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sunsets-and-crows · 8 hours ago

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Let The Dead Watch Us Bloom

Chapter 2 - The stranger wife

Words: 6.4K

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The flowers are dying. The gods are listening. And the deal you made in the dark is already binding. The price is written in blood and bones. How will you survive in a world so unlike your own?

Thank you to my gem and bea-reader @diamondtiger for the cover photo!

Content warnings ⚠️

Hades/Sylus, Persephone/Reader, probably OOC for both, death, grief, eventual smut.

I'll add to this list as we progress through these chapters but let me know if theres something I missed please!

You were choking on air that wasn’t air.

Heavy and perfumed, it coated your lungs like velvet: sweet with rot, rich with earth, thick as incense curling from an unseen censer.

You didn't know where you were. You only knew it was not your bedroom. Not your life.

You sat up slowly, trembling hands slipping over silk the colour of blood. Your body moved, but each shift felt wrong. Your skin burned. Your mouth was dry. Your limbs felt like they’d been sewn together with unfamiliar thread. Everything was wrong.

Your hair, too long. Your skin, too smooth. Your bones felt lighter, your soul somehow heavier.

You gasped, scrambling, “Where-?” you croaked, then stopped.

Because your voice wasn’t your voice.

It was yours. And yet it wasn't. The pitch was too smooth, the timbre too honeyed. You bared your legs, raking your hands along the skin there, searching for any features you would recognise: a scarred knee from riding your bike as a child, a freckle, hell, even a hair.

But every feature on your body was as unfamiliar as a stranger.

It came back to you in fragments. A deal with a deity that left you… Well, where did it leave you?

You breathed deeply, the same sticky-sweet scent filling your senses. It was grounding in a way, shaking your frayed nerves and forcing you to focus on what was happening around you, even as you felt the panic creeping up your spine.

Was it too dramatic to throw up?

You peered over the edge of the boat as it rocked,

The water, if it was water, was beyond black. Oily and iridescent, shifting like the surface of a raven’s wing or the belly of a thundercloud. The surface pulsed softly with a current that ran smoothly under the thick and endless river.

You leaned forward, elbows braced against the edge of the boat, trying to steady yourself as another wave of nausea curled through your stomach.

You’d thrown up in the back of a taxi once. That had been bad enough. Vomiting in front of what looked like an ancient, ageless ferryman who hadn’t spoken a word in ten thousand years? Somehow, you sensed that it would go down even worse.

The waters of the Styx were beautiful in a way. Their endless stretch perfectly reflected the surroundings, distorting everything around you with ripples and pulses. You gazed into the depths, trying to see how deep the river flowed.

Your face, warped, stared back at you.

Except it wasn’t your face in the slightest. Black hair, piercing green eyes and perfect skin all stared back at you. Familiar, in a way that made your throat close around a scream that threatened to burst forth from between your lips.

It was her.

Persephone.

Her features rippled across the river’s surface, and for one wild moment, you thought she was beneath it, watching you. Waiting.

You jerked back, breath catching in your throat, hand flying to your face like you could wipe her away. But the shape of your cheek, lips, and bones beneath your skin were hers now.

There was no one to see your quiet panic.

Not a single soul to bear witness to the way the Queen of the Underworld cupped her cheeks and pinched her skin in an effort to ground herself.

You were alone.

On a boat.

In the middle of the river Styx.

On the way to the underworld.

Gods, you were fucked.

The ferryman, Charon, stood at the helm of the tiny vessel. He hadn’t spoken. Hadn’t looked at you. But you knew.

He was older than memory, older than time. No eyes. No voice. Just that awful silence he wore like a second skin, the press of centuries clinging to him like smoke. His robes whispered as he moved. His hands, bone-white and ancient, gripped the pole with unwavering control. Steady. Every motion was deliberate, ancient. He had ferried thousands before you. He would ferry thousands more after.

The information whipped through your brain, unbidden, unlearned by you.

You knew his name. Knew his oaths. Knew the exact number of coins once placed on the eyes of the dead to pay for safe passage and how many had tried to cheat him. You knew the rules of this place. The weight of them. The consequence of breaking them. The routes through Elysium. The twisting paths of Tartarus.

