my heart is stone (and still it trembles)

by AceQueenKing

Summary:

Persephone falls, despite herself.

Notes:

• For calenlily.

1. Her prison cell is made of stone, and Persephone hates it.

She counts the stones while her captor is gone. He insists he is not a captor, that he is instead that strange word husband. Persephone does not believe him. Her mother would have told her she was to be married. Her mother would never have allowed her to be tricked by a flower, by something that has been meant, up to this point in her life, to only bring joy.

He is a god, and he is certainly kin; she smells that on him. He insists: family, husband. He says it in old, scratchy sounds, ancient syllables, his words clad in an accent she barely understands. They can’t speak well to one another.

But it does not matter much, for Persephone does not believe him.

---

2. Her cell is made of stone, and Persephone counts each brick.

Now that she has become used to her situation – that she is trapped in the cold underground, in a chamber as big as her mother’s temple – she no longer has the all-encompassing terror to keep her busy. Rather, now her days are filled with two things: utter boredom, vague queasiness, and, for a couple hours a day, her visitor.

Her only visitor.

He comes every day and brings her three meals she’s careful not to eat, for Persephone’s mother has raised no fool, and she is a well-learned woman. The food of the dead binds those who eat it.

“Eat,” he moans, in his strange tongue, her language but with an unfamiliar accent. There’s a desperate curl to his voice, as if his world lays on her shoulders. Persephone resents being turned into his own, personal Atlas. “Please?” he whimpers.

Everything she has heard of this uncle is that he is a strong man, a stern man. But she has seen nothing of him but desperation.

At first she throws his trays back at him, a violent reaction that leaves him scrambling. It is easy to refuse his food, all strange, black and grey and unlike anything above. But given that he is her only point of contact in this world, she’s begrudgingly reliant on him for communication.

Today, she picks up the strange, grey bread he upon her tray and keeps it in her lap, lets him hope as he babbles about his homeland. She understands him better now, his vowels understandable if strange. While he natters at her, she studies him: younger-looking than her mother, with dark, curly hair and darker eyes. She would have thought after so long underground he’d be paler than she, is but to her surprise his skin is darker than hers. He is not unhandsome, she thinks, and then is promptly furious at herself for thinking it. If he sees any hint of the rogue thought, he shows no sign.

She doesn’t move it for a solid hour while he talks to her, but she hopes if he thinks she is well-behaved, he might be more lenient, might be persuaded to let her see her mother and therein go home. “I want to go home,” she says.

“You are home,” he says, without missing a beat. His eyes remain on the damn apple for a long moment, then slowly take in her face: she knows her cheeks are red with anger, her skin burning so bright she feels as of she will combust just glaring at him.

“Is it so bad?” He asks, meekly.

She stares at the stones she cannot leave, the man she does not love, and the apple she does not eat in a sorrowful snap of her head. It is all vile. “Yes,” she spits, the word full of venom.

He gets up, but not fast enough that she does not see how his face falls.

Willing herself not to feel guilty, Persephone goes back to counting stones.

---

3. Her room is made of stone, and Persephone is going out of her mind.

There are three hundred stones in what Persephone thinks is the north of the room; six hundred on the long walls that attach the beginning of this frankly ridiculous room to its end. Three windows, not that anyone sees anything out of them but dismal grey. She starts decking her hell in flowers for want of having something nice to look at; ivy boughs at the windows, thick grasses carpeting her feet. Her powers still work here and this is worth reminding her captor of.

Her abductor-cum-husband doesn’t stop her or scold her. “You’ve redecorated,” he says, carefully, when he sees her doing this. “It is…interesting,” he says, after a long moment. He says nothing else, and so she doesn’t say anything else, simply decking the room with rich vines, choking the room with flowers from top to ceiling. Once, she catches him rubbing a hollyhock with his finger lightly, as if he cannot believe it exists. This makes her uncomfortable, and she does everything in her power to ignore his awe and instead focus on her own explosion of power.

