The Eighth House

Her last memory came rushing back to her: the fields of Nysa, the earth splitting, her terrible fall, and then... And then she woke here. An immortal hand had to be at work in this. There was no other explanation. Who was behind this? Why had they brought her to this...this place? Her indignant fury began to rise with her need for answers when in an instant the mysterious light in the room was extinguished, plunging her into utter darkness.

* * * * *

Hades willed the nimbus of light out of the chamber, drawing it back into the surrounding stone walls. He wanted their first interaction to be completely on his terms, and removing her ability to see him would accomplish this nicely. It had been a very long time since he'd been interested in a game such as this, but the opportunity to play it with an immortal woman...well, perhaps she would prove a bit more sporting than the daughters of men.

A part of him admonished himself for beginning what was meant to be a marriage by toying with his intended in this way. Why should he be needlessly cruel? If they were to marry, and she to remain in his kingdom with him for what would be, well, a very long time, he would want her to at least find him tolerable, would he not? Indulging his depravities with her as he had with the line of mortal woman stretching back through time...well that would be a risky gambit with one not so easily discarded after the game was ended.

The greater, darker portion of him, however, rationalized these thoughts away quite nicely. Aphrodite had cornered him into this entire arrangement under the technicality of a debt to be repaid, and a promise of retaliation that he very much wished to avoid should he refuse to fulfill. He suspected that a marriage would be a burden at best, and he fully intended to take what satisfaction he could from it before it became dreary. It was possible that she might tolerate his attentions. The marriage was already sealed by her father; there was little room for her to protest. But if she was horrified instead, well...resistance and fear would taste just as sweet.

He set his thoughts aside now, and turned his attention to Persephone. She sat among the cushions in the darkness, her feet tucked underneath her, back straight, eyes wide, trying to adjust and seek out any bit of light. There would be none. He could see her, of course. Nothing hid from him in his realm, even in the deepest of shadow. Oh, he could have used the Helm of Darkness to simply make himself invisible to her, but he preferred the disconcerting effect that the complete loss of her vision would create.

"Persephone," he poured her name into the void, each slow syllable a stroke of oblivion.

"Where am I? And why?" she asked, her voice flat. He heard mild irritation in her questions, but not fear. Interesting.

"Well. You're clearly not on Olympus. Nor under the Seas. Where does that leave you?" he riddled her, stretching out in his mind, readying himself for the game.

He watched her brows draw down, her eyes searching as she worked for the only answer there could be. "This is the Underworld then," she stated, setting it down as a fact that she would deal with later, once she had others to place beside it. "And what am I doing here? I'm obviously not dead."

"Oh, you will be delighted, Daughter of Zeus. Your father has commuted your sentence of eternal maidenhood. You're here to marry, by his approval," he purred at her, stepping closer to where she sat. Her eyes still sought light, but as there was none, she could not see his approach. He could see the pulse at her throat; his words were having the desired effect.

"The Underworld? Who would my father be sending me to..." she trailed off as she continued to work out the question in her mind. Her back slumped a bit; his puzzle had distracted her from maintaining her regal posture.

"You know who I am, Persephone," he made his voice a deep velvet caress, now directly in front of her. She raised her head slowly, her sightless gaze directed where she imagined he stood. Her breathing became deeper, and he saw realization spread across her face.

"Hades," she pronounced his name with the finality of a death sentence. By the Fates, this would be fun for him!

He moved to sit beside her on the platform, one leg tucked beneath him, the other draped over the edge, his foot steadying himself on the floor. "You are very clever, little goddess," he leaned near in the blackness, the vibration of his words heating her ear, "that is exactly who I am. Your father has given you as wife to the Lord of the Dead." He heard her sharp intake of breath at the import of his words, and his proximity. His provocations were having precisely the effect that he desired upon her. Upon them both, he noted, thankful again for the cover of dark.

He cautioned himself to check his pace. He had an eternity to mete out this diversion, there was no need to spend it all in one sitting. But this close to her and he was breathing her scent again. Damp earth and growing things. He boiled with lust. Slow yourself, Immortal.

