For the first time in his recollection, Hades was glad when Hecate appeared to interrupt.
"There you are! Please my Lord, I have so many things to show Persephone, may I..?"
"As you wish," Hades cut off the goddess before she could go on much longer with a description of the clothes she had no doubt already completed and wanted to boast about at great length. Persephone did not argue or protest; she gave him a respectful bow.
Hades froze in front of the gesture. How quickly things had changed! Before, he had wondered at her bravery, her incredible insight, her politeness and finesse down here in the dark. Now, after that stupid cherub had turned absolutely everything upside-down with his presence, Hades was startled instead by her confidence, her warm loveliness, how bright her hair was, by daydreams of what it would feel like to run his fingers through that hair or brush it behind her ears to touch the corner of her smile…
Get a grip! Oh, for the sake of all creation, do not act like a total fool!
She broke the silence.
"Thank you for your valuable time, my Lord." That impossible woman met his gaze and for a horrible moment he was afraid that she could perceive his reeling thoughts.
Just her simple stare, it seemed to swallow him whole and he couldn't think of how to reply or what to do in response. He floundered.
Everything was not as it was, so very quickly. A flash of gold and he was dizzy, he needed some time to think. How he needed to steady himself! Centuries of self-control had just deserted him in that moment. The Lord of the Dead merely nodded back to the woman he was falling for and had to stop himself from running from her intoxicating presence before he did something really stupid, like try to kiss her.
I am such a coward.
He found that he was on too much of a high from his revelations for that thought to worry him overmuch. Persephone made him swim with nerves, with an aching kind of longing he was just starting to pay attention to and he couldn't even begin to put everything together, to make sense of it. But for now, surely some space away from her electrifying eyes was badly needed? He was fighting the urge to stay with all his might and found his feet still fixed in front of her.
Hecate couldn't help but notice the staggering change in Hades. She'd never seen him in such a state.
"Are you alright, my Lord?" she stated with a sharp voice, her tone implying that a simple brushoff was not an option for Hades to utilise.
This feeling… This must be what it is like for a mortal to be drugged. My body just refuses to do anything. My mind is… I do not know. It is spinning wildly out of control.
Shock and dawning bliss, disbelief and attraction, astonishing tenderness and a haunting kind of panic all warred within him. He was ignited. He felt like all the different sensations could cumulate and overwhelm him at any moment. But it was a heady feeling. He wanted to encourage the tumult of swirling emotions bottled up inside to be free and run their course. Was it any wonder then, that he couldn't speak, let alone think straight? This rush of madness and he was somehow ecstatic? Logic had flown away on Eros's golden wings and taken all of Hades's sense along with it.
Hecate's question eventually prompted a spluttered laugh from the god.
"I am perfectly fine." He shot a warning at Hecate with his expression – now was not the time for an interrogation. Hecate pouted but didn't fight the warning in that look. "But I have a pressing appointment with the Fates that I cannot miss. I shall leave you two ladies together for a time."
He chanced a parting look at Persephone to judge how well she took his dismissal and she was just smiling faintly at him. In that, Hades saw extraordinary kindness that warmed him to the core. He had failed utterly to explain anything about Eros and the arrow and yet, she was content to wait. Her consideration was staggering. If he had been in her shoes, he would have been furious; there was not a trace of that in her, however.
Heavens, I do not deserve such a woman.
But apparently the Fates felt differently. So the God of the Underworld, shaking slightly, hurried away from all he suspected but needed confirmation of.
When he had left the bewildered goddess and that perfect woman long behind him bubbling laughter threatened to burst out of him. It was all so ridiculous, really. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt this confused, or even this alive, before. His whole existence had been so much routine and dry struggle up until this point. Persephone's arrival was an entirely unique experience. He loved her for the way she had dropped into his world.
There. That word had finally intruded into his scattered mind. He loved her. Warmth suffused his whole body, glowing from his chest and spreading until it tingled in the ends of his limbs. It brought with it astounding strength. He felt as though he could move whole constellations with a single flick of his finger, with this love so deep in his veins. He did love her, he really did.
But… She was just so beautiful… Could she really be his? Could he be worthy of her? Hades hoped with fervour as strong as his newfound love that the ridiculous flying archer with golden wings had not deceived him somehow.
Those words. Those golden words: Queen Persephone, Our Lady of the Underworld and devoted wife of King Hades, Our Lord of the Underworld and Master of the Dead.
His heartbeat steady increased as he realised that this was all he wanted. He only ever wanted her and then he could be happy forever. He needed nothing else. He'd never needed anything so badly.
If this is just another one of that rogue's cruel tricks…
Hades thundered past the River Styx, unhearing of all those servants who politely greeted him, unseeing of the boatload of shades that cruised past on the water beside him with Charon at the helm. He was so fixated on where he was about to go that everything around him narrowed down to the unsteady, jittery quality of his fast progress towards the Fates.
