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Hades stood with his hands braced on the table, watching her slowly rise to her feet. He watched her wince and wobble, and she fell to her knees, the sound of them cracking against the stone echoing through the room.
He made no move to help as she crawled to her chair and pulled herself back into it, panting and cringing at the pain shooting down her neck and spine. His chair flew back to the table, tucking itself in as he sidestepped out of its path. There was not a hair out of place, not even a ruffle in his pristine appearance.
Persephone’s head fell to the table and she shut her eyes, needing to rest even if her attacker was prowling toward her. His breath was cold on her neck as he whispered something to her, something she could not hear over her thumping heart. She shivered as it traveled down her back, forcing her to straighten. So quickly that the room swam around her head, and she had to grip the edge of the table to keep from toppling out of her seat. “A little weak, are we?” Hades murmured into her hair, breathing in deeply before saying, “Grason. You need a bath. You smell worse than a funeral pyre without the mint,kale.”
“I wonder,” Persephone said slowly, her words slurring together as she turned to face him, “why that might be.” It felt like she was speaking through water, and her thoughts were thick. It was a similar feeling to drinking too much wine, except she had barely drank enough to feel weightless, let alone drunk.
The room was spinning, even as she placed her hands on the table – hadn’t they already been there? – feeling the steadiness of it against her palms.
She saw Hades grin out of the corner of her eye. Just as she started to turn to tell him to shove that grin, a wave of ice knocked into her, shoving her off the chair onto the ground. She threw her arms out to catch herself, hoping to save her head from banging into stone, again. Eyes scrunched shut, she waited for the inevitable pain and tenderness that flowed through her body whenever he threw her into something.
It did not come. The biting cold of the stone did not touch her, and she felt no pain where she suspected she hit it. She must have hit her head harder than she thought to feel no pain.
When she opened her eyes, however, Hades was holding her just above the ground.
“Why?” she croaked, her voice hoarse.
“You were annoying me.” He grunted as he lifted her back to her feet. He kissed her forehead tenderly, and she tried to recoil, gentle as his touch was, but he held her head firmly in both hands, and she was still too weak to fight back. Her face warmed under his touch; his hands were hot on her chilled skin, but that wasn’t what heated her face.
When he pulled away from her his hands remained gently caressing her cheeks, and his eyes met hers. The look he gave her was something entirely different from anything she had ever seen inside him before. Where there once had been an impenetrable wall of hatred lining his eyes, was now a soft loving look.
A look so warm and full of passion that she forgot who stood before her. His soft eyes made her knees weak, and her chest tightened. All the anger and wrath she had been filled with moments before disappeared, a curtain of lust shutting it out of view, pushing it out of reach.
With one hand holding her face Hades trailed the other down her neck, his fingertips lightly grazing her skin. His hand cupped the back of her neck, holding her in place against him, and she leaned into his touch.
When he kissed her the world around them dissolved into nothing. They were floating in a dark ocean of ecstasy, where nothing else existed and nothing but their lips mattered.
His hand slid easily across the back of her neck, still slick with blood, to grip her shoulder, his arm firm behind her as he hugged her against him. She brought her hands around his waist, running them up his back, her fingers digging into his shoulders.
A tingle kissed her skin as he wiped the grime away. His breath was hot and heavy against her skin when he pulled away long enough to kiss down her now clean neck.
“Gods, Persephone,” he said, biting down on the sensitive skin between her neck and shoulder. She cried out, barely hearing the distant tearing sound as her tattered, slashed apart dress fell to the ground, torn from her body. “I have wanted you again and again since our wedding night.”
The cold air dragged it’s fingers down her skin and she snapped back into her body. She shoved her arms between them, pushing him away. Still impossibly weak, she knew she had hardly pushed against him, but he stepped back from her.
Hades’ hair remained perfectly curled, his clothes barely mussed. He wiped a hand across his reddened mouth, the only evidence that anything had happened at all, and raked his eyes down her naked body. As he reached for her she stepped back.
When he reached again she backed away further, until her bare back was flush against one of the golden columns lining the open wall to the garden. She held a hand toward him, and wheezed a tiny, breathless, “Stop.”
He stopped and took a step back, increasing the space between them. Hands at his sides once again, face cooled into its usual hard, emotionless expression.
They watched each other as they caught their breath, chests heaving in sync.
Persephone could hardly believe the god standing before her was the same one that had murdered the love of her life. With his pristine, coiffed appearance and gentle, if a tad too adventurous, hands, he seemed like an entirely different person than the one she had quarreled with before falling to Tartaros.
“Why?” Persephone whispered, forcing herself to look into his eyes. They were closed off and hard again, drained of all the warmth that had filled them seconds ago.
“You are my wife, and you are—” he cut himself off, gesturing up and down her body.
“Why did you kill him?” She corrected, her voice failing her and breaking.
Hades pressed his lips into a thin line, looking passed her toward the rose garden, seeing something she could not. “You loved him too much.”
Persephone scoffed, pushing off the column.
“You did,” he said. “You would never have let go of him, of a mortal man. I saw it in your eyes the day you asked me to bring him back—begged me to. You would have let him consume you, and then you never could have reached your full potential.” He looked at her, eyes softer, but clouded with something hard and angry. “He would not have stopped holding you back when he died, he would have destroyed your life. He almost did! Your immortal life, Persephone,” he said hotly, coming closer to her, but not close enough to touch her.
“Why does that matter to you? Why?” Her voice was rising to hysterical with every word. “It is my life to destroy.”
