An Old Friend

Getting the girls to the office without being seen was a feat, but Hades managed. He’d given the hat to Kore, and his jacket to Theo, and with one invisible and one swallowed in fabric, hoped it wouldn’t cause too much of a stir. The city was still waking, luckily, and the only people on the rivers had other concerns on their minds.

Only when they made it to the top of his building did he allow himself a small moment of relief. The three of them clustered into the waiting room, Theo handing his jacket back and Kore slipping the hat from her head.

Leuce stood from behind her desk.

“I can explain,” Hades said, but she wasn’t looking at him.

“Theo?”

Theo turned. She shook her head like she couldn’t make sense of the sight in front of her. “They—Demeter said—I didn’t know. You have to believe I didn’t know.”

Leuce couldn’t have understood the sentence, but it didn’t appear to matter. She pushed her chair aside and the next second she’d careened into Theo’s arms, wrapping herself in the other girl’s embrace. Theo stumbled into the wall before returning the hug, burying her head in the crook of Leuce’s shoulder.

“I don’t understand,” Leuce said after a long moment. She twisted enough to look at Hades. “How is this possible?”

Hades rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ve become a sucker for breaking rules, apparently.”

Theo pushed them both upright. She lifted a hand to skim her fingers along Leuce’s brow. “What happened to your eyes?”

“Long story,” was all she managed. She cleared her throat and shook her head. “I can’t believe Demeter let you come and see me.”

Theo’s smile faltered. “We didn’t know you were here until Hades said something.”

Leuce’s expression plummeted. She turned to Hades.

“It seems Demeter neglected to share what happened to you.”

“Why?”

Theo’s mouth twisted. “She said you went home. We thought you were happy.”

“She must have had her reasons,” Hades said, though he knew it wouldn’t lessen the sting.

Kore, too, offered a sympathetic expression. “I wonder if she thought she could protect us by not saying anything.”

Hades didn’t comment on the anger in her voice, the rigid way she held herself. “I actually have another favor to ask, Lu. Feel free to say no—I don’t want to pressure you into getting in the middle of this.”

Leuce’s expression turned fierce. “Anything. Ask it.”

Theo smiled sadly. “I need a place to stay.”

“Demeter…”

“Kicked me out.”

“What happened?”

“I’ll tell you the whole story when we don’t have an audience.”

Leuce looked from Kore to Hades to Theo. “Of course the answer is yes. As long as you need.”

Hades’s phone buzzed in his pocket. When he looked at it, Hecate’s name appeared on the screen. “I need to take this. Be right back.”

No one said a word, but Kore gave him a nod of encouragement.

He walked into his office to answer the call. “Hecate?”

“Tell me you didn’t drag that girl down here a second time.”

“Hello to you, too.”

Hecate huffed over the line. “Please, for the love of Tartarus, tell me Kore is not this very moment standing in the Underworld. I just got off the phone with a very upset Demeter, and she’s going to flip if she finds out you’re with Kore again.”

“I don’t know what happened, but she’s pretty shaken. She asked to come down.”

“And you said yes? I know you like her, Hades, but I can’t protect you from this one. You’re smarter than this.”

Hades couldn’t say anything to that. He was smarter than this, but that hadn’t stopped him in the diner, and it certainly wasn’t going to stop him now. Kore deserved more than that.

“Look,” Hecate said, “if you get her back to her mom by sundown tonight, Demeter says she’ll drop everything. No harm, no foul, as long as Kore gets home.”

Anger clenched Hades’s jaw. “That’s up to Kore and Kore alone.”

“It’s not her call to make, not when she’s in your kingdom, breaking the laws of your kin. Demeter has the right to ask for…”

But Hades couldn’t hear the rest of Hecate’s sentence, because he’d taken the phone away from his ear. He walked back into the waiting room, where Kore stood a few steps from Leuce and Theo.

She noticed him as soon as he cleared the doorway. Hades lifted the phone. “It’s for you.”

Hesitantly, she moved close enough to take the phone, lifting it to her ear. Hades watched her expression change, from awkward concern to annoyance and then, the longer she listened, downright anger. Orange flowers sprouted along her temples.

“What’s that about?” Leuce asked, though she looked at Hades like she already knew.

Hades settled his hands on his hips. “I’ve decided I liked Demeter better when she wasn’t talking to anybody.”

Theo burst out laughing. “He’s funny. Who knew he was funny?”

