A Touch of Darkness (Hades & Persephone 1)

Persephone straightened at his direct order. Demetri stood and walked to the wall of windows, his hands behind his back. “How about a bi-weekly feature?”

“That’s a lot, Demetri. I’m still in school,” she reminded him.

“Monthly, then,” he said. “What do you say to…five, six articles?”

“Do I have a choice?” she muttered, but Demetri still heard. The corner of his mouth quirked. “Don’t underestimate yourself, Persephone. Just think—if this is as successful as I think it will be, there will be a line of people waiting to hire you when you graduate.”

Except it wouldn’t matter because she’d be a prisoner—not just of the Underworld, but of Tartarus. She wondered how Hades would choose to torture her?

He’ll probably refuse to kiss you, she thought and rolled her eyes at herself.

“Your next article is due on the first,” he said. “Let’s have some variety—don’t just talk about his bargains—what else does he do? What are his hobbies? What does the Underworld really look like?”

Persephone felt uncomfortable at Demetri’s questions, and she wondered if these questions were for him rather than the public.

With that, she was dismissed. Persephone walked out of Demetri’s office and sat down at her desk feeling dazed. A monthly feature following the God of the Dead?

What have you gotten yourself into, Persephone? She groaned. Hades was never going to agree.

He doesn’t have to agree, she reminded herself.

Perhaps this would give her a chance to bargain with Hades. Could she leverage the threat of more articles to convince him to let her out of the contract?

And would his promise of punishment turn out to be true?

***

Persephone went to class after leaving the Acropolis. It seemed like everyone had a copy of New Athens News today. That bold, black headline glared back at her on the bus, on her walk across campus, even in class.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder, and she twisted to find two girls. She wasn’t sure of their names, but they’d sat behind her since the beginning of the semester and said nothing until today. The girl on the right held a copy of the paper.

“You’re Persephone, right?” one of them asked. “Is everything you wrote true?”

That question made her cringe. Her instinct was to say no. She hadn’t written the story, not in its entirety, but she cou

ldn’t. She settled on saying, “The story is evolving.”

What she didn’t anticipate was the excitement in the girls’ eyes. “So, there will be more?”

Persephone cleared her throat. “Yeah…yes.”

The girl on the left leaned farther over the table. “So, you’ve met Hades?”

“That’s a stupid question,” the other girl chided. “What she wants to know is what’s Hades like? Do you have pictures?”

A strange feeling erupted in Persephone’s stomach—a metallic twist that made her feel both jealous and protective of Hades—ironic, because she had promised to write about him. Still, now that she was posed with these questions, she wasn’t sure she wanted to share her intimate knowledge of the god. Did she want to talk about how she’d caught him playing fetch with his dogs in a grove in the Underworld? Or how he’d amused her by playing rock-paper-scissors?

These were…human aspects of the god, and all of a sudden, she felt possessive of them. They were hers.

She offered a small, unamused smile and said, “I guess you’ll have to wait and see.”

Demetri had been right—the world was just as curious about the god as they were afraid of him.

The girls in her class weren’t the only people who stopped her to ask about her article. On her way across campus, several other strangers called out to her. She guessed they were testing her name, and once they discovered she was Persephone, they ran up to her to ask the same questions—Did you really meet Hades? What does he look like? Do you have a picture?

She made excuses to get away quickly. If there was one thing she hadn’t anticipated, it was this—the attention she would receive. She couldn’t decide if she liked it or not.

Persephone passed through the Garden of the Gods, when her phone rang.