THE NEXT MIST SOAKED MORNING SAW PERSEPHONE DISTRACTED, RED EYED, AND SLIGHTLY OUT OF HER DELICATE WITS.

It was perhaps only a gentle, rose skinned touch of insanity - but the bloodshot eyes that graced her face also stained it with the bruised indigo hollowness of insomnia. She hadn't been able to sleep, that much was very clear. Something about her terrifying eyes flicked at my senses, making me wonder if she knew how terrible - and by that I meant eerily devastating - she looked.

The gaze of hungry, reeling death stayed in her eyes as we crossed the Acheron, the Cocytus, the Phlegethon. Even the wails of the dead could not chase the cobwebs away from her stained eyes.

"This is the Vale of Mourning," I pointed out a golden dappled peak to her in the distance. She looked at it pointedly astride a sleek black stallion of her own, before that sharp gaze of hers pierced my own like a shard of rugged glass.

Ah, now this I loved. Playing hard to get, hmm. The woman was a challenge, and one I gladly welcomed.

"The mountains' roots run infinite miles deep into the ground like a withered god - and between them sleeps the valley where the dead weep and dance. They call it the Lugentes Campi, the valley filled with souls who lost their lives for unrequited love," I muttered further, watching her for any signs of interest.

"Why was the shade crying the other day?" she asked, ignoring completely all my efforts to get her to notice the beauty of the valley. The question raised a flame of impatience in me - why did she want to concern herself with matters clearly out of her reach? I kept her safe from those miseries of my duty, and she dug deeper and deeper in.

"Which shade?" I feigned ignorance.

Her eyes flashed a brilliant green, making her look dreadfully, terribly beautiful. Something about her was like a fanged serpent, eager to bite and draw blood while feeding you venom. Lusts I would no doubt give in to wherever they concerned her.

"Don't lie," she gritted her teeth. "That woman. That day you showed me the Styx."

"She was scared of Thanatos. Many shades are, they all are scared of death, Persephone. Aren't you?"

"I told you before, you don't scare me," she glared at me. "Do you really have to make death that hard for them? Besides the pain they feel on separation from their loved ones?"

"Death is death," I snapped at her. "It is not my duty to wipe their tears, nor is it to hold their hand every time Thanatos takes their life. My responsibility is to make sure I guard their souls safely."

"Why did she die?"

"What...?"

"Why did she die? How did she die, Hades?" she asked again, her voice deadly but quiet.

There was steel in her words that refused to take no for an answer. She only looked back at me like a goddess frozen in shattered ice, her burnished skin glowing fiercely with a beauty of a thousand suns.

"She died while stealing a wheel of cottage cheese for her starving child," I said at last.

"So," she got off her stallion, her plum coloured robes trailing behind her as she walked up to me, "you are saying you left a homeless child to starve before taking the mother's life?"

"I do not get to decide when somebody dies. That is the work of the Fates. Something you do not seem to understand, wife."

"What I understand, husband," she sneered at me, cold and frigid, "is that you fail to have even the smallest bit of mercy for the dying! You part families, break them apart, all without the slightest sense of remorse!"

"Remorse?" I snapped at her, feeling my temper rise slowly. "Remorse? You Olympians burden me with the weight of a thousand million souls, expect me to keep the monsters of Tartarus in check, call me monster, call me dreadful - and oh, you expect me to show remorse as well? So that you can rain more insults on me while you sit on your gilded thrones and drink spiced wine?"

"There has to be some way!" she shouted back at me, until we both looked into each other's faces, livid, pale, white with anger. "There has to be some way you can give them some mercy even if you must take their life!"

"I am known for being just, not merciful. Death is irreversible," my jaw tightened, blood rushing straight to my brain.

"There must be something you can do," Persephone insisted, her tone sharp. "Something. Something to make the parting easier."

"There is nothing," I looked at her coldly. "This is the way the Underworld works. Death is a gruesome business, and emotions have no place here."

She stared at me with eyes of sunkissed steel, and never had I seen her so terrifying, so deadly, it was like the flowers that bloomed in her words had gone up in smoke - for the very same voice was so frigid that it could have frozen icicles from ocean waters.

"Do you do this with every woman, then?"

"Do I do what with every woman?" I tersed.

"Take them out to tours so that you can hide the real work you do here? This gruesome business? Clearly you are doing this for some reason - you do not intend to let me leave once the month is over, do you?"

I looked at her, and for once - I was at a loss for words.

"You have some ulterior motive, don't you, Hades? Clearly it isn't the kindness of your heart to allow me to leave - you yourself said there is no place for emotion here, right?"

"I..." my thoughts seemed to have trouble connecting themselves, "I genuinely - I actually enjoy your company-" I muttered, words slipping away as I tried to phrase them coherently. How was I supposed to tell her that this was not some ruse, not some plot - that I did really like being with her, taking her to beautiful places and seeing that smile on her face?

"Lies," she spat. "You lie, Polydegmon."

In utter shock and silence did my eyes meet hers. This was it, then. The one person in existence who I thought on my side was there no longer. I placed my trust in her and she cast it aside and flung it to the wild like a vase of useless glass.

"I have never," I began cautiously, guarding my voice as I stared at the seething goddess, "never ever been with a woman before you. Believe me."

Her expression refused to change, to transform a single bit, remaining still a stone eyed deity of anger, not the dewy lady of spring.

Then she turned on her heel, leaving me stranded in the vast, grassy moors under the inky sky, going in the direction that made my heart fill with dread.

"Stop, Persephone. Don't go that way-"

"I'll go wherever I like," she shouted back, her voice carrying over the biting wind.

"Wait - no. That is the way to Tartarus!"

"I'll go wherever I damned please!"

"I told you to fucking stop!" I thundered, my words deadly and dangerous and sharp, gripping her hand firmly before she took another step into that damned territory. She looked at me with hatred gleaming in her gaze.

I effortlessly pulled her back into the fields, all the while aware of her glare as it rested on me. My heart kept skipping beats at the thought that had I been a second late - I would have lost her, fucking lost her-

"That area stays off limits," I snapped at her, hardly aware of the tendrils of dreadful black that curled around my form, swirling and billowing with the whispers of death. "You take even one step towards Tartarus, and I'll chain you to the fucking bed!"

"What are you going to then, yes?" she mocked me, her eyes defiant, resistant. "You're going to make me your prisoner, huh? Am I not that already?"

"I will say this once," I growled at her, our noses almost touching as her irresistible, inviting scent enveloped my senses, "and once only. You do not understand how Tartarus works and you will stay away from it. Do-you-understand, Persephone?"

My heart sank as I saw her face, a picture of disdain.

And I knew I had lost her when my Queen spat at my feet and finally walked away.

every single being