“Don’t you ever listen?” The words slipped from between her clenched teeth.
“I could ask the same of you,” he said humorlessly as he lifted his hand, intent on healing her, though he hesitated a moment, waiting for her to protest. The pain must have won out because she said nothing.
He winced as he placed his hand on the first wound. The thorn was sharp and wet from her blood, the skin around it shredded. He gritted his teeth as it healed and moved to the next one on her side, then the two that protruded from her calves. When he was finished, he sat back, hating the feel of her blood on his hands so much, they shook.
“How long have you kept this from me?” he asked, knowing it had not gotten this bad overnight.
Has she told Hecate? he wondered.
“I’ve been a little distracted in case you haven’t noticed,” she replied bitterly, her breathing still not quite right. “What do you want, Hades?”
She sounded defeated as she spoke, and the tone of her voice put Hades more on edge. He felt as though she were pulling away from him once more, but this time it was worse. It should have made him desperate, but instead, he was angry.
“Your behavior toward Thanatos was atrocious. You will apologize.”
She glared. “Why should I? He was going to take Lexa! Worse, he tried to hide it from me!”
“He was doing his job, Persephone.”
“Killing my friend isn’t a job! It’s murder!”
That word— kill—he hated it. It tore through him like an arrow to the heart. She acted as if he wanted this to be Lexa’s fate, as if she’d forgotten who exactly he was.
“You know it isn’t murder! Keeping her alive for your own benefit isn’t a kindness,” he hissed. It was the harshest he’d ever been with her. “She is in pain, and you are prolonging it.”
“No, you are prolonging it. You could heal her, but you have chosen not to help me!”
“You want me to bargain with the Fates so that she might survive? So you can have the death of another on your conscience? Murder doesn’t suit you, goddess.”
Throwing the word back at her must have hit her just as hard because she tried to hit him, but he caught her hand and pulled her close. The blood that coated his palm was drying and felt sticky as he held her. Being this close added another level to his pain, as it reminded him of the night before, when they had come together so passionately.
Was this their love? These two extremes that felt so desperate all the time?
Then her hand curled into a fist, and her head fell against his chest as she began to cry.
“I don’t know how to lose someone, Hades.”
It was moments like this when he realized that his heart no longer belonged to him.
“I know,” he said, taking her face into his hands. “But running from it won’t help, Persephone. You are just delaying the inevitable.”
“Hades, please,” she said, desperate, and then whispered, “What if it were me?”
No.
He released her. “I refuse to entertain such a thought.”
“You cannot tell me you wouldn’t break every Divine law in existence for me.”
Hades’s power preened at the thought.
“Make no mistake, my lady, I would burn this world for you.”
He had said it before, but perhaps she did not quite understand what that meant. There were no rules, Divine or otherwise, when it came to her. She was the exception. It did not matter that no one else thought so. He did, and he was the end.
“But that is a burden I am willing to carry. Can you say the same?”
She did not speak, and he was not surprised. Likely she was thinking of all those threads burned into his skin, though that was not even the worst part.
The worst part was the guilt.
“I will give you one more day to say goodbye to Lexa. That is the only compromise I can offer. You should be thankful I’m offering that.”
*
Later that day, Hades stood unseen in a large, open meadow. On the springy, green grass, he placed one of Helios’s pristine cows. By the time he had
returned to the Underworld to retrieve a cow, he no longer cared about choosing the best, and the only reason he saw this plan through was because he’d like to locate the Graeae. It made him anxious that there had been no contact from their abductors, no hint of where they had been taken. He considered that perhaps Medusa had something to do with their disappearance, in which case it would have been more of a rescue. Perhaps that was why no one had come to collect the eye.