It is something to look at, at least, that is not stone. It is something here that is alive. It is almost enough to keep her going, something worth searching. He walks across her grasses, and she notices how it withers under his feet. He keeps his eyes down as he places it on her bed. “How are you today, my dear?”

He speaks smoothly to her, smooth as silk, but Persephone isn't fooled. He’s done his best to look extra handsome today, she notes, his unruly hair slicked with some oil. She stares at him; he isn’t a bad-looking fellow, but she hates him plenty regardless. Her mamas taught her bad men don’t always look so bad; don’t judge a plant’s usefulness by its thorns. She stares at his neatly trimmed little beard, his soft black eyes, his dusky skin, and whirls outwards, in a slow but threatening little stretch of her powers. He looks down to her fingers, which are knitting together a flower before she knows it, and she hands it to him: a yellow carnation.

She sits back with a sulk and watches as his face falls; he understands the language of flowers, which is interesting she thinks, and then tells herself nothing about the big boar can be considered interesting. He thumbs the petals of her gift; they grow withered at his touch.

“I’m sorry,” he says, nodding crisply. “I’ll leave you be.”

She grows a whole field of carnations; yellow, angry, carnations, each one screaming I reject this and I reject you.

But he does not come back that night except to slide a tray in, and leaves after collecting the old one without a single word at all.

Persephone should think herself happy, showing off how much she hates him.

But she isn’t, and that bothers her more than any amount of stone surrounding her.

---

4. Persephone’s cell is made of stone, and she is going to go mad if she doesn’t get out of it.

She’s covered every single filament of stone with moss, brushed her powers through every inch of the room, every single brick, and it feels not freeing but claustrophobic. It would perhaps be worth It if he didn’t seem so in awe of her output, his face going slack with wonder every time she makes something new.

She has made no progress in figuring out his machinations.

She’s tried to open his doors, but they don’t open for her power. No vine is fine enough to wiggle through her lock, none so thick as to break her window. She’s tried to break the windows, with vine and hand and, in desperation, a metal tray. She has gotten desperate enough to want to take her chances outside his walls. Even the bleak greyness of the underworld has come to look appealing, but it, too, refuses to open to her touch.

“What are you doing?” He asks, quietly, as she studies the window, ignoring him once more as he brings her to the window. No point in not admitting that she’s been looking for latches, for getaways. She doesn’t bother to remove her hands as she stands straighter, glaring at him with all her power.

“I want to go home to my mother, to my friends. Not held in one room by a – by a brute!” She spits at him. She is madder than she is wise, and she gets too close to his big body, stares up at him and his long face. “I will go mad if you keep me here. Is that what you want? A prisoner made insane just out of sheer boredom? I thought you were infamous for being a good host.”

He is silent for a long moment. He gestures, wordlessly, toward her walls, the rich ecosystem she’s painstakingly assembled. ‘But you have your – “

“I have nothing!” She pushes at him with her little finger, not hard enough to hurt anything but his pride. “All I want is to leave. I am not dead. What right have you to hold me?”

“What right…” He says, then closes his big, stubborn mouth, mulls his jaw. “You are my wife. That is enough, is it not? I should like to make you happy. What is that you…require?”

The question is so impertinent that she wants to laugh, almost does laugh, and then finally it breaks through her, like rocks tumbling down, and if only they were the rocks of her walls. She does not know much of weddings, it is true, but she knows her mother could never have consented to this man, to this place.

His face turns bright red; he mutters something she can’t entirely catch – something about not thinking it so awful a question – and then he turns his heels, retreating back across the well-worn dirt path he’s made in her floor. Nothing grows where his heels click.

She burns all her plants, purely on spite, and then she sobs.