You knew it all.

It was not your knowledge, the way the memories invaded your skull and pressed against the fractured seams of your mind told you as much. This was another thing that belonged to Persephone. They were her memories threading themselves through your mind, like ivy growing unrelentingly through old stone; soft, invasive, and inevitable.

The goddess had said you'd share them. You hadn’t realised she meant it literally.

They came in flashes. Truth dropped into your skull like coins into a fountain, rippling outward until they changed the shape of you.

And with it came the rage.

Persephone’s rage burst through you, quiet and coiled and long-suffering. A grotesque and villainous husband snatching her from the light and deceiving her with the seeds of a pomegranate. The grief of a thousand springs stolen. The exhaustion of never quite belonging in either world.

And deeper still, there was something else. Another echo. Something older than memory.

Power.

It licked along your spine, curled at your fingertips. A whisper of seeds buried in your mouth, of vines itching to grow from your footprints. Of life and death intertwined.

You clenched your hands. The boat kept moving. Charon made no sound, no gesture but the slow, steady push of his oar through that endless dark water.

The deal had been made. The ambrosia had sealed it. You had swallowed it down and thought you’d wake from a dream. But you hadn’t. You had woken up in a myth. A prison made of moonlight and smoke.

The wind shifted. You caught the sweet scent of datura mixed with a chilling vibration in the air. Somewhere on the shore, something monstrous began to howl.

You hadn’t realised that your journey was complete until the boat ground to an aching halt beneath you. It groaned, a long, splintering sigh, as it scraped along the shore. Like something carved from bone and old sorrow, reluctant to part with its passenger.

You stepped onto the riverbank, wincing as the soft and yielding earth gave underfoot. It was like grave-damp loam, thick with memory and rot, sucking at the soles of your sandals until they were encased in filth. The same filth clung to the hem of Persephone’s dress, your dress, as the crimson robes darkened with it, turning into something akin to dried blood.

There was no sun, only a dull, sickly light that hung in the sky like a dying star. The world underneath was bathed in withered greens and bruised violets, hues that were never seen in your realm. The light touched nothing gently, casting shadows without shape, and turning the living grey and the dead luminous.

And somehow, you shone.

The unnatural light slid over your skin like moonlight over marble. It shimmered through your onyx hair. Reflected off your eyes. Persephone’s beauty was worn like a crown you had no right to carry.

The air reeked of soil, salt and something older than both, tasting hot in your lungs and making you want to sneeze from discomfort.

Before you, the entirety of the underworld stretched out beyond the banks of the Styx, beautiful and endlessly vast. It reminded you of old maps from your favourite childhood books, familiar in a sense.

The River Styx wound down from the mountainside where you stood, carving black veins through the valley below. It split and forked meeting with four other rivers. The Lethe, the Phlegethon, the Cocytus and the Acheron, all converging to form a massive lake, wide as any city.

You could see it clearly from this height, this ledge of stone and ruin where Charon had dropped you like an offering. The lake sat at the heart of everything, beating as the rivers brought life to everything around it. At least, they should have been.

You had expected noise. Ravenous screams from souls suffering in Tartarus, endless voices clamouring to be heard over the roar of fire and water. But there was almost perfect silence. Only the wind whispered through the air, and even that seemed afraid to speak.

Persephone’s voice stirred inside you, bitter as wormwood.

Let it rot for all I care.

And it had.

The Asphodel meadows, once said to stretch soft and endless, now lay collapsed across the landscape in a smear of greying ruin. A barren field of half-remembered things. Broken, colourless, withered flowers bent toward the cracked soil. Faded grass rasped in the breeze, dry, lifeless, and brittle.

Nothing bloomed properly.

An almost perfect mirror image of your little plant shop. Broken, dry and dead, the underworld reeked of the same neglect that ruined your livelihood.

It was hideous. Yet somehow, it was beautiful.

There was a ghost of memory clinging to the walls of your mind, begging you to think on it for just a moment, to admire what it had once been. The divine design was still embedded in the soil like perfume on silk, faded and cloying, desperate to be remembered. There was glory here once, a kind of mercy for the souls of the dead.

