Hell Is An Empty Body (Book Two of The Triple Moon's Chronicles)

04 | The Noose To Kill Him ***

Warning for some steams and I'm so bad at those scenes 😬!

"Hell, I'm a king; I can dissolve that marriage if I want to."
Hades

This was what he said, and this was what he did as well. Persephone became a divorcee in the likeness of Aphrodite, and in their hatred, she found freedom.

Free from any god's desires because, in their misconception of a goddess' worth, they deemed her damaged. She was also free from her mother, Demeter, who now cared more for her second daughter, a toddler named Daeira. Free to wander wherever she pleased until he summoned her.

There she was now, a butterfly that had fluttered far from death into a summer song, while he was just a paper moth weighing down on his guilts.

And yet, her light attracted Hades.

The light that cascaded through her long hair, glowing red in the darkness, the light that refracted the blue from his heart. Her light that she flickered as she flicked her locks on the side, blowing a familiar scent towards Hades. The perfume of pomegranate—the fruit she ate to stay with him and his throat tightened even more on this memory. The world suddenly slowed down even when she looked at him with those silver sharp eyes and flaring nostrils.

"What do you want, Hades?"

He would always love her, no matter what.

"Please, let's talk in private."

Persephone giggled at the suggestion—the titter of madness, the laughter of sadness. She shook her head, narrowing her eyes at this god hidden behind the thick armour of a king.

"You want to talk now?" Scraping her hair back, Persephone snorted as her mind spun around the throne chamber of hell. Flashes of her time there hit her—the best, the worst, and the heartbreak.

"Please, let's not make a scene!" His voice broke as he came down with his helm removed and a hand stretching out towards her. She could see his chin quivering, his eyes looking down, and yet she just slapped his wrist in rejection and stormed out of the chamber. Hades followed her behind after a bow of his head in apology to his entire court.

Her steps sped up in rhythm to her anger. Persephone was in an ache behind her pursed lips. Hades had become a cut to her, the fever on her body, the swelling on her heart, and she cried countless nights over this long-lasting pain.

She would never heal from him.

Rushing through the hallway and out to the orchard, he caught her arm. The single touch of his hand on her caused his heart to hammer under his ribcage and it didn't help that she whipped him with a glimpse of her long, trim ankles. His knees weakened at their sight and he pulled her near him, her lips hovering over his chest only for him to see another kind of wound on her while Persephone's jaw dropped in front of the snared Theseus and Pirithous.

"What does that mean?" That was what they both asked at the same time.

Turning his head to the side as Persephone snatched back her limb, Hades asked, "Why do you have this scar on your hand?"

Persephone chuckled and crossed her arms. "Why are there two men buried in your orchard?"

Silence thickened between them, taking on the shape of a nimbostratus cloud, a dark grey smoke ready to produce a continuous rain without a lightning. The spark of electricity releasing into the atmosphere to join the sky, the air and the ground and instead the thunder came out of Persephone. "Fine, if you don't want to speak first, then I will do the honour. I hope you won't miss any nymph by the name of Mintha, because I just ended her life."