Destroyer of Light (33 page)

“Ah-ah,” she said, taking a step back and holding a finger out, teasingly.

“Persephone,” he growled.

“Show me,” she whispered. “Tell me how you found solace in my absence.”

“Tell you?" he whispered back. “About you how thoughts of you, your skin, your warmth drove me mad every night?” He reached for his groin, wrapping his fingers around his shaft and caressing upward, then slowly squeezed the swollen head and pulled back. Aidon hissed and gritted his teeth.

Mesmerized, she watched him touch himself with his palm upturned as though he were offering it to her. The tip seeped and glistened, his essence slicking over the head with every pass of his thumb. Persephone licked her lips and inched toward him. He placed his other hand on her lower back to pull her even closer, the tip trailing wetly against her belly on every down stroke. Her eyes traversed his body from his intense gaze to the motions of his hand and the tension knotting his forearm.

“About how the…
culmination
of this cold pleasure was the only way I could find any rest at all,” he continued, “about how it left me euphoric but empty, with my seed in my hand instead of filling your womb or your perfect mouth?”

Undone, she dropped to her knees in front of him and batted his hand away, replacing it with her hand and lips. Aidon threw his head back with a shuddering moan, then gently laced his fingers into her hair when the tip of his cock touched the back of her throat. His legs nearly gave out when she took him deeper still.

She hummed in enjoyment, intoxicated by his taste and scent, the feel of his coarse hair against her nose and lips, the awareness that he shuddered helplessly above her. Persephone traced her fingers across the lines from his waist to his hips, the slight protrusion of his hipbones, his thighs, his flanks, holding him to her as she copied the fervent motions of their lovemaking.

“Oh gods… sweet one, you’re killing me…” he groaned, his head thrown back, his eyes squeezed shut. Watching her would end him.

You cannot die, husband… you’re immortal,
she teased him.

But we can go mad, Persephone, and right now you're driving me out of my mind…

She looked up and stroked his shaft with her fingers, smiling at him. “With waiting or wanting?”

He pushed at her shoulders to send her onto her back, then dropped to his knees and lay astride her, the tip of his cock prodding against her entrance. A buck of his hips slid his hardness along her aching bud. Persephone wiggled her thighs and clawed at his chest. He ground against her again and she swore she felt every vein and contour of his length brush over her lips. She tightened her legs around him, her body quivering, canting her hips upward and urging him to enter.

“Hmm,” he mused with a mischievous smile. Aidon drew back with a kiss on the tip of her nose. “What of you, my love?”

Her teeth chattered from the absence of his heat. “Please…”

“What did you do on nights when you missed me?” She mewled when his fingers teased a puckered nipple, then traced an uneven path down her stomach to her thatch of hair. “Did you touch yourself as I did?”

“Yes…”

“Here?” He petted her mound and dipped his fingers into her warmth.

She could only close her eyes and nod, shaking at his touch.

“And here?” Aidon swirled the pad of his thumb over her bud, causing her back to arch and her thighs to squirm. “And imagined me taking you here?”

He pushed two digits into her and she curled forward toward him. “Yes!”

He pulled out and tasted her, licking his fingers with a low hum of appreciation, before pushing her knees further apart and diving in for more.

“Aidon, please! Please!” She gripped his scalp as he rolled his tongue over her sex from entrance to apex and back again to spear inside. Her taste was sweet like honey, intoxicating like pomegranate. He held her hips steady and lapped at her fervently as her hands became fists in his hair. A steady chant…
Take me, take me, take me,
rolled through his thoughts, a plea from hers.

He didn’t stop, not until he felt her thighs shake and her voice call out his name. Her head tilted back and her channel thrummed and ached with need, waiting to be filled. Only when her climax started to subside did he rise up the length of her body, burying himself to the hilt in the same movement. She clasped her legs and arms around him and cried out her approval as he groaned against her ear.

She pulsed and fluttered around him, a great wave surging over them both. The fullness of the living earth rose up through her and wrapped itself around him completely, heightening his every sensation. The current she commanded was electric and delirious, grasping at his very soul, as though the pull of life itself would swallow them both if he didn’t act on their desire. He responded in kind and set a devastating rhythm, fast and deep, giving no mercy to either of them. Persephone gripped at his skin, her body wracked with aftershocks of pleasure, heightened by every quick thrust.

