Well, it was past noon already, and Hades did say she would have the afternoon to herself. Just as she was planning to creep away, Stephanus sat up with a start.

“Oh!” he exclaimed. “It’s you. Where’s the wine?”

She refilled his cup for him. “I believe lessons are over for the day, for it is past lunch,” she said.

Stephanus hemmed and hawed at this, rubbing his beard. “Another tablet’s worth of lines and you may go.”

Persephone groaned, but she sat down and set to work erasing her previous letters with the end of her stylus before rewriting the same material all over again, carving laboriously whilst imagining she was stabbing the old man in the gut with each stroke.

“I’m done,” she said, showing her tablet to Stephanus.

He looked at it. “Your slope is off. Let’s fix that tomorrow.”

“I thought you were teaching me how to read; what does it matter how my slope lies?”

Stephanus took a stylus and rapped her knuckles with it. “Do I lecture you when spring comes three weeks too late? Or question why we are cursed with more suicides in your season than at harvest time? No? Then we will proceed with this in my way.”

Persephone cradled her hand to her chest, rubbing her knuckles. Any prior charitable thought she might have held for this man had evaporated. Luckily for his sake, she did not intend there to be a second lesson. “I see. May I go?”

At his curt nod, she stood up and all but ran from the library. It was wonderful to be in the courtyard again, inhaling the fresh air after spending the whole morning indoors.

There wasn’t much time left in the day. She needed some way to dissuade Hades from spending the night with her, so that she would be free to leave in the morning. A feigned sickness, perhaps, or...

Hades wouldn’t be tricked by a claimed headache, but Persephone had no wish to damage herself in order to seem convincing. She needed something else. Something foolproof. And on top of that, a way to bypass Cerberus.

It came to her as she was walking. She abruptly turned on her heel and headed toward the stables, counting her steps so that she would know them in the dark. Eustachys greeted her at the doorway.

“Good day to you, Lady Persephone.”

She looked at him. The man had seen her almost naked. What had mortified her only a few weeks ago seemed rather comical now. He glanced away, blushing. “Would you be needing a chariot, or...?”

She walked around the stable, looking at the horses. “Let’s see them.”

“Of course.”