"I can't always save you!"

"Why do you even bother?" Tears sprang to my eyes. I shivered violently, clutching his cloak tighter around me. "You just think I'm in the way, and all I ever do is screw up. Why don't you just send me to Boreas? It would save you a lot of trouble."

"Why do I bother?" Hades asked, surprised. "You really haven't figured that out?"

I met his eyes, searching for answers. "You were afraid," I whispered, surprised.

"For you," Hades clarified. The heat left his voice, leaving only weariness. "Yeah. You could have been really hurt, and I might not have made it in time." He reached out and grabbed me by the shoulders. "Look, I'm sorry I yelled, but you have to stop throwing yourself into these situations. You could have been hurt."

I nodded, gritting my teeth to stop from trembling. Hades seemed to notice my shaking for the first time and sighed. "I'm sorry I yelled. I just... That was terrifying."

I nodded. "Yeah. It was." My voice quavered.

He hesitated, then pulled me into a hug. I clung to him, taking shuddering breaths, fighting back tears. I was still shaking, still frightened by what had happened in Tartarus, but Hades had saved me.

My grip tightened. "Thank you."

He pulled back, eyes going to the table where Pirithous was eating. "Why don't you go with Cassandra while I take care of something."

His voice was gentle, and there was something in the way he looked at me that made my knees go weak.

I didn't think; I just acted. Quick as a thought I rose onto my tiptoes and kissed Hades full on the lips. He stiffened in surprise, then for a moment he relaxed and kissed me back, hand rising to touch my face.

He broke free of the kiss with a curse. "I can't do this," he swore and took a few steps backward.

"Why not?" I asked breathlessly.

"I'm not Zeus. I don't just go around-" He ran his fingers through his hair, frustrated. "I have standards."

I felt as if I'd been slapped. "I see."

"No! Damn it, that's not what I meant. You're just a child-"

"How else would you see me?"

Hades narrowed his eyes when he recognized his line. "Is that what got you so upset?"

Screw it. I'd already humiliated myself by kissing him. What else did I have to lose?

"Could you just tell me how you feel about me? Do you hate me? Can you even stand me? Because every now and then I see something and I think that you might...that you might have feelings for me, but then you do or say something so frustrating and I don't know. This back and forth thing is driving me crazy!"

He laughed. "I'm driving you crazy? You offer to bring people back from the dead and run off to Tartarus if I say the wrong thing! You're driving me insane!"

My heart sank. "So you do hate me?"

"Hate you? No! I-" He broke off, running his fingers through his hair. "I'm in love with you. I've been in love with you since the moment I laid eyes on you in the clearing..." He trailed off, looking to the side as if he could see me there. My mind flashed back to the picture in his dream and my eyes widened. "You're beautiful, and kind, and everything I could ever want, but that doesn't change the fact that you're eons younger than me. However much I'd like it to. Pursuing this in any way would be taking advantage of you, and I'm not going to do that."

My mind reeled. I hadn't been expecting that. I didn't know if I was in love with Hades, but I definitely had feelings for him. When I found my voice I said, "Who isn't younger than you? People make too big of a deal over age. It's just a number. I'm old enough to know what I want, and-"

"You're not even old enough to know who you are," Hades interrupted. "And you have no idea what I'm capable of. There's no need to rush anything. One good thing about being immortal is that we've got unlimited time to figure things out."

I opened my mouth to respond, but was cut off by a commotion behind Hades. Pirithous was thrashing around on the ground, clawing at his throat. Hades glanced at him and flashed me a dark smile.

"Now here we are." He waved his hand through the air. "Persephone, go with Cassandra."

"What's happening?" I asked as Pirithous' screams became audible.

"Get it out!" Pirithous roared. "Get it out of me!"

Hades shrugged. "I fed him."

Pirithous retched blood and shrieked in agony.

"Would you like some more?" Hades asked as he strode across the wooden floor. Pirithous was lifted from the floor by an unseen force and forced onto one of the banquet chairs.

"No! No! Please, no!" Pirithous shrieked as his hand moved inexorably to his plate.

I watched wide-eyed as Pirithous crammed food into his mouth, sobbing in agony.

"Did you actually believe," Hades asked, picking a pomegranate up from the table and cutting into it casually with a knife, "that you could enter my realm and abduct my wife?"

Hades cut the pomegranate into six even sections. I heard a strange crackling noise and Pirithous' skin began to take on a gray hue.

"The meal you just enjoyed was the flesh of a dear friend of mine who was killed in my realm the last time someone like you entered without my permission."

Pirithous whimpered as his skin hardened, fastening him into place.

"It is fitting that her final act is to put a man like you out of his misery. Indeed, if she hadn't drunk from the Lethe, she would be quite pleased to hear it."

Only Pirithous eyes remained flesh. His mouth opened in a ghastly scream.

Hades ate a pomegranate seed. "Of course you won't really be out of your misery, will you? You'll still be alive in there, still starving. I just won't have to hear about it." He tossed the uneaten sections onto the table. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have some business to attend to."

I stared in horror as a seal with a picture of a head covered in snakes etched its way above Pirithous' clawed fingers.

Cassandra hurried across the room to grab my arm. "Come on. Let's get you out of here."

Chapter XVII.

"You're freezing." Helen pried Hades' cape from my fingers.

"And soaked," Cassandra added. She led me through my room, adding onto my bathroom as she walked. The room widened, and a hot tub appeared in the center.

