Persephone glanced up at the wooden roof of the pavilion. Vines continued to crawl over the structure, filling every corner with greenery. She reached out her hand. “Stop,” she said.

The plant stopped climbing, but continued to mature, revealing greenish-yellow umbels.

“Beautiful,” Hades breathed.

Persephone glanced over to find Hades staring at her, not at the foliage. Another time, she might have looked away, but now she held her gaze.

Hades’ lips were as red as a pomegranate seed. It seemed like it had been so long since she’d felt those lips upon hers.

“Please take me back to the palace,” Persephone said. “I must rest after my ordeal.”

Hades was the first to look away. “Of course,” she said and stood, holding out her hand as a courtesy.

Persephone took it, her fingers briefly entwining with Hades’ before she let go.

In the chariot, she leaned against the side railing, placing as much distance between herself and Hades as possible. Hades said nothing, but her shoulders seemed stiff, her grip on the reins excessively tight.

Persephone flexed her fingers, squeezing them into fists then releasing them. She would give Hades no cause to punish her a second time; she was done with being humiliated, frightened, tormented.

Hades would never touch her again.

18

THE BATHHOUSE

The days passed swiftly after that. Her lessons with Stephanus progressed to the point where she no longer needed him and was reading on her own—texts on logic and history she left scattered around her room for Xenia to clean up, scrolls piling in untidy mounds until they spilled over onto the floor. Erato she took to her bed and read by candlelight, her lips moving to sound out the unfamiliar words, her cheeks flushing even though there was no one to observe her. She would bury those scrolls under old comedies and dry philosophical treatises, only bringing them out when she was certain of being undisturbed.

Persephone slogged through a history of the underworld and read summaries of the major judgments from the last ten years. Most had been performed by the judges of the dead: Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus, but for special cases, like Pirithous and Theseus, Hades intervened.

Hades bade her to sit and pass judgment from time to time, even allowing Persephone’s voice to sway her mind on a number of occasions. Persephone worked hard to persuade Hades to lessen the punishment of several long-serving residents of Tartarus, even going so far as to move a few repentant individuals to the Asphodel Fields. This change did not endear her to the judges of the dead, but Persephone could not be touched, so long as she held Hades’ favor.