Destroyer of Light (23 page)

“Of course, my dear Kore,” Demeter said, brushing a strand of hair behind her daughter’s ear. She restrained herself from tearing the asphodel out of her daughter’s hair and the jewels from her throat. They were marks of Hades’s ownership, his enslavement of her daughter. As soon as she could, she would give Persephone a new linen chiton, and discard that revealing black peplos Hades must have forced her to wear.

Persephone saw her mother’s eyes darting to her offending crown and cleared her throat, regaining Demeter’s attention. “Mother, you cannot call me that anymore.”

Demeter pursed her lips and looked away, her eyes filling with fresh tears. “Kore, I know that…
things happened to you
, but you needn’t bear that mark forever. We can return life to how it once was.”

“We cannot. Everything is different now. I—”

“I know what happened to you, child, and it wasn’t your fault that Hades raped you.”

“Raped…” she said under her breath in shock.

“It’s not your fault, you did nothing to provoke him, and you are
safe
now. Please know that first.” Demeter gripped her arms and squeezed gently, trying to comfort her. “I love you no matter what happened to you. You’re still whole; you’re still my daughter. My sweet darling Kore, and you always will be. We can still—”

“
Stop calling me Kore!
” Persephone commanded, her voice assuming the tone she’d grown into the last two months.

Demeter let go and retreated several steps back. She gaped wordlessly and Persephone took advantage of her silence.

“My name is Persephone. Mother, I am here for one reason and one reason only, and you and I
must
speak plainly. You must stop what you’re doing and let the mortals live. The worlds above and below have been thrown far out of balance. So much so that the King of Ephyra has escaped from the Underworld. I am here
only
to heal the world above from the devastation caused in my absence, but once it is done, I need to return to my rightful place.”

“Persephone…” Zeus muttered.

“No, no, it’s all right, child,” Demeter said shakily through tears. “You don’t have to go back to that horrible place ever again. Hades has no power over you here. You are safe at last and you can heal and one day you will look back on all this without fear and it will no longer hurt. You are home, Kore. You will never have to endure him violating you ever again.”

She shook her head, trying to abate her anger. “Mother, I
was not
violated. But nonetheless, I am a maiden no more. I’m not Kore; my name is Persephone and always has been. Hades Aidoneus Chthonios is my husband—”

“Persephone…” Zeus started, his voice rough with irritation.

“—And my home is with him in the Underworld where we rule
together
as King and Queen.”

“Persephone, you are
not
the queen of anything!” Zeus bellowed finally. “And you are no longer Hades’s wife. You are a girl child of my
oikos
, and my property. And you will obey my edicts.”

“Father.” She faced Zeus, throwing her shoulders back. “Before the end of the Titanomachy, you swore a Stygian oath to my husband while I was still in the womb. An oath that you kept and that we expect you to continue to honor.”

He stared at her, taken aback, then stood tall again, lifting his chin. “You are not able to make that decision, girl, and I suggest you not take that tone with me. I am not only your father, but your king.”

She stopped and nodded, then curtsied to him as one sovereign would to another. “My apologies, your grace,” she said without fear or facetiousness and stood up again to her full height. His eyes were like hers, but far more blue. He wasn’t as tall as she had remembered, but she hadn’t seen him since she was a little girl. “However, I must request on our behalf that our marriage is honored and that I return to my realm to rule with Hades.”

“And as you well know,
Lady Persephone
,” Zeus said with a sneer of sarcastic formality, “your marriage was annulled. You have nothing to say concerning whom I chose to marry you to, nor do you have any say in the ending of it! If anything, this is a matter for Hades and I to speak upon alone.”

“Then we shall,” said a voice from the shadows.

Persephone’s heart flew into her throat
and
she turned around to see Aidoneus loom forward from the mouth of the cave. He shielded his eyes and blinked when the sunlight hit him. Askalaphos walked behind him, shaking. In their gardener’s hands was her pomegranate.

Demeter threw her arm over her mouth and stumbled back, terrified. Hades made no eye contact with her, nor did he look at Persephone. He strode forward to his wife’s side and faced Zeus, lowering his gaze to look at him. “My lord,” Aidoneus bowed out of respect before continuing, “You well know that the lots were divided equally. You have rulership over us all, but not over the rules of
my
kingdom. As such you cannot forcibly take her back once you sent her there.”

Zeus turned and glared at Hermes. “Did I not
clearly
instruct you to tell—”

“He told us,” Aidoneus interrupted. “Hermes stood in my halls with that pitiful scroll and told my wife and I how you broke your oath,
young one
.” The last words came out as a growl. “You hold no sway over the world below and you were bound to honor the pact we made. I expected
her
to turn against her word—” he said, pointing at Demeter.

“Now wait just a minute!” the Goddess of the Harvest said, storming toward them.

