I start to say yes but I catch myself. Because Hades doesn’t love me, not in the way she means – not in the way that might endure.
We reach the cliff edge overlooking the humans and their glittering oasis – a whole world I created. It no longer feels like the decisive argument I thought it would be.
Indeed my mother only glances at it long enough for a flicker of shock to cross her face before she turns back to me.
‘Very well,’ she says. ‘Let’s talk hypothetically. If he found someone else, what would happen to you?’
‘I …’ I force myself to truly consider it – hypothetically. And I realize I would be fine. I’d move out, maybe, find a new home in the Underworld. Because this land is mine with or without him. I’d be heartbroken but I’d go on. I’d gather my friends. I’d feel loved without him.
If Ineededhim, if the life I loved were truly dependent on him, then I wouldn’t be able to love him without hesitation, without thought – with the freedom that Ifinallydo.
‘I have power and the gods of this world respect me,’ I say. ‘I’d be devastated but I’d survive.’
‘Any match I found for you would have been based on firmer foundations. More security. More stability.’
‘I belong here.’ I gesture to the world. ‘How do you not see that?’
‘You belong with me,’ she retorts. ‘Because I’m going toactuallylove you forever. And you’re going to return to the surface with me.’
I laugh at that one. ‘No, I’m not.’
‘You have to,’ she says. ‘Or people are going to keep dying.’
I step back, thrown. ‘You’re going to keep killing mortals unless I come back with you? What is this?’
Mother glances around hurriedly. ‘Not here. We’ll talk back at the cottage.’
‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’
‘It doesn’t have to be forever,’ she says and I scoff because I recognize this. ‘Just play us one song’ and all of a sudden I’m in a full recital for the goddesses who will go running back to Olympus with tales of my musical gifts. She loves to lure me in with a compromise she’ll twist. ‘We’ll talk about it on the surface, not on this land. Not where anyone could hear.’
‘I trust everyone in this world.’
‘A queen should never be such a fool. Let’s go back to the surface. It’ll be all right, Kore.’ She steps forward, and reaches for my cheek. ‘Come with me and everything will be fine. Please trust me. Trust my love.’
I step back, pushing her hand off me. ‘I do trust your love, Mother. I just wish you’d stop manipulating me with it.’
And, before I can do anything I might regret, I reach for the flowers she stands upon and banish her back to the surface.
Fine. I’ll fix this famine another way. Life is my domain – and no one, not even my own mother, gets to bring it to an end like this.
ISTART THE LONG WALK BACKto the palace to give myself time to think. But my mind keeps flipping between my mother’s cruelty towards the humans and the malice she showed when talking about my love for Hades.
And maybe she’s right – maybe it will end. Maybe love really doesn’t last forever. But, by the Fates, it has to start to end, right? So what if there’s a middle I could love every second of?
Before I can lose my nerve I skip ahead through my flowers and go in search of Hades.
He’s weaving when I find him. He’s only just started but I see flowers and the edge of a waterfall from Elysium, one he designed and I created.
He’s so deep in thought, just like always, that he doesn’t hear me open the door. I’m struck by the yearning that’s becoming more common every day. I watch his fingers fly over the tapestry and think of the man, with all this softness and gentility, who was forced into a war, forced into a crown, forced to lock himself away so the world wouldn’t see his sensitivity and mistake it for weakness.
He leans in closer to strike a single thread from his creation and line up a second to replace it.
‘Hades,’ I say. He jumps, though for once it is not with the startled expression of someone just short of reaching for a sword.
‘Persephone.’ He speaks as though the word is an exhale of relief.
I find myself speaking without thinking, though I say precisely what I planned to. ‘I love you.’ It sounds so simple – too simple, really, for all that we are and all that we have done.