Entering the abode of the Fates was a bit like walking into a vast and complicated web spider's web made of black ropes. Threads of life tangled, crossed, joined together, touched faintly with each other and coiled in hopeless knots or trails that stretched right from the summit of the Underworld all the way to blackest of its pits. And the remarkable things was that, if one took the time to pull a thread close to their face and inspect it, they would discover that the 'rope' was not in fact one unbreakable black thread but rather millions of coloured strings, each as thin as a single hair, woven intricately together to make the whole appear black. Such was the complexity and interconnectedness of mortal lives. Shiny metallic threads cut through across these millions upon millions of ropes, the bright and ever-shifting quality of immortal existence, which interfered and interjected across so many lives in so many ways that on some occasions they became buried amongst the other existences they had touched and affected. The gods and goddesses were more akin to light beams that, when a thread came into their brilliance, it either was coloured vividly by the presence of the divine or shrunk away and frayed as a result of some godly intervention. It was a bizarre and enormous place and the three sisters constantly toiled at it, altering it, shifting it, adding to it, slicing some threads away forever and disposing of the dead. It wasn't somewhere that you could just happen upon either – there was no entry or exit in that sacred place and only very certain people knew the way to gain an audience with the forces who lived in it.
Hades willed the shadows to take him into the presence of the three Moirae and the very next second he was there, in the heart of the web, standing before them.
Most mortals thought of the Fates as unkind crones who cackled cruelly as they snipped lives short with their wicked-looking instruments of death but the reality was vastly different. They appeared as three industrious mothers, sisters who were not very apart in age but could be discerned according to their varying heights, who carefully attended to their strings with the skill of accomplished maestros and who hid the knowledge of time deep within their perfectly white eyes. Knowing the future was a burden they had been given forever.
Lachesis, the middle Moirae who sported a vest-like attire with many pockets of different coloured thread spools, noticed Hades first. She gave him a warm and inviting smile and tossed her braid over one shoulder, storing needles in its length with a quick push of her callused thumb.
"Little Hades," she sighed, clearly pleased to see him. "Our little Lord is paying us a visit, sisters!"
The youngest and shortest of the Fates, Clotho, was creating a brand new thread of life. She warily stretched the miniscule start of thread that fed out of two tightly woven lives and tied it to her finger so she could add to it. At her sister's call, she carefully negotiated great pillars of taut ropes to stand where she could see Hades. When she caught his eye, she gushed.
"You are just too adorable!" she proclaimed which made Hades duck to hide his blush. "Oh, you are, little son of Kronos! Look at the brightness of first love on you! My, my, my…"
"Goodness, Clotho, that's enough," Atropos climbed down a ladder with her spindly legs and stood impressively, towering over them all, her scissors hanging from her waist. "We didn't go to all that trouble just to end up mollycoddling the boy!"
"But it's too cute…"
"You caused the production of that arrow?" Hades blurted out the question, his heart pounding. "You wrote the words of fate on it, truly?"
Clotho tittered, setting aside the new life thread she was weaving. She took a few steps closer, her white pupil-less eyes displaying the joy of having executed a plan they had been waiting on for such a long expanse of time.
"My dear boy." One of her soft hands cupped Hades's chin as she stared into his face seriously. "The story of you and your wife has been written for centuries. It began with the will of your mother Rhea, who wanted your happiness with all her might. It continued with your brother's will; the mighty Zeus blamed the loneliness he perceived in your existence on himself and vowed to set all to rights as much as he could."
Glorious happiness surged within him at his family's gifts. Hades found himself touched by their selfless desire to see him with a family of his own.
"Ah, but it wasn't all for you!" Atropos held up one thin finger to emphasise her point. "Persephone longed to find her true love…"
"Me?" Hades choked out.
"Yes, you! She wanted it so very badly, with all her might, that her will shook though the foundations of the Underworld. Zeus helped her break through to you but ultimately, the longing in her pulled her…"
"Oh, it's just all too romantic! I'm going to cry!" Clotho exclaimed. "But your fate won't be an easy road to travel."
"What do you mean?" Hades asked before he could think twice about how rude he sounded.
Lachesis shook her head solemnly and all three sisters grimaced as the compulsion not to disclose any more came over them.
"That is all we can tell you," Lachesis pronounced, a little sadly. "Suffice to say, there are six ways your story can end and six things Persephone can do to choose her ultimate fate. She is the one with control of your destiny, Hades. She always has been."
"Believe in her," urged Clotho, returning to her work. "Love is a powerful force that lies within both of you, to see you through the tough times."
Hades shut his mouth tightly against his flood of frustrated questions. It would be no use to waste breath on trying to extract forbidden knowledge from the Fates. They were unwavering in their resolve and they were well-meaning. He had to trust his faith that, as they said, he could realise his happiness. So instead, he kissed each of the Fates on the hand, which they exclaimed over and then allowed the shadows to take him back to his House.
When he materialised from the darkness, he took a moment to take stock.
Trust her. Trust Persephone. I love her. I have to somehow show her that I love her.
An odd combination of sounds disturbed these serious thoughts and he concentrated, trying to determine what was making such a racket outside the walls of his House. After a second's hard listening, he could discern giggling, music, singing and the pounding of feet in time with the beat of the music. Hecate's shouts were mixed heavily in amongst the commotion. Hades rubbed his face with a hand and sighed, steeling himself to go out and investigate the source of all the nonsense.
What in the name of all creation has Hecate done this time?!