But the mercy had curdled.

Memories surged up behind your eyes, uninvited and warped. They were not clear thoughts, just feelings—impressions, like stained glass viewed from the wrong side—murky.

A meadow, long ago, with vibrant grass like crushed velvet. Blossoms the colour of wine and cream, blooming like soft stars. A hush of wind so delicate, carrying the perfume of new rain and crushed herbs, a solace in a world of death and destruction.

But even that memory turned to rot. Petals blackened at the edges, air turned sour, and the ground splitting roots like ribs bursting out of old skin.

Roots bursting out like ribs.

Let it die.

This place does not deserve life.

He does not deserve life.

Not from me.

Your hand clutched at your racing heart, pulses of nausea twisting through your chest, and a grief that did not belong to you catching around your teeth.

“I was wondering how long you were going to stand there, your majesty.”

The soft voice cut through you like the snap of a dry twig.

A girl stood on the path ahead, emerging from where the mountain slope curved down into the beginning of the valley. She appeared young, someone who had died too beautifully and lingered that way for too long, with half-wreathed mist curling and tumbling around her shoulders. A more tangible soul than anyone you had seen down the valley, and seemingly untouched by the same weariness that threaded through the land. Her robes were thin, gossamer silk flowing like smoke behind her. The robes of someone much higher up than the other souls that graced the banks of the great river.

You didn’t know her, but you knew her.

Eurydice.

The name bloomed inside of you, blossoming with Persephone’s recognition, a weary familiarity with no warmth or fondness. She was Persephone’s lady-in-waiting.

She bowed. Barely. Just enough to be proper. Just enough to show she was choosing not to do more.

“Welcome home, my lady,” she said. Her voice was dry, polite, and unmistakably suspicious.

Her gaze lingered too long. Her head tilted just slightly, like she was reading a smudge in a painting that shouldn’t be there.

You felt as though all your secrets had been laid bare before her, that she could see right through you, and there was nothing you could do about it.

Your mouth opened. Nothing came out.

Where were Persephone’s memories now? Surely there should’ve been a script, a routine, a phrase, a tone to mimic. But there was nothing. Eurydice’s face wasn’t attached to any clear memories of conversation, just a sense of quiet contempt. It was like they’d barely spoken.

You nodded because that was all you could do. You reached for that cold detachment that she seemed to wear like perfume in her memories.

“Things look… different,” you said.

Eurydice's lip twitched. Not quite a smile, more like amusement sharpening the edge of her mouth.

“This way, my lady. We should get you ready for your evening meal. Hades doesn’t like to be kept waiting. As I’m sure you know.”

Did you know that?

You weren’t sure of anything, other than the fact that you were so out of your depth, you wanted the ground to swallow you whole. Not that there would be any place left to go, you were already in the Underworld.

You followed her down a sloping path carved into the hillside. Narrow and crumbling, lined with low walls that might once have framed gardens or orchards. It reminded you of little British hamlets and medieval villages bustling with life and joy. Now they were marked with centuries of ruin.

Flanking the path were pieces of the Underworld. Shadowy plateaus, distant gates, and open pits shrouded in haze. You felt the weight of names pressing behind your eyes. Lethe. Tartarus. The Fields of Punishment. Each one a phantom that might solidify if you stared too long.

You kept walking, wondering if this is how Dorothy felt as she walked her path down the yellow-brick road.

Probably not, this seemed a lot more daunting.

The path narrowed as you descended, cutting into the mountainside like a scar, and then widening again as it plateaued off.

You followed Eurydice along the base of the path, framed by jagged stone and mist, until you arrived at a gate.

Like everything in the underworld, the gate was timeless and ageless, seemingly grown from the black iron vines that twisted into its monstrous arch. It latticed and spiked, humming with a kind of divine energy that you couldn’t comprehend. Behind it, you caught a glimpse of the main road leading toward the heart of the underworld, a fractured ribbon of stone vanishing into trees. What should have been gardens flanked the path, but like the rest of the land, they lay in ruin. Tangles of thorns and dying hedges hunched low like creatures too weary to stand.

