I spent ten years at Hades’s side helping him, for love. Ten years, from the moment he was nothing — a fallen son of a forgotten bloodline, wandering the mortal roads with cracked sandals and an empty stomach — to the day he ascended Mount Olympus and claimed his seat among the gods. And through all of it, he called me Sister. Then came the day he led his chosen bride through the golden gates. And I fell ill. On the night I lay dying, he knelt at my side and gathered my cold, wasting hands in his. His eyes were rimmed red, and his voice, for all his divine power, cracked like a mortal man’s. “If the Fates grant us another life,” he swore, “I will give you your proper name. I will make you mine — before all of Olympus.” The Fates heard him. They gave me another life. I came back in the bloom of my sixteenth year, born once more into the House of Selen — a family of ancient and noble blood, revered across the divine realm. My father had decreed a sacred rite: I would stand upon the high balcony of our temple-house and cast the Golden Apple into the crowd below. Whoever caught it would become my husband. The courtyard was full. Demigods, heroes, young gods in their finest robes — all of them jostling and laughing and craning their necks toward me. And then I saw him. He was standing near the center of the crowd, just as I had known he would be. My fingers released the apple. It arced through the air — golden, gleaming, falling precisely where I had aimed it. Directly into his arms. But he stepped aside. A single, casual sidestep. And the apple tumbled past him and landed in the lap of a filthy, hollow-cheeked vagrant crouched in the shadows behind. The cheering stopped. Silence swallowed the courtyard whole. Every eye moved between me on the balcony, Hades standing still as marble in the crowd, and the stunned vagrant clutching the sacred apple with shaking hands. Hades lifted his face and looked up at me from across the distance. And in that moment, the memory struck me like lightning. I had lived this before. In our first life, we had grown up together — two children of neighboring divine houses, running through the same sunlit gardens. When his family’s power crumbled and he was cast out, left to wander without resources or patrons, I had quietly bled the treasuries of the House of Selen to fund his studies. I had fed him, sheltered him, believed in him. And something had grown between us. Something that felt, then, like love. He had promised me. He had said: I want to spend eternity with you. So when my father announced the apple-casting rite, I pulled Hades aside and asked him — begged him — to stand in the center of the crowd and catch what I threw. And I threw it perfectly. I calculated every breath of wind, every inch of distance. But he stepped aside. And the apple went to the vagrant. Just as now. In our first life, I had stood on that same balcony, burning with shame as the crowd murmured and stared. I had refused to honor the rite. I had rejected the vagrant — humiliated him, humiliated myself — and faced my father’s fury for it. Father made me kneel on the cold stone steps of the ancestor shrine for three days and three nights as punishment. And for what? For Hades’s sake. For his soft, practiced excuses. He had come to me afterward with red-rimmed eyes, clasping my hands, and told me the story of the woman named Minthe — daughter of the noble House of Su, who had saved his life on the road to his trials. She had asked for nothing except that he honor her with marriage. He had given his word. So he could not marry me. He was bound. Honorable. Sorry. And then he became everything I had helped him become. He won the Three Sacred Trials — the highest honor in the divine realm. He rose. He shone. And the woman he brought home in her gleaming white robes and golden crown was Minthe. I stood in the crowd and watched the man I had given everything to lead another woman beneath the laurel garland. Before I even had time to grieve, disaster found my own house. My father, facing political ruin, arranged a hasty marriage for me — a man older than my father, but stable, safe. And Hades appeared at my chamber door. He extended his hand and told me I deserved better than a rushed union. He told me he would protect me. He told me the House of Selen — that I — had been too good to him for him to allow this. So he brought me into his house. Not as a wife. Not as even a consort. Only as his Sister.