But Leuce only managed a small smile. “I don’t think Kore should stay with me. Theo is one thing—if Demeter already kicked her out, then I doubt she’ll come banging on my door demanding her back. Kore, though…”

Hades rubbed a hand over his jaw. “I understand. I wouldn’t ask you to get in the middle of this if I thought there was another option.”

“If she doesn’t mind it, staying with you might be the best option. I hope Demeter would think twice about storming the home of the king of the Underworld.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Theo muttered. “Kore had to grow a forest in the living room to be taken seriously the first time, and that lasted about forty seconds.”

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Whatever Leuce might have said in response was stilled by Kore walking back into the room, her hair more flowers than curls and her expression livid.

“I take it that didn’t go well?” Theo asked.

Kore clenched the phone in her hand. “She thinks she owns me.”

“She’s a powerful goddess. Most of them are used to getting what they want, when they want it.”

Kore handed the phone back to Hades. “I’m done with it. She’ll have to get used to me being gone.”

Hades grimaced. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? We’ve seen what your mother can do.”

“She hasn’t seen what I can do.” Kore’s eyes burned. “And she won’t like what she finds.”

#

They returned to a quiet house. Hades’s phone thankfully had remained still through the journey from his office to his house, though he would have liked something other than silence from Kore, too.

She’d agreed that staying with Leuce put both her and Theo in unnecessary danger. Not only that, but Hades got the sense those two wanted time alone with each other. Whether they had been more than friends when they’d known each other on the farm, they certainly seemed inclined that way now.

Cerberus met them at the door. One head sniffed Hades’s shoes, but the other two stretched towards Kore, noses twitching. Before he could push the dog away, he reared up, setting his paws on Kore’s shoulders and attempting to lick her chin.

Hades stared, too stunned to apologize. He’d never seen Cerberus do that before.

Kore laughed, thankfully not seeming bothered by the display. She scratched her fingers into the fur along his shoulders. “I think he likes me.”

It was the first thing she’d said since they’d left the office.

Hades tried to smile. “I think like is an understatement.”

Kore pushed Cerberus off, but he stayed close as she moved into the living room. Hades followed, watching as she sat on the couch and held her hands out to the dog, welcoming him into her space. She held him against her leg so he couldn't jump on her again, and scratched behind the ears of his middle head.

Hades remained standing. He had to look awkward, there in the middle of the floor, but he couldn’t bring himself to sink into the couch. He cleared his throat. “I understand if you don’t want to talk about what happened with your mom, but I should know what I just signed up for.”

Kore didn’t answer for a long moment. She stared at Cerberus, or maybe somewhere past him, lost in thought or memory or both. “I want to say that she won’t follow me down, but I don’t know anymore. I knew she was protective, and scared of the things she’d seen, but I never thought….”

Hades waited for her to pick up again, but she didn’t. He lowered himself onto the nearest solid object, the corner of the coffee table. “Did she hurt you?”

Kore scoffed, the sound utterly humorless. “Not like you’re thinking. She did, however, strip two of my friends of the only home they’ve known for centuries, because I was stupid.”

“The party?” He remembered the expression on Theo’s face when she’d brought it up.

“Kind of. I don’t know if she knows we went. She has to, because if she really did react like that over a flat tire…I don’t know. It’s like I don’t know her anymore.” Kore turned away, hiding her expression. “Because of her, I can’t seem to stop hurting everyone around me.”

Hades’s chest constricted at the break in her voice. “You can’t live your whole life to fit into what makes her happy.”

“Clearly, I’m doing quite the opposite of that.” Kore gestured at the house.

Hades didn’t have an answer for her. The silence continued until Kore sighed.

“Thank you for taking us in. I don’t know where Theo would have gone if you hadn’t.”

Hades didn’t say that he hadn’t done it for Theo. Her words in the park came back to him, the implication that Kore might feel something more for him than she let on. That if he didn’t, he should tell her.

But he’d just broken every rule he’d ever promised to uphold, simply because she’d asked him to. He couldn’t get much clearer than that, could he?

“Hades,” Kore started, her voice heavy. “How permanent are the pomegranates in the garden?”

Hades froze. “Don’t go there, Kore.”

“Are those rules like the ones you’re bending for me right now, or are they more of the combust-on-the-spot-if-broken type?”

“You saw Leuce. You really think she’d stay here this long if she’d been able to leave?”

“I don’t know. I kind of like it here.”

Panic flared in Hades’s chest. Is that what it would come to between them? What happiness could he give her here, in his desaturated, dead world? She belonged in the sun, surrounded by living things.

Hades stood. He took a step back. “I know you’re upset, but that is not a way out.”