As you and Eurydice approached the gate, a low rumble vibrated through the soles of your feet. Your memories already understood, but your own mind struggled with the realisation of what the monstrous thing could be.

Emerging from the mist with slow, deliberate thumps. His body radiated a menace born not just of size, but of age, of being feared for centuries unbroken. His paws were the size of dinner plates, claws curved and cracked, and his fur was dark, almost greying with matted, knotted ash and what looked like dried blood. One head watched you with cold reptilian stillness, the second snarled, low and guttural, lips curled to expose jagged teeth the size of your fingers. And the third… the third was already watching you like it knew something. Something important.

Cerberus.

He was much bigger than you’d imagined. Bigger than anything had a right to be. He looked more like some cursed warhorse than any creature born of dogs. Massive, monstrous, and stitched together by a god with no concept of restraint. He was all muscle and hard bone, a perfect weapon for violence and keeping out the living. And yet, there was something else in him. Something old and raw. Grief, or loyalty, maybe. The kind carved into you through centuries of solitude and mistreatment.

You gaped in awe of him, even as he snarled and grumbled.

Beside you, Eurydice halted, her body tense as the low, warning growl rumbled through Cerberus’ chest like the echo of thunder.

He moved toward you both, low, deliberate, heads dipping one by one as he crossed the threshold between territory and threat. Three pairs of eyes locked on yours, and for a breathless second, it was like staring into the centre of a storm.

Eurydice reached for your arm, terrified.

But you weren’t.

A dog is still a dog, after all; even one with three heads must exhibit some “normal” dog-like behaviours. You loved animals. All animals, even the ones that growled at you, ran away, or bit you.

You were determined to make this one your friend. To try and heal some of the years of training him to be a tool, rather than a pet.

You stepped forward, and the big puppy backed up just slightly, teeth bared now on all three heads, foam glistening at the corners of his mouths, hackles raised high and trembling with barely concealed anger. You could feel his breath on your skin, hot and damp and laced with decay.

But Persephone’s body didn’t flinch.

So neither did you.

“What’s got you all riled up, huh?” you murmured, voice quiet and even, the way you used to speak to sick animals in your shop, strays with infected eyes and fur matted to the skin, feral things that didn’t know what kindness sounded like anymore.

Cerberus snarled. The middle head lurched forward. Eurydice hissed your name like a warning, like a prayer she didn't believe in.

Cerberus would never truly hurt an immortal or one of the dead, so you were both perfectly safe. But somewhere deep, the part of you that was human wondered if having the soul of a mortal might make you the exception to the rule.

“Sit,” you commanded, keeping that warmth in your tone, but something in the way you said it pulled taut in the air and the hound froze.

All three heads went still.

One blinked. Another growled, a questioning, unsettled noise, as if the sound had slipped out before he could stop it.

A moment passed.

He almost nodded, and then Cerberus lowered himself to the ground. His hind legs bent first, tucking under himself with a small almost hop, then his front legs joined in, one paw folding delicately beneath the other.

The stone almost trembled beneath his weight.

Not quite a proper sit, but at least he wasn’t growling anymore.

You took a step closer, slow and sure, your gaze steady even as your heartbeat battered your ribs like a bird trying to escape its cage.

“Good boy,” you whispered.

One head tilted toward you, the middle one, with a nicked ear and a scar down the muzzle. His tail twitched with the urge to wag.

Deciding to push the boat, you reached your hand out to him, open and confident, letting him sniff your scent and get to know you. He would’ve met Persephone before, right? He knew her scent, right?

Cerberus leaned in, cautiously at first, as if he couldn’t quite believe what you were offering. Then, fully, burying the weight of his skull into your palm with a rumble that could have been a growl or a purr.

The other heads were not as patient.

The leftmost head shoved his sibling aside, nudging hard against your arm for attention, while the third snarled jealously and wedged his snout beneath your hand, baring his throat in submission.

“Oh,” you laughed, the sound breathless and strange in your ears. “So you’re greedy now, aren’t you, sweetheart?”

