MAY BABY

HOLIDAY REMIXES

LIZ SHIPTON

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination.

MAY BABY

May 1, 2024.

Copyright © 2024 Liz Shipton

Written by Liz Shipton

Tyrannosaurus Yes Media

CONTENT WARNING

This one’s pretty straightforward. Just a guy and a girl and a big, purple dildo.

He kidnaps her.

There is a part where he gets angry and drags her up some stairs.

Honestly, this is a problematic relationship.

Also, he’s her uncle.

I feel like people forget that.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

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CHAPTER 1

PERSEPHONE

THE RAIN WAS SHEETING down like iron rods in the slate gray streets, flooding the gutters and pummeling the black and navy-blue umbrellas of pedestrians. Persephone squinted through her windshield at the barely-visible tail lights ahead of her. The wipers were cracked and old, and were doing basically nothing to mitigate the water flooding down the fogged-up glass. The engine was making that noise again.

Her phone buzzed on the passenger seat and she picked it up. A call from Mom. Sighing, she threw on her blinker and checked over her shoulder, narrowly missing an oncoming cyclist and eliciting a series of angry honks from the cars behind her as she pulled across the right lane and into an empty space at the sidewalk. She turned off the car and swiped open the call.

“Yes?”

“Seph, I need you to confirm that you’re coming to dinner on the nineteenth. I sent you a text an hour ago and heard nothing back.”

“Seriously?” Persephone squeezed her eyes shut and pinched them. “Is this seriously what you’re calling about? I’m working, Mom.”

Mom scoffed. “Working. What are you doing? Taking a selfie?”

“I’m driving. In the rain.”

Mom huffed down the line. “Well you don’t have to answer. I could have left a voicemail.”

“You never do that! If I don’t pick up you’ll just keep calling and calling until I do.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is true, Mom. You can’t even wait for me to get off work to reply to your text. I’m busy!”

Mom was quiet. Then, “So are you coming or not?”

Persephone closed her eyes and tilted her head against the headrest. “Yup. I’ll be there.”

“Great. And I need you to make that salad again. The one with the raisins.”

“You always pick the raisins out!”

“Well, other people like them.”

“Gods. Yep, fine, I’ll make a salad. Anything else?”

“I feel like you’re mad at me.”

Persephone grit her teeth. “I’m not mad at you, Mom.”

“Are you sure? Because it feels like you’re mad at me.”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay.” A long silence. “I love you.”

“Love you too, Mom.”

Persephone tapped to end the call and tossed the phone onto the seat. Then she gripped the wheel between both hands and stared through the fogged-up windshield. She sat for a long time, watching the red and white streaks of head-and-tail lights winking by. It was May Day. And her own mother had forgotten to wish her Happy Birthday.

Sighing, she checked over her shoulder and turned the key in the ignition. The engine sputtered and didn’t start.

“No.”

She turned the key again. The car made a sound like an eighty-year-old smoker having a bronchial event, shuddered and was still.

“No. No no no no no.”

She tried the key again. And again. On the passenger seat beside the phone, the UberEats order she was supposed to be delivering continued to dissipate heat and the smell of curry. Persephone slammed her fist against the horn. She beat the dashboard with her palm. Then she took the wheel in both hands again and dropped her forehead to it.

“Fuck.”

Welp, she was going to lose this delivery gig. Probably. Fuck it—at least she could eat the curry. Sighing, she sat up, flicked on the emergency lights, and picked up her phone. A text popped up. From Mom.

> Happy Birthday, Sweetheart.

Persephone swiped it closed. As she opened Google to look up the number for the nearest tow truck, the screen flashed once and then went dark. The battery was dead.

“Are you. Fucking. Kidding me.”

She reached into the glove box for a charger, but of course, there was no charger in the glove box. Slamming it shut, she shoved her hand into her hair and braced her elbow against the window and glared through the windshield again.

Olympus was turning out to be tougher than she’d thought it would be. Eight months in the city and she’d yet to land an audition. Her server jobs paid shit, and it didn’t seem to matter how many near-topless selfies she posted, her Instagram sat at a measly 3500 followers. This UberEats gig had been a last-ditch effort to scrounge together the money she needed to make rent this month—make rent today—since her building had just ended rent control and the rate had sky-rocketed. And now she was going to lose it.

She beat her fist against the window and grabbed the takeout box of curry off the passenger seat. She was halfway through viciously tearing open the wrapper on the little plastic spoon and fork, when the dim gray light coming through the fogged-up window went even darker and she turned to see a black SUV, so tall it blocked everything around it, pulling up next to her car. She checked in front of it—traffic hadn’t stopped. The SUV had just pulled to a halt in the middle of the street. Cars behind started honking. Frowning, she cracked the window just enough to peer over the top.

The blacked-out rear passenger window rolled down. On the other side of it was the face of a man so beautiful Persephone nearly dropped the curry. Jet black hair tousled around a brown, angular face with high cheekbones and a strong, aquiline nose. Crystal gray eyes that were striking against his smooth, dark skin. He was wearing a black suit, black shirt that looked like silk or something, a black tie, and had a tiny diamond stud in his right ear. He kind of reminded her of a Saudi guy she’d dated once. That guy had been a DJ. This guy was almost certainly not.

She just managed to keep her mouth from falling open, rolled the window all the way down and said, “Hello?”

“Do you need help?”

“Uh—” Persephone looked around the car’s interior like there might be an answer somewhere nearby, then said, “What?”

“You’re sitting here with your blinkers on. I thought you might need help.”

“Oh. No—” She waved the plastic fork. “I’m fine.”

“Do you have someone to call?”

She laughed bitterly. “My phone is dead. But I’ll be fine. Thanks.”

His eyes narrowed and swept around her face. She felt suddenly as though she were being interrogated, and that he wasn’t happy with her answers. She shivered, although whether it was because of the rain and cold air that were now coming through the window, or because of the seriousness of his silver eyes, she wasn’t sure.

“It’s not safe for you to be stranded here,” he said. “This isn’t a good neighborhood.”

“This is my neighborhood.”

His eyes indicated that this was also an unsatisfactory revelation. “How are you going to fix this situation?”

“Excuse me? What kind of question is that?”

“What is your plan for getting yourself out of this neighborhood?”

Getting out of this neighborhood? Like, right now? Or permanently? Oh fuck, existential crisis…

“I don’t…know.”

He cracked the SUV’s door and shifted sideways on the seat. “Get in.”

“What? No. No way.”

His jaw ticked. “Is this always how you respond to people trying to help you?”

“It’s how I respond to random dudes who pull up in the rain and tell me to get in their car.”

“I’m not a random dude.”

“Look, this is kind of freaking me out. I’m fine, okay? I don’t need any help.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Just get in the car—”

“I said no.” She glared. “Thank you.”

His eyes flashed. He held her gaze with his bright, icy stare as a long, chilly breath passed between them. Then he slammed the SUV door shut and rolled up the window, disappearing behind a black slate.

Persephone rolled up her foggy window and blew out a breath. She turned her attention back to the plastic utensils. The curry was nearly cold now, but whatever. At least—

Her door flew open and a pair of hands came through it and grabbed her around the shoulders.

“Hey!”

Persephone screamed and dropped the curry, splattering bright orange sauce all over her jeans and the footwell, as an enormous bald guy in a suit and sunglasses wrestled her out of her seatbelt and dragged her from the vehicle. The SUV hadn’t pulled away—the passenger-side front door was open, and as the bald guy flung open the back door and threw Persephone through it, she realized he’d come out of that same vehicle.

He slammed the door behind her and Persephone heaved a terrified breath.

She was being fucking kidnapped.

HADES

Miserable, slate gray rain pummeled the roof of the SUV as it weaved painstakingly down the traffic-clogged street toward downtown. Hades sighed and looked out the window.

He hated coming to this part of town. It was seedy and foul. Mortals scurried down the sidewalk under their boring umbrellas, in their boring suits, on their way to their boring jobs. Drab. All of it. For a city full of living souls, Olympus was pretty fucking soulless.

A flash of orange caught his eye, and Hades looked up to see a bright yellow car pulled haphazardly up to the sidewalk ahead with its blinkers on. A classic old Volkswagen bug with a vanity license plate that said FAMOUS1. It looked like a piece of shit—rusty around the tailpipe and with condensation fogging up the windows—but it stood out so vividly against the dismal, gray street, that he couldn’t take his eyes off it. It was like a patch of sunlight coming through the clouds.

He leaned forward and pressed the intercom button. “Charon? Pull up next to that car.”

The driver’s voice came back down the line. “The yellow one, My Lord?”

“Yes.”

A second voice came through—Kerberos, his bald, beefy security guard, who was up in the passenger seat next to Charon. “Are you sure, Sir? We’re running late.”

“I’m aware.” Hades clicked off the intercom and looked out the window again. The SUV pulled to a stop next to the bug and he looked down through the little car’s driver’s side window. It was so fogged up with condensation that he couldn’t see inside.

He waited. He wasn’t sure why, but his heart was beating fast. He felt like he’d stumbled on some kind of treasure box at the bottom of a deep, dark ocean, and the anticipation of discovering what was inside was making all the hair on his arms stand up.

The bug’s window cracked and a pair of dark blue eyes peeped over the top of the glass. Hades felt a jolt of electricity shoot down the back of his neck. He rolled down his window. The eyes took in his face, his suit, his tie. They flicked to the stud in his ear. Very slowly, the bug’s window rolled down.

Hades’ breath stilled in his chest. The face that was revealed on the other side of the glass was the most beautiful he had ever seen. Strong, dark eyebrows to contrast her soft, white-blonde hair. Pink lips bowed like a ribbon. A handful of freckles scattered across her pale cheeks and slightly upturned nose.

They looked at each other for what felt to Hades like a literal eternity, while his insides shattered, crumbled, and fell over each other in an effort to put themselves back together. He managed to stop his mouth from falling open. He managed to put some air into his lungs.

