Page 41 of Where Darkness Bloomed (Of Stars and Salt #1)

The woman’s breath was ragged and soft. Blue light pulsed around her, seaweed drifting by. Overhead, brilliant daylight bled through the water’s surface, a distant halo of gold. She surged upward, her head breaking into open air.

The goddess stepped from the sea onto a windswept cliffside beach, seawater streaming from her dark hair and robes.

“Thetis!”

A voice echoed in the distance.

She glanced over her shoulder. Regret lined her features, but she only cradled the infant in her arms closer. Without a word, she slipped into the dark mouth of a rocky cavern, vanishing down a winding path into darkness.

Persephone’s eyes opened.

Her breath came unsteadily, rising and falling as though she had shared the goddess’s flight. Like fog, the dream clung to her mind’s edges, blurring the line between waking and dreaming.

Gradually, the chamber around her sharpened: dark walls rising high, the dome above glittering with constellations. The bedding, soft and cool against her bare skin.

Next to her, the bed was empty.

Like a crashing tide, the memory of the night surged.

His hands, sure and demanding, trailing fire over her skin. His breath brushing the hollow of her throat. The weight of his body pressing her down, holding her open. The sound of her name— her name —murmured, low and deep, against her flesh.

The names that were now hers in full.

Persephone. Wife. Queen.

She sat up, pulse racing .

The chiton she had worn—discarded somewhere on the floor—was gone. Only the silver diadem remained, glinting like a shard of starlight at the foot of the bed.

She grasped a blanket from the bedding, wrapping it around herself as she stood.

Beyond the terrace’s linen curtains, silver-colored dawn was rising over the Underworld. Wild, wind-kissed mountains stretched in every direction, rising in harsh and breathless beauty.

A flicker of gold caught the edge of her vision. Her gaze shifted to a pedestal near the far wall, hewn from dark stone. Atop it rested a helm.

It sat in silent dominion, the dark gold reflecting the light, edged in shadow. Empty eye slits stared back at her, angular and severe. A stiff crest of black horsehair swept back in a warrior’s plume.

The Helm of Darkness.

Fashioned in the deepest fires of the cyclopes’ forge and bestowed to Hades during the Titanomachy. A gift. A weapon of legend. A crown of war.

She remembered him wearing it before. That first moment—when the earth split open and he had risen from its depths. Clad in armor, crowned in gold, his face hidden behind the sharp edges of this helm. Darkness had clung to him then, like a mantle of his will. A presence that had stilled the wind.

She stepped closer.

The hush around it deepened, soft but foreboding, whispering of battles long past. Of the lord who wore it still.

Her fingertips ghosted along the ridge of the crest. Slowly, she lifted it. Cold metal thrummed against her skin, the weight filling her hands.

“Heavy, is it not?”

She jolted at the voice behind her, deep and calm—now familiar.

The helm tipped through her fingertips, crashing to the floor with a deafening clang.

***

Hades stood in the doorway, silent.

Persephone stood at the pedestal, draped in linen and haloed in the soft light of rising dawn. The blanket clung to her body, molding to the curves his hands had traced all through the night. Her dark hair was still tousled from sleep—from him.

She studied the helm cradled in her palms, brow furrowed in thought .

Then he spoke.

The helm slipped from her grasp, falling with a clang that reverberated sharply through the stillness.

Persephone winced, bending to retrieve it. When she straightened, her cheeks were flushed, her eyes lifting to find his.

The heat rising in her face told him she remembered the night with the same vivid clarity he did. Every moment. Every sound and touch. His body tightened swiftly in response. But he ignored the pull of desire and stepped forward, bridging the distance between them.

She stood still, tracking his approach with soft, clear eyes.

“Is it true the cyclopes forged this?”

Her question surprised him, slowing his steps. Until now, she had asked him very little. But now, her gaze was changed, bright and curious, lit with a spark of intrigue that drew him like a flame in the dark.

He stopped at her side, glancing down at the helm in her hands. “They did,” he replied. “A powerful gift.”

Her fingers skimmed the dark-gold surface. “Why was it given to you?”

Again, she surprised him.

The war between gods and Titans was etched into the bones of Olympus, known to gods and mortals alike. Nevertheless, curiosity was an invitation. A door that opened not just to his history, but hers as well.

“We were young gods then,” Hades explained.