She opened her mouth to speak, inhaling fully before she chose her words. "Why am I in the dark? This is your own realm. Why do you hide? Is this how you earn your name, Unseen One?" she mocked, trying her best to banish the tumult of feelings he knew were competing within her.

"It might be one of the ways, yes," he stroked her with his voice, allowing himself the indulgence of sliding one knuckle lightly down the length of her upper arm. She shivered under this, their first touch. "You are in the darkness so that you understand who is master in this kingdom. Do you understand?"

She ignored his question. A response was not necessary; they both knew the answer. Instead she inquired, "Will you show yourself? Or am I to remain blinded indefinitely?" Her words made him want to roll around in the flavor of the panic, the defiance, and yes, even the hidden arousal he thought he heard warring in her tone.

"Oh you will see me, little flower," he said moving even closer to her, his chest separated from her shoulder by a finger's breadth. He knew she would feel the heat in the space between them. He brushed the mass of her hair behind her shoulder, exposing her graceful neck. "Perhaps," he continued, stoking the tension of the moment, bending his neck to speak the words against her throat, "perhaps tomorrow we'll have a look." He dragged his lips along the skin beneath her ear. "Would you like that? Wife?" Hades growled the last words low against her flesh.

She exhaled with a sound that was part sigh, part uncertain whimper. He had her, he knew then. A more frivolous deity might have capered at the glee that whirled inside him. Her breath came shallow now, her palms wedged together between her knees to still herself. She had taken the inside of her lower lip between her teeth. Yes. This was his time to depart. He would leave her wanting first, and angry only second.

"Tomorrow then," he said, uncoiling himself from the platform to stand once more. The darkness hid the fact that there was more than one thing standing in the room. Despite her attempts to retain control through scornful words, her lips were parted now in a telltale picture of the beginnings of arousal. He watched her look up in his direction, wide eyes filling with sudden question.

A slow grin twisted his lips in the shadows. A path of decadent gratification lay before him, and today he had made ready his supplies for travel. Tomorrow he would set out to see what lay around the bend. Before she could change the flavor of the moment with more questions, he willed himself out of her room, taking his shadows with him.

* * * * *

"Why do you deceive me, Artemis?" Demeter threw her words like poison darts.

"I may be many things, Demeter," the tall goddess answered in a tone of warning, adjusting the quiver of arrows over her shoulder, "but I am not a liar. We don't know where she is."

"And you, Athena, will you pretend ignorance as well?"

"I pretend nothing, daughter of Kronos," Athena grew irritable and flexed her knuckles around the shaft of her spear, its butt planted in the earth. "We've explained several times to you all we saw that day -- you simply refuse to listen. What reason would we have to hide your daughter from you?"

Demeter eyed the pair of goddesses she'd tasked to accompany Persephone to the fields of Nysa. Let her enjoy the flowers and the trees, she'd said to them, but watch over her. Now they stood before her, in the shade of a stand of cypress, looking over the same hilly fields her daughter had walked only two days before, trying to tell her that they'd felt the earth tremble and saw a great rift split the meadow in two. And then Persephone was gone.

"Perhaps, Artemis, that tawny brother of yours convinced you to help him finally carry her off," she accused, recalling that it was the advances of Apollo, Artemis's brother, along with those of Hermes, that had made her fear for Persephone's maidenhood in the first place.

"My brother can attend to his own wooing; he doesn't need my help. Tread carefully with your accusations, Demeter. I understand your concern for your daughter, but I will only tolerate so much." Artemis' jaw flexed now in restrained anger, and the sleek hunting hound at her feet rose with a low growl in its throat.

"So where is this 'great rift' in the earth now? The field looks exactly as it always has. You expect me to believe your tales, but there is no evidence to support your claims."

Athena leaned down to take up her great shield again from where it leaned against her hip and. shouldering it, made ready to depart. She still held her helm beneath her arm, and her face had grown redder than usual at Demeter's charges. "It is as we've said, Demeter. The hillside was sealed shut again only moments after it shook itself open. Believe us or not, Goddess of the Earth, but I will stand here and listen to your insults no longer."

