Persephone

XIV

They had not expected the sight that greeted them as they walked through the doors.

Zeus. Seated in the throne, idly toying with a loose soul between his fingers, cold rage emanating throughout the room.

Persephone felt her mouth twist. The disrespect. How dare he.

Hades, however, seemed on the surface to be unaffected. He walked to the bottom of the dais, quiet footsteps echoing softly around the stone, and bowed his head.

"Brother. I see you have made yourself comfortable."

Zeus gave him an ugly grin. "Well, it is my throne, little brother, I do not see why I should not."

It took all of Persephone's self-control not to lunge at him with her nails and rake the smug look off his face, dismember the contemptuous superiority that had always betrayed his hubris in his voice and leave him cold and dead on one of the ritual alters at Delphi, to show the mortals that he was not the benevolent king they loved.

Surprise, and a tinge of terror jolted the goddess out of her revelry of patricide. Her heartbeat quickened.

She wasn't a violent person. On the contrary, she detested the way in which Olympus encouraged brawls and wars in the mortals, the way Ares held his sword with him always as if he hated to let the opportunity of a fight slip through his thick, stubby fingers. But here, now, she could think of nothing more joy inducing than ripping her fathers skull apart in her bare hands.

Was it the realm's influence? Was it Hades?

Her hands began to shake, and she soon realised it was from fury, not fear. And she understood that she had been cocooned before, unable to reach her full potential, her full promise of strength and resolution. But now? Oh my.

Olympus should guard itself much more warily than it had in centuries past.

"I suppose so," replied Hades indifferently. "You always claimed everything as yours anyway."

A flicker of electricity in the King's eye. "Careful, son of Kronos," Zeus murmured, smirking, before turning his gaze to his daughter.

"And what of the Lady Kore. Do you have nothing to say to me little one?"

Persephone stayed silent. He wanted her to rise to his taunt. He always had. She would not satisfy him today.

Zeus chuckled, before standing. The marbles in Olympus hadn't been terribly inaccurate - the King of the God's was a behemoth figure, and stood head and shoulders taller than his daughter, who had inherited her mother's height.

Hades, however, only had to look up slightly to meet his eyes.

"Come, brother, let us do away with civilities. There is no point in them. State your business here."

"You know what I come looking for."

Zeus stared into his brother's eyes before glancing over to Persephone.

"The Lady Kore will come back with me this instant. Really, Hades, I expected better of you, we all did. But kidnapping a poor, sweet young girl simply to get back at me -"

"Kidnapping?"

Damn. He'd done it. She had risen to his taunt, and now she could not back down.

"Oh, but lovely daughter of mine, that is what your selfishness has done. Talk abounds around Olympus, that Hades kidnapped you, forced you down here with him, to rot in this decrepit place."
Zeus curled up his nose and spat on the ground. It landed in a tendril of moss that shrivelled up upon impact, a spark igniting its animated screams as fire curled the green into black. Persephone choked.