---

5. Persephone’s cell is made of stone, until it isn’t.

He makes little changes to it, gradually; it’s subtle, but she catches a slight glow of light that has to be his work in the center of her room. She’s glad she burned the plants, for she could not stand them responding to his gift of mere trickery of the light. The room’s walls gradually thin, to the point one wouldn’t be aware they were in a prison at all: the walls that hold her are a fine crystal, unbreakable but transparent. She remakes some of the vines over the crystalline structure out of spite; it might be beautiful, but its his handiwork. She makes sure the vines she chooses are neutral to the sunshine; she will not see her plants respond to him.

And nothing from his hand grows.

Still, he is bristling with pride when he comes in, smiling ear to ear.

It fades when he sees her. She must look a sight, she knows; she hasn’t changed her clothes since she was snatched, her dress as rumpled as it has been since he pulled her onto his chariot. She has stopped combing her ever-wild hair, and, unlike him, her skin has lost any luster it may well have bad. She glares at him, hateful as ever, her head held haughty and high.

“I thought…” His voice cracks. “Did you not find the change…pleasing?”

“No,” she says, calm and under control. Be unto stone, she thinks. Be unto stone. “No.”

“How should I change it?” He snaps his fingers and the stones under her feet slip cold, yellow and shiny with ugly gold. “Gold?” He snaps his fingers again and the substance slips to a greyer cooler, still shiny and still ugly. “Silver? I can make it any metal you wa—”

“I want freedom.” She says; he shakes his head, a quick no-no-no-no that’s so vehement she has to wonder what horror has made him so afraid of being alone. She cannot fathom why he would rather be with a woman who hates him than his own retinue.

“Ask…” His face crumbles, like stones crashing into the sea. “Ask for something I can grant, my wife. Please.”

“I have,” she hisses.

He looks at her, a long look that makes her think he is evaluating her.  She doesn’t much like it, the thought that her saving grace here relies on staying in his good graces.

“I want …to make you happy, wife,” he says, slowly.

“Then let me go.”

He sighs, takes a step forward. His hand gently reaches out, and before she can quite take a step back, he touches her shoulder. She gasps, afraid, and realizes, too late, that he has gotten too close.

“I do not wish to lose you.” He leaves one hand on her shoulder but touches her no further; odd, more friend that husband, in his touch, and the strange syllables of his speech still show how far they are apart. “I will not hurt you.”

“Even your dog has full run of the house, husband,” she spits; he withdraws, a sullen look on his face.

It’s not much of a victory, but it’s more than she had when he walked in.

The room fades back to its crystalline form as his heels click out into the hall. Persephone throws herself on her bed, and dreams of the taste of her mother’s barley-bread.

---

6. Persephone’s cell is, abruptly, opened. The stones part like seawater, falling down into rubble.

She’s afraid, at first – perhaps having not been able to claim her by wooing, Hades schemes to keep her by invoking her death – but something protects her as the rocks fall, keeps her safe. She floats, suspended nicely in the doorway, as walls fall all around her.

He appears a few moments after the dust settles; he yanks her into a long hallway, his arm snaking through like a crook, and suddenly she is in a stone hallway drenched in jewels. She blinks as she takes in flowers of so many varieties, etched in stone with golden, filigreed leaves.

“You can...“ he says, though it’s hard to hear over the rabid beat of her heart. “You can have – free-reign. Of the castle.” She glares, and he backs away, hands held out. She startles and moves away from him, as if his hands could sting. “You’re right, it’s not – you deserve to be freer than the dog. Pick…pick whatever room you like, for yourself. Or pick none. Whatever in this castle I have, I shall share. It is yours to do with as you like.”

“I deserve free reign, period, not only of your house but of the realm and the realm beyond it,” she says, spitting each word like a particularly foul seed; she regrets it the second the poison leaves her mouth, not because his face falls, but because she has a much larger area to look for an escape now, and he could easily send her back into a prison. “You cannot keep a woman prisoner and then expect her to think you a man so fine when you open the cage. I am no canary, Hades.” She says it calm as she can, and she sees some sort of recognition, some regret in his hands as he touches the edge of her sleeve. She wills herself to hold still.

