Hell Is An Empty Heart (Book One of The Triple Moon's Chronicles)

04 | Cold White Light

    Hades developed an odd addiction for his guest. He would visit Persephone's dark cage whenever he got a spare moment, spending hours staring without speaking or attempting to touch her. Between his hands, he would always hold a similar blossom to the one that caught her heart and caused her misery—a newly gifted flower during every one of his visits.

Nine narcissus were now in the vase at her bedside. It made the spring's symphony, the cure against monotony, the one they called Persephone, on her ninth day away from home. She was supposedly lost in her dreams, confined and comfy in her crystal casket. Sometimes he would allow himself to come closer, polishing her like a precious stone with his eyes until he was content enough to go away.

Persephone would act as if she didn't notice him, then burst into tears once alone. She would weep for the soothing voice of her mother, for the perfume of their island. Most of all, she would cry for the sun to caress her face and warm her heart because in this realm, the sky was either blood crimson or pitch black.

She would waste all her day looking through the tiny window of her prison. Her only treasure was this same view of nothingness. There was no warmth, no life, nobody in this unbearable silence. The quietness that her thoughts transformed into music, making the haunted shrieks from the cold to become an orchestra to her loneliness.

If, for a change, she would get nearer to the door, her three canid guardians would bark at her and then try to bite her again. They were loyal to their master and guarded Persephone day and night, and she needed something to tame them.

They offered her some food, some raw red meat, but she piled it up to rot. She only ate one seed every day, kept in a little pouch that she could conceal. Their hospitality would serve another purpose as she squared them up for her tiny mouth and pushed the plate back towards her monster guard's muzzles instead.

The three hounds couldn't resist the temptation of the delicious meal and gave in. The animal scoffed the meat, and she gave them more and more and even her water until their lips would start to crack open.

Persephone's mouth fell open at what she was seeing. One body joined the three large Doberman dog heads and the creature of the abyss spoke from one of them, saying, "I heard you calling your father's name."

She shook her head as the second one laughed at her. "You were a fool! He can't hear you in the realm of the Dead. Worst of all, he was the one behind all this. He gave your hand to our Lord without your mother's consent. It was your dear father who sent you here."

"Don't be afraid; our Lord did the same thing when he first arrived here," the final one whispered then paused. "He cried out to heaven for his brothers to come and save him, but they never did," he spoke to her through each of his three heads. He would always talk to anyone in that manner, as if they were all thinking the same.

With her nose wrinkling and her arms crossed on her body, she asked him, "What's your name, and why are you telling me all this?"

"They called us Cerberus," he answered, before grinning. "We saw the way you blushed. Rest assured, our master is good, maiden Persephone."

Persephone didn't understand the subtext of Cerberus's sentence because she had never fallen in love before. She didn't even know the power of her charm and its effect on anyone, and the only male deity close to her was Hermes, but she never felt that way about him.

"And what's about you, Cerberus?" she traded a query for his riddle with a giggle. "Why are you here?" and she shamed him too. "Don't you have divine blood running through your veins?"

She had heard stories about the one named Cerberus at Mount Olympus from her sisters. He wasn't any kind of hound but a son of the goddess Echidna—one of the most famous inhabitants of Tartarus, a female insectivorous deity adorned with the lower body of a snake.