“I want you to be happy,” he said as the warm breeze danced around us. “From the moment your mother introduced us, my joy was tied with yours, and I promise you that despite my mistakes, everything I do is to please you.”
I nodded, wishing I could say the same. But my happiness was my own, and I couldn’t be responsible for his, as well. “Thank you,” I said quietly. “Before going back, could we go somewhere warmer and walk around a little?” It was dusk here by now, but it was still morning back home, and I was desperate to feel the sun on my skin again.
“Of course.” He slipped his hand into my elbow, and while that small amount of contact was enough to make my skin prickle, I didn’t pull away. I hated the resentment and anger that prevented me from loving him the way he loved me, but no matter what Hermes said, I lacked the strength to conquer it. All I could do was open myself up to my new life and hope that in the end, it would be enough.
* * *
I tried.
I tried harder than I’d ever tried anything before. Every morning I let Hades bring me breakfast in my new bedroom two doors down from his. Every day I forced chitchat as he taught me more and more about what it meant to rule the Underworld. Every evening I sat with him as we read or talked about our shared day, and I tried so damn hard to love him that as time passed, I grew more and more certain that one day my heart would burst.
But the wall of resentment inside me didn’t budge. Nothing Hades did or said wore it down, and no matter how hard I tried to work around it, it was always there. It was as if someone had cursed me into never falling in love, or at least never falling in love with Hades. We’d been friends before this, as much as we could’ve been, but even that was gone. Every tie that connected us had been severed, and that wall in my chest blocked every attempt I made to create new ones.
I was stuck. We were stuck. Whenever I looked at Hades, I could see the pain he carried with him, building up slowly from our restrained time together. But how could I explain my unnatural hatred toward him? Wouldn’t it hurt him more if I told him that I didn’t want anything to do with him? That I hated him so much it physically hurt me?
I had to pretend to care. And part of me did—I cared about how badly I was hurting him. I cared that I was lying to him. I cared that he was just as miserable as I was, if not more so. But every time we could have moved into the realm of something more, that wall was there, ever looming, ready to stop me.
Hades tried everything. Breakfast in bed, lavish gifts, even giving me free rein over the palace’s interior decorating. I had a large patch of rock to work with outside as well, and over the years, I created a jeweled garden. It wasn’t anything like the real thing, but it gave me time alone, time I needed to think, and Hades showered me with praise for it.
But nothing worked. We were frozen, not because of him, but because of me. And I didn’t know how to fix it.
The days were endless, and though the seasons passed on the surface, nothing but my hair color changed in the Underworld. The rock pressed down on me constantly, trapping me without mercy, and the few times Hades brought me to the surface didn’t make up for my prison. Mother only visited once, shortly after my tantrum in Olympus, and even then it was simply to make sure I was behaving.
Hermes, however, stuck to his word. Whenever he came down to train with Hades, he spent a little time with me. Playing games, talking, exploring what few parts of the Underworld I was willing to see—he was my lifeline, and things seemed a little brighter when he was there. He was the reminder I needed that life hadn’t stopped completely. That there was still a world up there teeming with it.
One afternoon, I sat in the middle of the observatory, a long room at the very top of the palace that looked out across the vast cavern. It’d been empty when I’d discovered it, but I’d created an armchair for comfort, and the fireplace crackled with flames every time I entered. The entire length of the outer wall was made of glass, and I spent as much time up there as possible. One of my gifts was the ability to see the present, and sometimes, especially after a hard ruling, I liked to sit up there and go from afterlife to afterlife, reminding myself that what we did wasn’t all bad. People lived whatever lives they wanted on the surface, and as Hades reminded me again and again, it wasn’t our job to judge that. It was our job to judge what they thought was right. What they thought their afterlife should be. Most of the time, a soul went directly to their afterlife without any contact with Hades and me. But sometimes they were confused or didn’t know or couldn’t rectify their beliefs with their actions, and that was where we came in.
It was exhausting, judging eternities. But I did the best I could.
A soft knock cut through the room, and I pulled myself back into the present. I’d been watching a girl walking hand-in-hand through the woods with a young man. She’d clearly loved him in her life, and the fact that they’d found each other even after death…I envied her. I envied her so badly that I hated her. “Come in.”
Someone slipped inside—no, not just someone. Two sets of footsteps too light to be Hades’s echoed through the room. Frowning, I twisted around in my chair. Hermes walked toward me, and behind him, Aphrodite followed.
“Afternoon,” said Hermes, giving me a boyish grin. “You look like hell.”
“I feel like hell,” I muttered, trying to push the thought of the girl away. She was mortal and dead, and she’d probably never held a jewel the size of a fist in her life. She was happier than I would ever be though, no matter how many gifts Hades gave me. “What are you two doing here?”
“What, I’m not allowed to come by anymore?” he said, perching on the arm of the chair. Aphrodite wandered toward the window, setting her hand on the glass and smudging it. I winced, but the unseen servants who staffed Hades’s palace would clean it later.
“You know what I mean,” I said. “Why did you bring Aphrodite?” She practically glowed with eternal satisfaction, and seeing her only made the fire of jealousy inside me burn even hotter.
“Because I think I can help,” said Aphrodite, turning to face us. “If you let me, I mean.”
“Help how?” I said warily, finding Hermes’s hand. I didn’t trust Aphrodite, for all her good luck and happiness, but I did trust him.
“Hermes mentioned you’ve been having trouble adjusting,” she said with a hint of mischievousness that probably drove every man on earth wild. “How often do you and Hades sleep together?”