Queen of the Dead

The pomegranate seeds were a mistake. I knew that the second they hit my tongue, but by then it was too late. Six seeds. Six little jewels of tart sweetness that burned going down like swallowing embers. Persephone stood in front of me at the edge of camp, where the strawberry fields gave way to the dark line of trees, and she smiled like someone who'd just set a house on fire and wanted to watch it burn.

"I'm sorry," she said. She didn't look sorry.

My mouth tasted like copper and honey. The world tilted. I grabbed for the fence post and missed.

"What did you," I started, but the words came out wrong. Too high. Too soft. My throat felt like someone had reached inside and rearranged the furniture.

"You'll understand eventually." She stepped closer. Her eyes were ancient and tired in a way that had nothing to do with the teenage body she wore. "I've been married to him for millennia. Do you know what that does to a person? To be bound to death itself, to feel his cold in your bones every single day, to love someone who can never feel warmth the way you do?"

"You're a goddess. You can do whatever you want."

"Can I?" She laughed, and it was the saddest sound I'd ever heard. "The marriage vows are older than Olympus. Older than the Titans. They're woven into the fabric of the Underworld itself. I can't leave him. I can't even want to leave him, not really. The bond won't let me."

I tried to step back. My legs wouldn't cooperate. Something was happening to my body, a slow unraveling, like being unmade thread by thread.

"So you're giving it to me."

"I'm giving it to you."

"You can't just, I'm not, I'm a guy. I'm Percy Jackson. I'm not,"

"You're whatever the spell makes you." She reached out and touched my face. Her fingers were warm. Mine were getting colder. "The godhood transfers. The appearance transfers. The marriage transfers. Everything that binds me to Hades will bind you to him instead."

"This is insane. You can't do this. There has to be a rule, a law, something."

"The laws of the Underworld don't care about fairness. They care about balance." She pulled her hand back. Already I could see the change in her. The divine glow was fading from her skin. Her hair was losing its luster. She was becoming mortal, or something close to it. "I'll have a few decades. Maybe a century if I'm lucky. Time enough to be human. Time enough to feel the sun without him pulling me back down."

I fell to my knees. The grass was cool against my palms, and my palms were wrong, smaller, softer, the hands of someone who'd never held a sword. My clothes hung loose in some places and tight in others. My chest ached with a strange new weight.

"Please," I said, and my voice was a stranger's voice, low and musical and wrong. "Please don't do this."

"I'm already done." She knelt in front of me, and for a second I saw the girl she might have been before the Underworld claimed her. Scared. Desperate. Human. "He'll come for you tonight. He always comes on the new moon. The bond will pull you to him whether you want it or not. And when he kisses you, the marriage will be complete."

"I don't want this."

"I know." She stood up. "Neither did I, once."

She walked away. Just like that. She walked toward the mortal world, toward sunlight and freedom and a life that didn't belong to anyone but her, and she didn't look back. I tried to follow. My body wouldn't move. The pomegranate seeds sat in my stomach like stones, and every time I tried to stand, the weight of them pushed me back down.

The camp was quiet. Too quiet. I could hear the harpies in the trees, the distant sound of the lava wall, the ocean crashing against the cliffs below. Normal sounds. Camp Half-Blood sounds. But nothing felt normal anymore.

I looked down at my hands. They were pale. Delicate. There was a ring on my finger that hadn't been there before, a band of black iron set with a diamond that seemed to swallow light instead of reflect it. I tried to pull it off. It wouldn't budge. The metal was cold enough to burn.

"No," I whispered. "No, no, no."

The ring pulsed. Once. Twice. Like a heartbeat that wasn't mine.

I felt him before I saw him. A cold that seeped up through the ground, through the grass, through my knees, into my bones. The shadows between the trees grew darker, thicker, and then they moved. They coalesced. They became a man.

Hades was taller than I remembered. He was always tall, but now he towered over me, his presence filling the clearing like smoke. His face was carved from stone and starlight, beautiful in a way that hurt to look at, terrible in a way that made me want to run. He wore black, always black, and his eyes were the color of dying embers.

He looked at me. I looked at him. The ring on my finger burned.

"Persephone," he said, and his voice was the sound of the earth cracking open. "You're early."

I opened my mouth to tell him I wasn't Persephone. I was Percy. I was a demigod. I was a boy. But the words wouldn't come. The bond was already working, threading itself through my chest, pulling me toward him like a tide I couldn't fight.

He reached down and cupped my chin. His fingers were cold, so cold, but they didn't hurt. They felt like coming home, and that was the worst part.

"You've changed," he said. "Your eyes. They're different."

"Please," I managed. "I'm not, you don't understand, I'm not her."

His thumb traced my lower lip. The touch sent a shiver through me that had nothing to do with fear. The marriage vows. The sacred bond. They were rewriting me from the inside out, and I couldn't stop them.

"You're trembling," he said. "Are you afraid of me?"

Yes. No. Both. Neither.

"I don't know," I said, and it was the truest thing I'd ever said.

He leaned closer. His breath was cold against my mouth, and I could feel the weight of the Underworld behind him, the endless dark, the river of souls, the throne of bones. The new moon hung above us like a closed eye.

"Then let me help you remember," he said.

His lips met mine.

The world ended.