“The Titans were old powers, vast and mighty beings. Our first victory came when my brothers and I freed the cyclopes from Tartarus. Grateful, they reclaimed their forges beneath the sea and crafted three weapons. Zeus’s lightning, Poseidon’s trident”—he nodded down to her hands—“and my helm.”

Persephone listened in silence, gently placing the helmet back on its pedestal.

“It was my first descent into the Underworld,” Hades added wryly, his hand gliding over the short bristle of his jaw.

The memory surfaced mightily—that first descent into an endless abyss, souls churning like a maelstrom.

The unjudged and lost, all anguishing for the world above.

Alongside his brothers, he’d carved a path through darkness to reach Tartarus where the cyclopes waited, bound in chains of black iron.

And there, the chains had been shattered, the giants freed from their chthonic prison.

Persephone started to speak, but hesitated. Then she said quietly, “I did not know the Underworld existed before you. ”

A chuckle rumbled low in his chest. “Long before. But it was different then, nothing more than a void of chaos. A place where all souls drifted, righteous and wicked alike. Only Tartarus was set apart, holding those who defied Kronos. Unchallenged, he ruled for millennia.” He paused, his expression darkening. “Until your father freed me.”

Another memory rose—the heaving darkness, a sickening lurch. The foul experience of being expelled from Kronos’s gut.

Persephone’s voice was hushed. “What happened?”

“I was the eldest,” he said. “When Zeus tricked Kronos into drinking the wine and mustard, I was the first to be freed. Together, we dragged our siblings from our father’s stomach.”

Blunt, yet accurate.

Persephone studied him still. “And then?”

Doubt flickered through him. He looked down at her. “Surely your mother has told you these stories.”

She shook her head, her hand shifting where it clutched the blanket to her chest. A small movement, but his gaze dropped anyway to the curve of her collarbone, the bare slope of her shoulder.

“She rarely spoke of it,” she admitted. There was a note of embarrassment there, as if ashamed of what she did not know.

He dragged his eyes back to hers, exhaling through his nose. Understanding dawned, quiet and bitter.

“Demeter was... reluctant in her role after the war,” he said, unable to suppress the grimace that tightened his mouth. “Though she eventually accepted her dominion over earth and harvest, it did not satisfy her for many ages.”

“She wished for a different role?” Persephone asked. The question came soft, but something startled lived beneath it.

Guilt stirred in Hades’s gut, low and sharp.

The truth was thorny, a tangled, sharp-edged thing. But it was hers to know—her beginning. And his too. The Fates had wound their threads together from the moment she opened her eyes.

“Zeus chose your mother the moment she emerged from Kronos,” Hades said slowly. “Their union created you. But it also awoke in Demeter a desire to rule, as Zeus came to.” He paused. “When Zeus chose Hera for the crown, your mother never forgave him.”

He looked away, jaw tight. “Though she wasn’t the only one left dissatisfied after the war. ”

“You were too,” Persephone said quietly.

“I was.”

He raked a hand through his hair, recalling the moment that had shaped his eternity.

“After we imprisoned the Titans, my brothers and I cast lots. It was the only fair way to divide governance. Zeus received the heavens. Poseidon, the sea. The Underworld fell to me.”

A dry smile touched his lips. “But I was a warrior then, with no desire to be a jailer. I resented it.”

Persephone searched his face with quiet understanding. “But you value it now.”

An unspoken question was tucked into the words.

He met her gaze. “Greatly.”

“What made you see it differently?”

Another difficult truth. In those earliest days, mortals had been Olympus’s pride—sculpted from earth, gifted divine breath. They danced in the sun’s warmth, built temples, ruled with joy and fire and wonder. The gods had watched from a distance, amused, indulgent of the creation.

A paradise. Until the first death.

“A child,” Hades answered at last.

Persephone stilled, waiting as he wove the memory into words.

“A mortal child,” he repeated. “Drowned in a river swollen with spring rain. She was the first to die, and her spirit wandered, lost and afraid. There was no place for her then, and she wept at the gates of the living.” His voice grew slightly rougher.

“I saw then—if the dead had no guide, no home, then death itself was cruel.”

“So I crafted law, order. From the chaos, I carved out a place in the cosmos where the dead might be received with justice. With peace.”

His gaze shifted down again. Persephone watched him, staring into his face as though she had never seen him before. Perhaps she had not, not like this.

He cleared his throat. “I can show you.”

She hesitated, looking down at the blanket drawn around her. “But I—”