The girl he’d just fallen immediately and irrevocably in love with blinked. She frowned up at him and said, “Hello?”

CHAPTER 2

PERSEPHONE

IN ANY OTHER SITUATION, Persephone would have been ecstatic to be sitting in the back of a car like this. Soft black leather seats, marbled wood trim. Maybe one day she’d be in a vehicle like this on the way to a red carpet, instead of to an unknown location where she’d most likely be tortured and killed.

The beautiful, black-haired man with the earring sat stone-faced on the other side of the car. He’d said nothing since Persephone had been thrown in next to him fifteen minutes ago. Persephone watched him the way a cat watches a dog walk down the opposite side of the street.

“Where are we going?” she whispered.

The man didn’t respond.

The blacked-out windows had darkened on the insides too, and Persephone couldn’t see out of them as the vehicle made its way through the city streets. At some point, they turned and picked up speed, and she guessed they must be heading out of the city. She kept her eyes fixed on the black-haired man as they swept along what must have been a highway heading out into the countryside.

Thirty minutes later, she heard gravel crunching under the tires, and the vehicle stopped. She sat, breathless, listening, as the two front doors opened and two pairs of boots stepped out. One pair crunched up to her door, and she heard the handle jiggle.

Persephone took a breath. She balled her hands into fists.

As the door swung open, she threw herself past the bald security guy and staggered out onto the gravel. It was still pouring rain, and the bright gray sky blinded her as she stumbled toward a line of trees and rain-soaked grass on the other side of the driveway. The trees stood at the edge of a river, swollen with rain and roaring along the boundary that separated the driveway from the fields beyond. Footsteps pounded up behind her. She chanced a look over her shoulder and slipped, tumbled, and went down hard on her elbows in gravel and mud.

The security guard grabbed her under the arm and hauled her to her feet. She shrieked and tried to kick him in the balls, but he intercepted her foot with his other hand, used it to pull her toward him, and swung her over one shoulder. Screaming, she beat on him with her fists as he turned and carried her up the driveway toward an imposing, stately mansion.

Inside, the house was chilly and dark. Persephone’s furious shouts echoed off the marble floor as the security guard carried her to a plush living room and dumped her onto a red velvet sofa. She immediately scrambled up and tried to lunge past him, but he stopped her easily with one hand in the center of her chest and pushed her down.

“Please try to be calm, Ma’am,” he said. “He’s not going to hurt you.”

“Who is he? What is this? What do you want with me?”

The security guard folded his hands in front of him and looked down at her from behind his sunglasses. Then he touched his right ear and said, “Yes?” He appeared to listen for a moment, then nodded briskly, said, “Yes, My Lord,” turned, and walked out of the door, closing and locking it behind him.

Chest heaving, Persephone looked around. A huge stone fireplace, book cases; enormous French doors looking out onto a sweeping, rain-soaked estate. She ran to the doors and rattled the handles. She put her back to them and scanned the room again. On the other side of it was a white marble bust. It looked heavy enough to break a window.

She was halfway across the room when the door the security guard had exited through rattled. Persephone froze. Her instinct was to hide, but what good was that going to do? There were only so many places she could go. And it wasn’t as though hiding was going to get her out of there any faster. Her heart began to thump in her ears as, paralyzed, she watched the handle turn and the door swing slowly open.

As the beautiful stranger stepped across the threshold, the room seemed to darken. Shadows crept out of their corners and stretched across the floor as the door slammed shut behind him. A draft whistled under the French doors and slipped down the back of her neck. The walls closed in as he crossed the room toward her, seeming to grow taller with every deliberate, menacing step. Persephone shivered and took a step backward.

He stopped. “Are you cold?”

Persephone said nothing. The stranger lifted a finger and aimed it at the fireplace. A blast of blue flame erupted from the hearth, flooding the room with eerie blue light, chasing the shadows back to their corners.

He turned his icy gray eyes back to her. “Better?”

“Who are you?” she said.

He resumed his slow, calculated approach. Persephone stepped back again and felt her heel come up against the sofa. She steeled herself as he closed the gap between them and stood before her, at least a head taller, a demon in his black suit, wreathed in shadow. She caught a fiery scent—like smoke and cinnamon.

“Who are you?” she repeated. “What do you want?”

He lifted a hand and she flinched. But he didn’t try to grab her. Just flicked a finger and, keeping his eyes on hers, summoned a black towel out of thin air and handed it to her.

“Dry your hair.”

Wordlessly, she took it. He stepped back and watched as she dried herself. His eyes tracked the movement of the towel around her face, lingering on her neck when she lifted her hair and dabbed it there.

“You’re being really creepy,” she said.

His eyes flicked back to hers. “Apologies.”

She shoved the towel back at him and he held it in both hands for a moment, still taking in her face like someone observing the Mona Lisa for the first time.

“What do you want with me?”

“I’d like to give you a job.”

Persephone stared at him. “I’m sorry. What?”

He tossed the towel aside and it evaporated. “I’d like to give you a job. Here.”

“You kidnapped me and brought me here to give me a job?”

“If you had just listened to me and got in the car, I could have explained all this—”

“If I had listened to you? Oh I’m so sorry that instead of listening to the guy who pulled up and told me to get in his car, I listened to my own instincts, which were screaming at me that this asshole was totally gonna try to kidnap me. And oh look!” She threw up her hands. “I was right.”

“I didn’t want to do that. You were stranded in a dangerous neighborhood and you refused to accept my help. You left me no choice.”

“That was my neighborhood!”

“And when I asked you how you planned to get out of it, you said you didn’t know.”

“I would have been fine. I could have walked to my apartment from there!”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

Existential crisis. Rent. Broke. Persephone squeezed her eyes shut and shoved all that out of her head. “Then what the fuck are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about giving you a job. So you can get out of that neighborhood.”

She glared at him. “What makes you think I’d accept a job from you?”

“Nothing, I suppose. Except that you’re clearly in dire straits and could use the money.”

“You don’t know that. I’m doing fine.”

“Is that why you’re living in that neighborhood and driving around that piece of shit? Is that why you’re delivering—” He paused, leaned a little closer, and sniffed. “Curry?”

Her face flushed scarlet. “Fuck off.”

“Your license plate says Famous,” he continued, “but I’ve never heard of you. Your clothes are…well fitting, but off-the-rack. And you obviously never learned any manners.” He observed her coolly. “Would you at least like to hear what the job is?”

Persephone realized her mouth had fallen open in incredulous disbelief. She was so furious she couldn’t speak. How dare this asshole? Dire straits? No manners? You know who didn’t have manners? Kidnappers. Kidnappers like this asshole were decidedly lacking in basic manners.

But then…

There was the fact that he was, annoyingly, right. Existential crisis. Rent. Broke. She’d almost certainly been reported as failing to make that delivery by now. Rent was due today and she didn’t have it. She couldn’t even post to Instagram because her phone was dead and she had no idea where the charger was, and—oh fuck. Her car. Her car was still sitting in the fucking street with the blinkers on and the door open! Her phone was in the car. Purse. Wallet. Everything. At this point, she didn’t even care if someone stole the car—good luck to them getting it started, honestly—but she needed her fucking phone and the two-hundred-and-fifty dollars in that wallet.

“My car.” She glared. “Where’s my car?”

“Don’t worry about your car. Charon will bring it here if you decide to stay.”

“Stay? Why would I do that?”

“As I keep trying to explain, I’m trying to give you a job.”

“A job doing what?”

“I’m in need of an au pair. Some live-in help.”

“A nanny? You want me to be your nanny.”

“Essentially.”

Persephone narrowed her eyes around the room. “This doesn’t look like the kind of house that has kids in it.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Why would you say that?”

“It’s nice. Too nice. Where’s all the kid junk? Where’s the carpet of Legos I should be trampling under my feet? How do I know you’re not trying to trap me? How do I know you even have kids?”

“I do.” He returned her glare. “Do you want the job or not?”

“What does it pay?”

“It pays well. And you’ll be given a room. All your meals will be taken care of.”

Persephone eyed him. “What’s the catch?”

“There’s no catch.” He shook his head. “Just a couple of rules.”

“And those are?”

“You’re not to leave. And under no circumstances are you to go in the basement.”

Her mouth fell open. “I can’t leave? So I’ll be a prisoner?”

His jaw ticked. “Prisoners aren’t usually paid, as far as I’m aware.”

“Well nannies aren’t usually held captive either.”

They glared at each other. Finally, he said, “I think you’ll find it very agreeable here. Certainly a step up from your old digs. And the children are so easy you’ll probably never even see them. My guess is, after a week or so, you won’t want to leave.”

She scoffed. “The kids are so easy I’ll never see them? What kind of nanny job is that?”

“A very easy one.” He held her gaze. “Do you want the job or not?”

Persephone stared at him. This was insane. This was fucking insane. There was no way she was considering this. Was she? Was she…considering this?

She glanced around the room. It was nice. Super fucking nice. She imagined her bedroom would be super fucking nice, too. Probably a four-poster bed. Probably a balcony. Private bathroom…

And he was going to pay her? And she wouldn’t even have to see the kids?

Honestly, what kind of idiot wouldn’t take this job?

HADES

Hades couldn’t breathe. He was leading the girl—woman, he kept telling himself, she was a woman, despite seeming so young and vibrant—to a guest room on the top floor, but his heart was so loud in his ears and his vision was so blurry he hardly knew where he was going. He couldn’t believe it actually fucking worked.

She hated him—that was pretty clear—but at least she had agreed to stay. And it was better for her to think he was cold than for her to know the truth: that he was so devastatingly smitten with her that he might have actually lost his mind. If she knew that he had been scrambling around inside his head for the last thirty minutes, desperately coming up with lies and excuses to explain the insane thing he’d done when he ordered Kerberos to pull her out of that car, she’d think he was fucking lunatic.

Either that, or she’d think he was the kind of creepy, pathetic, hopeless romantic who fell in love with people at first sight without knowing anything about them.