“Please…” He sighs. “Time. I think perhaps we both need time. I cannot –” His hand squeezes hers, and it is a strong hold, desperately strong. “I cannot lose you.”

She says nothing in response. He has not won her, and the desire to point that out is overwhelming, but for once in her life, she holds her tongue.

“Let us try to get to know one another,” he begs. A hint of a boyish smile crosses his face, almost roguish, she thinks. “I could perhaps surprise you. I am a king of a third of the universe, and no unworthy man.”

“Okay,” she says, and vows to look for whatever escape she can. It’s the smart option, he knows, but she can’t resist getting in one last barb when he smiles at her in response. “I very much doubt it, but you can try. But know Diamonds and gold have never meant much to me, alas.”

“I have faced long odds before,” he says, carefully avoiding looking at her. She does not think he is talking of the conquest of women, but her cheeks color anyway at the suggestion. Damnably, he keeps his face serene and studious.

He takes her on a tour, but she spots no obvious exits. She has to admit – irritatingly – that it is, perhaps, not so horrible a home he had made. She likes the flowers, they are pretty enough. But though he has covered his home in filigreed flowers for her – and she imagines he had to work at quite a fever pitch to do it – that does not mean she has to like him.

He owes her her freedom, and she owes him nothing. It matters nothing that he is handsome, a king, or even…kind, at points.

She hardens her heart as she walks, tells herself to hold no succor in his arms or in his home. She wills herself to be stone.

---

7. Persephone’s heart is stone. She makes it so.

They fall into a weird sort of rhythm. He spends so much time attempting to woo her heart. Every day brings with it a new poem, or prayer, or attempt at conversation; she tries to avoid looking at him, his love pains inexplicably shared between them. He has not touched her, thankfully. She knows other tragedies well enough to be thankful for this small mercy.

He spends every moment that he isn't working with her – but, fortuitously, mortals seem to be dying in large enough lots to keep him away from her quite often. She was never aware of how quickly mortals faded until she was down here, until his gaze, inevitably, drifts toward his throne room and he whispers excuse me, handing some mortal or another their final apportionment. She uses the time well, searching for any escape, but every day turns up one less way to escape him.

And every day, too, she finds herself feeling damnably guilty for even trying. He is so lonely. He seems so unused to another person that merely brushing past him renders him utterly mute. And his conversations, while halting and stiff, are not unkind and are all too honest.

She likes him, as a person. She resents him, as her captor.

And resents herself all the more for liking him, for pitying him.

She does not eat, but he insists they take meals together, to “get to know” one another. It is hard to ignore his food, but easy not to eat it: it is all strange stuff, dark grey breads and strange black leaves, with wine so dark she thinks it is closer to charcoal than any proper grape-must. It is harder still to ignore his words. His chats are agreeable enough, and therefore dangerous, but she participates anyway; he asks about her mother, and her homeland, and Persephone does talk of them, if only to remember them herself. She has been here a while now.

She does not know how long; the days fade together quickly without a sun, a moon. She has been there at least weeks, she thinks; perhaps a month, perhaps more.

She asks questions as well. At first, she keeps them limited to the realm, to potential escape routes – though his answers do not elucidate any such places. But then it slips to knowledge of the man; he tells her things. Things she knows she would be happier not knowing.

“Oh, this scar?” He says with a frown when he catches her staring upon it.  “My father.” When he catches the horror that flits across her face – she knows of the madness of her grandfather, every child in her generation does –  he laughs. “Not when he ate me. During the war. The former was rather one large gulp, one and done – or so I’m told by my sisters.”

“I’m sure you tasted foul,” she mutters and he laughs.

“Well,” he says. “I suppose stewing in one's father’s belly rarely does make one sweeter.” His eyes sparkle and she hates the way her belly shivers at the thought of it. “But I have bathed since.”

