Hi all! Sorry for the long break between chapters! Christmas is a crazy time...

I liked writing this chapter, particularly shaping Hecate's character. I do like Hecate...and she'll get better, so have faith. Jealousy is a hell of a beast :)

Thanks everyone for the reviews. I do appreciate it.

Chapter 10

Hecate lifted an eyelid, and then the other.

Blue followed by black. Strange.

Non-responsive.

She looked over the half-naked girl that had intruded on her domain. Thrust onto her own bed by Hades, demanded by him that she look after her, as blood seeped from a wound on the back of her head onto Hecate's furs.

She straightened, turned to Hades who sat rigid on her kline, bent forward with an elbow on his knee.

It was peculiar having him in her home. No matter how often she dreamt of it, he had never come. Now…she felt invaded. She couldn't put her finger on it. Perhaps he took too much space? Or was it the fact he brought a stranger with him?

His gaze was locked on the girl. One of his hands flexed and released, and every so often he closed his eyes and the tenseness in the angles of his face would relax.

'I took her,' he muttered.

'Took her?'

'I took her from sunlight.'

Hecate stared at him, slightly numb, 'And then struck her over the head?'

His gaze remained on the girl, his voice low and flat, as if he still couldn't comprehend what was happening. As if he was too distracted. 'No. She went wild, and she fell…I dropped her.'

Hecate's own hands curled into fists so that her nails buried into her palm until it stung. 'But you stole her?'

Finally, those eyes turned, but they looked straight through her. 'You can't steal what belongs to you.'

Hecate shook her head. 'She's flesh and blood. She doesn't belong to anyone.'

Hades didn't answer her for some time, but his gaze focussed, a fire suddenly burning through them. 'You're wrong. She took souls from my domain, brought them back to their rotting bodies. She cheated death. She cheated me!' He let out a bark of laughter, the sound so foreign to Hecate that it shocked her to her very bones, just as unfamiliar as the wry smile that broke across his face.

Her fingers tangled and untangled together, and then she started moving, limbs automatic, pulling familiar, clay pots out from her shelves. Knowing exactly where to find what in her chaos. Yarrow, calendula, stop the bleeding. Lavender oil, rubbed into temples to stop aching in the skull. Perhaps peppermint in a tea later. Vinegar to dip a strip of linen in.

If the girl was a goddess, she would heal. She should heal.

Pathetic.

Jealousy was wicked. She tried to tell herself she was above it…but it dumped out like stagnant filth in her stomach. Seirios lifted his head and whined low, plaintive, a mirror to Hecate's sudden feeling of dejection. She glanced at her hound, and noticed that Hades had stood from the kline and was standing by the bed, staring down at the girl.

'What's her name?' Hecate asked finally, voice hollow.

'Persephone.'

Kore moaned, forcing eyes open, feeling as if they were stuck together with tree sap. Still she couldn't focus. A vision of people, a deer, a hound, a splash of red, swum above her. She closed her eyes again.

Then she felt the soft touch on her temples, the smell of something smoky and sweet, the tang of vinegar, reaching her nostrils.

She was running through the darkness, terror seizing her heart. A hand wrapped around her wrist, around her thigh, but she wrenched herself free and ran harder. She had to escape. She couldn't breathe.

She collided with the solid body, looked up, saw mercury.

There was an indecipherable intensity to his gaze, full of history and greatness. There was none of the anger that she was used to, even after barrelling into him. He turned, square to her, and lifted a hand, palm up, and became still.

No grabbing or snatching at her flesh. Just a silent offering.

He murmured something she couldn't grasp as her hand hesitantly reached out, her index finger touching a line on his palm and following it. His hand was rougher than hers. And warm.

Too entranced by the calluses, she twitched when the fingers of his other hand touched the swell of her hip, swept slowly into the dip of her waist, the fabric of her chiton following so it gathered up a thigh. She jerked her fingers away from his palm, her gaze flicking to his.

He wasn't looking at her face. Smoky eyes were fixed on where his hand, impossibly warm, clutched at her waist, fingers flexing.

She gasped, swaying away. 'That tickles.'

He didn't release her. He stepped closer, nostrils flared, the fire in his eyes something her mind couldn't decipher, but something her body seemed to recognise.

She felt her skin flush.

'Will you show me?' he murmured, his head tilting down to a point she felt the warmth of his breath on her heated cheeks.

'S-show you what?'

His free hand came up towards her, the pad of a thumb running carefully along her bottom lip.

Warmth twisted through her stomach.

His silver gaze turned to liquid, the tip of his thump slipping into her mouth when she exhaled sharply, and pressing down on the flat of her tongue, 'What you are made of, little one…'

Clawing her way to consciousness again, swimming through thick oil, her eyes opening again to an image of men hunting a stag on a ceiling.