The Goddess of War turned on her heel then and strode from the shady cover of the cypress trees, heading back toward her chariot where its pair of dappled grey horses stood placidly munching away at the grass of the field.

Artemis ran a calming hand over the head and back of her dog, easing it from its fever to protect its mistress. She hefted her bow and cast a final look over the fuming Demeter, her expression softening from her earlier bristling. "We know you're only desperate to find Persephone, or you wouldn't be speaking this way. She's Zeus's daughter too, Demeter. I'm sure he won't have let any harm come to her. If we discover anything more that may lead you to her, we will come to you. I'm sure you will find her."

With this, Artemis jogged away, her hound trotting at her heels, to join Athena at her chariot. Demeter watched the pair mount the cart and, with a flourish of the reins, Athena's horses thundered from the field, carrying the goddesses who should have protected her daughter with them.

Demeter stood alone now in her anxiety and bitterness, left to search for Persephone by herself.

* * * * *

Hades meandered through the bare stone halls of his subterranean abode, finalizing his strategy for the second meeting with his appetizing little guest. The rooms and passageways within his palace would be considered austere next to those of either of his brothers, but he considered all of those curtains and tassels and busts to be fripperies and distractions. For him, the stark surroundings enhanced his ability to focus.

How would he present himself to her? Should he just appear in the room? No. He wanted her many things, but startled was not useful. And what if she was asleep when he arrived? Should he begin in darkness again? Possibly.

He contemplated for a time disguising his form with a more...wholesome countenance. Perhaps some unruly golden curls, tan limbs? Blue eyes like one of those sky-dwellers? He smirked to himself. That might be an entertaining choice. She might drop her guard when she saw him as a more familiar breed of immortal, become comfortable. His steps slowed as he lost himself in his mind for a moment. The thought of her embracing her false god of light in the most intimate of ways when he would suddenly cast off his fair façade and show her what he truly was. She would shriek in terror and the sound of it would finish him off then and there.

Satisfying though that would be, he thought, he ought to consider the long game. He might desire her submission, could take advantage of her dread, if that was the way the wind blew, but he wanted things between them to be clear and straightforward from the beginning. Fantasies of trickery? Was he no better than Hermes, that flighty charlatan? No. Ruses and tricks were mere sleight of hand, and even the audience knew them for lies. The real sorcery lay in honest, naked power, which enthralled without doubts or dispute.

He would reveal himself for what he was, judge her reaction, and proceed accordingly. He had a dozen plans at the ready, to use according to the weather of the day. This was no silly mortal girl he prepared to sport with: this was a goddess. He would give her the respect of sincerity. Even if what he sincerely wanted to do with her was sublimely unholy.

He came to an iron glyph that stretched an arm span wide, set into the deep gray stone of the corridor wall. A circle above a crescent, bisected by a cross: his personal mark. Hades had arrived outside the chamber that held the first challenge he'd looked forward to in a very long time: Persephone.

* * * * *

Persephone walked the length of chamber, passing the time in contemplation. So, she thought, the Underworld. She was here by the blessing of her father and the will of a monster, or so the Lord of the Dead had been called by the other immortals.

A monster whose words had caressed her in the darkness the day before, taking license with her body's reactions where she gave none. The way he'd established his power between the two of them by leaving her blinded in shadow... Persephone condensed in a low shudder, and she was not certain whether it was a result of fear, or of something else she still did not wish to name.

Her knowledge of Hades came only from whispered tales, passed among gods and men like contraband.

Harsh, cold, unfeeling. These were the words by which she knew her abductor. His reputation on Olympus hardly spoke of a desirable partner. Her mother must have had no foreknowledge of this arrangement. Demeter would be horrified at the idea of the infamous Polydegmon claiming her as a bride. He did not have as much to claim as her mother imagined, however. She shook her head; her mordant sense of humor had not left her, even now.