No; worse—she’d know he was.

They reached the door at the end of the hall and Hades fumbled a key from his pocket. His hands shook as he put it into the lock and opened the door. He pushed it open and the girl—woman—stepped past him to poke her head in, overwhelming him with a wash of soft, floral scent that flipped his stomach over and launched it into his chest.

“Pretty nice.” She looked around the room, then stepped back and looked at him. “Why are you sweating?”

“I’m not sweating.” He swiped at his forehead with his sleeve. “Is this acceptable or not?”

“It’s fine.” She stepped across the threshold. Folded her arms and turned. “And your guy’s gonna bring my car?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I need my phone.” She looked around. “So when do I start?”

“Tomorrow morning.” He frantically scoured his head for something he could give her to do. He didn’t actually have any fucking kids. Au Pair? Why the fuck had he even said that? “Clean the—kitchen. I’ll be gone most of the day.”

“Cleaning isn’t usually part of an au pair’s job description.” She narrowed her eyes. “Where are you going?”

“Work.”

“What time?”

“Any time. I’m always on call.”

“What do you do?”

He hesitated. His official title was Lord of the Underworld and most of his job description involved Grim-Reapering mortals off the face of the Earth, but he was pretty sure that if he told this woman that, she would have…questions.

He folded his arms. “It’s not important.”

“Fine.” She sighed. “Is that everything?”

“For now. If you need anything, Meneotes can help you.”

“Okay.” She shrugged. “Sounds good, I guess.”

They stood watching each other as an uncomfortable silence descended. Hades knew he should leave, but he couldn’t. He wanted to stand there, staring at her beautiful face and drowning in her grass-and-flower scent for the rest of his immortal life.

“You know it’s my birthday today,” she said, suddenly.

Hades felt his eyebrow arch. “Happy…birthday?”

“Yeah.” She sighed and put her hands on her hips. “Yeah.”

He surveyed her. “May Baby.”

“What?”

“Child of Spring. Born in May. People would say you’re ambitious and a little naive.”

She glared. “Oh would they?”

“Some might.”

“What do they say about you?”

“November?” He shrugged. “Probably that I’m cold.” He turned to go.

“Oh!” The woman put up a hand. “I never got your name. I’m Persephone.”

His stomach dropped. The floor seemed to disappear from under him and the shadows he’d been struggling to keep at bay since this girl had been carried into his house rose up the walls around him like crushing black water.

“Persephone? Your name is Persephone?”

“Mhm. And you’re…?”

Oh shit. Oh fucking, assing, ever-loving shit. She was a god. And not just any god: a daughter of Zeus. A daughter of Zeus and the goddess of…was it flowers? Nature? Something pretty fucking important, anyway. Something mortals would definitely notice was missing.

She was also, technically, his niece. Not that that mattered—the gods were all a bunch of incestuous lechers—but it did mean that if Zeus found out Hades had abducted her, there would be problems. His brother could be a real prick about stuff like that.

Her eyebrows ticked up as she waited for him to reply. Hades dug frantically through his brain for another lie to stack on the pile.

“Aidan,” he came up with, finally. “My name is Aidan.” He swallowed. “You’re a god.”

“Yup.” She smiled a cunning smile. “And my dad’s a big one. So you’d better not try anything, Buddy.”

CHAPTER 3

PERSEPHONE

WELL, she didn’t want to admit it, but Aidan had been right: a week in this house and she had no desire to leave.

The place was rich, but not tacky; lush, but restrained. Tasteful paintings and stone sculptures. A little chilly—every room seemed drafty and all the floors were marble—and a bit dark, but elegant. It turned out to be a fantastic place for staging Instagram shoots for herself, and when she wasn’t dusting shelves or polishing table legs, Persephone was sprawling half-naked across chaise-lounges, pouting at her phone.

The work turned out to be even easier than Aidan had said it would be. She’d seen neither hide nor hair of any of these alleged children since she arrived a week ago. None of the cleaning was terribly taxing, and the job she’d been doing tidying the various rooms on the list Meneotes had stuck to the fridge seemed to suffice. No one had reprimanded her about her work, at least.

The only other person she’d seen in the house was Meneotes, and he was around almost as infrequently as Aidan. Between Instagram sessions Persephone spent her days wandering empty rooms, pulling dust sheets off grand pianos and throwing open heavy curtains. She cut the daffodils that had sprouted mysteriously in the garden after she’d arrived and arranged them in vases. She planted basil seeds and coriander in pots on the kitchen windowsill. Her little yellow car, parked in the gravel driveway, was a splash of color in the outside world. The rain persisted, giving the place a grim, heavy atmosphere, but Persephone was determined that as long as she was here, she would do her best to brighten things up.

By the end of the week, the only door in the place she hadn’t opened was the heavy oak-and-iron door in the back of the kitchen, which Meneotes said led to the basement and which she had been expressly forbidden from opening. She found herself walking past it more often than she meant to, sneaking sidelong glances at it and wondering what was down there. Probably a wine cellar, she figured. Probably a lot of very expensive wine.

The fridge was always full—Persephone had no idea who stocked it—but none of the food was very appetizing. Instead, she ordered takeout for every meal, making sure to tip the UberEats guy who delivered it generously and relishing the fact that she could do that now.

On Tuesday morning, a week and one day after she’d arrived, she summoned up the nerve to tidy Aidan’s bedroom. She’d stuck her head through the door the week before, but, realizing what it was, had quickly withdrawn it. Aidan was aloof and mysterious, and extremely hot, and she had to admit that she he made her a little nervous. The last thing she wanted was for him to walk in on her in his bedroom, folding his underwear or something.

But, she reasoned, she was here to do a job, and that job was tidying the house. Aidan’s bedroom was listed on the scrap of paper Meneotes had stuck to the fridge, so she was going to have to get to it eventually. So, that morning, armed with her lemon-scented furniture polish and her caddy of cleaning supplies, she steeled herself in the hallway outside and pushed open the door.

It didn’t take her long to get through most of the cleaning. She worked quickly, and there wasn’t much to do anyway. She was down on her hands and knees, looking under the bed for errant socks, when she came upon a large, pink shoebox with a red satin ribbon tied around the lid. Tucked under the ribbon was a small, cream-colored card.

Persephone paused. She hadn’t seen anything so vibrant in the whole house. She looked over her shoulder. Getting caught folding Aidan’s underwear would be one thing, but getting caught snooping in boxes under his bed would be quite another. She slipped her finger under the card and flicked it out from under the ribbon—casually, like she hadn’t meant to do it. It fluttered onto the floor, revealing a note written in elegant, looping script:

Minthe,

Something to keep you company when I’m not around.

xxx

So it was a gift, then. For Minthe, of all people. Persephone knew Minthe—or, okay, she didn’t know her personally, but she knew of her. Minthe was a nymph with a massive following on Instagram: around four hundred thousand, if Persephone remembered correctly. She was trashy. Her pictures were absolutely scandalous. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but why on Earth did Aidan have a box under his bed addressed to her?

Again, Persephone checked over her shoulder. She chewed her cheek. Opening this box would be completely inexcusable behavior from a maid. Beyond the pale. Grounds for firing, for sure.

She slipped the ribbon off one side and cracked open a corner of the box and peeked under the lid.

Inside the box was a massive. Purple. Dildo.

Persephone’s eyes went completely round. She slammed the lid shut and shoved the box back under the bed. She sat there staring at it with her heart beating in her ears and her face flaming. What in the absolute fuck was he doing with that?

Very carefully, as though afraid it might bite her, she cracked the lid again and flipped it all the way open. She peered into the box in the manner of someone looking over a very tall ledge.

Mother of Zeus that thing was fucking huge.

She reached in and pulled it out. It was too big to get her hand all the way around and weighed as much as the Monster Burrito at her favorite taco shop. The one that cost upwards of twenty dollars and came loaded with enough guac, sour cream, cheese, chili, refried beans and carne asada to give the entire city of Olympus a small heart attack.

She turned it over, examining it in the light. Apart from being bright purple and freaking enormous, it was extremely realistic. Lots of veins. Nice details on the head. On the base of it, etched into the balls, were the words Model H69: Hades.

Persephone’s eyebrows lifted. This was some kind of custom job modeled off an actual god. How much had Aidan paid for it? Custom god cocks weren’t just falling off the shelves at Walmart. He’d gotten this made specially. Lucky Minthe was getting a very nice, very expensive present.

Persephone’s heart sank a little. So was he dating her? It was certainly possible. Aidan was obviously loaded and super fucking handsome. There was no reason he wouldn’t be dating Minthe. Sighing, she put the dildo back in the box and closed the lid. This was intrusive and wrong, and it was making her feel weirdly sad. She had no reason to be jealous of Minthe. It wasn’t like she was into Aidan. She was just his fucking maid.

Plus, he had kidnapped her. Let’s not forget that. She was not about to start developing Stockholm Syndrome here. Let Minthe take that creepy bullet for her; good luck to Minthe, honestly. Persephone put the box back and finished cleaning the room. She went back downstairs and continued the rest of her chores.

But that enormous purple god cock followed her around for the rest of the day. She found herself thinking about it while she was dusting the chandelier in the foyer. She found herself staring vacantly out the window in the music room while she was supposed to be Windexing the glass. She couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was making her itchy. It was making her, frankly, horny.

Not just the thing itself—although, that would certainly be enough to do it. She wasn’t just imagining what it would be like to have that thick, girthy length inside her. She was imagining what it would be like if Aidan had bought it for her. What kinds of things had Minthe done to make him do that? What kinds of things had they done together? What kinds of things would Aidan do to her?

By the time the sun went down, she was so flustered and distracted she forgot to order dinner. Her nipples chafed against the inside of her shirt. Her core was hot and tight and her panties had been soaked for hours. She stood outside the closed door to Aidan’s bedroom, chewing her thumbnail and pacing.

There was no way she was going back in there.

That would be insane.

