When they come before her, lost, confused, weeping for the life they left behind, she greets them with comfort and with asophodel flowers. She shows them to the meadows Hades left fallow, tells them “build and be well,” tells them “the end of your life is not the end of you; find joy in each other, for now, all things are equal.”
She finds the man who left her, the one she sold her soul to save, and presses a pomegranate kiss to his forehead, whispering, “Treat her better than you ever dreamt of treating me,” as her gaze goes, ever-seeking, ever-judging, to the woman who stands in the shadows, trembling in her fear. He is weeping when he steps away. He will spend the rest of eternity trying to be worthy of her mercy.
And when they come to her cold and cruel, she shows them the lake, which still churns, eternal and cruel, at the center of her Underworld.
Hercules visits as he can, when the world does not need a hero. Not as often as either of them would like. He gathers her close, until the warmth seeps from him into her, until she feels like a living woman again, and her kisses taste of sour wine and cruel earth, and he loves her even in the absence of her heartbeat.
There are those who cannot believe that Hades would step aside, and so they claim that the sad-eyed woman who walks his halls is not his replacement, but his bride; they spin stories around her as spiders spin webs in temple corners. She looks like Megara, departed bride of Hercules, but that cannot be; Hercules would slay any man who touched his beloved, even now that she is dust and bones. She must be someone else, then, someone new.
She does not know who first called her “Persephone.” It does not matter.
When Hades returns, it is to find the world has changed. The temples have fallen; the gates of Olympus are closed. A thousand years of myth have made of a captive his common-law bride, and she meets him at the doors of his own kingdom with a smile on her lips, a three-headed dog at her side, and a scroll sealing their divorce in her hands.
“Thanks for the house,” she says, while he’s still staring. “Now if you’ll excuse me, wonderboy and I have a date with my father-in-law.”
Never give the keys to the kingdom to a woman with no reason to give them back to you.