Her nails raked his back and he grasped her thigh. Every plunge into her produced a throaty cry. He planted one hand in the soft grass, pushing harder. Aidon felt that same swell of waking life flood into him and back through her. He was lost to pleasure, oblivious to anything that existed outside their sanctuary.

His lips met hers and their sounds were muffled and breathless as he felt ecstasy build torturous, almost painful. His back arched and fire burned up the length of his spine, color and light and the vague outlines of a thousand narcissus blooms filling his last coherent thoughts. He shouted her name to the stars above, then collapsed on top of her, his eyes shut and his breath hot against her tangled hair.

Persephone lay still, letting the pull of the earth subside, breathing onto his neck and running her fingers through Aidon’s locks until his weight grew too great and she pushed at his shoulders. He released her reluctantly and rolled onto his back, taking in great gasps of air and holding her against his side. When Aidoneus opened his eyes, he stilled. Larkspur, crocuses and small clumps of narcissus grew all around them, spread across the whole of the Plutonion, and even creeping up on the hillside above. “Sweet one? Did you— did we just…”

Persephone wearily opened her eyes, looked in the direction of his outstretched finger and laughed, sitting up and planting a hand on his chest. “Not what I intended, honestly…”

“Explaining these flowers to your mother will be a walk through Tartarus, no doubt.”

She stopped and buried her face in her hands with a groan. “I don’t want to think about that right now.”

“Apologies.” He sat cross-legged beside her. “But it does beget an important question: what time are you expected back?”

“Dawn, at the latest,” she answered, looking off toward the east, hoping that she wouldn’t see light on the horizon for a while yet. Her face fell. “What time must you leave?”

“Probably around then. Chthonia needs me,” he sighed. “The natural order will resume now that Thanatos is free. And after he returns to his duties, we will be
very
busy. I will also pay Tartarus a visit to ensure that the punishment you designed for Sisyphus is being carried out to the letter.”

She felt his seed shift inside her and hope sprang up in her heart. It was a few days past her peak of fertility, but there might still be a chance, and perhaps tonight they could make a child together— conceived in the world above. “Then we have a few more hours…”

“And I intend to make the most of them.” He lay on his back in the grass with a broad smile. “But what you called forth from the earth was… exhausting. Give me a few minutes to recover, wife.”

She lay on him and listened to his heartbeat, then traced her finger over his chest. Her hand wound its way down to his thigh and traveled inward, stroking the seam of his scrotum and his softened penis. She smiled and played with the skin at the tip, then combed through his coarse thatch of hair and traced its path up to his navel and back again, caressing him with no intention of arousing, just a desire to explore him.

Nonetheless, he didn’t stay soft for long, and she heard his heart pick up tempo and felt him thicken in her hand. With a firm kiss, he let her know that he was ready, and she straddled him and lay on his chest, slowly sinking down onto him. Aidon held her hands so she could balance, her softly lit face framed by the waves of her hair and the starlight above, an image he wouldn’t soon forget. He sat up to hold her, both barely moving, immersing themselves in slow, languorous pleasure, indulging in a feast of intimacy after their months of famine. When they grew anxious for release, he turned her over and filled her from behind. His chest grazed against her back and one arm wrapped securely around her waist, their knees and hands pressed to the earth.

Afterward they lay hand in hand, staring up at the stars, and the music at the Telesterion finally died down. The lights there dimmed and they were left with crickets and starlight. Persephone told Aidoneus about sending Melia’s ghost back to Chthonia, and Aidoneus told Persephone that their pomegranate grove was in full bloom, that he would often retreat to its beauty at day’s end to think about her. He spoke about studying the ritual of the
hieros gamos
; she expressed her desire to write and pondered how they would communicate for the next few months.

