‘Persephone!’ Hades calls when he returns.
I can’t tell whether he’s furious or happy.
He’s standing in the middle of the foyer, staring at the walls around him. My heart beats:My husband, my husband, my husband.
‘What is this?’ he asks.
I can’t help but smile. ‘Don’t you recognize your own work?’
I have plastered every available space in the palace with the tapestries, paintings and statues that Hades has crafted. I found them rolled into stacks in the corners of his art rooms and lying in towers that seemed precarious at best. A whole lifetime of art, of trying to escape thoughts I cannot even imagine.
‘Why is it here?’ he asks quietly, with a touch of sadness and a hint of longing.
‘They’re beautiful,’ I say firmly. ‘Art should be seen andfinally you have an excuse. Everyone who visits can believe I did them, and they won’t have to gather dust any more.’
His face shatters into a grin. There are worse beings to marry, so many thousands of worse beings. I hadn’t dared to imagine ever making anyone smile like that, so raw and open. I feel accomplished somehow, like every harsh edge I have is softening.
‘I did not even consider that,’ he says.
‘Well, I get the whole realm thinking I’m extraordinarily talented, so it works out well for me too.’
‘You don’t have to keep complimenting me. I’ve already agreed to marriage.’
‘Besides,’ I continue, ‘you’ll need to pretend to have done all of that.’ I nod in the vague direction of the humans. ‘Splitting the land and restoring the souls and all the rest of it.’
Hades’ smile falters. ‘Why?’
‘Because Father is much more likely to leave me alone if he believes me harmless,’ I say. ‘And if I’m plotting to revamp the afterlife, I’m not quite the meek, flower-loving child he thinks I am.’
Hades glowers. Even though he knows what Zeus has threatened, he won’t let it stand in his way. ‘Who cares if –’
‘Darling, I’m already marrying you. I think we’ve established just how much I care, and just how desperate I am,’ I say.
Hades smirks and I realize how much I love this teasing without consequence, where insults are met with smiles and laughs, not icy stares and scolding.
Wait.
Is this all that this is?
Is this infatuation that’s been building little more than beingtreated like an equal for the first time? It should be promising – I might not have feelings for the man I am marrying – but it’s not. I feel like I can’t trust my own reactions if they can be so easily warped.
‘I always imagined a softly spoken wife who spoke of her adoration of me so lyrically,’ he teases. He lifts my hand to his lips and as they brush against me I feel like I’m falling to this realm all over again.
Gods damn you, Hades.
I take a shaky breath and say, ‘Fuck you,’ like it’s the caress ofI love you, complete with simpering eyes and the clutching of his hand.
Hades shakes his head but he can’t stop the smile on his face.
‘I always thought you a good performer but, by the Fates, I hope your acting skills improve by this evening,’ he says.
‘For the hardest role of my life?’ I feign consideration. ‘Hades, pretending to love you shall be my magnum opus.’
I just hope I’m right.
AKNOCK ON MY BEDROOM DOORand I see a collection of women: Damaris, Cora, Larissa and Styx.
‘I thought you might need a hand getting ready,’ Styx says.