It was one thing to be caught folding the man’s underwear. Quite another to be caught snooping under his bed. And another thing altogether to be caught fucking herself silly with the enormous dildo he had bought as a gift for his girlfriend.

She checked her watch. Seven thirty-three. She had no idea what time he’d be home. He came and went at all hours of the day and night. If she was going to do this, she’d have to be quick. In and out.

And in and out and in and out and in again—

No, focus!

She cracked the door and slipped inside.

HADES

Something was happening.

Somewhere in the shadows in the back of his mind, Hades became aware that something very stimulating was happening. He paused mid-sentence and stared past the mortal sitting across the table from him, through the window to the street outside—some shitty little side street on the outskirts of Olympus, where he’d been summoned to reap this mortal’s soul tonight.

“My—my Lord?”

Hades lifted a finger. The mortal stammered and fell quiet. Hades stood up from the table, his head nearly touching the ceiling of the mortal’s shabby apartment, and turned around. Something was happening. Something was happening in his house.

He sent his Sight under the mortal’s door and through shadows in the city like a pipeline; along windowsills, up the sides of buildings, and around trees. He Saw through shadows out of the city and through the countryside, back along the highway toward the mansion. Up the drive. Under the girl’s yellow car. He navigated the shadows of the trellis that climbed the side of the house and slipped through the window of his bedroom and up into a shadowy corner of the ceiling and Saw the room below him.

Persephone was taking off her clothes in front of the mirror. On Hades’ bed, the box he had bought for Minthe sat open, its contents strewn across the sheets—pink tissue paper and the red ribbon and the massive purple dildo.

Hades’ cock pulsed. He wheeled around, his Sight returning to him, his eyes landing on the startled mortal, still sitting at the table with a bemused expression.

“Get out,” Hades choked. “You’re free to go. Today is not your day.”

“My Lord?”

“Get out!” He threw out his hand and the door to the apartment flung open.

“M—my Lord, this is—this is my house—”

“OUT!”

The mortal yelped and leapt up from the table. Bowing, his hands sandwiched in prayer, tripping over his feet, the mortal scurried from the room. Hades slammed the door closed behind him and returned his Sight to his bedroom.

She wasn’t actually going to do this?

Below him, Persephone had removed her panties and stood naked before the mirror, looking at herself. Gods, she was so hot. She ran her hands over her breasts and stomach, and turned to check out her ass. Hades felt like he needed to sit down, but he couldn’t move. He was transfixed, staring at her as she turned to the bed and climbed onto it.

She kneeled and looked at herself in the mirror again, running her hands up and down her body, and Hades cock strained against the seam of his pants. He wanted to follow those hands with his tongue. He wanted to lie on his back between her knees and worship her incredible form.

She got onto her back and lifted her knees, opening her legs to the mirror and showing him her beautiful, glistening pussy. She reached for the dildo and needed both hands to pick it up, and seeing it in her hands—seeing his cock in her hands—made him so hard he groaned and had to reach down to unbutton his fly.

He unzipped his pants and took himself out, and watched as she trailed the tip of the dildo down the center of her chest, her abdomen, past her perfect, tiny belly button, and stopped at the mound above her center.

She hesitated, and he stood there with his cock in his hand, his heart beating through his chest and the blood crashing through him. He could see how wet she was. He could see her trembling as she positioned the head of his cock against her entrance and bit her lip as she looked at it in the mirror.

Through the blood roaring in his head and the heat pouring through his veins, a tiny, almost inaudible voice made its way to the surface of his consciousness.

This was super wrong. He absolutely should not do this.

Then she sank the first inch of the cock into herself and gasped, and his head went totally quiet. There was nothing in his ears but the sound she had just made, and when she slipped in the next inch and made that sound again, he echoed it with a groan and stoked himself.

“Fuck,” she whispered, and she dropped her head back and closed her eyes. “It’s really big.”

“Yeah,” he growled, even though he knew she couldn’t hear him. “Yeah it’s really fucking big.”

She opened her eyes and watched the cock in the mirror as she took the next inch, and he raked his eyes over her body as she shuddered. In this way, he watched her take the whole thing—slowly, carefully; gasping and swearing and moaning that she couldn’t do it, and he stroked himself at every inch and told her, Yes you can. Yes you fucking can.

When she had the monster fully inside herself she paused and looked in the mirror again. She moaned at the sight of it and started making little circles with her fingers on her clit, and Hades swore and took his hands off himself because he was almost there just watching her do that and he didn’t want to finish without her.

With her other hand she gripped the base and began to ease the thing in and out, her hips rolling against the sheets—against his sheets—and he took his dick in his hand again and matched her pace. She started to moan, steadily, rhythmically; in time to the movement of her hands.

Her moans came faster, and Hades kept up with them, his eyes fixed on the huge purple cock she was now thrusting wantonly inside herself. He felt the end coming and he knew he couldn’t stop it—the room was growing dark and the walls were closing in. His world had narrowed to a tunnel, to a single visible point: that spot between Persephone’s legs where that cock—his cock—was buried deep.

She shouted, and her body convulsed, and a switch flipped on somewhere inside him. White-hot light and blistering heat screamed through the tunnel around him like a freight train. Obliterating shadows; exorcizing the dark. He fell to his knees in the face of that blaze like a mortal at the feet of a great and terrible god. He shut his eyes and knelt in the light and emptied himself onto the mortal’s shabby carpet, moaning.

When he opened his eyes she was looking up at him from the bed. Looking right up into his face like she could see him watching.

CHAPTER 4

PERSEPHONE

SHE RAN into Aidan in the kitchen while he was getting his coffee the next morning.

She wasn’t expecting to see him—he usually wasn’t around this early in the day—and it completely flummoxed her. Dropping her gaze, she mumbled good morning as she side-stepped him to get to the fridge. She could feel her face going red.

He knew. She was sure of it. She didn’t know why she thought that: it was insane—no one had been home, no one had seen her. She’d washed everything and put everything back exactly as she’d found it. Gone to bed and heard Aidan come home hours later.

But she couldn’t shake the paranoid feeling that he knew. Like there was an elephant in the room that neither of them was addressing. Or an elephant-sized dick.

When she came back from the fridge to the kitchen island, she ran into him again, and they did an awkward two-step as she went left and he also went left, and then she went right and he also went right.

“Sorry.” He put up his hands and chuckled nervously. “Not—ah—not caffeinated yet.” She tried again to step left and he again went left. “Oh boy.” He blew out a breath. “We are either not in sync at all or really in sync today, huh?”

Persephone squinted up at him. “You’re being weird.”

He flicked his eyes away and stepped back. Frowning, she carefully stepped around him and went to the island. She opened the leftovers from her takeout dinner from two nights ago and sat on a stool, eating rice with chopsticks and watching the back of his head as he made coffee. When he turned around she quickly looked away. When she looked back, he was watching her.

He cleared his throat and smiled briefly, then ducked his head and walked out of the kitchen. Persephone frowned at the mug he had left on the counter. He hadn’t even taken his coffee.

She got a text from Mom later that morning.

> WHERE ARE YOU?

Sighing, she tapped it open.

> GOT A NEW JOB. WORKING.

> WHAT NEW JOB? WORKING WHERE? NO ONE’S SEEN YOU. WHERE ARE YOU?

> I’M FINE, MOM. EVERYTHING’S FINE. I’M AT WORK. I CAN’T TALK RIGHT NOW.

> ARE YOU COMING TO DINNER ON THE NINETEENTH?

Persephone rolled her eyes. So much for the concerned Mother role.

> YES I’M COMING TO DINNER.

> AND YOU’RE BRINGING THE SALAD WITH THE RAISINS?

> YES, I’M BRINGING THE SALAD WITH THE RAISINS.

> GOOD. BECAUSE WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT SOMETHING.

Persephone frowned.

> OKAY. WHAT?

There was a long pause while her Mom typed. Then she sent

> I THINK YOU SHOULD COME HOME FOR A WHILE.

Persephone stared at the message. Another followed.

> I KNOW THINGS HAVEN’T BEEN GOING WELL FOR YOU. I GOT A MESSAGE FROM YOUR LANDLORD—I CO-SIGNED YOUR LEASE, YOU KNOW, YOU CAN’T HIDE THAT STUFF FROM ME. SOMEONE TOLD ME THEY SAW YOUR CAR BROKEN DOWN ON A STREET NEAR MIDTOWN. I’M WORRIED, SEPH. I THINK YOU NEED TO COME HOME AND REGROUP. THE INSTAGRAM THING…I MEAN, WHAT ARE YOU REALLY DOING? IT’S TIME TO GET SERIOUS. YOU NEED A REAL JOB. YOU NEED TO GET YOUR LIFE TOGETHER.

It was difficult to focus on cleaning that day.

She managed to shove Mom’s message out of her head—that was just Mom being Mom and trying to run her life—but her mind kept wandering back to the bedroom, to the box she knew was in there and the thing she knew was inside it. Now that the cat was out of the bag—or the dick was out of the box—she wasn’t sure she could just go about her days ignoring it. The fact that no one else was home made it all the more maddening: the knowledge that she could probably get away with going back any time she chose and doing it all again.

She found herself pacing in the kitchen, chewing her nail and glaring at Aidan’s untouched cup of coffee on the counter. Why hadn’t he just given Minthe the goddamn dildo already? Then she would have never discovered it. She pulled up in front of the basement door and put her back to it. She tilted her head back and sighed at the ceiling.

Somewhere behind her, muffled by the door and sounding very far away, someone moaned.

Persephone frowned. She stepped away from the door and turned around and stared at it. For several long, silent minutes, nothing happened.

Then she heard it again. A moan. Not a sexual moan. A plaintive, chilling moan, like the sound of someone in distress.

Persephone stepped up to the door and put her ear against it. It was definitely coming from the basement. She stepped back and looked at the door again. The door Aidan and Meneotes had told her explicitly not to open.