“—But not you. Surely if the
King of the Gods
cannot keep a Stygian oath, then you should not expect the fealty of those who would,” he narrowed his eyes at Zeus. “What do you suppose will happen the next time your lady wife has had enough of your philandering? Or if Ares or even Athena decides to follow in your footsteps, and Kronos’s before you, and depose you? Do you think I will bother to send Briareos to break your chains and subdue the gods again?”

“What would you have me do, Aidoneus? Be honest with yourself and look around. Your choice of bedmate and whatever we said at the Styx aeons ago means
nothing
when measured against the ending of all things. I had to consider the greater good. Surely you can understand that.”

“And I do. But you should have brought Demeter in line before trifling with me. Instead, you unwisely engaged in a battle of wills with her that brought us all to the brink of ruin,” he said, his voice dispassionate.

“We couldn’t—” he stopped himself, not wanting to give away to the ruler of the Other Side how weakened by Demeter’s famine they truly were. “Your obstinacy had a part to play in all this, you know. Did you truly understand the severity of all this, or were you too busy
entertaining
your bedmate? Surely your kingdom is overwhelmed right now.”

“It is,” he said with a nod. Zeus’s accusation stung. It was true— his singular focus on her had been a way for him to ignore the devastation of the world above. But, he needed her by his side now more than ever. “All the more reason to have the God and Goddess of the Dead there to set it aright.”

“The Goddess—” Zeus shook his head. “Your
consort
, you mean. What more is she than that?”

“As the Lord of the Underworld, it is my right and my wish to confer power upon her. She rules Chthonia as my equal.”

“Oh, so
that’s
why she wishes to stay!” Demeter interjected and folded her arms in front of her. “By poisoning her mind and promising her a throne at your side as you raped her into submission every night?!”

Aidoneus gritted his teeth, wishing with all his might that he could taunt Demeter about how
willing
her precious daughter had been to lay with him, to seduce him as many time as he had seduced her. He didn’t want to embarrass his beloved by telling all the secrets of their bedchamber. Or their garden. Or their throne room. Or the pool. Or the walls and tables and a dozen other places in their palace. Instead, he scoffed and rolled his eyes at her. Demeter huffed.

Zeus spoke. “Aidon, you’ve let Hecate and Nyx influence you for far too long. Aren’t you master of your own realm? It’s
your third of the cosmos
for Fate’s sake, not theirs! And yet you call
your
realm by
their
old word for it.”

“The Underworld is as it ever was, and what I say is the truth. My wife and I preside over Chthonia. And what’s more, while Persephone and I rule side by side in Asphodel, the true source of her power lies far,
far
deeper than that.”

Demeter and Zeus both looked at Persephone in shock and leaned away, almost imperceptibly.

“Tartarus bends to her will. She has faced Titans.” Hades smiled triumphantly. “And my queen is now as much a part of my world as I am. Askalaphos!”

Persephone took a step forward before her plan fell to pieces. “I ate the fruit of the Underworld, Mother!”

Demeter’s legs faltered and she took a step back. “No…”

“I ate six seeds from a pomegranate—”

“Tell me you did not do this!”

“A pomegranate!” Zeus laughed. “Pomegranates don’t grow in the Underworld! I’ve heard some tall tales in my time, but this one, Aidon—”

“It is the truth,” Hecate said from her place beside the chariot. “For aeons the seeds lay dormant. But by your daughter’s union with her husband and through their united dreams, they grew.”

“Where else could you possibly find a pomegranate?” Persephone said calmly. She reached for the fruit in Askalaphos’s hands and held it out to Demeter and Zeus. “Certainly not in the
living
world.”

Demeter snatched it from her hand and turned it over in horror, then threw it to the ground. She gripped Persephone’s arms tightly almost shaking her. “By what trick did Hades deceive you?! How did he make you eat these? Tell me!”

Persephone wriggled out of her grasp and stood next to Aidoneus again.

“You did this!” Demeter hissed at Aidoneus. “You were going to lose her and it wasn’t enough for you to have ruined her for all eternity, you had to bind her to your hideous dead kingdom!”

“I did no such thing, Demeter! I didn’t even
know
she had eaten them until after I sent her on her way. Persephone
kept
it from me!” He glanced at his wife, his voice gentling when it spoke in her mind.
Why didn’t you tell me?

Persephone winced at his words; spoken and unspoken, feeling a sting of guilt that she had deceived her husband, even for the sake of them all. “I ate those seeds without Hades’s knowledge.”

“Of course you would say that when threatened by your captor, Kore!” Demeter cried. “He forced them on you just as he forced himself on you! But we can correct this, Kore. Surely we—”

“Mother, I ate them alone, and knew exactly what I was doing when I ate them. Aidon didn’t find out until after I left,” she said looking at him purposefully.
My love, please… They would have blamed you unless I revealed it myself.

They will anyway, sweet one
, he answered.
It makes no difference.

Demeter scowled. “You look to
him
before you speak! Why should I believe what he is obviously coercing you to say?”

Askalaphos stepped out from behind Aidoneus. He bowed to low before Zeus. “Y-your grace,” he stood and nodded to Demeter, “and great Lady of the Harvest, what the Queen says is true.”