Helen touched my shoulder and I was wearing a green one-piece swimsuit. My feet touched the hot water and I hissed as the heat made contact with my freezing-cold toes. I eased my way into the water.

Cassandra and Helen joined me, keeping light conversation going. I sank into the water, pulling my knees to my chest. They hovered close, not asking me any questions, waiting until I wanted to speak.

"...and Hades agreed to give him another half-dozen Reapers," Cassandra complained.

Helen shook her head. "Those guys give me the creeps."

"They're not so bad," I objected. I felt like a ball of ice had replaced my heart. I was cold inside, where the warm water couldn't reach. I summoned a glass of hot chocolate and took a cautious sip.

"Are you okay?" Cassandra asked. I looked from her face to the concern mirrored in Helen's and couldn't help but smile.

"I'll be fine. Thank you."

"So what was more shocking...seeing Pirithous get turned into a statue, or Hades' confession?"

"What confession?" Helen asked.

"Oh, he said he was in love with her."

"How did you know that?" I asked over Helen's gasp.

Cassandra gave me a look. "I saw it."

I shook my head. I'd been attacked. I'd just seen some guy turned to stone. And Cassandra wanted to chat about boys? "You guys really don't do comfort well."

Cassandra shrugged. "We're dead. We still feel everything, but not to the same degree you do. It makes empathy kind of hard."

I blinked, not sure what to make of that.

"Back up," Helen said. "He said what?"

"He just wants to be friends." I took another sip of my hot chocolate, and the ice-cold feeling in my chest dissipated. I smiled at Cassandra, grateful for the distraction. She had one long pale leg out of the water and was painting her toenails red. I summoned green polish with a shrug. It was better than thinking about what I'd just seen.

"I never realized Hades was that dense," Helen said as she handed me a jar. "Put this stuff on your face, it's amazing."

"He's probably right." I shrugged. "There is a pretty significant age difference. You know, I've got to say, I wish I could redecorate up in the living world like I can here. My best friend Melissa would be so jealous of this bathroom."

Cassandra took the jar of mud mask from my outstretched arm and looked at it skeptically. "If he thought you were too young to have a relationship with, he shouldn't have married you."

I rolled my eyes. "That doesn't count. I'm way too young to get married."

"Oh, Cassandra." Helen sighed. "Put the mask on. Anyway, I was married at ten years old. This concern over marrying too young is a completely modern invention."

I nearly smeared the daisy I was painting on top of the dark green polish on my toes. "Ten?"

"It's not as though either of you are human," Cassandra pointed out. "You can't play by human rules. Look at all those vampire romance books and movies and television shows. No one makes a big deal about those guys being thousands of years older than the-"

"Actually they do." I sighed, studying my toes carefully. They looked dry; I dipped them back into the warm water, pleased when the polish didn't run. "Just read the online reviews, someone is sure to mention it."

"Physically speaking, Hades would be what, twenty? Twenty-five?" Helen asked. "That's not such a big deal."

I imagined coming home from school one day to tell my mom I was dating a man almost ten years older than me and blanched. "Uh..."

"My husband was fifty! Surely a paltry ten years doesn't-"

"Times have really changed," I explained.

"Whatever, it's still stupid," Cassandra said. "You're too pretty to wait around for Hades to come to his senses."

I waited for the follow-up to that comment, for Cassandra to say I was lucky or some other barb, but nothing came. It was a compliment, pure and simple. I thought back to my conversations with the girls at school and was surprised to realize they didn't have to be like that. Girl talk could just be this. No insults, no guilt trips. I smiled and sank deeper into the warm water.

"It's kind of nice not to be chased after," I admitted. I cheated and imagined a tasteful French manicure on my nails rather than painting them. "For the last few months every guy I've seen has gone kind of crazy."

"Yeah, I know all about that," Helen agreed with a bitter laugh.

"Troy..." Cassandra sighed.

Helen nodded. "Daughters of Zeus are nothing but trouble."

"Trouble is right." I shuddered. "I still can't believe what Hades did to Pirithous. I mean, he deserved it, but..."

"It's one thing to wish a horrific death on someone. It's quite another thing to witness it." Cassandra scrubbed the mask from her face.

"Yeah...what Hades did. I mean Pirithous was-is-in agony!" I couldn't stop thinking of Pirithous screaming in pain.

"He's the Lord of the Underworld," Cassandra pointed out, sitting at a stool in front of the vanity. Helen frowned at her, summoned two more, and perched on the one in the middle. "You didn't think he had a dark side?"

I sat at the third stool and studied my reflection. I felt like I'd stepped into something way over my head, some world where torture was acceptable-first by my mother's hand, and then by Hades'.

I searched the mirror, looking for the mark of change I felt burning like a brand. I'd seen something terrible. Surely I must look different.

The girl in the mirror remained unchanged. Her eyes were more troubled than usual, but nothing looked out of place.

I jumped as Cassandra's face leaned over mine in the mirror. "You know what we should do?"

"What?"

"I know exactly what you're thinking." Helen grinned.

"What?" I asked again, looking between the two for some signal I was missing.

"We're going to make him regret turning you down," Cassandra announced.

"Makeovers!" Helen said, smiling. "Don't get me wrong, Persephone; you're pretty, but a little makeup wouldn't kill you."

I blushed. I used to love makeup and nail polish and all things girly. Melissa and I used to play in front of the mirror for hours, but eventually snide comments from the other girls had washed away my love for primping. If I put much effort into my appearance and some guy was especially obnoxious, they'd say I was inviting the attention. The girls would glare at me... It was just a lot of trouble.