After his dramatic departure the previous night, she had sat at the granite bench and had made use of the basin and pitcher of water in the room. While divesting herself of dirt and cleansing her scrapes from her fall, she had lined up her questions one by one. Why had Hades chosen her, of all the goddesses to wed? Why had Zeus given consent, knowing that her mother would be livid? What would Hades expect of her? Would she be able to object? Was there a way for her to leave the Underworld of her own volition?

She had tried for a time to cast her will through the rock overhead, hoping that she might find a burrowing system of tree roots that she could summon to wedge their way into the chamber and break her out. She had felt nothing when she'd searched above for vegetation, and had wondered if she was simply too far below the surface, or if Hades' domain had rules of its own when it came to divine abilities.

Now she paced over the rugs on the floor, restless after a fitful night of sleep that had been plagued with dreams of falling. Dreams of Hades' voice curling against her skin. Her insides grew tense at the thought. That was another problem she wished to cram frantically back into the box from which it had spilled.

Her worrying was interrupted when, as it had the night before, the ambient light fled the room, leaving her blind. Something almost imperceptible had changed in the quality of the air.

He was with her.

"In the dark again, are we?" she tried to remain jaded. That would serve her better than trepidation, she hoped.

"For the moment."

"You said yesterday that you would show yourself. Has something changed?"

"I said perhaps," he reminded her. "Are you still certain you'd like to see? You've had a night to consider."

"Do you still intend to make a wife of me?" she painted the word in a thick coating of insinuation, to make sure that he knew she was aware of his intentions. "Then face me, Immortal. The sons of men have managed to do that."

"Hah!" he barked, jolted into amusement by her challenge. "Very good! Very good, then. This whole affair might just keep both of us on our toes. You wish to meet your fate, Persephone?"

She said nothing. There was no point in repeating herself just to play into his sport.

"Very well," he made it a pronouncement and restored the light to the room within the space of a breath.

Hades stood before her and Persephone faced a god the likes of which she had never seen. The gods of Olympus she knew, though individual and varied in appearance, were as a rule a tanned and golden lot, or even ruddy depending on temperament. With his kingdom beneath the earth, however, Hades was not a god of Olympus.

Her eyes traveled over a figure with skin so pale that she questioned whether life flowed in his veins at all. Hades would never be mistaken for one of the tawny gods of the sea or sky. His chill pallor made him look as though he were carved from marble. The phrase "body of a god" was not lost on her, however, despite his cool, stony countenance. He stood casually, one forearm resting between the prongs of his infamous bident, his weight on the adjacent leg. He held her eyes and said nothing, inviting her to fully take him in.

That he was the color of a thing grown underground was not terribly surprising when she considered the realm he called home. What did pique her curiosity however, where his extremities, which all looked as though they'd been dipped in ink and had absorbed it like a sponge. His hands were the deep gray of doused coal, and this dark coloring crept up his forearms until it faded away to match the rest of him at his elbows. The same went for his sandaled feet and calves, visible below the hem of his chiton. The surface of all of this stained flesh had a lustrous, almost scaled appearance, like the skin of a snake. She slapped away an urge that rose unbidden to reach out and discover what it felt like.

"Well?" he arched a brow at her. "Do you wish for darkness again?"

"Lord Hades, I don't..." she stammered, "I...I've never seen..." There was no way to finish her sentence that would seem polite. And why are you worried about being polite? Who's holding who in a room with no doors?

"Stilled that salty tongue of yours, have I? Come, now, you've nothing to say?"

"Why? Why me? Because I'm the one daughter of Olympus who was forbidden to any of the other gods?"

"Well, now, you know, I'd never thought about it from that angle before, little flower," he flashed his teeth at her. "Forbidden fruit is more delicious. But no. You can thank Aphrodite or perhaps even Hermes for your being...invited here."

Her brows drew down, her eyes searching for comprehension.

"It's all one big vicious circle, you see," he explained. As if to illustrate, he hefted his bident mid-handle, cutting a practiced swath through the air, like the arc of a scythe, and she watched it instantly condense into a bulky iron ring that he popped onto a finger.