“This is crazy,” she whispered aloud. “You’re not going to go snooping around any more places you shouldn’t be snooping around. You’re lucky you got away with what you did last night.”

On the other side of the door, someone moaned again. An anguished plea that went straight to the marrow of her bones.

Her blood ran cold. Holy fuck, was Aidan killing people? Did he have someone tied up down there like some kind of twisted slasher movie? Fucking Zeus, he had kidnapped her, for fuck’s sake! Kidnapped her and brought her here and told her she couldn’t leave and told her not to go in the basement under any circumstances.

He was a psychopath. A fucking serial killer.

Her heart began to beat fast. She needed to get out. But she couldn’t just leave this person on the other side of the door, could she? She couldn’t just abandon some poor girl—because, let’s face it, it was probably a girl—in that basement and run for her own life, could she?

She swung around and frantically scanned the kitchen. On a hook by the door to the outside was a large key ring, holding a set of mismatched silver keys. She ran to it and took it down. Sprinted back to the door and fumbled through them, trying each one in the lock with shaking hands. When one finally clicked and she heaved open the door, a draft of freezing air blew out of it and the smell of death came with it.

Gagging, she covered her nose and mouth with her hand and squinted into the darkness. “Hello?”

No one answered.

She took a tiny step across the threshold and tried again. “Hello?”

Her voice was swallowed by the darkness as thoroughly as though she had spoken into a pillow. It was so dark she couldn’t remember what seeing was. She took another step and her foot slipped over an edge, and her heart shot into her mouth as she grabbed at the door frame to keep from falling. Regaining her balance, she felt around with her toe until she discerned that she was standing at the top of some wooden stairs, and that the next step was about six inches below her.

Remembering that her phone was in her pocket, she took it out and turned on the flashlight. It emitted a tiny white ring that showed her no more than a few steps ahead before it too was swallowed by the darkness.

Steeling herself, she began to climb down.

The air grew colder and the smell of death more pungent as she descended. Her fingers and lips turned numb and her teeth chattered. The steps seemed to go on forever, down and down into a dark so smothering that when she looked back over her shoulder she couldn’t see the door she had come in by. When she had been descending for so long she had forgotten why she even came down here, her foot encountered a different kind of surface, and she realized she had reached the bottom. She angled the phone down and saw that she was standing in sand.

She lifted the phone above her head and shone it around. It was so completely, pathetically useless. Sighing with frustration, she lowered it and tapped the screen. She needed magic, or something, to make the light brighter. She was a god, wasn’t she? She should have magic, shouldn’t she? Aidan was just a random dude and he’d done that trick with the fireplace. She kept tapping the phone. She needed to send a magic blue flame out of the tip of her finger, or a spark or something, or—

The phone lit up.

It was so bright she shut her eyes and angled her head away. When she squinted them open, the phone was blazing up from her hand like a tiny sun.

“Shit.” Stunned, she blinked and shook her head. “Well I guess I figured that out.”

She lifted the phone above her head again and looked around.

Everything she thought she knew about her situation turned over on its head.

CHAPTER 5

PERSEPHONE

HADES.

He was Hades.

Not some random dude called Aidan who was keeping kidnap victims in his basement. The Lord of the Fucking Underworld. The Underworld she was currently standing in.

It stretched around her into infinity; a vast, bleak wasteland in every direction. Rock and dirt and scree and desert.

And souls.

Billions of them. Uncountable. White-headed and vacant, with pale, translucent skin. They were hunched with their hands flung over their faces, as though the light that Persephone had brought was too bright for them to see by. They were of all shapes and sizes: men and women and tiny children.

Slowly, some began to lower their hands, revealing wide, black eyes that blinked and seemed not to see. One by one, they stood and began to shamble toward her, working their slackened jaws and stretching out into the void with skeletal fingers. Bumping into each other. Losing their way.

She couldn’t explain why, but Persephone wasn’t afraid. She reached out to a little boy who was stumbling blindly toward her and touched his hair as he went by. At the brush of her fingers, he stopped. He turned and looked up at her.

Persephone’s heart twisted. They were cold and blind. Lost and alone, even though there were billions of them. They needed light and warmth and color. They needed care. She put her palm against the little boy’s cheek and smiled.

“What are you doing down here?” someone growled.

Persephone whirled around. Hades stood at the bottom of the staircase, bounded by shadow, tall and black and terrible. Thunder and fury.

His eyes flashed. “I told you not to come down here.”

“I wasn’t—I didn’t mean—”

“It was the only rule you had to obey.”

“It wasn’t the only—”

She felt his shadows, the icy grip of his rage, wrap around her like a vice. He closed the gap between them and stood before her, glaring down, trembling with fury. Then he grabbed her by the shirtfront and dragged her back up the stairs.

She screamed and swung at him with her fists. They seemed to bounce off him and leave no evidence that they had touched him at all. She felt helpless. Weak. Completely at his mercy. He stared straight ahead, ignoring her cries as he dragged her out of the basement, through the kitchen, and up the stairs to the bedrooms.

“You’re hurting me!” she yelled. “Let me go.”

He gave no indication that he’d heard her as he flung open the door to her bedroom, threw her through it, and slammed it shut behind her.

HADES

On the other side of the door, Persephone screamed and pounded with her fists. She was surprisingly strong for such a little thing: he could feel the door shuddering against his shoulders as he sank against it, trembling.

That had not been the right way to handle that. In hindsight, that was a very poor way to handle that situation. He’d panicked.

He hadn’t wanted her to see that place. A person like her shouldn’t have to see a place like that. That place was cold and abysmal, and she was light and Spring. She was yellow cars with vanity license plates and fresh-cut flowers and opening the curtains in the music room. She was awkward two-steps in front of the kitchen island. She was sunshine.

And now he’d lost his temper and she’d seen not only what he did, but who he really was: an angry, miserable wretch with a life devoid of joy and a basement full of souls.

He tilted his head back and absorbed the rattling of the door. He would have to open it eventually and absorb her wrath as well, but for now, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He stepped away from the door and didn’t look back as he stalked down the hall and went back to the basement.

Her phone had fallen out of her hand when he’d grabbed her and dragged her out of there, and it lay face-up in the sand, blazing light into the Underworld. He stood on the bottom step and marveled at it. It went all the way to infinity. It chased out every shadow. He stepped over it and made his way across the wasteland toward his throne.

The souls, who usually didn’t notice his comings and goings, turned. They sensed him. Or they saw him, maybe, in the newly available light. They began to follow him. The quiet, rhythmic shuffle of their feet grew and multiplied as more began to crowd him, tailing him across the desert. They pawed at him, touching his arms and shoulders.

“Who was she?” someone whispered. “Who was that lady?”

“She was warm.”

“She brought us light.”

He shuddered and shrugged them off. He couldn’t stand the souls. They were like ghouls. They’d never approached him before. He’d never heard them speak; he didn’t even know they could do that. He reached his throne and flung them back, glared around, and stomped up the stone steps to the seat. He sank into it and dropped his face into his hands. He sent his Sight up the shadowed steps of the basement and under the door of the bedroom he had shut her in.

She was crying.

PERSEPHONE

She would never get out. She would never escape this place now. She’d pissed off the Lord of the Fucking Underworld and gotten herself locked up in his mansion. She’d trusted an asshole who kidnapped her. He wasn’t a god. He was a dangerous, angry jerk on a very short leash.

Also, she was pretty sure he was technically her uncle.

Not that that mattered. The gods were all incestuous lechers.

Even if she did somehow manage to escape, where was she going to go? She’d probably already been evicted. She’d definitely lost her Uber gig, and probably the server jobs too, at this point. Instagram was, let’s face it, a dystopian hellscape, and she wasn’t sure if Charon had actually fixed her car or just parked it in the driveway. Things had been going badly before she got here, and now, they were going even worse.

Back to Mom’s. She’d have to go back to Mom’s. Like a little girl who had fallen off her bike.

She threw herself on the bed and sobbed. She knew it wasn’t going to help. She knew crying never helped anyone. She knew if this was a book or a movie or something, the heroine would be pluckily devising a way to get out and saying things like, “It’s not over til it’s over!” and boldly owning her choices and tying the bedsheets together to shimmy out of the window and face down the rest of her life, but fucking she had had a really bad day, okay? And she just wanted to cry.

A knock at the door stifled her. She sat up, swiping hair and tears off her face with her shoulder and glared. “Yes?”

There was a long, long silence.

“What do you want?” she said.

“Can I come in?”

“Absolutely not. Unless you’re opening that door to let me out, you may as well leave it closed.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Didn’t mean to do what? Drag me out of the Underworld and lock me in this bedroom? Oh okay, well I guess that’s fine, then. Please, come in and drag me around some more.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Great. Thank you.”

“Can I please just come in and talk to you? Please. For a minute, I just want to explain myself.”

“You can explain yourself from out there.”

He sighed and she heard him lean against the door. “I don’t know if I can. In there or out here.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Look, I don’t—know why I did this. Okay? I’m really sorry. I don’t know what to say except that I’m sorry.”

“You kidnapped me.”

“Yes.”

“And imprisoned me here.”

“Not quite—”

“Why? Why would you think that was okay? Why would you think having your security guard drag me out of my car and throw me into the back of your SUV would be an acceptable thing to do?”

“It wasn’t. I know it wasn’t. I just—I think I may have legitimately lost my mind or something that day. You were…” He sighed. “You lit up something in my soul. And until that moment, I wasn’t even sure I had a soul.”

Persephone stared at the door. “I what?”

“You heard me. Please don’t make me say it again.”

“Okay. Then say what the fuck you mean by that.”

“I can’t explain it. It was your car. Your stupid license plate. Your whole…being. It was like a sunrise after a long, dark night. And it made me do a really, extremely, terribly stupid thing.”

“And what about the really, extremely, terribly stupid thing you just did when you dragged me out of the basement?”

“That was also inexcusable.”

Slowly, she got up and went across the room and put one hand on the doorknob.

“Open the door.”