The thought of him in the bath enters her head uninvited; she can almost trace it with her finger, the idea of his large shoulders wet with water, the scar that disappears up his arm and in her imagination, winds around his arm like a snake. She wonders if it is his only scar, wonders if his chest is as broad as it appears to be, if it is thick with wirey hair or smooth, and, of course, if any trails wind down to places underneath…

“Are you…well?” He tilts his head and she realizes to her horror that he is staring, that he has noticed her staring. You hate him, he reminds herself. Ignore those soft brown eyes. Be as stone.

“Only hungry,” she says, soft but, she knows, the words strong enough to hold their own barb.

 “I will provide for you,” he says, and he smiles, obnoxiously sweet. Her stomach turns queasy at how quickly she notices his stupid smile. “I am used to it. I used to go into the acid of my father’s stomach,” he says, “bring my sisters the best of what our father ate.”

“So you're used to shifting through garbage,” she says, doing her best to be disinterested though she has always wondered how her mother got through such harsh times.

“Ooph!” He pretends to be struck in the heart by an arrow; childish, she thinks. “How you wound me.”

“It wounds me,” she mutters, carefully studying one of his beautiful glasses full of wine because she can’t say this to his face without feeling the arrow going through her own chest. “That someone so used to the injustice of captivity would inflict such pain on another person.” She hears him suck in a harsh breath and is unable to stop herself from looking; the look on his face, crestfallen and red, says it all. The worm of guilt eating its way through the apple of her chest says more.

He finishes his meal in silence but offers no explanations for his actions. She does not apologize either.

The next day, he has healed from her wound, smiling and jovial once more.

“I knew your mother very well in the war,” he says, sipping upon dark wine that she cannot – will not – drink. “Did you know that? We were side by side for much of it,” he says, chewing upon a bit of bread. “We were good friends. She was like a mother to me. Carried me like her little baby doll when I was just a babe. Taught me all her melodies.” He starts to hum one of her mother’s most beautiful songs about grass growing on a fertile plain, and it is too much. She raises her head, snaps.

“Then I am sure she is deeply saddened by how you have stolen her dearest daughter,” she says, wishing she could eat if only so that she could jab her fork at him for emphasis. “Now she has lost both her “son” and her daughter.”

He puts his dark wine down roughly, so rough a small spit of it flies out, hits his white tablecloth, and, pettily, Persephone rejoices in the knowledge that cleaning it will inconvenience the man.

“I did not kidnap you,” he says, fussily. “You were given to me by your father, who said you wished to be married. I am sorry if I have given you or your mother pain, such was – never the intention.”

“The road to Tartarus is often paved with good intentions,” she snaps. She wonders if her father brought this plan up with her mother; she cannot imagine he had, for how could her mother not tell her? Surely she would. She closes her hand into a fist so tight that it bleeds: she is looking for you. Patience. She has no proof of this, but Persephone believes, militantly, that her mother won’t stop looking for her until she is found.

He glares at her over his breakfast, sighs.

“I am aware that perhaps I did not handle your…arrival…well. I thought perhaps it would make it …easier, for you, to come to grips with the underworld if you…” He mumbles something, fast, but not so fast Persephone’s ears do not catch it: “didn’t have to see it.”

“Perhaps not pulling me under the earth like some thief would have been –”

“I offered you a gift, you accepted,” he waves his hand, as if plucking the flower was even remotely the same to him as a months-long courtship. “It is done.”

“It was,” she acknowledges; there is no denying it. “But it is not very charitable hold a girl accountable for her loss in a game in which she did not know the rules. Especially for such high stakes.” He has taken her, and no matter how much she protests, he does not seem to want to let her go. All for want of a flower. “Surely you would prefer a wife who enjoys your world?”

His hand drums on the table: one, two, three. She counts it, each finger as it rattles against the table. Abruptly, he stands.

“Come,” he says, plainly. “I tire of this. Let’s…” His lips knit into a thin line. “How would you like to go out?”

“Oh, am I given a choice in my courting, now?” She asks; his mouth pinches into a little line. “Or will my father decide that, too?”

“Give me a chance,” he asks; he seems as if he is weighing whether dropping to his knees is too dramatic a gesture. Alas, he does not. “Please, give me one day.”

