Gift fic for Malhearst, I hope you enjoy the fic dear :)
Written for the Hogwarts assignment (Herbology: Write a Mythology!AU replicating the story of Hades and Persephone), the March Jewel-Day Event (Aventurine Necklace: Write a Mythology!AU) and the Drabble Ship Challenge (Gin'Tonic).
It's a funny turn of fate, Hade's muses, when it is the king of hell who gets the better side of the deal. After all, he is functioning far better than his pathetic siblings.
However, there is a downside to his kingdom. The dead are a terrible bore, after all, for a man who has seen the world and made it tremble in his wake.
"My lord." A voice says and he turns, his crown glimmering in the palace lights.
"Yes?" Hades questions and smirks when the man falls to his feet, a greedy look on his face under the mask he wears. Nothing can pass through his kingdom that he doesn't know about. The man is a traitor, yes, a two-faced spy his brothers have sent, but he is just a pawn on Hades's chessboard. A tool. A toy.
"There is a living girl in the kingdom, my lord." The man says, a scowl on his face, and Hades knows this news is delayed. The girl must be important then.
"And who is she?" Tom asks carefully, eyes like stone. The man flinches.
"Persephone, daughter of Demeter."
Hades cannot help the smirk that curls on his face. The wretched woman's daughter has decided to pay a visit? He will be a gracious host. He will make the girl stay and enjoy then woman's rage.
"Find her and invite her to dinner," Hades says. "I would like to extend my hospitality to such an important visitor."
The girl is not quite what he expected. He has been thinking about a girl made of ivory and flowers, a gentle soul who had drifted into his kingdom looking for something she thought she couldn't find elsewhere.
She is not any of that. She is made up of rage and allure and a flower crown that curves around her head like a snake; blood-red roses that match her hair and catch his eye when she turns to him. Her eyes are brown in the world above, perhaps, but here in the underworld, they are the color of the golden diadem he wears on top of his head.
Persephone, he remembers in the back of his head, means Bringer of Death. Somewhere, alarm bells ring, but here, there is only a god leaning down to kiss a maiden's hand and catch her Cheshire smirk as he lifts his head back up.
"Welcome to the underworld," Tom says when they are both seated at the table.
"Glad to be here," Persephone says back, perching on the edge of her seed, eyes wild and lips pink. She looks like a caged animal.
Tom has never felt like this before, like every nerve in his body is on fire.
"Will your parents worry?" He asks carelessly.
"Oh yes," She says back, her eyes blazing with something he cannot quite identify. "They will stress, to the point of madness."
Hatred, he realizes then. It is an emotion he has only seen on himself, but he knows that they have the same thoughts in his head: her mother, bossy and dominating; her father, high and mighty with that damned twinkle in his eyes and his string of affairs.
"Would you like to stay a little longer?" He asked, no longer caring that it is far too soon to be making these types of offers.
"Oh, yes." She says wickedly and scoops six crimson seeds into her mouth. "For as long as I possibly can."
He stares in rapture as she bits down and her blood-red lips match the future she has created for herself.
Persephone is a ruthless ruler and he has never admired a person more. She captures the hearts of his people and turns them into warriors that never die, an undead army of corpses at her command.
They come calling eventually, her mother turns the world to ice with her anger and her father settles it with a compromise: half a year or the world freezes.
Persephone leaves as she pleases. There has never been a colder winter before.
Darkness. Sin. Burning passion. Cold ambition.
Persephone reigns. She has not been dragged into this. She is his queen and she has taken half his kingdom for her own.