He did. On the other side of it he was disheveled and hollow-looking and his eyes were like a person’s who hadn’t slept in days.

“You know that doesn’t make it okay, right?” she said. “Just because you think someone’s cute, doesn’t mean you get to put them in your car.”

“I never said I thought you were cute.”

“Pretty then, whatever.”

“I don’t think you’re pretty. I don’t think you’re cute. I think you’re the most beautiful soul I’ve ever encountered. And I’ve encountered a lot of souls.”

Persephone stared at him. Beautiful soul? She was a shit waitress and a failing Instagram model. She couldn’t even hold down a gig delivering takeout. She was weak and shallow. She responded to adversity by giving up and crying, and she was always unprepared and she did nothing of any substance and she could never find her phone charger and she was basically drowning in this city where even the lowliest mortals in her bad neighborhood had their shit together enough to keep their apartments when rent control ended.

She was filled with such an overwhelming fear that she was about to burst into tears again that she covered it by folding her arms, hardening her glare and saying, “Encountered. Is that what you call it? Taking people to your basement?”

He flinched. “You weren’t supposed to see that. I’m not—proud of what I do.”

Persephone watched his eyes cast down. She felt bad. That wasn’t fair. He may have been an ass, but the souls didn’t have anything to do with what they were talking about. She sighed and unfolded her arms.

“I didn’t mean that. I don’t actually think there’s anything wrong with what you do. I know you have to do it.”

He nodded, staring at the floor.

“But I don’t understand how you think you know my soul. You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me. We’ve said less than ten words to each other the whole time I’ve been in this house.”

“I don’t need you to tell me who you are. I can see it. You bring light and color to places that are dark and cold. You chase away the shadows. That’s beautiful.”

Persephone didn’t know what to say. She watched him staring through the floor. He still looked miserable, and in the silence that settled between them she stretched out her toe and nudged his toe with it.

“The most beautiful soul you ever encountered?”

His eyes came up.

She squinted one eye closed. “More beautiful than anyone else?”

The cool, dangerous light came back into his gaze. He narrowed his eyes back at her and said, “More beautiful than anyone else.”

She swallowed. “More beautiful than Minthe?”

His face remained completely still except for the tiniest tick of one eyebrow. He held her gaze and said, “Much more beautiful than Minthe.”

Persephone felt her face turn scarlet. So he did know. He had to. She pulled herself up taller and cleared her throat and impulsively brushed at her hair and said, “So you know about that, then? Somehow.”

“I…do.” He hesitated. “I…watched you.”

The air squeezed tight around her and she went completely slick between her legs. She found just enough breath in her to say, “And did you like what you saw?”

His eyes darkened. His voice was low as he said, “Did you like what you found in the box?”

Her core tightened so suddenly it ached. That it was him: the model. He was Hades. He was H69. He was the god with the staggering cock. She swallowed, nodding.

He took a wary, wolfish step toward her and she stepped back. His eyes burned into hers as he stopped, and she saw that he was trembling. Like a cat hunting a bird. Gripping the edge of the doorframe. Holding himself back.

“Was it good?” His voice was smoke and shadows.

Persephone nodded. He took another step. Persephone countered, back across the threshold, and he stepped across it too and backed her into the room.

“You want to feel it again?”

She nodded. He made a low noise in his throat and her eyes lowered to where the thing they were talking about was straining between them. When she looked up, his eyes had tracked hers. They flickered, and the room went still.

Then he shot out his hand and grabbed her by the wrist and crammed her palm against the thickness swelling down his thigh.

Persephone went simultaneously weak and on fire. She seized him by his belt loop and dragged him toward her, and his lips smashed into hers as she pushed the heel of her hand down his shaft. He groaned and began grabbing at her clothes.

Mother of Zeus the cock went on and on. She wouldn’t reach the end of it without bending down to get there, and by now he had her shirt halfway off and his tongue inside her mouth, so she abandoned the over-the-pants exploration and just started tearing at his zipper. She ripped it open and reached inside and he swore around her tongue as she squeezed his balls. He stepped back long enough to shed his pants and tear off his shirt, then lunged for again, pulling off her shirt as well and throwing it across the room.

He walked her back as she unhooked her bra and opened her own zipper, and by the time her thighs hit the bed, he was shoving down her pants so she could step out of them. He kicked them sideways and grabbed her by the hips and threw her backwards onto the mattress so hard she bounced, then scrambled up on top of her and was kissing her again.

His lips were insistent and brutal. He pushed her onto her elbows and she let her thighs fall open so he could get that thing between them. She felt its length press against her entrance, the whole naked length of it sliding down her soaked and aching center as he pushed his hips against her, a tormenting facsimile of what she actually wanted him to do.

“Just fucking put it in,” she gasped. “Please.”

He pulled away and looked down at her. The shadow of a smile graced his mouth. “Oh you want it now? Already?”

“No, I want to have tea and fucking sandwiches first,” she growled back.

He chuckled and lowered his mouth to her nipple, grazing it with his teeth so that she jolted and arched against him. “Maybe I don’t want you to have it yet,” he said, dragging his mouth across her chest and clamping his teeth gently on the other side. “Maybe I want you to wait.”

Persephone reached between them and wrapped her fist around his cock, and he choked and snapped his eyes to hers.

“I don’t think you really want to wait,” she said. “Do you?”

The space between them went feverishly taut as his eyes burned into hers, his chest heaving. “Fuck.” He shook his head. “No.”

She crawled backward on her elbows for the pillow and swept her hair aside as he got on his knees between her thighs. He braced his palms on either side and pressed them gently open, then grabbed her by the hips and pulled her up against him, taking his cock with one hand and positioning it against her.

He looked up, the tousled black mess of his hair falling across his eyes. “Ready?”

Not breathing, she nodded.

“I’ll go slow.”

She shook her head. “Don’t.”

“It’s going to hurt.”

“It’s fine.” She smiled mischievously. “I practiced already, remember?”

He tilted one dark eyebrow. “I do remember.”

“So don’t worry about it.”

He kept his eyes on hers like he didn’t think she knew what she was really in for here. Slowly, he slipped inside, and when she gasped and tensed, he smirked.

“I thought you said you practiced.”

“I did.” She grit her teeth. He sank in a little more, and she hissed, the sensation so close to, but not quite, what she remembered. She knew what it felt like when it was all the way inside. She wanted it again now. All of it. Immediately.

She pushed herself toward him, trying to get him inside, but he gripped her by both hips and held her still while he retreated to adjust his position, and when she made an impatient noise, his eyes flashed. “Careful, Persephone.”

“Or what? You’ll get mad? I’ve seen you mad. That doesn’t scare me anymore.”

He narrowed his eyes—those stone-cold, thunder-gray eyes—and suddenly, the room grew dark. Shadows climbed the walls and Persephone felt as though she shrank, or he grew, or the bed was sinking into the earth. Cold whispered through her, deep inside her soul, and she caught her breath and shivered.

Then he yanked her hard against him and slammed in to the bone.

Persephone yelped and twisted both hands into the sheets as the full force of him plowed through her. The sheer burning might of it was unlike anything she’d felt before. Nothing like that rubber thing she’d found in the box under his bed. This was life and death. Dark and the edges of light. Shadow and fear and eternity.

He reached for her and pulled her up so she sat in his lap; knelt beneath her with her legs around his waist and took her face in both hands and said, “Okay?”

Bending to press her lips to his, Persephone began to move. He moaned softly and kissed her back, matching the undulation of her hips. He moved with her, sliding his hands to her ass to angle her and get deeper, and as he hit a spot that sent pain shooting through her core, she bit down on his bottom lip to keep from crying out. He barked at that and pinched her harder, and she responded by biting him again, and he shouted in fury and flipped her onto her back and pinned her hands to the bed and then they were just flat out fucking each other; on a boundary somewhere between anger and lust; hate and love; darkness and light.

“Fuck, you feel so good,” he groaned into her neck through his teeth. “I can’t believe you feel so fucking good.”

It was an intensely serious endeavor, fucking Hades; a thing that she had to brace for and breathe through. A thing that meant sweat and pain. Persephone felt his power and she was legitimately afraid of it. She felt it when he pulled out and flipped her over, pinned her to the bed again and sank in from behind. She felt it when he grabbed her by the hair so he could drag his tongue down the side of her neck. She felt the anger and the entitlement. The knowledge of his own strength. The fact that he could actually, if he wanted to, do whatever the fuck he wanted.

And she was pretty into it.

Her whole life had been silliness and frivolity. Sunshine and flowers. Vanity license plates. And here was this guy who was nothing but death and anger and the dark. Despair that went bone-deep. He fucked her like her meant it. Like fucking her was going to save his immortal soul. They watched each other’s faces in the mirror as he rode her with one hand in her hair and the other on her clit.

“You’re mine,” he growled. “Forever. I’ll have you like this every day for the rest of eternity.”

And even though it was ridiculous because he was so adorably serious, those words split her open. She felt release coming like an unstoppable wave, and her eyes fluttered closed as she gave herself over to it.

“Look at me!” he snapped, and pulled her by the hair. Her eyes snapped open and she found him in the mirror again, and with his name on her lips and his eyes on hers, she came. He roared as she clenched around him, ramming himself home in a crazed, bucking frenzy, until they were both sprawled face-down at the foot of the bed, with his hand still knotted in her hair.

And somewhere deep in the pain and fury of it, she discovered a kernel of truth inside herself that she hadn’t known was there before:

She didn’t want to be silly and frivolous. She wanted to do something like she meant it.

CHAPTER 6

HADES

HE COULDN’T REMEMBER who he was, or where he was, or what he was, but he knew he had just experienced something transcendent. He rolled onto his back and pulled Persephone into one arm and shoved his hand through his hair and whistled at the ceiling.

Persephone was quiet. She propped her head up on her fist. She trailed one finger down the middle of his chest and said, “So are you still going to give Minthe her present?”

He laughed. “Definitely not.”

