When he was finished, he returned to the palace and found Hecate in his bedroom. She sat beside the bed while Persephone slept.
“How is she?” he asked.
“Exhausted,” she replied. “She just stopped shaking.”
Hades’s frown deepened.
“I don’t understand how she managed to wander into the forest.”
“Enchantment,” Hecate said.
“Enchantment,” Hades repeated.
“I have been thinking, the fear is all wrong too.”
Hades’s brows knit together. “What do you mean?”
Hecate kept her gaze on Persephone as she spoke.
“Persephone has no fear of you cheating with Leuce. She trusts you. Her greatest fear is losing Lexa. Which leads me to believe this was meant to tear you apart.”
Hades considered her words and, after a moment, asked, “Was Leuce at last night’s celebration?”
“I believe so,” Hecate said. “Which is why the fear seems off. Even after that picture surfaced in the Delphi Divine, she was unbothered enough to bring Leuce to celebrate.”
“You said it was an enchantment?” Hades asked.
The goddess nodded.
“A potion, if I had to guess,” Hecate said. “Likely from a Magi.”
Hades had no doubt that Leuce was involved somehow. Her deception was about to end. He left the bedroom and headed outside, where his realm had been restored to order, and called for Hermes, who appeared almost immediately, as if he had been waiting for Hades’s summons.
“You called, Daddy Death?” Hermes arrived grinning, but that smile quickly died. “You look awful.”
Hades felt awful.
“Find Leuce,” he said.
“Oh no,” Hermes said. “What did she do this time?”
“Nothing different from before,” Hades replied. “She just fucked with the wrong god.”
“I’ll locate her.”
“Don’t just locate her,” Hades said. “Bring her to me.”
Hermes nodded and vanished.
When he was once again alone, Hades took a deep breath and wandered away from the front of the palace, around its many gardens. He was anxious to have Persephone awake, to talk to her about what she had seen and beg for her forgiveness. Despite the fact that he had done nothing wrong, he had created the monster that had affected her so cruelly, and for that, he felt guilt.
He rounded the garden wall that separated the garden outside his bedroom from the Asphodel Fields and came face-to-face with Persephone.
She was pale and dressed in white. Without energy to keep up her glamour, her Divine form was on full display, and beneath the muted Underworld sky, she looked both beautiful and haunted.
For a moment, all he could do was stare. There had been so many times in the past when he had feared that she would disappear right before his eyes, that every moment they’d had was some kind of torturous game the Fates had woven into his life only to unravel, and he’d never felt that more than in this moment.
He swallowed hard and asked, “Are you well?”
She stared back, the gold of her hair glinting as a light wind teased the strands, and in that moment, her cheeks flushed a light pink.
“I will be,” she said softly.
The silence that followed was not so heavy, and Hades hoped that healing from this would be easier somehow.
“May I join you on your walk?” he asked.
“This is your realm.”
He frowned at her response, which was less enthusiastic than he’d hoped, though he supposed he could not blame her for putting distance between them after what she had seen. She moved ahead, walking in the direction he’d come from, and he fell into step beside her. He wanted to touch her, at least hold her hand, but he recognized that he was seeking comfort, seeking confirmation that they were okay, and he could not expect her to be ready for that.
He curled his fingers into fists as they continued on in silence, coming to the end of the garden, facing the Asphodel Fields, and the tension between them was so great, Hades could no longer handle it.
He turned to her, and while her body was angled away, she stared up at him.
“Persephone,” he murmured, wishing so much that he could reach for her. “I…I don’t know what you saw, but you must know—you must know—it wasn’t real.”
Which was mostly true. Hecate had pulled memories from Persephone’s mind, and those had been filtered through her pain and her anguish and her trauma. He would never truly know what she’d seen, only how it had affected her, and that somehow made this all worse.
“Shall I tell you what I saw?” she asked, a raw note to her voice that made it rasp. “I saw you and Leuce together. You held her, moved inside her like you starved for her.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and trembled.
“You took pleasure from her. Knowing she was your lover was one thing. Seeing it was…devastating, and I wanted to destroy everything you loved,” she said, her voice cracking as tears spilled down her face. “I wanted you to watch me dismantle your world. I wanted to dismantle you.”
Her words were like claws digging deep into his chest, and despite his previous reservations about touching her, he reached for her now, wishing to meet her gaze.
“Persephone,” he said and she opened her eyes, brimming with tears. “You must know that wasn’t real.”
“It felt real.”
That was the horror of it—the torture of it.
“I would take this from you if I could,” he said, and he meant it. He would take it from her so she would not feel the pain of a betrayal he did not commit, so she would not look at him like she did now—with the shadow of suspicion in her eyes.
And yet even with the doubt swimming in her expression, she drew nearer.
“You can take this,” she said, then whispered, “Kiss me.”
He was doubtful at first but eager all the same, and he touched his lips to hers. His intention was to be gentle, but Persephone left no room for soft caresses. Her hand snaked behind his neck, and her mouth pressed hard against his, so he let his tongue taste hers. Hades drew her closer, his fingers digging into the fabric of her dress while her hands cascaded down his body to his cock, which had grown long and thick as their kiss had continued, and he drew away with a guttural inhale.
Still, Persephone held him, and despite the layer of fabric between them, he felt hot in her hands.
“Help me forget what I saw in the forest,” she begged. “Kiss me. Love me. Ruin me.”