The three heads were fighting for affection, batting at each other like puppies in a litter, each trying to climb over one another to get closest to your touch. A low, vibrating growl buzzed through his chest, the kind that spoke of contentment combined with a tail that wagged so powerfully, that the earth rumbled with each slap of it against it.

“Settle down,” you murmured. “There’s plenty of me to go around.”

Behind you, Eurydice still hadn’t moved.

Cerberus curled closer, still rumbling contentedly beneath your hand, each head jostling the others for space. Their massive shoulders pressed into your side, and you felt their breath ruffle the hem of your robes like wind through the dead grass.

You turned slightly, just enough to glance back at Eurydice who was still frozen in place. Her expression was unreadable, but her eyes, sharp and knowing, had lost what little reverence they once held.

She tilted her head, curls falling over one shoulder.

Then, flatly, like it didn’t matter at all:

“He’s never…” she said, and her voice caught, barely audible. “Well, you're certainly not Persephone, but you must be the goddess of something if he’s reacting like this to you.”

A pause. Not long enough for denial. Not long enough for excuses.

“She would never greet him like that. And she’s never once called him ‘sweetheart.’”

Eurydice swept past you, her robes whispering across the stone, and opened the gates before you could respond, her voice drifting back like an afterthought. “You’ll want to fix that before dinner, I suppose.”

The palace loomed before you like a memory half-forgotten. Spires of black stone pierced the sky, twisted and jagged like frozen lightning, curved from obsidian and the bones of giants. The gates yawned wide, swallowing you and Eurydice whole as you passed through them.

You tried to focus on the details. You’d heard that it worked to anchor people in moments of high anxiety, so you listed them in your head. The echo of your sandals as your feet hit the polished stone floors. The scent of smoke and oud clinging to the hallways. The burgundy mosaics beneath your feet. The labyrinth of corridors that Eurydice led you through.

Nothing worked. Your thoughts skittered uselessly, lost in the weight of the moment prior.

Of course, she had seen right through you. Who were you kidding? You were nothing like the ageless Goddess of Spring. What did you think was going to happen?

The truth had spilled, clumsy and raw, from your lips on the walk from the gate. Like a sinner confessing their truth from memory, unsure if any of it would be believed. How Persephone had come to your shop. How she’d offered you salvation. Everything. Or at least, everything you understood.

Eurydice hadn’t said much. She’d just walked beside you, her silence brittle. Until, finally, she broke the tension.

“Of course she did,” Eurydice said, the words flat as ash. The tone of someone betrayed so many times, it had stopped feeling personal.

“She hates this place. Has since she stepped foot in it. The first crack in the stone was from her sigh of disgust.”

You didn’t know what to say. So you said nothing.

“That was your first mistake,” Eurydice chuckled humourlessly. “You were wayyyy too nice. He’s going to see straight through that. You want to be convincing?” She turned slightly, giving you a once-over. “You’ll need to carry yourself like you’ve got a sceptre lodged up your ass.”

Your jaw dropped open. “Should you be saying things like that about a Goddess?” you’d asked, shocked.

She snorted. “Please. She can’t hear me. Not up in her precious mortal world.”

“But still-”

“Oh, don’t look at me like that. What’s she going to do, smite me again? What’s death times two?”

You didn’t know whether to laugh or wince. “Aren’t you worried?”

“About her?” Eurydice shrugged, then tilted her head, voice dropping just slightly. “No. About the others? Maybe. The gods don’t like being criticised. They like obedience. Worship. And silence.”

She looked you dead in the eye for a moment too long.

And then, softer:

“Just… be careful with your kindness, alright? It makes you easy to spot.”

You nodded, mulling it over and then straightening your back a little more.

The dressing chamber smelled of citrus and sweet herbs, musky and oudy from incense and perfumed oils. It hung heavy in the air, thick like honey. Fabrics pooled across every surface in shades of every colour, black, bruised plum, blood wine, moonlight white, silver, and gold gossamer silk softer than anything you’d ever felt.

Eurydice didn’t speak. She moved through the fabrics with expert hands, brushing velvet and silk aside like a priest, so used to the ritual it had become second nature.

