A Bloom So Deadly: Hades and Persephone Retold

The Visitor

Persephone stood, hands pressed into the stone wall that divided them, well after the Dread King was deep in sleep. His resistance to her had been a fragile thing, like plucking a petal from a flower. Tired. He had been so tired, she could feel it as her darkness probed his. She did not know what was wrong, what had happened to cause that terrible flare she felt as he stood in her door, but she knew one thing: when he came back, his powers were weak. And he was exhausted.

There had been the briefest second of resistance when she found that tiny gap and slid in, but he had folded to her power so easily, so quickly it was almost as if he had wanted to.

Inside, she felt her powers lace with his and she had stood, hands pressed into that wall, with a rise of gooseflesh all along her at the sensation. It felt so right, so correct, like two pieces of a puzzle fitted together. And then, as his energy had commanded her to calm earlier at the dinner table, she commanded him to rest. And how easily it was done, how quickly he gave in and slid into sleep. She - a stupid, useless girl - had commanded a king. And that king had yielded at her hand.

It was a heady, dizzying thing. It made all sorts of things echo through her, made her darkness simmer in want: what else could she command this king to do?

No. That was not her. That was not like her in the least.

Persephone shook that dark thought from herself, pushed that monster inside her back into the cage of her heart. But the beast mewled against her ribs and she was struck by a thing inside her that was so entirely new, something deep in the shadows of her soul: a desire to rule this king. She wanted to make him give to her every demand as easily as he had slid into slumber.

No.

Her brow tucked as she laid her head against the wall, face contorted as she fought off that beast inside.

No. He had been kind, he was her friend.

But, oh, how addictive was just the mere thought.

For a while she let her darkness brush against him, easing him further into sleep. And once she was sure he would not wake, she tore herself from the wall and slipped into her own sheets, heart pounding.

Eventually, exhausted from her own poor rest of late, she slid into a sleep as deep as his own.

The next day, the kingdom let them rest. The Shades would wait. King Hades was not one to miss his duties. Hecate and Thanatos would not wake him. If he had not arrived in the throne room, it was with good reason. And while they both secretly hoped that reason was because he had spent the entire night awake, making his awkward small talk with Persephone, they would not have felt any differently had they known the truth. He had needed rest. And so they let him rest.

Hera, however, had no such compunction.

Three sharp knocks on his bedroom door roused him from sleep. Hades stretched along his sheets, a throaty groan of waking escaping him. He felt...good. He felt rested. He blinked sleep from his eyes, that remaining heavy pull that tried to coax him to put his head right back on his pillow, and rubbed at his face.

Another three sharp knocks.

"Just a moment," he said, sighing as he slipped from his sheets and dressed. How late in the day was it? How long had he slept?

He crossed to his door and opened it, finding an unamused Hera waiting on the other side.

"You have slept half the day," she muttered, pushing in past him. It took a moment for his mind to catch up, to remember why his sister had come to see him. Hades' eyes slid to the door that hid Persephone and remembered her darkness sinking into him the night before, remembered how easily he had folded under her ministrations.