“Isn’t she going to be pretty mad if she…doesn’t get it.”

He sighed. “No. We aren’t anything. We spent a night together. I thought it was more than it was. I thought maybe I could—” He waved a hand. “I don’t know. Entice her back. But she doesn’t care about me. She’s got like a thousand guys sending her boxes with their dicks in them. It may be obvious by now, but I’m not very good with women.”

“So the box…?”

“It’s yours.”

“Oh really?”

“Everything. All of it’s yours, if you want it.” He stretched up to kiss her temple, but she was following the path of her finger down his abdomen and looked distant and slightly concerned.

“Everything?” she said.

“Of course.” He tipped her chin up to look into her eyes.

“Even the basement?”

He frowned. “Why would you go back there?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“It’s…” He hesitated, searching her gaze. “It’s cold and dismal. And I’m ashamed of it.”

“You shouldn’t be ashamed.” She pulled his hand from her face and laced her fingers through his. “It’s not shameful. It’s inevitable.”

“It’s death. It’s darkness and shadow.”

“It’s nature. It’s part of life.”

“It’s suffering.”

“Sometimes.”

“Mortals hate it. Everyone who knows about it is afraid of it.”

She frowned. “Do all mortals hate it? Are none of them ever…relieved? Is it not sometimes the end of suffering? Do none of them welcome it like they welcome sleep at the end of a long day?”

He sighed and looked at the ceiling. “Sometimes.”

She was quiet for a moment, tracing the contours of his stomach. “I could help you. I could make it easier for them.”

He shook his head. “You don’t want to do that.”

“I do.” She caught his gaze and nodded earnestly. “I think I do. Will you take me?”

“I don’t know…”

“Please?” She squeezed his hand and kissed his knuckles, and his heart pulled so tight in his chest that he had to take a breath against it. He brushed the hair from her face and touched his thumb to her pale, speckled cheek.

“Okay.”

The light she had brought still blazed into the four corners of the Underworld, and the souls were gathered at the bottom of the stairs like they had been waiting for her to return.

Persephone let go of his hand and stepped down onto the sand, and he almost snatched her back as that sea of souls closed around her, pulling her away from him, reaching out to touch her, clamoring to be closer. She let herself be borne by them, smiling kindly, returning their touches, bending to catch a word spoken by an old woman, touching the head of a small boy. Hades followed at a distance, keeping a wary eye on her, but his mistrust of the souls was fading. They weren’t ghouls, he was realizing: they were more like children. All this time, they had been his children, and all he had needed was someone to show him how to care for them.

When they had ferried Persephone to the throne and she had ascended the steps, she turned and raised a questioning eyebrow at him.

“Can I sit?”

He shrugged, shaking his head. “I suppose you’d better. They seem to like you more than me.”

She sat and crossed her legs at the ankles and laid both arms on the arm rests like a queen and surveyed the wasteland. Tiny green shoots had sprung up inside the heels of her footprints, and buds were sprouting at the ends of branches of trees that had been dead for millenia. The air was warm and smelled like flowers, and the souls chattered together and looked up at her and smiled.

She turned her eyes back from the infinite horizon and found his gaze and gave him that cunning grin he’d seen the first day she’d come to his house. “How many followers do you think this is?”

“How many followers?”

She shrugged. “Roughly.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Around a hundred and twenty billion.”

She nodded approvingly. “That’s pretty good. More than Minthe has, for sure.”

CHAPTER 7

PERSEPHONE

SHE WOKE in Hades bed and stretched and blinked at the ceiling. The curtains were open and sunlight streamed through the window. For the first time in over a week, the rain had stopped.

The shower was running in the next room and steam curled through the half-open door. She sat up in bed and rubbed her face. The sheets were a nightmare. A tangled bundle, half wound around her ankles. Last night they’d had sex so many times she’d actually lost count, and he’d told her he would marry her and make her queen of the Underworld. Granted, he’d said that mid-thrust while he had her up against the headboard with her knees in her ears, but still.

She sighed and looked out the window. Less than two weeks ago her life had been an unmitigated disaster, and now she was about to become Queen of the Fucking Underworld. A hundred and twenty billion followers. It was like a dream.

And yet…

She couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that something about it wasn’t right. To disappear from the world entirely and devote all her time to the souls on the other side of the river? It would be like giving up on her life. Her life was a disaster, but it was her disaster. To walk away and take up a queendom just by taking some dude’s hand—even if that dude was Lord of the Underworld—felt like a cop-out. It felt like cheating. Frivolous. She hadn’t earned that title. She’d just been lucky enough, or dumb enough, to be stranded on the side of the road when he drove by.

And if she was honest with herself, marriage had never been on her radar. It wasn’t like she was opposed or anything, but it wasn’t something she’d actively been looking for, and it definitely wasn’t something she was ready to jump into with a guy who’d kidnapped her, who she’d known less than two weeks, and who yesterday had dragged her up two flights of stairs and locked her in a bedroom.

She was staring across the room at the mirror on the opposite wall when someone pounded on the front door downstairs. She frowned at her reflection. They pounded again, harder, and a woman yelled. Persephone rolled out of bed and threw on Hades black t-shirt and padded down to the kitchen barefoot. She stopped on the way and grabbed a bottle of Pom Wonderful juice from the fridge. She was extremely dehydrated from all the fucking.

When she clicked back the latch and opened the door, her mother was on the doorstep.

“There you are.” Mom put her hands on her hips. “We’ve been worried sick.”

Persephone blinked in the early morning sunlight and squinted at her. She tried for a word, but it came out a croak. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Who’s been worried?”

“Everyone! Me and your father. Hermes. Apollo. What have you been doing?”

Persephone cracked open the Pom juice and sipped. It was sweet and tart and mercifully cold. She sipped some more and replaced the lid. “I’ve been at work. Hades gave me a job.”

“Hades?” Her mother eyed Persephone’s chest. “A job doing what? Wearing his clothes?”

Persephone looked down at her t-shirt. It literally said LORD OF THE MOTHERFUCKING UNDERWORLD in big white letters. She rolled her eyes. “That’s not part of the job, actually. That’s just a perk.”

Mom scoffed. “Well it’s time to come home. This is quite enough. Your life is in disarray and you’ve been missing for a week. You can’t just run away from your problems and hide in the Underworld.”

A footstep sounded on the marble behind her and Persephone turned to see Hades, shirtless in a pair of gray sweatpants, stepping off the stairs. He came up behind her and put his arm around her shoulder. “Everything okay here?”

“Fine.” Mom’s glare hardened. “We were just talking about Seph’s future.”

“Mom, can we please not?”

“I would love to talk about Persephone’s future, Demeter,” said Hades, tightening his grip around her shoulder. “Where would you like to start?”

Mom squared her jaw. “How about we start with where she’s been for the last two weeks? Holed up here in your sordid little hovel?”

“That doesn’t sound like her future,” Hades growled. “That sounds like the past.”

“Well if the future you have planned for her is anything like it, then I have to say, I’m not exactly thrilled about her prospects.”

“Her prospects are—”

“Okay stop!” Persephone threw up her hands. “Both of you stop.”

Mom’s mouth stuck open. She gaped, furious at Persephone as Persephone took a deep breath and blew it out in a billowing white cloud. She gently shrugged Hades arm off her shoulder. He withdrew it and stepped back, frowning.

“Look…” She looked at him, then at Mom. “I get that you both are trying to help me. I get it. I do. And I appreciate it. But…this is my life. It’s a mess, yes. I’m aware. I’m not doing it very well. But I’m doing it. It’s mine. And I think—I think I need to keep at it for a while. I need to figure things out for myself.”

Hades was watching her closely, like someone listening to a doctor explain that a loved one had stage four cancer. When she’d finished, he said, very quietly, “You don’t want to be Queen?”

“Were you serious about that? It didn’t exactly seem like—” She blushed and looked away. “Like a firm plan or anything.”

“I was dead serious. I want you to be my queen. The souls love you. I need you.”

“Okay…” She spread her palms. “Honestly, I don’t know. I mean, I care about the souls. And a hundred and twenty billion followers, but…you need to learn how to take care of the souls yourself. And you need to learn how to deal with your anger better. And my mom is right: I can’t just trip off into La-La-Land and ignore my problems and never come back.” She turned to Mom, raising a finger at her smug expression. “And you can wipe that smile off your face. I’m not coming home.”

Mom folded her arms. “So what, then? Back to Olympus? You don’t even have an apartment any more.”

“I don’t know.” Persephone put a hand to her forehead. She felt like things were becoming unsteady. She didn’t have a plan. She felt mildly panicked. She turned to Hades. “I don’t know. Maybe I could stay here just for a while? Help you until you learn how to do better with the souls? I can teach you how to talk to them, and I can help you keep the light going, and then…”

She trailed off. Hades wasn’t looking at her. He was frowning at the bottle of pomegranate juice in her hand.

“Did you get that from the fridge?” he said.

Persephone blinked. She looked down at the bottle. “Uh…yeah?”

“From my fridge?”

“Yes…?” She looked up. “Sorry, what are we talking about?”

He turned his eyes up to hers. “You ate my food.”

“Uh huh.”

“You’ve never done that before.”

“What? Yes I have.”

He shook his head. “You haven’t. You always ordered takeout. You never so much as drank the tap water.”

“What?” Persephone did not understand the weird turn this conversation had suddenly taken. “What does this have to do with anything?”

Behind her, Mom hissed. She grabbed Persephone by the shoulder and turned her around, snatching the bottle from her hand. She glared at it, then at Hades. “You tricked her.”

Hades returned her look. “I did no such thing.”

“You snake.” Mom shook the bottle in his face. “You evil fucking serpent.”

“Mom!” Persephone gasped. “For fuck’s sake, calm down. What is going on?”

“You can’t eat food from the Underworld!” Mom snapped. “If you do, you are bound to the realm. Forever.”