Finally, she pulled a black gown from a carved wardrobe and held it up to the candlelight. It shimmered faintly, its surface swallowing the glow of light like a mirror to another world.

A perfect complement to the richness of Persephone’s hair, something that could drink in the sun and never return it.

“Arms up,” she said, already stepping forward.

You obeyed. The fabric settled over you, clinging in places that made you flush, and flowing so perfectly with the curves of Persephone’s perfect figure. The sleeves swept from your shoulders like raven wings mid-moult. The neckline plunged. The neckline plunged with the waist sculpting itself into your ribs. When you caught your reflection in the nearest mirror, you stopped breathing.

She was beautiful before, in your tiny little shop, surrounded by dead flowers and dreams. But like this, she shone with an otherworldly radiance. It was unnatural, the intensity of a beauty meant to be worshipped and feared.

“Hair,” Eurydice said next, already behind you, leading you to a vanity.

Her fingers in Persephone’s curls were quick, precise, and practiced. Braiding like she was weaving armour and crowning you with coils of black and gold. Pins slid through your scalp like thorns through fruit. Your eyes watered, but you held still.

“Is this really necessary?” you asked, hating the way your voice trembled.

Eurydice made a sound low in her throat. Not quite a laugh. “You’re about to dine with a god. With your husband. You have to show up looking like she would.”

She reached for a slender vial on the vanity and poured silver oil into her hands. It glittered like melted stars, catching in the hollows of her palms. She worked it into your skin, your arms, collarbones, and throat until you gleamed with light that came from within.

The scent was heady, creamy tonka and nutmeg mixing with the Goddess’ natural scent.

Your skin drank it like water. And when she was finished, you barely recognised yourself.

Power looked back from the mirror.

Painted over your bones. Pressed into your mouth and eyes and all the spaces where fear used to live.

Eurydice stood behind you, her face unreadable. Her eyes flicked to yours in the glass.

“Try to act like you belong here.”

You stared at yourself for a long moment. At the gown. The braids. The liquid gleam of oil on your collarbone.

“Who exactly is he?” you exhaled.

Eurydice blinked, needing a beat to realise what you were asking about, who you were asking about. “Hades?”

You nodded, averting your eyes to hide the spike of fear you felt. “I mean… I’ve seen him in her memories. Is he really so cruel? So…”

“Grotesque?” Eurydice offered, already turning away to put away the oils. You nodded. “Mmmm, that makes sense.”

You hesitated. “So is he… like that, I mean?”

She chuckled, raising an eyebrow. “You’ll be able to see for yourself if you're patient enough. But no, Hades is a God after all, he looks like the rest of them.”

You looked at her reflection in the mirror. “Then why does he look like that in her memories?”

Eurydice leaned against the vanity, folding her arms. “Because that’s what she wanted to see. It’s easier to hate someone if you make them monstrous.”

Your mouth was dry.

“He’s a man, a God. They all have the ability to be monstrous, especially husbands, but he’s not the villain you’re expecting to see.”

She turned away, folding and organising a pile of already folded and organised silks.

You hesitated. You hadn’t wanted to ask, hadn’t even wanted to think it, but the words clawed their way out all the same. “Do I… what about marital duties?”

Eurydice laughed. A real laugh this time, sharp and unexpected. “Gods, no. He won’t touch you. He never has. Honestly, he’ll probably keep half the room between you so as not to incur her wrath any further. He’s had enough of her ire.”

You blinked. The image of a God shying away from a Goddess was almost laughable, given what you knew about mythology. “What, he’s afraid of her?”

Her smile faded into something harder to name. “He’s not what she says he is.”

You turned back to the mirror, taking yourself in again. The weight of it all. The crown of braids. The sharp bones of your borrowed face.

“And what does he want from me?” you asked, quietly.

Eurydice’s voice softened just slightly. “He wants peace, everyone here wants peace.”

The doors to the dining hall loomed ahead, vast and daunting. They were as beautiful as they were ominous. Twin slabs of obsidian veined with red and gold, each carved with a thousand ancient shapes too faded to name. The handles were sculpted into serpents devouring their own tails, mouths locked in eternal hunger.

