‘I’ll miss you,’ I admit and he stares for a moment, his demeanour shifting. He straightens up like he’s resisting whatever it is he’s feeling. And then his shoulders fall, like he’s giving into it.
‘Persephone, I am sure you will be perfectly fine without me.’
I’M SO BUSY RUNNING THEcourt and adding Hades’ tasks to my own that I don’t have time to linger on his absence. It’s just something at the back of my mind, something that aches when I pay attention to it, and, when I don’t, feels like a shadow following me around.
A few days later, a nymph appears at my side – Hades convinced me that sending all the storm nymphs back to Earth at once wouldn’t be a great thing for the living mortals. But I am determined to source some automatons from Olympus so the nymphs don’t have to keep acting as servants.
‘Hades is here,’ she says.
I nearly bowl her over as I run towards the palace’s front doors.
Hades must have only just entered. He looks tired, helm clutched under one arm, robes dusty. I’m so impossibly happy that I practically throw myself at him, slinging my arms round his neck so tightly my feet lift off the ground.
He chuckles, clearly delighted.
‘I missed you too,’ he says.
‘Stop reminding the rest of us how single we are!’ Styx yells from a doorway where a group of court members hover, watching us.
‘Not for lack of trying, apparently,’ Hades says pointedly, which succeeds in something I thought impossible – a purplish blush spreads across Styx’s cheeks.
Lower, so the others don’t hear, he says, ‘We need to talk somewhere private.’
My heart plummets.
We shuffle off to our favoured library, fireplace already roaring.
He sits down heavily.
‘Are you okay?’ I ask, resisting the urge to sit on the arm of his chair, to massage his weary-looking shoulders. ‘You seem exhausted.’
‘I am,’ he admits. ‘I crossed a great deal of Asia Minor. I’ve never seen anything like this. Wars happen on individual islands. Plagues spread in cities. This is everywhere.’ He looks to me, lips pressed firmly in a reluctant scowl. ‘Persephone, there’s no easy way to say this. In every land, every nation I visited, there’s famine. It’s your –’
‘Mother,’ we say together – his a fact, mine a dreaded whisper.
I practically fall into the chair opposite him.
I’m torn – perversely touched that she would go to such lengths, but terrified of what her next move might be and worried about how she must be feeling to do all this. Above all, there is the dawning realization that I must do what I’ve been putting off for so long: talk to my mother.
I draw my arms tightly across my chest like I might be able to hold myself together.
‘Persephone …’ Hades trails off and I wonder if maybe I’m not the only one struggling with not knowing how to comfort without overstepping.
Faked love …
‘What do you need?’
‘I don’t know,’ I admit. Part of me is sure I’ve made it worse in my head by leaving it so long and giving it time to blow up into something it’s not. Part of me is convinced it will be worse than I can even imagine.
‘I can talk to her for you?’
I shake my head. ‘No. I need to get her here and show her how happy I am. I think I need to do that alone. And I miss her.’
‘I understand.’
I’ll have to bring her to the Underworld, invite her into our home, show her … everything. And hope she can forgive me.
‘There’s another thing,’ Hades says to my silence. ‘Word of the change in the afterlife has reached the mortals. Already there are inklings that their sense of morality is shifting. A few of them are still calling you Kore. Only it seems to be more out of fear, as though saying your name might summon you or be an ill omen.’
