingertip. “Hades has seemed tense lately.”

Leuce lifts a silver brow. “Has he?”

I feel my frown tip low and work to right it. “You haven’t noticed?”

She lifts one shoulder. “Hades can be a moody beast. I try not to pay the swing too much mind.”

My righted frown tips again. “Oh.” I study the beautiful woman across from me. With her dark skin accented in silver and white, and her faded green eyes, she’s exceptionally attractive. I can’t help but wonder why Hades is choosing to spend his time with a girl like me, when he has women like Leuce and Minthe surrounding him.

I know it can’t be because Leuce and Minthe are together. In the time I’ve known them, I’ve come to understand that their relationship is a very, very open one.

And Hades engaged in relations of a similar kind before…

I hedge, “You’ve known Hades a while, then?”

I swear, Leuce’s eyes sharpen. There’s something cat-like about Leuce. I noticed it the very first moment I met her outside the Tower of Pluto. She’d inspected me even then with a feline curiosity. A lethal grace.

Finally, she speaks. “I have. A very long while, in fact.”

“How long?”

She smiles coyly, licking a pebble of wine from the rim of her glass. She purrs, “Long.”

I clear my throat, trying to ignore the blush that scorches my skin. “So—” I can’t make myself ask the question that burns on my tongue. To cool the sting of it, I take a big gulp of my wine. Leuce waits with a kind of patience that could test even the Gods, if the Gods were real . Courage somewhat gathered, I force myself to ask, “Did you know his wife?”

The surprise that flashes in her eyes is entirely genuine. She leans forward and breathes huskily, “He told you about his wife?”

I nibble the corner of my lip. I’m not sure if I’m treading water here that would be better left undisturbed. Still, I can’t help myself. I admit, “I met Herman. ”

Leuce’s brows furrow and smooth as understanding settles in. “I see.”

I nod. “He let it slip that Hades was married.”

“And what did Hades say about her?”

“Nothing, really. Just that—well—that she was murdered.”

I don’t add that she was very obviously promiscuous in a way I can’t imagine I will ever be.

Sadness flashes in Leuce’s eyes. It doesn’t ebb as she murmurs softly, “She was.”

“How?”

Leuce straightens in her seat. “Persephone, I think these are questions you should ask Hades. I can see that you are very important to him, and he is very important to me, and thus, you are important to me. I feel very—connected to you. As though you and I are meant to know each other.”

It’s odd, but I feel the same. There is something about Leuce, and Minthe, too, that draws me in. An attraction I can’t explain. Can’t begin to understand. It’s more than physical, it’s magnetic.

Instead of agreeing with her, I press, “Hades mentioned that his relationship with her was very open.”

Leuce’s eyes narrow only slightly on me before they drag slowly down the length of my body. It’s the first time she’s looked at me the way I’ve caught Minthe looking at me. With open attraction. Sexual attraction. My blood heats even as my belly flips in discomfort. I am attracted and yet not.

I’m so confused .

“Yes,” Leuce says slowly. “It was a very open relationship.”

“But—” I shake my head. “Hades doesn’t seem like the kind of man who would—well—share.”

“Oh.” She laughs. The breathy sound exudes sex. “I don’t think he would share you. But Hades has a very long and rich history of sharing.”

My face is on fire. It’s so hot, it hurts.

Covering my cheeks with my hands, I breathe a measured breath between my lips. “Did—um—have you—God, I don’t know why I’m asking this.”

Her head tips to the side. “Do be cautious the words you speak to the Gods, Persephone. There is nothing they cannot hear, provided they care to listen.” She smirks. “And I believe there is one God who is very aware of the words you speak, when you speak, even inadvertently, to him.” She pauses as I gape at her. “But to answer your question, I again think you need to ask Hades about his sexual relations with me.”

Knowing I’m going to get nowhere with Leuce when it comes to digging for information about Hades, I ask, “You believe in the Gods?”

“Very much.”

“How does everyone here believe in them? I thought they were just—I thought everyone believed— knew —they were myth?”

“They are far more than myth, my friend.” She lifts her glass to her lips and drinks deep. “Even now, I can feel their power.”

Hades takes that very moment to walk into the kitchen. And although he’s only just a man, power is the thing that rolls off him, crackling like embers in the dark.