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“Everything is on its head now. X running around like a child, doing whatever he wants and not sending the souls to us, is breaking down the Underworld. It’s unstable. You’d think the Underworld can’t get any worse, but there it is.”
I frowned. “So, you’re here to tell me I need to fix it? Catch X?”
Persephone leaned closer. “Oh, honey, no one is going to catch X. I’m here because of Hades.”
“I don’t understand,” I replied, but the unease that Hades was to blame surged through my gut.
“I’ve seen how he looks at you. And I think it’s a perfect match. Hades doesn’t easily fall in love, you know. Trust me, if anyone knows what Hades is all about, it’s me.”
My stomach fluttered as I tried to figure out what was going on. “Hades feels nothing for me but a healthy dose of lust.”
She laughed again, the tantalizing sounds skipping around me, but I felt as if she knew something I didn’t and it irritated me. I shifted in my seat to find a comfortable position.
“Just tell me what’s going on,” I said.
Persephone sighed. “You’re very naïve for someone who’s seen so much.” Cue the condescension. “Hades has a thing for you.”
A thing?
“I don’t think so.” Between Hades and me, I was the only one who gave a shit about what the other one thought. He didn’t even think twice about me after getting off. Which I kept letting him do by sleeping with him because I couldn’t resist.
“Honey, I know it’s hard to believe,” she said. “Trust me, when I first saw the way he looks at you, I thought it was silly, too. But he seems to be serious.”
I sighed heavily, ignoring the obvious intrusion of Persephone spying on Hades and me. None of this made sense. If Hades really had a thing for me, he wouldn’t keep kissing and fucking me, then vanishing as if I meant nothing. And so many lives had been lost since he’d arrived.
“What about X?” I asked. “You can’t tell me Hades is serious about me and then X keeps killing when he knows what I’m all about.”
Persephone shook her head, her dark strands bouncing over her shoulders. “It’s not Hades’s fault. He can’t stop X any more than you can. He decided never to love after me. And I don’t blame him. A curse is nothing to scoff at, and it affected both of us severely. But X got out because Hades decided to reject part of himself.”
“If he rejected love, why are you saying he has something going on with me?”
Persephone exhaled loudly and crossed one leg over another, reminding me of a school teacher about to educate a student who couldn’t work out the assigned homework. “Why don’t you make us some coffee? Then we can talk this all through, and I can help you see you’re the savior of the world for reasons other than your exceptional fighting skills.”
She’d just demanded coffee from me like it was normal. But she was a goddess. And the Queen of the Underworld. Maybe it was normal for her to snap her fingers and everyone jumped. Or didn’t, seeing as they were all dead.
I guffawed inwardly at my own joke and stood to put on the kettle.
Persephone followed me to the kitchen. She stood slightly taller than me, her body slim, yet powerful, and she ran her hands over everything, as if she were in a strange place, a tourist in my home.
I guess she was.
When the kettle was on, I leaned my hip against the counter and folded my arms.
“I haven’t had a lot of girl time.” Persephone hopped onto the counter. She wore a Greek-type robe the color of snow. I’d worn one of those when Apollo took me to Mount Olympus with him in something that had felt like a dream. I’d thought she’d wear something black and dreary, seeing as she lived in the Underworld. “The only conversations I have are with the Fates. Past, Present, Future? It can become a bit of a drag. And they aren’t into chitchatting over a cup of coffee.” Her smile was still gorgeous.
“I can’t even imagine what that must be like,” I responded, remembering how much I’d cherished my conversations with Catina, how just the simplest of girl chats eased my tension and helped me gain perspective. Sometimes I got so caught up in my world it was easy to forget another life existed around me. If I had no one to talk to like Persephone did, I’d go mad.
“Oh, honey, you don’t want to.”
When the kettle boiled, I pulled it off the burner and poured the water into two cups prepped with instant coffee. Part of me wished I had something better to offer the Queen of the Underworld. I handed her a cup and tried not to think too hard about how bizarre this was, about what conversation to start, and to just avoid staring at her in awe. For the last couple of months, I’d been surrounded by gods, but each time I met a new one, I’d ended up captivated by their presence.
Even with Persephone only sitting on my kitchen counter, she held such grace and might as well have been seated on a throne. She carried an air that I could never pull off.
“If Hades can’t stop X, what’s going on?” I asked, sipping the scalding liquid.
Persephone tried the coffee, her shoulders softening and her mouth curling upward. “By Zeus, this will always be the best thing I’ve ever tasted. It’s not often I get to drink coffee.”
I nodded, unsure what to say to that. What did she drink down under? The tears of broken families? I shivered and pushed the morbid thoughts away. I looked at her, waiting for her to answer my question.