Beautiful. Haunting. Fitting for the Underworld.

Eurydice led you as far as the threshold to the antechamber before stopping. She motioned toward the room with the air of someone giving instructions to a guest she wasn’t responsible for.

“You wait in here until you’re announced and then just… sit down and eat what’s put on your plate. Or don’t,” she paused, thinking. “Your choice.”

Your pulse flared again, sharp as a needle to the chest. Something must have flickered across your face, perhaps panic, or something akin to it, because Eurydice hesitated for half a second.

With a single nod, murmured, “You’ll be fine.”

You wanted her to stay. She knew your secret; she was the only comfort you had in this place, the only thing you had become familiar with.

But before you could say anything, she turned and vanished down the corridor, her footsteps lost to the hush of her robes.

Your fingers twitched.

You were alone.

You breathed in deeply, then let it go slowly through your teeth. Again. Again. Just like your therapist taught you. Focus. Name five things you can see.

Doors.

Stained glass windows.

Marble floors.

Wall sconces.

Dead roses.

Your hands tingled.

The antechamber was quiet. Unnaturally so. The silence wasn’t empty. It was cold and profound. The walls had memory. They watched and they remembered every step.

Cold crept up your spine. Not the fresh chill of air, but the kind that had been sealed into stone. The kind that soaked into your bones and whispered. You shouldn’t be here.

Gods. It felt like the entire underworld had been carved from your worst fear. Like it saw you. And was waiting for you to see it back.

Your legs were braced like they expected to run. Your fingertips prickled. Electricity danced beneath your skin, crawling over your knuckles, down into your palms.

You rubbed at them, trying to work the pins and needles out of them, needing the sensation to disappear. Dragging your hand across the nearest wall, you tried to shake it off, but the sensation only deepened. The roses were dead, colourless and brittle in a pot by the wall. Their scent had long since faded, yet the thorns remained sharp. Would it be too much to shove them into your fingertips? Would it alleviate the ache?

You moved towards them instinctively, as a body moves towards an old habit. A low hum resonated behind your ribs. It was almost a feeling but more like sheer need.

Your fingers grazed the leaves, the dried flowers, and finally, you pressed the pad of your thumb against a single thorn.

The sting never came, but the itch snapped. An electric pulse raced out of your hand like static, like something exhaled. Maybe it was you. A single drop of blood beaded at the puncture and fell into the dry soil.

And the plant breathed.

The petals unfurled into a bruised crimson, lush and heavy, the scent filling the air with sweetness and an almost unnatural perfume of the blooms.

You staggered back, horrified. The heat of embarrassment flushing your skin.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” you whispered.

You didn’t even know how you’d done it, let alone why. One moment your thumb was bleeding, and the next there was breath and bloom. The roses had opened like a pair of lips. Like they’d been waiting for her.

Well, maybe not her. Maybe they had been waiting for you.

Panic swelled, thick and sour at the back of your throat. Someone would notice. Of course they would. The underworld was full of eyes, and a change that vivid would gleam like a beacon. The flowers were too red. Too alive.

They would see. And it would give you away.

It was clear that Persephone would never invoke blooms so beautiful in this place, it reeked of her neglect. So why? Why did it react so beautifully under your hands? Why was it so instinctual?

You touched it again, hands trembling. "Stop," you whispered, as if words alone could undo what you’d done. You touched the nearest rose and pictured it as it was before, to force it back into its rotten state. Dry, brittle, folded in on itself like a secret too tired to keep living.

It didn’t work.

The petals only leaned into you, soft and dewy and utterly alive. The scent grew sweeter.

“No no no-” your voice cracked, barely a sound, your fingers fluttering uselessly over their blooms. “I didn’t mean to-”

But the power wasn’t listening.

It wasn’t yours to reason with.

It belonged to the body you now wore, rooted in your bloodstream, and threaded through your bones like new ivy claiming an old wall. It was not something that could be borrowed or worn lightly. It was invasive, permanent, and it was the power that had chosen to react.