“Alright,” she says, though she does not plan to do any such thing. Still, there’s a balance to walk here; she has to escape if possible, and hold out if she cannot.

The day passes, even she has to admit, pleasantly enough. He shows her his own gardens – small and given the lack of light, necessarily limited in his crops to what does not need anything beyond the sun, but it is done nicely done enough. Small, but – well, he doesn’t have the gift of agriculture, not like she does. Everything she gave him rotted in her hands, she remembers.

“I know it is nothing like what you have with your mother, but I hoped that perhaps you could aid me in such endeavors,” he fusses.

“Its all in the gardener,” she says with a snap of her wrist; it is not entirely true, but she is in no mood to be kind. With one curl of her hand, his garden bursts forth into dazzling life; she does it to prove a petty point, but the look on his face is nothing short of awe-struck, and something in her stone heart cracks a bit as she watches him look at his mushrooms and nightshades.

“Thank – thank you,” he says. “I had hoped someday you might be so generous but…” He shakes his head, clearly of the mind that if he cannot way anything nice, he should say nothing at all. She doesn’t like the vulnerability in his eyes, and can't shake the feeling she’s lost something in translation. The feeling intensifies as he leans in, squeezes her hands. “It will – the dead will appreciate it. Truly. Thank you.”

“The dead eat Asphodel,” she says, flatly. Her mother has told her that much of the underworld. It was why her mother insisted they limit its growth in the upper world; there were limits, and Hades needed them down below. “Only Asphodel.”

“For their sustenance…” He paused. “It is all I can grow for them. But the Asphodel dulls the minds. they enjoy such foods as these. In as much as the dead can. They will…be thankful. It will remind them of what they have lost. A taste of home, perhaps.”

“That seems a sad thing, to me,” she says; she doesn’t like this conversation, doesn’t like the way her chest hurts when he stares down at the sorghum below them, as if such is a miracle, beyond graces known. She wonders, for the first time, if perhaps he is talking about himself among the dead. Without her, when was the last time he supped upon anything that tasted of the sun?

“It is a bittersweet one, perhaps.” He raises a hand; drops it.  “Much here is.”

“Suppose I fit in then,” she mouths, without even thinking about it; she stares in horror at what she has done in a slip of a tongue and recognizes in his long face that her uncle has seen it too.

“Suppose you do,” he says, his voice a murky, dark thing. “Suppose you do.” He carefully caresses a sheaf of wheat, then turns toward her. “I think it is time you met your subjects.”

---

8. Persephone’s heart is stone, but it is cracking.

It’s the dead, really, that render the mortal blow; the shades look at her with some sort of awe. There are so many of them, and such diversity among them, men and women of different ages, places, and means: from the richest to the poorest, all congregate in Hades’ realm. She has not met many humans in her lifetime. Though dead, there are so many recent arrivals who are glad to hold conversations with her, to touch her hand with wonder and reverence she has only seen for her mother. Often, the other Gods have only looked upon her as, essentially, a hanger-on, little better than a nymph to her dear mother.

These humans look at her like her mother looks at her. Like he looks at her.

Like she is the most important thing in the universe.

She sees more of the man in him than the God now; that is, she is starting to understand him. Now that she is no longer bound to her room all the time – which he has apologized for, many times, and she has, irkingly, made her peace with, in a way. She has not forgiven him, exactly, but she is not, entirely, mad about it. Attempts to summon her anger on the subject keep getting foiled – annoyingly, by his smile.

He likes when she interacts with the shades; he’s more content to watch from the sidelines as she listens to their stories, offers them what food she can because it is the only gift she can give them, and so many have come to them hungry. He is generous to them in his own ways; he cannot offer the food she can, but he offers them peace of a sort she cannot grant: he is their king, and he resolves all their troubles. Admittedly, it’s attractive.