“And who, pray tell, are you?” Zeus boomed.

“My name is Askalaphos, s-son of Orphne, nymph of the river Styx. I am the Queen’s gardener.”

“You mean Hades’s slave—” Demeter snarled.

“Be silent, woman!” Zeus said. He turned to Askalaphos. “Speak.”

“I…” he swallowed and breathed shallowly, looking from one powerful, angry god to the other. “I saw the Queen go out to the garden at night, alone. She didn’t know I was there and must’ve thought she was alone in the grove. I-I panicked and hid so she wouldn’t see me. Queen Persephone pulled a pomegranate off the tree and I saw her open it and eat six seeds. Just as she said. I didn’t even
want
to come here, but Lady Nyx saw it too and told me I should say something. She saw her eat them, Erebus saw her—”

“Nyx witnessed it too?” Zeus asked.

Demeter’s face grew red with rage. “How dare you incriminate my daughter on behalf of your master! You lie and screech and give false witness… I ought to turn you into an owl!”

Askalaphos cowered behind Persephone for protection. She grasped Aidon’s hand and together they shielded their gardener. “You will do no such thing, Mother. He speaks the truth!”

Persephone glanced behind her. Askalaphos had already taken off running for the safety of the caves, not waiting around for the angry earth goddess to make good on her threat.

Demeter’s face reddened and twisted in hopelessness. She burst into tears and turned to Zeus. “My lord, surely six paltry seeds isn’t enough to bind my poor daughter to the Underworld! How could so few—”

“If she ate one seed or ate a thousand, it would make no difference!” Hades yelled, bearing down on Demeter. “She ate the fruit of the Underworld and is thereby bound to it for all eternity. Persephone is mine!”

Demeter faced him placing her hands on her hips, lifting her chin. “You see?
Now
your true nature comes out, Aidon. Nothing has changed about you in all these aeons. Observe, daughter, your ravisher’s eternal selfishness!”

“Selfishness?!” Aidon fumed. “This from you, Deme, who kept my wife a powerless child for all the aeons of her existence, denying her everything and teaching her nothing! If you had mentioned anything about her destined role in the cosmos then it would have ignited her beautiful curiosity. You couldn’t have kept your
stranglehold
on her!”

“You have no place and no right to tell me how to raise a child! What would
you
know about having children anyway?”

“You held no more knowledge than him upon your daughter’s birth,” Hecate scoffed quietly.

Aidoneus looked at the hand that had been holding his wife’s a moment before and saw traces of blood on his palm. Persephone’s blood. His gaze flew to hers, alarmed.
What is this? What have they done to you?

Nothing,
she replied. Persephone flushed with embarrassment.
It’s… moon blood.

He stared at her confused for a moment before it dawned on him. In the living world women’s fertility came and went each month, following the changes of the moon. Aidoneus lowered his gaze, upset at his ignorance, and stroked her back.
Are you alright?

Persephone thought about the stopping of her cycle, and how gladdened she was at the prospect of carrying his child, only to find out that it wasn’t to be. She thought about Hecate’s words in the boat, how Persephone was carrying those seeds to the world above. She realized then what the Goddess of the Crossroads meant. Any union with Aidon in the world below couldn't produce children. Instead, it had become the genesis of spring.
Yes
, she lied, fighting back tears.
I’m fine.

“…And given the evidence of Persephone’s rearing,” the Goddess of the Crossroads continued, “I would say you know less still.”

“You stay out of this!” Demeter hissed at Hecate. “
You
did everything you could to control my every action and desire, to run every single aspect of my life—”

“Well, at least you retained
something
that Hecate taught you,” Aidon interrupted. “Gods know how little else—”

“Enough!” Demeter scowled at the Messenger, who was leaning against the chariot, scratching idly at a golden wheel. “Hermes, how could you let her out of your sight?!”

“My lady, this is hardly my fault—”

“Like blazing Tartarus it isn’t! How hard was it, Messenger? Go get her and bring her back and yet you couldn’t manage even that!”

“You weren’t
there
Demeter! I— Have
you
seen Charon— Look, I didn’t want to—”

Hecate interrupted him. “I think this has gone far enough—”

“Don’t you tell me what I can and cannot say about—”

“Nothing you have to say at this point
matters
, Deme. What’s done is—”

“Selfish, lying—”

“—couldn’t possibly understand—”

“—meddling witch!”

“—my lady, if you would just—”

“
You
mind your own—”

Persephone listened to her husband and mother, Hermes and Hecate descend into yelling overtop of one another, their voices clashing against each other in an endless cacophony. This was going nowhere. She felt another cramp contract her womb and winced again. The mortals were still unfed and dying, and more would die unless she began healing the earth. Zeus remained silent, observing the fight. He glared coldly at Persephone as she made her way over to him.

“A fine mess you’ve made,” he said quietly, his arms folded across his chest, “Daughter.”

“The mess is not of my making.” Persephone took a deep breath. “And I have a solution, if you would hear it.”