Persephone’s cheeks grew even warmer. She wished she could sink into the ground and disappear. Instead, she took a step back, out of reach. “You presume too much,” she said, both proud and terrified of her own audacity.

Hades’ lips thinned. “Do I? You stand at the threshold of my realm, the scent of my asphodels on your skin. Why else are you here, if not to offer yourself to me?”

To... what? “I never—there must be some mistake,” Persephone said.

This whole day had been one long mistake. Upsetting her mother, walking past the grain fields, and now, disobeying her mother once more by speaking with Hades instead of running away and pretending she had never found this place.

Hades’ eyes narrowed, her gaze piercing. “A mistake. Are you so blind as to believe the legends, then?” Hades approached her, taking one step forward for each step that Persephone took back. “Do you accept all the lies they tell about me?”

Persephone’s back scraped against the side of the cave. She pressed her palms against it, trembling as Hades leaned in.

“Do you know what they say about you, Demeter’s daughter?” Hades asked, her voice low, her eyes as dark as pools of water on a moonless night. Persephone saw herself reflected in them, a bruised and battered girl with hair the color of mud.

She knew. Everyone knew, and she thought she would crumble from shame to hear the slurs from Hades’ lips. They echoed through her thoughts, spoken by a chorus of faceless, nameless voices.

Frigid bitch.

Thinks herself too good for Hera’s sons.

How is it that the goddess of spring keeps herself barren?

“Please don’t,” she whispered.

Hades cupped Persephone’s face in her hand and ran her thumb over the girl’s lips. Persephone’s breath came in ragged gasps.

“Don’t,” she said again. The cave wall was cold at her back, the chill seeping in through her chiton and into her bones. The heat radiating from Hades’ body felt like fire by comparison.

Hades leaned in, and for one terrifying, exhilarating moment, Persephone thought she might kiss her—but Hades instead brought her lips to Persephone’s ear.

“You were always destined to be mine,” Hades said and then took a step back, turning away from Persephone for the first time. She clicked her tongue and beckoned, and the horses trotted up to her, bringing the chariot along with them.

Run! a voice screamed inside Persephone’s head. Now, while she’s distracted... run!

She couldn’t move. Her ear tingled where Hades’ lips had touched her. “What... what do you mean?”

“I mean that we shall go on a journey, you and I.”

Persephone stared at the darkness beyond the rift, the precursor to the darkness unending beneath the world’s crust. At last, at long last, her legs became hers to command, and she ran.