She hates that she finds it so. Guilt licks at her heart: what would her mother say, to know her heart beats so traitorously for her captor? It is a disease, she thinks.  She tells herself he does not deserve to hold her hand, but the way he winces with she withdraws her own hand makes her feel unfathomably ill. It doesn’t have to be me, she thinks, stubborn; then, when she gives earth-bound food to the hungry shades below, and she sees the adoration naked upon his face, she thinks: it couldn’t be anyone else, either.

The other scary thing is that she is starting to adjust to life here. She no longer misses the sun, nor the moon; she’s allowed herself to wear his clothing, to brush her hair. She does not yet allow herself to eat, but she is beginning to fear it might be just a matter of time. She hasn't even tried to escape in ages, has simply accepted that she is here, for the moment.

Especially if he keeps looking at her so. He is…fond. He is happy to see her “adjust” to the castle, though when he says this, she is quick to put him in his place. She insists she has not and knows from the way her stomach twists that it is perhaps a lie, or close enough to one.

It is easier to try to socialize with his subjects, rather than the king himself. And so she does, a stone moving through the waters. She tries, hard, to ignore it is his hand skipping her stone.

“I didn’t think you’d take to this so freely,” he says, and there is pride in his voice. “Shades are…difficult, for many gods. Our kind do not often like being reminded of…” He scoffs and gestures with his hand. “Mortality.”

She nods; the shades are not quite human, but not quite the soulless zombies she’s heard humans become after their death. They thank her for the bounty, and Persephone’s heart cracks as dead men and women smile at her in thankfulness. If the asphodel helps them to forget, then for one day her crops help them to remember, helps them feel sated in death as they could not be in life. She never knew so many mortals starved, and so often. To give them a bite to eat before they move to their final resting places –for many, that is a mercy.

He is a good king, in his own way.

When he reaches out to her, holds her hand to lead her back to the castle, her heart skips a beat.

She hates it.

Be like stone, she thinks, ignoring his soft smiles, his murmured hopes that she will come around.

“I was thinking,” he says…” Perhaps, tomorrow, we could…” He blushes a crimson shade, and she knows she should look away. She doesn’t. She waits, and he gains his confidence, nods. “Have a little – date, together? You do not have to eat, simply…share time with me. We could dance, perhaps…? I could have some shades accompany –that is, if you like music—“

“Yes,” she says, too fast; his eyebrows raise.

He smiles in response and she hates how her heart skips a beat, but it does. Oh, miserable traitor, this heart of hers. He leans forward, his hands squeezing her tight.

Be like stone, she wills herself, but she cannot; he leans forward as if deciding to attempt to go in for a kiss, but then withdraws, leaving her lips unsullied. Persephone knows she is lost, for she mourns the loss. Stone, her mind tries to remind her, but her heart is what makes her pull him into an awkward hug, and she feels the heat that flashes across her cheeks.

The noise of her interior walls cracking is so loud she thinks surely he must hear it. Gentleman that he is, he does not comment.

---

9. Persephone is not at all made of stone.

Agreeing to this date was a mistake.

She does not eat at the dinner they have, for she must not cross that final line. She does everything that she can to think of the life she has not lived in months now as she stares at the plate, right with more familiar food-stuff that she herself has grown: her mother’s kind smiles, the giggling and whispering games of her nymphs, the sweet smiles of her sisters. She is now tempted to eat his food, and it is awful.

But she cannot cut off his supply either, for how could she do anything to hurt the shades, to deny them the one happiness she can grant? She knows what is to be hungry, now.

She cannot die for lack of food but oh, Persephone is hungry – and hungry in more than one way, because the only thing that distracts her from her desire to eat is the look of him. He is not so bad, she thinks.

She studies the neatness of his beard, the softness of his lips and thinks: no, not bad at all. He does not dally over his meal; he is nervous, she thinks. His hands shake, sometimes, when he catches her staring.

“Shall we dance?” he asks, and her heart trembles. The last bit of stone left in her falls to the pit of her belly. Her heart takes his hand before her brain can even hope to realize what has happened.

