I’m sorry. I respect him too much to go behind his back like that.
Yet you don’t respect him enough to keep your hands off his wife in the first place?
You were free to do whatever you wanted then. But I won’t keep it a secret from him, either. He deserves better than that.
He did, and I hated myself for agreeing. He knows we aren’t together while I’m down here?
Yes.
And he’s all right with that?
As all right as anyone could be. He loves you. He wants to see you happy as much as I do.
You have a strange way of showing it.
Hermes didn’t reply. Between us, Hades sat stiffly, his eyes blank as the woman talked about her life. Slowly, as if it were the most casual thing in the world, I set my hand over his. I hadn’t meant to hurt him, but I’d been a fool to think I never would. There were consequences for everything. Even happiness.
As much pain as it caused him though, that was a price I was willing to pay.
* * *
Despite that first day, Hades and I settled back into our old routine, this time with genuine friendship between us. I managed to carry the contentment of my summer into our time together, and as the years passed and I went back and forth between him and Hermes, I continued to do the same.
It wasn’t simple, but the uneasy truce between the three of us became all but permanent. Years turned into decades and decades into centuries; before long, I’d lost all track of time, my only benchmarks the beginning of spring and the end of summer.
But we were happy. Even Hades eventually adjusted, and I no longer saw pain in his eyes when he met me in the meadow every autumn. Instead he seemed pleased to see me once more, and slowly I grew to be happy to see him, as well. I hated the Underworld, and that wall between us was as strong as ever, but his understanding made me more accepting of his world.
Nothing changed for a long time. But one day, as I lingered in the observatory after we’d finished our judgments, I closed my eyes and did something I’d done thousands of times before: I found Hermes. Summer was only a short time away, and I was anxious to be with him again.
He was in his chambers in Olympus, standing on his balcony as the sun reflected off his light hair. And he wasn’t alone. That wasn’t anything unusual—he was social by nature, the complete opposite of Hades, and he usually spent a great deal of time with our brothers and sisters. But this time it was Aphrodite who stood beside him.
And she was naked.
Not that that was anything unusual, either, but the way she hugged his arm to her chest, the way he touched her—
I was going to be sick.
Hermes and I had never talked about what he did during the winters. He knew I wasn’t with Hades, not like that, and I’d always let myself believe that he waited for me. Maybe most of the time he did. But we didn’t have any rules about our time apart, and I had no right to feel as furious as I did.
It was Aphrodite though—the goddess who had everything. Love, satisfaction, a perfect life, a happy marriage. And now she was taking the one thing I had that was mine, the one damn thing in the world that gave me any amount of real joy.
But Hermes certainly didn’t seem to be complaining.
How dare you. I pushed the thought upward with every ounce of strength I had. It still took ages to reach Hermes, but when it did, his eyes widened, and he immediately moved away from Aphrodite. His cheeks turned red, and when she tried to rejoin him, he sidestepped her. So he knew he was doing something wrong, after all.
“Persephone, please—I’ll explain everything later.”
Like hell he would. Like hell I would let him. What would he say, that Aphrodite had accidentally slipped into his arms? That it was only a onetime thing? That he’d missed me and he was lonely, and he couldn’t wait any longer?
This is over. Don’t bother to come by this summer, because you and I are done.
“Persephone?” said Aphrodite, and she looked around. “She’s watching?”
I didn’t bother to wait for Hermes’s response. I pulled myself back into the observatory so quickly that for the first time since mastering my powers, I grew dizzy. I sat there for a long moment, my head between my knees, and struggled not to break down.
What else had I expected? He was Zeus’s son as surely as I was Zeus’s daughter. Cheating was in our blood. But no matter how many times I’d done it to Hades, that slap in the face—that complete and utter betrayal—had never hit home for me before.
My face was hot, and tears prickled in my eyes, but I refused to let them go. Instead I forced myself to breathe in and out slowly, counting each breath. Hermes loved me; I was certain of that. But why had he gone to Aphrodite? Was half a year really so long to wait?
Or had she seduced him? Were Ares and Hephaestus and Poseidon not enough for her?
Of course not. This was Aphrodite. She could never have enough, and she took whatever she wanted without a second thought. Mother may have considered me selfish, but I was nothing compared to my sister.
The door to the observatory opened and shut, and I wiped my dry cheeks angrily. I wanted to hurt something. I wanted to wrap my hands around Hermes’s neck and squeeze. It wouldn’t kill him, but it would help me feel a hell of a lot better.
“Persephone?”
And now I might have my chance. I straightened, my eyes narrowing as I focused on Hermes. He looked as if he’d dressed in a hurry, his clothing rumpled and his hair a mess. At least he’d bothered at all. “I told you not to come.”
“Actually, you didn’t,” he said, shuffling his feet. “You said we were over, but—”
“And we are, so you have no business here,” I snapped. His expression crumpled.
“Persephone, come on. I’m sorry. It was just once—”
“And I happened to peek in at the exact wrong moment?”
“You never said I couldn’t see anyone else during the winter.”
“I never said you could, either.”
He exhaled. “What’s really bothering you? Did you have a fight with Hades?”
I stared at him. He really didn’t get it, did he? “What’s bothering me is the fact that out of all the girls and goddesses in the world, you had to sleep with Aphrodite.”
“And what’s wrong with her?”
“She’s Aphrodite. She has Ares, she has Hephaestus, she has every damn person she wants. You’re mine. You’re the only person I have, and she—she steals you like it’s no big deal—”