A Touch of Darkness (Hades & Persephone 1)

He looked away from her. “I thought you would change your mind.”

She stared at him a moment. “I told you I wanted to write about Hades.”

“Not about that,” he said. “I thought he might convince you he was justified in his contracts with mortals.”

“Let me get this straight. You decided that I couldn't think for myself, so you stole my work, altered it, and published it?”

“It's not like that. Hades is a god, Persephone—”

I'm a goddess, she wanted to yell.

“Hades is a god, and for that very reason, you didn't want to write about him. You feared him, Adonis. Not me.”

He cringed. “I didn't mean—”

“What you meant doesn't matter,” she snapped.

“Persephone?” Demetri called from his office. She and Adonis looked in the direction of their supervisor’s office. “A moment?”

Her gaze slid back to Adonis, and she pinned him with a final glare before heading into Demetri’s office.

“Yes, Demetri?” She stood in the doorway. He was sitting behind his desk, a fresh edition of the paper in hand.

“Take a seat,” he said.

She did—on the edge, because she wasn’t sure what Demetri would think of the article—she had a hard time calling it hers. Would his next words be ‘you’re fired?’ It was one thing to say you wanted the truth, another to actually publish it.

She considered what she would do when she lost her internship. She now had less than six months until graduation. It was unlikely another paper would hire the girl who dared call the God of the Underworld the worst god. She knew many people shared Adonis’s fear of Tartarus.

Just as Demetri started to speak, Persephone said, “I can explain.”

“What is there to explain?” he asked. “It’s clear by your article what you were trying to do here.”

“I was angry,” she explained.

“You wanted to expose an injustice,” he said.

“Yes, but there’s more. It’s not the whole story,” she said. She’d really only shown Hades in one light—and that was really in no light at all, just darkness.

“I hope it’s not,” Demetri said.

“What?” Persephone was confused.

“I’m asking you to write more,” Demetri said.

The Goddess of Spring was quiet, and Demetri continued. “I want more. How soon can you have another article out?”

“About Hades?”

“Oh yes. You have only scratched the surface of this god.”

“But I thought…aren’t you…afraid of him?”

Demetri laid the paper down and leveled his gaze with hers. “Persephone, I told you from the beginning. We seek truth here at New Athens News and no one knows the truth of the King of the Underworld—you can help the world understand him.”

Demetri made it all sound so innocent, but Persephone knew that what she would bring upon Hades from the article published today was only hatred.

“Those who fear Hades are also curious. They will want more and you’re going to deliver.”