Her eyes flickered over him, up and down. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“Promise me you’ll stay away from the garden,” he said, his voice too strained. “As much as I enjoy your company, you can’t lose the surface because of me. You love it too much.”

Whatever she’d been about to say—promise or not—did not make it out of her mouth, because Hecate appeared between them.

One minute, an empty patch of carpet. The next, a scowling, glaring Titan, her arms crossed over her slouchy sweater and an expression that said she was ready to start the next apocalypse.

“Well,” she growled. “You’ve done it this time.”

“Hecate?” Kore rose from her spot on the couch.

Hecate turned, her body stiff. “Your mom is worried sick. She asked me to bring you home.”

Hades scoffed. “Tell the truth. She didn’t ask, did she?”

“It might have been more forceful than that.” Hecate shook her head. “She’s serious, Hades. Remember what I showed you? Demeter is promising all of it and more if Kore isn’t back on the farm by nightfall.”

Kore shook her head. “My mother said she’d never destroy the human world again. She promised.”

Hecate looked between him and Kore. “I wouldn’t pop in like this if I thought Demeter might be bluffing. I told you that you had a role to play in this yet, Kore, and now it’s here.”

Orange erupted from her hair, then red, and before any of them could speak, her curls could have been the prize show at a botanical garden. Hades fought the urge to cross the room, to tell her it would be all right. It would have been a lie, and she’d dealt with enough deceit for one lifetime.

“I never wanted any of this,” Kore said. “Why is she doing this to me?”

Hecate had no answer for her. She turned to Hades instead. “The dead can’t break through. You know this.”

Hades felt his jaw clench. “Or what?”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Demeter has crossed a line, and I for one won’t put Kore on the chopping block to soothe her tantrum.”

Hecate bared her teeth in a wicked grimace. “You were tasked with the protection of this realm. If you abandon that because of a girl—”

“The realm will be fine,” Hades growled. Tremors rocked through his shoes. “If the dead come, this is where they belong. Demeter wants to treat Kore like a hostage, so let her pay the price. I’ll welcome the new arrivals personally.”

Hecate stared, open-mouthed. She tried to say something, stopped, then turned back to Kore. But she found no answers there, either. “I’m asking you, the both of you. Don’t make a decision you’ll regret.”

“Good-bye, Hecate,” said Hades. “Nice talking with you.”

Hecate only glared. As soon as she’d come, she disappeared with a pressure wave Hades felt in his ears.

He and Kore stared at each other across the empty space. He wanted to ask if she was all right, or if he could do anything for her, but he already knew the answer. What help could he offer against such a betrayal, except to say he knew what it felt like to think your parents had been so different, too?

“I’m sorry,” was all he said.

Kore didn’t respond. She crossed her arms over her chest, her mouth twisting.

“I can go. Or I can take you somewhere.”

Another shake. She wobbled, and Hades moved to catch her before she fell. She latched onto him, her hands fisting around the fabric of his shirt. She pressed her cheek against his chest and squeezed her eyes shut, and Hades felt her shoulders begin to shake.

He held her. Wrapped his arms around her and felt her warmth against him, leaned his chin on top of her head and pulled her close. He was no stranger to pain. He’d take it all if he could.

Kore’s hands slid up his chest, and he didn’t stop them. Her fingers twisted in his hair, tight enough to send a pleasant tingle along his scalp, and she pulled him down. A request, one Hades couldn’t have denied if he’d wanted to. And he’d stopped wanting to.

Her mouth moved, petal-soft against his lips. He tasted salt and sweet and something in between, something all her that swam in his head and twisted in his stomach and drowned him where he stood. He reached down, hands sliding to the curve where her hips met her legs, and hoisted her into his arms. He earned a small gasp for his efforts, her legs twisting around his waist to hold herself in place.

He stumbled onto the couch, half-falling into the cushions. Her tongue pressed against his lips in a needy request, and Hades was all too happy to taste her against him. He let her in, and she burst across his tastebuds, warm and sweet and perfect.

His hands danced along her thighs, finding the end of the dress and pushing it up. Kore broke away from him, her breath shuddering in her chest, and Hades stilled. “Too much?”

She shook her head, her teeth finding her bottom lip. She looked almost embarrassed. “No, it’s not—It’s just that—I’ve never…”

Oh.

Hades let his hands find the couch. “We can stop here. We don’t have to go any further.”

“That’s not what I meant. I just need you to show me the steps the first time.”

The first time. The words spilled over him, the idea that there might be more to them than here and now and this. He leaned up to kiss her again, and the smile on her face as he did nearly undid him right there on the couch.