I hated that wall, and if it were possible, I would’ve ripped it down with my bare hands. Loving Hades should’ve been the easiest thing I’d ever done. He was a good man. Better than me, better than Hermes, better than every god and goddess who dared to call themselves Olympians. In a pit of deceit and jealousy, he was the one thing that hadn’t been tainted by time. And I’d hurt him again and again.

Without bothering to knock, I burst into Hades’s chambers. He sat at his desk, shuffling through scrolls and parchment, and he looked up as I strode over to him. “Persephone?” he said, a hint of confusion in his voice. No wonder, either, since I hadn’t stepped foot in his chambers since our wedding night. “To what do I owe—”

Before he could finish, I crawled into his lap and kissed him. Not the kind of hesitant kiss we’d shared few times before, but the burning kisses I’d shared with Hermes. The kind that filled me with fire, all-encompassing and eternal. The kind that begged for more no matter how much I’d already fed it. It was the kind of kiss that no one, not even Hades, could ignore.

And he didn’t. For a long moment, he didn’t move—he didn’t touch me, he didn’t kiss me back, he didn’t react at all. But at last his hands found my hips, and his lips moved against mine with equal fervor.

That wall inside me loomed, as dark and resentful as before, but despite the way my entire body screamed for me to stop, I kept going. His touch burned my skin, and that hatred wrapped around me so completely that I could barely breathe. But I needed this. I needed to be loved, even if the only person who could do it was the man I couldn’t stand.

“Bed,” I whispered between kisses, leaving no room for negotiating. He lifted me up without protest, and I wrapped my legs around his waist as he carried me across the room. I’d sworn to myself I would never go back here, but as he laid me down amongst the silk, I steeled myself against my body’s protests and pulled him down with me.

I don’t know how long we kissed—long enough for both of us to get undressed, long enough for us to be seconds away from doing something neither of us had thought we’d ever do again. But before we got that far, Hades broke the kiss, his eyes searching mine.

“You’re sure?” he whispered, and after a split second, I forced myself to nod. He loved me—I could see it in the way he looked at me, feel it in the way he touched me, everything. He loved me in a way Hermes never would, and I was an idiot for throwing all of that away without even trying. I knew what love was supposed to feel like now, and I could have that with Hades if I tried. I just had to want it bad enough.

He kissed me again, gentler this time, but he still didn’t close the gap between us. “Why now?” he murmured, brushing his lips against the curve of my neck. I let out a frustrated groan.

“Because—because,” I said, my voice breaking. “Because I want to, and you love me, and—can’t we at least try?”

Hades pulled away enough to look me in the eye. “And what about Hermes?”

I swallowed, and something must have flickered across my face, because Hades frowned. “It’s over with him,” I said. “Please, can’t we just…?”

“Do you love me?” he whispered. I blinked.

“I—I want to.” I ran my hand down his bare arm, feeling the muscle beneath his warm skin. “Please give me the chance to try.”

He exhaled deeply, as if he’d been holding in a breath for eternity. “I made that mistake once.” He kissed me again, this time with aching gentleness. “I will not make it again.”

Suddenly the weight of his body was gone, and he turned away to put his clothes back on. I lay there, exposed and shivering in the open air, and the tears I’d been holding back all evening finally broke through. “Don’t you love me?”

He flinched, staring at the floor. “I love you, Persephone. More than my own existence. But it is because I love you so much that I cannot do this. In time, if we were to take this slowly, I would be honored. Under these circumstances, when I am nothing but a release to you…” He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

I opened my mouth to tell him he was so much more than a release, but I couldn’t force the lie out. If anything, he wasn’t even that. He was a way for me to feel loved. A way to get back at Hermes. And I didn’t care if it made things worse, so long as the pain of Hermes’s betrayal disappeared.

But whether I wanted to admit it to myself or not, that wound was far too deep for anything to mask it, even sleeping with Hades. I hurt in a way I’d never hurt before, and Hermes had created a gaping hole in my chest that nothing could fill. I curled up in a ball, not caring that I was still naked, and I let out a choked sob. Hades must have been halfway to his desk by then, but instantly he touched my back. It was a comforting gesture, not a romantic one, and it was something I desperately needed.

“You’re all right,” he murmured, and he wrapped a blanket around me. “Everything will be okay.”

He could say that as much as he wanted, but he didn’t know. He couldn’t. I buried my face in his pillow, making a mess of the deep blue silk, but he didn’t seem to mind. Instead he lay down beside me and gathered me up in a gentle embrace. “It will get easier,” he murmured. “It may not feel like it now, but it will.”

That only made me cry harder. Of course he knew what this was like. I’d done this to him again and again throughout our marriage, and never, not once, had he broken down in front of me. He’d kept that pain bottled up, refusing to take it out on me no matter how much I may have deserved it. Between him and Hermes, there was no contest. Hades would’ve never been with Aphrodite. He would’ve never even thought about her that way. He would’ve been there for me every moment of every day—he had been there for me, and I’d just never seen it before.