His new bride, Minthe, was less than pleased. Even under the pretense that I was merely Hades’s benefactress — his honored Sister, his childhood guardian — she looked at me as though I were a splinter lodged in her divine flesh. At first, I could not fully understand it. After all, it was Hades who had insisted on bringing me in. Hades who had defied gossip and whispers to install me in the east wing of his divine palace. By rights, her fury should have been aimed at him. But that is the way of things, even among the immortals. When a woman cannot reach the god who wronged her, she turns to the only other target within range. I will say this for Minthe: her methods were not subtle. She cut my allowances. She reduced my household to near nothing — jewels, fine cloth, even the most basic provisions. She left me stripped of comfort in what was, by all appearances, a palace of abundance. I might have endured it in silence. But the winter came, and she withheld the sacred fire. The eternal flame that warms an immortal’s wing was simply… not refilled. My handmaiden fell gravely ill with the cold. I had no choice but to go and ask. I found Minthe seated beside a roaring hearth, wrapped in furs, cracking open the roasted chestnuts that Hades had prepared for her with his own hands. She did not look up when I entered. “Oh — Sister has come to call,” she said, her voice airy and pleasant. “Have the servants been neglecting you?” I kept my tone even. “The eternal flame in the east wing has gone dark. My handmaiden has taken ill.” She laughed softly, tossing a shell into the fire. “Do forgive us, Sister. My lord has only recently secured his throne. There are so many offerings to make, so many alliances to maintain — the household has simply run short.” She looked up then, and her eyes were full of challenge. “I thought surely you, of all people, would understand. You were so generous with the House of Selen’s resources for so many years. Surely you don’t mind extending that generosity a little longer?” Her smile curved. “After all — Sister is a guest here. One ought to be grateful, ought one not?” Every word was a blade dressed in silk. I opened my mouth to answer. “My lord has returned.” Hades stepped through the door, still wearing his traveling cloak, snow-dusted and wind-cold from the outer reaches of Olympus. He saw me. He paused. Minthe rose immediately and folded herself into his arms. “My lord,” she said, her voice gone soft and wounded. “Sister has come to scold me for the household accounts. I have tried so hard to manage wisely, but there simply isn’t enough —” Hades frowned. He looked at me. “Sister,” he said, with the careful patience of someone managing a delicate situation, “Minthe bears a great many burdens. Please be patient a little longer. I will see to it that your needs are met.” I stared at him. He had the power to rearrange the very stars. And this was his answer. I said nothing. I said only: “Of course.” And I walked back to the dark and frozen east wing alone.
From that day, Minthe and I were at war. Not over Hades. I want to be clear about that. It was about dignity. Whatever I had once felt for that man, whatever foolish love had bound me to him in our first life — I did not come to his house for him. I came because I had nowhere else to go. And having come, I found I was owed at least the basic respect due to someone who had built the ground he stood upon. I had sustained him when he was nothing. The House of Selen had funded his rise. I would not be treated as a beggar in the halls I had helped to fill with light. So when she docked my provisions, I went to the treasury steward and argued my case. When she spread whispers about me among the serving nymphs, I confronted her directly. Every time, I was overruled. Hades’s law was simple: Minthe’s word was final. Once, she accused me of stealing her golden hairpin — made a scene that rattled the entire palace. I uncovered the truth within an afternoon: one of her own handmaidens had mislaid it. I brought the evidence before Hades and laid it out, clear and incontrovertible. He was silent for a long time. Then he said, “Sister, she is young. She does not always think before she speaks. Please — do not hold it against her.” I looked at him for a long moment. I felt something shift in me. When he had been a forgotten and powerless wanderer, I had shielded him from every slight. I had stood in front of him when others mocked him, and refused to let anyone diminish what I believed he could become. And now, enthroned and magnificent, he asked me to absorb every wound his wife inflicted and repay her with patience and grace. I began to understand that the world runs not on love, but on what is convenient. On what men are willing to protect when it costs them something. The worst came when Minthe poisoned me. It was not meant to kill. Only to humiliate — to leave me doubled over, weak and gasping, during a gathering of divine households. A small cruelty, carelessly deployed. When I discovered the source, something in me finally broke. I crossed the palace in three strides and struck her across the face. She screamed. She ran to Hades. That evening, Hades came to the east wing. He told me I must kneel before her and beg her forgiveness. I am Persephone of the House of Selen. My knees bend for the sky, for the earth, for my parents. For no one else. I refused. So Hades gave the order. His attendants surrounded me. They took up the iron-banded staves kept by the door. Once. Twice. Three times. The blows came down across my legs, and the pain finally drove me to my knees. Through blurring vision, I saw Minthe standing over me, and the corner of her mouth was curved into a smile. That night, Hades came alone to the east wing. He looked at my legs, which had lost all feeling. He sighed and reached for my hand. I pulled it away. He sat in silence for a moment. Then he spoke. “Sister. I am sorry for today. Truly.” “But Minthe — she saved my life, once. I swore an oath to her. I swore I would never allow her to suffer.” I looked at him. Saved your life. That is the coin she holds. And who carried you home through the winter storm when you collapsed, starving, in the road? Who sat with you through three nights of fever? Who poured the last of the family’s tungsten steel into the raging fire to forge the most resilient weapon for you? What coin do I hold? I did not say it. I was too tired. The cold and the injury worked together, and I sickened. Each day I grew weaker. The finest healers of Olympus came, and none of them could turn it back. The day I died, snow fell beyond the window like a blessing I no longer wanted. Hades knelt beside my bed, gripping my hand as though he could hold me to this world through sheer will. “Sister,” he said. “Forgive me. This life — I failed you completely.” “If the Fates grant another — I swear I will bring you home properly. With ceremony, with honor. I will give you your name.” I looked at him. My heart was perfectly still. What had I answered? I remembered. I used the last of my strength to pull my hand free, finger by finger. “Hades,” I whispered. “In the next life — let us never meet at all.” I closed my eyes. I heard him cry out behind me — a raw, torn sound, the voice of a god stripped to something human and helpless. And then I woke up. Back at the beginning. Standing on the temple-house balcony, the Golden Apple warm in my palm.
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