Aidon muttered about wanting her scent caught up in his clothes to take back with him. Persephone gladly obliged, laying out his cloak and wrapping it around them. They huddled within, limbs entangled. He peppered kisses all over her heated body. Aidoneus made love to her sublimely and slowly, withdrawing every so often and prostrating himself to worship the apex of her mound with his lips until she begged for him again. They peaked close together, and Aidon lay back, fitting her against his side, gathering his cloak around her as though it were the sheets of their massive bed. He started to nod off, blissfully drowsy and content, trying to keep himself conscious so they wouldn’t awaken at noonday to curious Eleusinians or an angry Demeter.

He stroked Persephone’s hair, hoping she would sleep in his arms, under the stars. He’d carry her unseen through the Telesterion to her bed if she did. “I love you, sweet one,” he murmured. “I’m counting the days until you return.”

“I am as well. I love you, my dear husband.” She closed her eyes and nuzzled up to him, petting his chest, her limbs heavy, her words slurring from sated exhaustion. “I want to give you a child, Aidoneus. A son. I want to fill our home with your sons and daughters.”

He said nothing.

“Aidon?”

Hades stared at the sky, wide eyed and silent until Persephone finally fell asleep.

“Lying with that creature
was more important than keeping a promise?”

Persephone gaped at Demeter. Three days had passed since her return from Ephyra, each one filled with silence between mother and daughter. She knew this was long overdue. Still, Persephone had expected more subtlety. Her face grew hot, and she felt her stomach sink.

“That… Plutonion your little band of fanatics built was
covered
with—”

“Larkspur and narcissus, yes! I don’t deny any of it!” Persephone’s voice echoed through the empty hall of the Telesterion. She calmed herself. “And I don’t regret it.”

“How could you?”

“How could I what?” Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Spend a night making love with my husband, who I hadn’t seen for three months?”

“You weren’t—” Demeter took a breath. “He is
not
your husband. He abducted you and your marriage was—”

“Enough, Mother! Zeus reversed his edict. At least my
father
knows how to keep an oath.”

“Yes, that makes one among us.”

“I didn’t
swear on the Styx
to sit next to you in that pretty little chair for the festival! That was your idea. I had more important things to take care of.”

“Like that selfish monster’s carnal needs? And next to
my
temple no less! Thankfully, when Diocles told me about the burst of new flowers, he didn’t know what you did there, but
I did
.” Their existence was even more of a blow than anything else. Only an act of love between an earth goddess and her chosen mate could have grown those flowers. Demeter herself had done so with Zeus, a great field of poppies springing up beneath them on Crete so very long ago. “It isn’t enough that you admit to lying with him. Now I’m forced to see the evidence of your fornication so close to—”

“The same way I’m forced to hear you fucking Triptolemus?”

“Language!”

“What else would you call it? For three months I’ve had to listen to your bed creaking down the hall from me!”

Demeter’s face grew red. ”You are the bedmate of a violator and call him your husband, you call your defilement ‘lovemaking’! What has he done to force you to tell me these lies, and tell them to yourself?”

“I had a choice to leave Hades, to leave the Underworld and never return, yet I ate the seeds to remain with him. You lie to yourself because you can’t stand when I tell you the truth.” She turned to walk away. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, Mother.”

“Don’t I? Helios told me how loudly you screamed, that you cried out for
me
to save you when you were abducted. And don’t think I was deaf to rumors about what that monster did to you before you even arrived in the Pit!”

Persephone stared at Demeter, her voice like ice. “And why was he compelled to abduct me? Why was he forced to consummate our marriage so hastily, Mother? Answer me that.”

Demeter stopped breathing.

“You’re not the only one who hears things.”

Her mouth was dry, her eyes glassy. “I didn’t—”

“Because he got there first.”

“I would never have—”

“Wouldn’t you? What was I to become?” She paced a slow circle around Demeter, fighting to keep her anger at bay. “An oak?”

“Kore…” She gentled, her eyes filling with tears.

“A laurel like Daphne? No, it would have to have borne flowers. Pear, then?” She sneered. “Pomegranate, perhaps?”

“Stop…”

“I think I would have rather liked that.”

“Please…”

“To be a pomegranate tree…”

“Stop it!”