He keeps his distance as they stand – he is polite, if nothing else – and slowly takes her hand. There is no music at first, but the souls hum elegiacally, and though it sounds different from the music she has known at home, she has to admit it also is quite pretty.

“Persephone,” he says, gravely serious, as he always is. “I am so thankful you are here. That you were promised to me. I was alone here too long, and my realm has suffered for it. It does so no more...” She swallows, says nothing. He places his hand in hers, keeps it there as he slowly wheels her about the room. “I should hope by now perhaps you have come to see this option as…” He swallows, gives her a smile that makes him look almost boyish, though he is, she knows, many years her senior. “As a – well, as not the worst, perhaps.”

“it is not the worst,” she says, quietly, and hates herself all the way for saying such. What would her mother say?

He holds her tight in response, the arms sliding closer as he holds her hips, and not her waist. “I never thought you’d come to like the dead,” he murmurs. “The Underworld was always considered the worst draw but I – I have always favored it. The only thing I lacked was…”

He touches her cheek, and she trembles. There is a vulnerability to him there, a raw point that she could open wide with a painful blast of words. But she doesn’t want to, not anymore. She closes her eyes, allows herself to feel the gentle touch of his hands on her skin. It is soft, his hand;softer than she might have expected.

She can hear the beat of his heart as she pulls them into a closer embrace and finds herself oddly comforted by the fast beat of it.

By the time his lips cross hers, it feels inevitable.

She is not stone. No.

And neither is he. Not one inch of him.

---

10. When Hermes comes, Hades offers her the seeds, and she knows what he’s really asking.

“Please,” he says; soft, under his voice, so soft that she doubts Hermes could understand him, not in his odd accent. “I can’t – please.”

Hermes offers her everything she thought she wanted many months ago; she stands staring at the pomegranate in Hades' hand, and guilt twists through her. She wants her old life, still; she misses her mother, has missed all her nymph friends, has missed even mischievous Hermes. She looks at her brother, who looks happy to see her, and happier still, perhaps, that if she goes with him her mother will cease her sorrows.

Her mother, who wants her more than anything.

And then there is him. If she leaves, the underworld they have built will fall to ruin; she knows he cannot maintain it. And she knows, too, that the man will not likely try to take another bride – and even if he did, he certainly would not find a way to ask for her again. At best, he will find another bride, and she will have to see another girl with him, if she goes with Hermes. And that, in its own way, seems unbearable.

She has to admit, she has become...happy, in her own way, with being his wife.

 “Please,” he begs; she knows if Hermes were not here, the man would be on his knees, begging her. The look in his eyes, half-crazed, suggests he is thinking of doing it anyway, damn his pride and all. He holds the seed out, and she sees the loneliness in his eyes, the terror of being alone in the deep, in having to explain that the wife he brought to his people was not the wife he kept.

And she knows, then, that she loves him, for her tortured heart breaks in twain at the thought of it.

Mother forgive her. She has made her decision. At least now they will have the time to say goodbye, at least now she will be able to grant her mother permission to travel below, if only for visits.

She will miss her very much.

“Thank you,” she says, softly. She takes the pomegranate seeds, swallows three in quick succession. They are hard and cold, like little stones. It will be enough, she thinks, to doom her, if only on the merest of technicalities. “I appreciate your hospitality,” she says.

The sparkle of hope in his eyes is enough to doom her. She will bargain, when she is there; perhaps she can split her time between them, perhaps there is a way. But that is not something she can do now, and so she simply runs her hand down his side, gives him a knowing nod. The relief in his eyes grants some relief, but not enough.

She turns toward Hermes, her face made of impassive stone. She won’t give up what just happened, not until she is with her mother, her father. Then she will plead her case, and pray perhaps that they will forgive her. That there will be a way forward for her without feeling constantly torn in twain.

“I’m ready,” she says.

She came to the underworld a girl, but the woman who goes up to the surface, wind whipping through her hair, is no longer a girl.

She’s a queen.