“Well, this wasn’t food from the Underworld.” Persephone glanced at Hades. “This was juice. From the fridge.” Hades grimaced. Persephone’s heart ticked nervously up a notch. She lifted her eyebrows at him. “Right?”

He shifted. “Technically, the whole house is in the Underworld. When you cross the river—” He indicated over Mom’s shoulder to the river at the edge of the driveway. “Demeter’s right. It’s a binding oath. Don’t—” He put up his hands against Persephone’s rising incredulity. “Please don’t ask me why. I didn’t make the rules.”

“This is ridiculous.” Mom whirled around. “I’m calling your father.” She stomped down the steps toward the driveway, pulling out her phone. Persephone watched her go in a daze. She turned back to Hades.

“Is this for real? Am I trapped here?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry—I didn’t mean for this to happen. I honestly didn’t think you would ever eat the food here.”

“Well I was thirsty.” She eyed him. “From all the fucking.”

“Right.” He returned her look. “You know…there are some myths that say a person only eats the food when they’ve decided they want to stay here.” He dropped his gaze, shrugging. “So…there’s that.”

Mom came stomping back up the steps, shoving her phone back into her purse. “Your father is on his way.” She folded her arms and glared at Hades. “He’ll sort this out.”

“No doubt.” Hades sighed and sank to a seat on the top step. “No doubt.”

Zeus dropped out of the sky moments later in a blinding flash of lighting and deafening clap of thunder. The earth cracked beneath his Birkenstocks as he landed, bracing himself with one hand against the ground. He straightened, sweeping his mighty gray beard back over one shoulder, and strolled up the driveway in his tie-dye shirt and cargo shorts, wooden staff in hand. He climbed the steps up to Hades’ porch and Persephone, Mom, and Hades all had to make space for his enormous belly and massive frame.

Zeus peered at them over the top of his Ray Ban sunglasses. “Alright, alright, alright. What’s happening, folks?”

“Your brother,” said Mom icily, “has abducted your daughter, and tricked her—”

“I didn’t trick her,” said Hades.

“—tricked her into eating the food of the dead.”

“I see.” Zeus looked down at his brother. “Stand up, for My sake. You look like a degenerate sitting down there with no shirt on.”

“I look like a degenerate?” Hades got to his feet. “You look like Woodstock threw up on Santa Claus.”

“Is this true?” Zeus said, ignoring him. “Did you abduct my daughter?”

“Yes, but only—”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” Hades spread his palms, looking helpless. “I wasn’t thinking. It was—”

Persephone stepped forward. He looked so defeated, so lost and small under the glare of his brother that she couldn’t stand it. Yes, he was a mess. Yes, he was angry. But he was also cold and alone and in need of someone to care for him. To help him learn to care about himself.

“He did it because he thinks I’m beautiful,” she said. Hades looked at her. “Right?” Hades swallowed. He held her gaze and nodded. She turned to Zeus. “And I think he’s beautiful too.”

Mom scoffed. “This isn’t love, Seph. You know that, right? This is Stockholm Syndrome.”

“Does that really matter?” said Persephone. “At the end of the day? If I’m happy?”

“Uh—” Zeus put up his hand. “I kind of think it matters.”

Persephone huffed. “It’s not Stockholm Syndrome. I’m a big girl. I can think for myself. I know what I feel.”

Zeus stroked his beard. “So what’s the problem? If he loves you and you love him, and you’re bound by oath to stay, just stay.”

“Well—” Persephone hesitated. “That’s not…I didn’t say I love him. I said I think he’s beautiful. That doesn’t mean I want to get married and live in his house. I’ve only known him two weeks.” She turned to Hades. “And you have…you know. Some issues. Sorry.”

He nodded, looking at the floor. “Yeah, no, I get it.”

“And I do want to be with you and spend time here, and help with the souls…I mean a hundred and twenty billion followers. That’s, like, a lot of followers. But I just feel like if I’m going to be a queen, and I mean really be a queen, that a hundred and twenty billion people can look up to and worship and be inspired by, then I need to do something with my life. I want to be a queen like Beyoncé. Not like a British Monarch.”

Zeus clasped both hands around the top of his staff and leaned on it, observing her. “So what would you suggest we do?”

“I don’t know.” Persephone looked around. “I’m not the one in charge of this stuff. But maybe if there was a way I could be here, like….part time?”

“Part time.”

“Half the year, maybe? Do fall and winter in the Underworld and Spring and Summer in Monaco, or something.”

Zeus studied her and turned to Demeter. “I think that seems pretty reasonable. What do you think?”

Mom was clutching her purse and glowering at Persephone. “You don’t really want to spend six months holed up underground every year, do you? In the dark? And the cold?”

Persephone sent her gaze across the rain-soaked grounds to the river Styx. To the fields on the other side of it, where the sun was beginning to dry the world with its light.

“I do,” she said, almost to herself. “I don’t know how to explain it, but…I think we need the dark. The dark is the only way we know how to see the light. Light can only begin at the edges of the dark; one can’t exist without the other. We shouldn’t be pushing death and darkness and cold away—we should embrace them. They’re part of the same cycle.” She looked at Hades. “They’re part of the same life.”

Hades was watching Persephone with the devastated look of a man who was falling apart inside and trying to be happy about it. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”

“Why don’t you come with me?” She gave him her best cunning grin. “Monaco’s pretty great this time of year…”

He shook his head. “I can’t, Persephone.”

Her stomach sank. “Why not?”

“My job is here. I have a duty to the souls. I can’t leave.” He took her hand. “Look, I want you in my life. But at the end of the day…I want you to be happy. So if six months is all you want and that’s all I get—” He shrugged, smiling sadly. “Then I guess I can be satisfied with that.”

“Will I still be queen?”

He looked at Zeus. Zeus shrugged. “I don’t see why not. You’ll have to get her a t-shirt: Queen of the Motherfucking Underworld.” He straightened, clearing his throat. “Is that acceptable to you, Persephone?”

Persephone held Hades’ gaze. She hadn’t thought it would be like that. That he wouldn’t be able to come with her. But he was standing here supporting her decision and smiling through his fear, and if he could do it, so could she. She was determined: she was going to get her life together.

She nodded.

“Great.” Zeus clapped his hands. “If this arrangement is agreeable to all parties, then I think we’d better get this show on the road.” He checked his watch. “I have a drum circle at eleven.”

He turned and swept down the steps to the driveway, then stood wide-legged, gripping his gnarled old staff. He raised it above his head and brought it down hard into the gravel. The sky shook with a mighty clap of thunder and the ground split between his feet. When he stepped back, a sapling was growing out of the crack he had made. He turned to Hades.

“This pomegranate tree will mark her departure and return. It flowers in the Spring and Summer, when the sun warms the branches and gives it energy to grow. But it doesn’t bear fruit until the fall, and it keeps fruiting until late in the winter. When the flowers turn and the tree begins to fruit, you’ll know she will be coming back, and she will stay as long as the tree bears fruit.”

Hades nodded and stared miserably at the tree.

Persephone put her hand on his cheek. “You’re going to be okay,” she said. “I think we both are. Maybe not all the time, but no one is okay all the time. Sometimes things will get dark. Sometimes we’ll be sad and cold. But the darkness will end. It always does eventually.”

Hades covered her hand with his and laced his fingers through hers. He squeezed and let her go. “When you bring the light.”

Persephone smiled. “When I bring the light.”

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What do you do with a drunken sailor when the world is underwater?

My name is Bird Howsley, and I’m a beautiful disaster. Okay, “beautiful” is probably being generous. But the “disaster” part is right.

In a brutal, dystopian waterworld, where survival depends on skill and smarts, I’m pretty much always one bad decision away from watching my life go completely down the drain.

Luckily, I have a lifeline: my cute, level-headed sailing teacher, Sargo Paz. Did I say cute? I didn’t mean cute. He’s just a friend. I definitely don’t have weird sex dreams about him.

Anyway, three days ago, I got a message from a dead guy. That’s odd, right? I had a plan to go find him, but it went pretty badly sideways, and Sargo and I ended up in the crosshairs of a very sketchy underground organization that now wants us dead.

We didn’t know what else to do except flee into the Salt. Now we’re stuck together on Sargo’s tiny sailboat, facing down pirates and harrowing seas, and things are getting, uh—tense between us.

Oh, and did I mention I’ve been blacking out? Like…a lot?

An Excerpt

I climb down the companionway to the galley, expecting to find Sargo making a cup of tea, but he isn’t there. I squint through the cabin to the bunk in the bow. He’s kneeling on it, facing away from me with his head down. I take a few steps closer and hear him breathing hard. A shaft of fear goes through me. Is he sick? If he’s sick, I don’t know how I’m going to sail Panga on my own.

Then I see what he’s doing, and freeze. My view of his hands is blocked by the angle of his body, but I know immediately by the sound. The rhythmic sound of his fist, beating against his hips. The ragged breaths he is trying to take quietly.

He’s jerking off.

My whole body ignites. I feel like I just stepped over the edge of the world and am free-falling into nothing. I should turn around and go back to the cockpit. I should pretend I haven’t seen this.

Instead, I take a step closer.

“Crack. That’s what this is.” - Goodreads Review

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PART-TIME AUTHOR 🪶⚓ FULL-TIME PIRATE.

HI! I’M LIZ. I’m a freelance writer, indie author, and full-time, off-grid, live-aboard sailor. I’m currently sailing around the world with my boyfriend and my dog, turning my real-life adventures into speculative fiction.

I feel incredibly grateful to be able to explore the world as I do, and I love incorporating the incredible experiences, beautiful places, and wonderful people I encounter on my travels into my work.

I also use my books as a means to explore themes of mental health, addiction, technology, climate change, and the looming collapse of society (but, like…in a fun way.)

When I’m not penning novels about the impending apocalypse, I work as a freelance content writer specializing in articles about code, music theory, and off-grid living. On the rare occasion I’m not writing, you can find me swimming, hiking, telling my dog I love her for the bazillionth time today, or watching Taskmaster.