This place sucks. I’ve never liked it. Never. Not even as a guest.
She looked back at Aphrodite, who stood at Persephone’s shoulder, absently stroking the half-dead goddess’ strawlike hair.
How could you ever think I would call you a coward for choosing to stay here?
A dog barked, and barked a second time. Cerberus emerged from behind a column and wagged his tail, then bared both sets of teeth when he saw Ares’ wolves. Oblivion and Panic flashed fangs of their own, but neither they nor Cerberus attacked.
Hades placed his foot on the first step and turned. Aphrodite gently untied the knots of Persephone’s bonds and let them flutter to the floor. Persephone rubbed her wrists, out of habit more than any real discomfort, Athena thought. In such an advanced state of decay, she doubted if Persephone felt much of anything anymore.
“There,” Ares said. “She’s free. And now you’ll let us pass.”
“If you can.” Hades nodded. Ares looked at Athena and placed a cautious foot on the steps. Hades did nothing. His word was solid. He still believed in the scales tipping even.
“Come on.” Ares beckoned Aphrodite as he backed up the steps. “It’s all right.”
Athena walked up the steps beside Odysseus and didn’t look back. She didn’t want to see anything that passed between Ares and Aphrodite. She didn’t want to be softened. But she couldn’t keep from hearing.
“I’m staying,” Aphrodite said gently. “With Persephone. I’m not going up to fight with you. I’m no use.”
Ares kept his voice hushed and his words ran together. For a moment Athena thought he’d take her anyway, that he’d abduct her from the underworld like Hades had abducted Persephone from above. But he didn’t, and Aphrodite wouldn’t change her mind.
“I never get to keep you very long,” Ares said softly.
“So it seems. You’ll come back for me, if you can.”
“Don’t I always?”
Athena tried not to listen as they embraced, and tried not to hear the emotion in Aphrodite’s voice when she said, “Go with her now. Bitch that she is, she’s your best chance.”
“And you, Hades,” Athena said over her shoulder. “You won’t harm her?”
“If Aphrodite wishes to stay as my guest, then she will be treated as one.”
Athena nodded as Ares brushed past. She and Odysseus followed behind, watching the wolves press their muzzles into his hands. None of them looked back. Enemy or true love, none could bear the sight of Aphrodite left behind in that dead place.
* * *
“Hades got the raw deal,” Odysseus commented as they walked through the bleak, empty halls.
Athena had always been inclined to agree. When the world was divided, Zeus took the heavens for himself and Poseidon the seas. The underworld and the dead they gave to Hades.
“It suits him.” Ares shrugged.
But had it always? Maybe in the beginning, Hades had been as bright and as full of laughter as his brothers. Maybe he’d been turned to morbidity slowly, from days and nights and centuries of the same gray nothing inside his palace. The same shifting red-orange light and the mourning dead crowded into his walls.
Or maybe he’d always loved the decadence of decay. The aggression of disease. The despair of no time passing. In any case, he loved them plenty now.
“Why doesn’t he put things here?” Odysseus asked. “Furniture. Art. Candles.” The light inside the palace was dull and washed the color out of their skin. They might have been a rerun of a ’50s TV show. Perhaps the one where the fat guy was constantly threatening to slug his wife. “To the moon, Alice. To the moon.” Athena took a deep breath. The moon would’ve been a welcome trip.
“He has homes topside for that,” Ares replied. “This place he wants pure. Desolate. So if you kill yourself to get here you’ll wish you could kill yourself again.”
“Poor Persephone.” Odysseus cleared his throat. Poor Persephone. And now poor Aphrodite. Athena still wasn’t sure if Aphrodite had made the right choice. The underworld was just as likely to drive her mad as her sickness. And it would be a crueler mad. Rats in an endless maze mad. Picking your brain out through your ear mad.
“I’m sure she’ll be all right,” Odysseus said. “There are two of them now, to keep company. They can play Pickle in the Middle with the two-headed dog.” He stopped. They’d come to a long set of wall-to-wall stairs. “Do you think that’s it?”