She blinked, trying to focus. It was some sort of…picture, drawn on rock. She pushed herself up, her gaze moving around the room without seeing anything, terror twisting up her insides into a knot. Fingers touched at the back of her head where it had connected with the floor, wrapped now in linen.

A firestorm of grief and confusion tore at her.

He had taken her. Buried her in darkness. She had been taken from Gaia and dragged away. To a place that felt too heavy, the air stale and cold, and the overwhelming feeling that she was underground.

She sat for moments. Or it could have been an age. Too numb, too exhausted. Despite that, a steady stream of fluid dripped from her eyes as if her tears would never, ever stop.

Nobody is here. Move. Move, Kore. Run

Her internal pleas woke her, helped by the intense cold, icy tendrils wrapped around the bare skin of her arms, across a shoulder where the thin shift she was in had slipped down. She swallowed hard and pushed fur from her legs so that same cold touched them, and finally looked around.

She was in some sort of cave, walls, ceiling, and floor made from stone. Despite that, there was no doubt that it was a home chaotically packed with…things.

A small couch, braziers of flame that did little to warm the room, some sort of animal fur covering half the floor with stacks of parchment scattered across it, an open pit filled with old ashes where an iron pot swung over it. One of the walls were made of shelves, filled with more strange items. A jumble of wooden boxes, rolls of papyrus, sheafs of parchment, jars, wooden dolls and clay figurines, amphorae filled with peacock feathers and sticks that were salt-white. There was one table with just as much disordered clutter; skulls from various creatures, a bronze bowl overflowing with colourful stones.

Her gaze darted around the strange room to make sure what her mind had not tricked her. That some dark figure hid in shadowy corners. She willed her courage to not fail.

Bare feet touched ground, she pushed herself up on shaky limbs, and she stumbled towards anything to hold onto. Reaching out, one hand grasping the edge of the shelf, the other falling unceremoniously into a clay bowl filled with orange paste. She recoiled, trying to get her eyes to focus on what had made her fingers sticky.

Keep going...

Wiping the offending digits on the unfamiliar clothing, she moved, keeping herself upright by sheer determination as the room twisted.

A narrow passage. A dull glow. An exit. And she found herself in a forest of dead trees and no sky.

'I wondered what you would do.'

Kore spun, heart in her throat, and the world spun with her. She stumbled to the side, falling into freezing mud.

A woman knelt on a rock next to the mouth of the cave Kore had come from, skin and hair so pale she almost glowed. Sitting next to her was a hound that was almost her opposite, her white fingers tangled in its black fur. And on her other side, another girl hovered. Something undeniably recognisable.

A nymph.

Hope bloomed in her chest, deliriously reaching out to her. 'Please…I need…' she slurred.

The white woman on the rock turned, murmuring to her. 'Go get Thanatos, Minthe. He will help you with her.'

Kore whimpered as the nymph darted off. The cold and wet was seeping down to her bones, and her teeth started clattering together.

'I thought you would just sit there and weep for your mother. You cried out often for her while you lay in bed. I was beginning to feel quite uninspired.'

Kore could hear the white woman, but her head pounded and she tried to push herself upright.

'Regardless, I don't see anything special about you. You look,' the woman paused, lip curling. 'Pathetically weak. You are weak, aren't you?'

Kore was too cold.

The woman climbed up, and then appeared to float across the ground, the linen of her peplos not sliding through, hem spotless. Her hound kept close to her side, his lip quivering up canines that were as long as Kore's thumb. The woman came close to her. 'Oh for the sake of the goddess!' the woman spat. 'Stop crying!'

Kore couldn't even feel it.

The woman knelt down, reaching out and grasping Kore by the chin and tilting her eyes up to hers.

Kore noticed that they were a pretty colour…like violet. But they looked…

'Why are you sad?' Kore whispered.

The woman flinched slightly, her fingers releasing from her chin as if she burnt her.

'Did you g-get t-taken too?'

The woman's mouth tightened slightly, 'No.'

Suddenly, Kore's muddy hand circled the woman's wrist, leaving streaks of black mud on skin so pale. 'P-please. I need to go home.'

The woman tugged ineffectually to try and get Kore to release her. And she refused to let her go. Even if she was a figment of her imagination, she wouldn't let the snow spirit go.

'Tell me how t-to leave!'

The woman stopped pulling, staring into her eyes, her white brows furrowing. 'I…I can't help you. Hades wouldn't…' the woman swallowed, the look of pain flashing through those flower eyes. A noise in the trees made her glance up, and then back down at her. She turned the tides, grasping Kore's own wrists. 'I will give you something, scared mouse. Whatever you do, do not eat the food of the dead…the fruit of the underworld. You will be forever bound to this domain. Promise me, Persephone!'

Kore flinched at that name, and the woman released her as the nymph and another stepped from the trees.