His eyebrows knit together, his dark eyes … lost. I imagined many responses to this declaration – one I never thought I would manage to make – but I never thought he would be confused.
‘I love you too. You know this.’ He watches me almost warily.
‘Not just Ludus, Hades.’ Playful love. That one is easy to admit. Even at the start, we verged upon it – even when I hated him still. I worry that I will fail, that the declarations I managed so boldly to my mother will dissipate on my tongue because I cannot possibly talk. ‘Pragma,’ I manage, swallowing round the lump in my throat. If I make it to the end of this sentence I feel like I will fall apart.
‘So soon, I …’ He trails off and I know. I know it’s ridiculous – pragma is a bond forged by years. But who else could I confide in? Who else has been with me through enough chaos that it should have been spread over decades?
But I’m not finished. ‘Eros.’ I try for a chuckle. ‘Though after the other night you know about that one.’ Lust. The urge frustrating me several times a day – to lean towards him, to close any and all distance between us.
‘Philia, even.’ And there it is: the real confession. Love on the level of the soul. ‘Every love someone can have for another being, I have them all for you.’
Hades lingers in stasis for a moment. Before I can prompt him his eyes are steel and there’s a rage in him I’ve never seen before. ‘Why are you saying all this?’ he hisses. ‘What did your mother say to you?’
‘This has nothing to do with my mother,’ I snap. Gods, hasn’t she done enough? Can’t this moment exist without her?
‘Persephone,’ he says gently and I hate it. I want him to grab me and pull my lips to his. Or I want to hear his voice crack as he screams for me to leave this realm and never return. I don’t want him to talk to me with pity, to say my name like his heart is breaking.
‘I’m not asking for you to feel the same,’ I say quickly. ‘I just wanted you to know. I feel like I’m lying to you by not saying anything.’
‘You can’t mean this,’ he says, pushing away from where he sits and walking towards me.
‘Go ahead and try to tell me what I feel one more time.’
‘It’s not fair,’ he says. ‘You know that’s how I feel for you and –’
‘What?’ I ask. The most I dared hope for was that he might return one of these loves. What is he saying?
‘You know full well,’ he says. ‘I’ve made my affection rather obvious –’
‘When?’ I demand. I should be overcome with joy. But I won’t have this, won’t have him claiming he made such feelings clear before I did. Not that it’s a competition but … no, I won’t have it.
‘A thousand times over.’
‘Name one.’
‘Designing your world, creating your entire wardrobe, marrying you,’ he lists.
‘Because you like me not because you love me!’
‘I kissed you four nights ago and told you I couldn’t keep up with the pretending and all the emotions involved. What else does that mean if not love?’
‘That this situation is confusing you! And that you’re a terrible actor. Youliterallytold me you were faking your love, that all you felt was lust.’
‘You know what, it doesn’t matter right now,’ he says. ‘Tell me what your mother said.’
I shake my head. ‘I don’t want to talk about her. Now that I know you feel the same way I would quite like to head upstairs to that enormous bed of yours.’
I’m only half joking.
‘We are doing no such thing.’
‘See! That right there is how you didn’t make it obvious at all. I kissed you and you yelled at me –’
‘I thought you were doing it because you thought you had to!’
‘By the Fates, why would you think that? Have I done a single thing because I had to from the moment I got here?’
‘You married me out of necessity! Of course it would follow that you would believe youowedme such things … and I told you that’s why I stopped it the next day. You didn’t correct me!’