You gripped the edge of the pedestal, trying to slow your breathing.

Persephone’s memories rose in your chest like a flood, slick with rage and decay and things that had grown in places they never should have. You saw her hand outstretched over a field, her fury curling through her fingers, vines tearing through soil like teeth. You felt the ache of it. It felt like grief and surrender.

She’d tried to kill this place on purpose, but her power hadn’t obeyed.

Because the power didn’t bow to Persephone’s wants and desires, it obeyed her essence. And that essence had always been to bring life.

You staggered back, breathing like you’d just run from something ancient. Your hands were sticky with oil and magic and rose-pollen. The antechamber swam slightly, shadow thickening at the corners of your vision. You tried to steady yourself, to quiet the magic pulsing beneath your skin.

This wasn’t something you could control. You were a mortal in a borrowed shape, a paper crown on a guillotine block, and if you weren’t careful, the entire Underworld would feel it. You needed to calm down.

You barely had the thought when a sound broke the silence.

The groan of ancient hinges as the doors were opening.

You spun too quickly, nearly tripping over your own feet, the silks of your gown tangling around your ankles. You tried to stand taller, to steady your breath, to remember how a goddess would carry herself. You were still trembling when the dining hall revealed itself.

The world stilled to watch you fall.

You stepped forward as if in a trance, your breath shallow in your throat. Every nerve lit up with dread. Persephone’s memories had painted this room in horror.

Stone floors slick with blood. A table piled with bones, a crown of teeth as the centrepiece. She remembered the reek of death curling in her nostrils like smoke. The way she said it always smelled of rot in here, like the Underworld itself was bleeding from the seams.

You braced yourself.

But there was no blood. No bones. Only silence. Only shadow. Only the flicker of golden light playing over obsidian.

The dining hall was cathedral-vast, shadowed and sacred. Obsidian columns rose like the bones of titans, wrapped in gilded vines and etched with stories written in dead tongues. The vaulted ceiling disappeared into ash. Braziers lit the space in slow pulses of gold, casting no warmth, their only purpose was gilding the cold edges of the room in firelight. The air tasted holy, heavy with incense and the quiet weight of expectation. At the centre of it all stretched a table long enough to bridge kingdoms.

At the far end of it, he sat.

He was everything you feared.

And nothing you’d expected.

Hades was nothing like the grotesque tyrant from Persephone’s memories. Not the skeletal, snarling God her rage had painted behind your eyes.

He was something else entirely.

He reclined in a throne carved from black stone, his posture loose with power, his limbs arranged like he’d never been told no. He was unbearable in his beauty. A weapon forged in starlight and storm.

He wore robes the colour of midnight sins, draped across one shoulder and leaving the other bare, sculpted muscle gilded by candlelight. His bare chest was an artwork of lines and valleys, the planes of him cut sharp and perfect. A chain of obsidian circled his throat, nestled in the hollow like it belonged to no one else.

Rings glinted on his fingers, thick and ancient, each one more beautiful than the last, a perfect complement to his own divine beauty. His hands alone could ruin or resurrect.

Moon-pale skin stretched over sharp cheekbones and a jaw that could cut glass. His lips jutted upwards in a smirk that sent a wave of heat through you. His eyes, Gods his eyes, they dragged over you with the patience of something eternal. Red as old fire. Red as fresh blood spilled in silence.

Those eyes pinned you like a butterfly to velvet.

They didn’t roam. They devoured.

They flicked past you, just briefly, to the cluster of roses still blooming at your back. And when they returned to yours, there was something in them that made your stomach clench.

When he finally spoke, his voice resonated, booming through the room.

“I see you’ve already begun redecorating,” his words came low, warm, and slow.

And it did something terrible to you—something the Goddess would probably take your head for.

You stood at the edge of his kingdom, wrapped in a body that wasn’t yours, trembling beneath a gaze that didn’t look away. The petals behind you rustled as if they too held their breath.

You were not ready. For this.

“Darling wife, won’t you take your seat?”

DISCLAIMER: This is heavily inspired by Goddess of Spring, one of the books in the Goddess Summoning series by P.C. Cast.

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