“No! This is yours!
Own it!
I was to be bound to Aidoneus whether you liked it or not and your last desperate scheme nearly ruined my chances for a happy marriage. Fates be praised I found it in my heart to trust Aidon after he did what had to be done!”

Demeter stayed silent.

“And it wasn’t even a fit of madness! Merely the last flourish in a lifetime spent sheltering me from men and sex.”

“I only wanted to protect you,” she whispered.

“By forcing Daphne’s fate on me? By taking away my free will?!”

“You don’t understand what was at stake!”

“You tried to subvert the will of the Fates, to hide me from the man I was betrothed to in the womb, and you never even told me! You never bothered to tell me about Iasion, you forced Kyrene to leave, you banished the Oriades, sent away my friends, forbade me from speaking with the mortals… You… you yanked me away from my home in Nysa when I started to bleed, and barely told me anything about
that
! I thought I’d done something wrong!”

Demeter had nearly forgotten Kyrene, the warrior nymph that bore an ill-gotten child by Apollo. It was as though Persephone were emptying a storehouse filled with all the anger she’d harvested over the aeons. “I sacrificed
everything
to raise you well. I kept you safe, Daughter. Do you think that recluse would have rushed to protect you if you attracted the attentions of Ares, or Apollo, or Poseidon? You have
no idea
what sort of pain I prevented.”

“You’re right. I knew nothing about the dangers around me. And I was helpless because you never taught me how to protect myself!”

“There were things I taught you—”

“To become invisible
to mortals
. To grow brambles.”

“What else was I supposed to do?!”

“You could have taught me to escape, to travel the ether to safety. But you couldn’t have me running away or relying on myself, could you?”

“Worse could have happened to you there!”

“What, exactly? Discovering the goddess I was born to be?” She folded her arms across her chest and raised her chin. “That I’m more powerful than you are?”

The Harvest Goddess clenched her teeth and the room chilled and darkened. Persephone leaned back as her mother took a slow step toward her. “Do not forget, little one, that I am aeons older than you. I challenged Iapetos the Piercer
before
the Titans were bound in chains. You will not disrespect me so.”

Persephone flinched, her fists still tight. “Respect is earned, not given, and you’ve never had the decency to show
me
any. Stay away from me.”

Demeter’s shoulders slumped. “Kore, you don’t mean that.”

“I’m forced to
stay
here with you,” she hissed as her vision blurred. “Not
speak
with you or see you. No agreement can force me to do that!” Persephone wiped the back of her hand across her reddened face, brushing tears away. She gulped around the acidic lump in her throat and muttered her thoughts aloud. “Gods above, I cannot wait to go home again…”

“But… your home is with…” Her face fell.

“Home!!” she shouted. “Where I’m called
Persephone
. Where my husband loves and respects me!”

“Kore, please…”

“Stop calling me Kore,
you selfish sow
!”

Her mother stood frozen, her jaw slackened and tears brimming in her wide eyes.

Persephone stared forward, frozen, her throat tightening. She picked up her skirts and bounded up the stairs, fleeing the hall and her mother’s quiet weeping. She slammed her door shut and crashed down on her bed, curling up into a ball, waiting for Demeter to angrily fling the door open and demand an apology.

Nothing.

Persephone— Kore, by any measure of how powerless she felt— shuddered and wrapped her arms around her chest. She buried her face in the pillow and bawled.

***

Demeter collapsed in the greenhouse behind the throne room, sobbing. She was furious with herself. Zeus had told her to not fan the flames. But with that argument, she might as well have thrown Kore bodily into Hades’s arms. She huddled, her knees to her chest, the front of her peplos damp with tears. She didn’t see the growing light as the door slowly opened, nor did she hear it shut. Demeter only felt strong arms wrap around her shoulders, and heard Triptolemus whisper comfort and reassurance into her ear.

That night, Persephone heard the groaning of the bed frame in Demeter’s room, and guessed that her mother and Triptolemus had made amends. She didn’t want to ask how or why— it was none of her business, just as her marriage shouldn’t be any concern of Demeter’s. Persephone wrapped her pillow around her ears to muffle their reconciliation.

She and her mother didn’t speak to one another for days after, parting ways each morning to attend their duties. Persephone nurtured the second planting and Demeter made sure the first harvest grew strong and full in its bounty. Mortals and nymphs surrounded Persephone throughout her waking hours. She grew used to the company of Eumolpus and Minthe, and was often joined by a pretty Oceanid named Daeira who was three months along with Hermes’s child. Even so, her separation from Demeter made her feel isolated. Worse still, the constant companionship made her miss her husband all the more.

The week after his departure, Persephone was filled with hope and trepidation, wondering if she would quicken with Aidon’s seed. All the flowers had fallen from the pomegranate trees in Eleusis the night after their coupling, and little bulbs of fruit started to appear on the branches. She took it as a sign. Many of the women in town were as fertile as the fields they tended, and the countryside was full of wives— and a few soon-to-be wives— with radiant smiles and growing bellies. She’d spoken with many about their glad news. But when she shared with them that her husband had been sending souls back from Asphodel to be reborn, many had recoiled in fear.

A few did understand and would give her a wistful smile, saying they wondered if the life they carried was a lost loved one returning to them. Persephone answered honestly, that she did not know— that no one could. One woman, a student of Eumolpus, had said that she planned to name her child Plutus if it were a boy, the closest anyone could come to honoring her husband. There were already a great many Artemisias and Hephaestions, Dimitris and Apollonas living in Eleusis. Why not a Plutus?

Persephone fantasized about what she would name their child if he’d given her one that night under the stars. Of course she would consult with Aidoneus, but her mind happily wandered from name to name as she walked through the fields, filling the plants with renewed life.

Persephone finally settled upon a potent one: Zagreus. ‘King of the Reborn’. It would fit perfectly, given his parentage and the destiny accorded to their eventual son by Zeus’s oath. She giddily wished that she already knew how to write so she could tell Aidon of her idea. More sober reflection reminded Persephone that despite being the Goddess of Spring, fertility personified, she searched for signs of whether or not his seed had taken root in her fertile soil.

The next morning, she awoke to both bed sheet and sleeping chiton stained with blood. Minthe came to wake her and heard her weeping. Persephone lay with her head in the nymph’s lap, and Minthe petted her hair while the goddess cried inconsolably. Persephone said as little as possible when Minthe asked what was wrong. It was better to not divulge too much to Demeter’s faithful servant. The naiad patiently listened to her broken sobs, reassuring her that all would be well. At noonday, Persephone finally arose and washed, sponging her thighs. She wadded a rag inside an itchy loincloth and donned her clean peplos, then resolved that she wouldn’t let any more flights of fancy get the better of her. She would speak plainly with Aidoneus, and together they would decide on how best to conceive.

When she’d made her desire for his child known in the midst of hazy afterglow, he’d remained silent. Was he reluctant to have children? Things had certainly changed since she’d first contemplated the idea of a family with him. Perhaps he desired to talk with her further about it, but had wanted to let her rest. His silence was likely borne of consideration.

Practical questions replaced fancy and loomed over her as she tended the growing crops. How would they raise a child? More importantly,
where
would they raise it? Would the babe travel with her, or stay at home with Aidon? What would her mother think? Would Demeter welcome Persephone’s child knowing that Hades had sired it?

Demeter came to her the next morning and sat at the edge of her bed. Her weight shifted the mattress, and Persephone stirred from sleep, bleary eyed. A hesitant, almost penitent smile crossed her mother’s features. Demeter held a warm cup of honeyed kykeon, and Persephone could smell a strong dose of ambrosia, pennyroyal and willow bark wafting from the ceramic cup.

“Minthe told me your courses came,” she said quietly. “Here. This will help you feel better.”

Persephone sat up slowly, her hips and lower back still sore, and reached for the offered drink. “How?”

“When taken with ambrosia, the same herbs and tinctures that make humans well can also affect us.” Demeter smiled, trying to reassure her. Persephone regarded at her skeptically. The Goddess of the Harvest folded her hands in her lap and looked down. “It… it is your private life. I should not have said anything. I have my concerns…”