Page 47 of Where Darkness Bloomed (Of Stars and Salt #1)

From his seat, Minos scoffed, glaring at the man. “You cast the weight of your vile crimes on your wife?”

Tantalus’s arms stretched out, pleading. “It is the truth! You must believe me, my soul is innocent before you!”

His desperation cloyed the hall.

At the edge of Hades’s vision, Persephone flinched. His gaze flicked to her. Subtle distress was written across her face, her fingers curled in her lap. The king’s wretched sobs stirred her sympathy.

But she did not see him as he did.

She saw only the pleading, broken man. Not the stain of his sins, the weight of his heinous crimes. The festering rancor of depravity blooming deep within his dark soul.

“Nonsense.” Minos’s voice cut sharply against the silence. “I know how well you entertained the gods—”

“Peace, Minos,” Hades called firmly.

The hall fell silent again.

Hades’s gaze turned back to Tantalus, who gasped for air like a drowning man, thin chest heaving with the strain. “You make grave accusations, Tantalus. Against your wife, no less,” he remarked calmly. “If you wish to prove your claims true... then drink.”

He raised a hand.

At the center of the hall, a fountain stood, a sphere of glinting black obsidian, water sluicing endlessly over its glassy surface.

Tantalus’s eyes slid to the fountain, fear crystallizing on his face. Even so, he staggered to his feet, pitching toward the fountain. He cupped his hands, water trickling through his fingers as he brought them to his lips.

From the throne, Persephone leaned forward slightly, watching.

For a moment, only his ragged breath filled the hall.

Then—a shift.

His trembling ceased. The wide-eyed terror drained from Tantalus’s features like wine from a broken cask. The breathy sobs quieted, swallowed by silence as a slow, insidious change overtook him.

His shoulders straightened, his eyes darkening wickedly, flattening into cold, black voids. A slow, cruel smile unfurled across his thin lips.

Hades regarded the mortal without surprise. “Speak,” he commanded.

Tantalus’s gaze snapped to him, a sneer rising like bile. Hatred now smoldered in his black stare. “I was once favored by the gods,” he spat. “I dined with them on Olympus at the invitation of Zeus himself. You know this, Unseen One.”

He stepped forward, his face breaking into an ugly leer.

“They feasted on ambrosia and nectar, hoarding eternal youth and power. One day, I took only a morsel, a mere crumb for mankind. For that, Zeus cast me out.” Tantalus gritted his teeth, venom coating the words.

“My son condemned me for my pride in thinking myself equal to the gods. His betrayal shamed me more than the gods ever could. A king, scorned by his own blood.”

A pause.

“Oh, but I had my revenge.”

Madness danced in the king’s eyes, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I hosted a banquet, grander than any in my kingdom’s history. During the fourth course, Dionysus noticed my son’s absence.”

Persephone gasped, her eyes widening with dawning horror.

Tantalus’s gaze slid toward her. Then his smile stretched wide, showing unnaturally pointed canines. “They say your mother tasted a piece of his shoulder, young one.”

The words slithered through the air like a serpent, and Persephone recoiled as if bitten. Laughter rang out, shrill and maniacal, bounding off stone.

The mirth of a madman.

But it faltered abruptly, choking off mid-breath as Hades stepped forward. He came to the edge of the dais, standing between the mortal king and his queen—an unmoving wall of dark power.

“Tantalus of Phrygia.”

The torches guttered beneath his restrained wrath. The air thickened, turning cold, pressing inward like an iron grip.

“Had your words held truth, I might have held your soul in solemn guard, as I do all the dead. But for your deceit, your hubris, and the horrors you wrought upon your kin—”

His eyes flicked up, meeting the mortal’s, fathomless pits of endless dark.

“—you will know me as your tormentor.”

Tantalus’s lips parted, a scream clawing its way up his throat—

“ Silence .”

The command cracked through the hall.

The scream died before it could be born. Tantalus’s mouth gaped open, frozen in a voiceless shriek. His neck strained, veins bulging. He writhed, screaming silently for help.

None would come.

“Forsake hope, mortal king.” His voice held the finality of a tomb sealing shut. His power surged, a vast darkness, preparing to devour this wretched soul. “I, Hades, Lord of the Underworld, condemn you to Tartarus, where you will hunger and thirst for eternity under the lash of Tisiphone.”

Hades turned away then, his gaze finding her—

Persephone.

She sat rigid in the throne, but her breath had steadied. Her eyes were still wide, though not with fear. Or, at least, not entirely. Understanding, the beginning of it, caught light in her gaze like the first spark before flame.

She saw it now, written in the marrow of this moment: the cruelty Tantalus had wrought, the child he’d butchered, the legacy of horror he had carved into the world.

This was the reckoning. The moment when evil was named, measured and weighed. And at last—repaid.

Punishment.

“Alecto,” Hades called, not looking away from her.

Flames erupted behind him.

Black fire surged from the floor, dark and seething. From the blaze, Alecto emerged, eyes like embers. The whip in her hand slithered, unfurling in the air, its flaming coils hissing like serpents.

Tantalus flailed helplessly, his feet rooted to the marble by an unseen force. The whip cracked, the blazing coils seizing him as his mouth stretched in a silent, agonized scream.

Alecto wrenched him from the ground. Flames swallowed them both, then died. Silence returned.

The air in the hall lightened, the oppressive tension lifting like night before dawn.

Hades nodded to the judges, and said, “That will be all.”

One by one, the judges bowed their heads. Then vanished.

Then, slowly, he brought his gaze back to the throne. Persephone still sat there—gracefully composed, if yet a touch uncertain. A sight both maddening and divine, her beauty crowned by his dominion.

The first time she had graced his throne room she had been barefoot, cloaked in a blanket. Trembling and fearful, believing he meant to ravage her .

Now she was clothed in starlight and shadows.

And he wanted her. Fiercely. Now.

Not with the wild fury of conquest, but with the ache of spring dawning after a long, ageless winter. He wanted to hear her laugh, to lose himself in its echo, to feel her hips warm beneath his hands, her limbs tangling with his, her cries scattering like blossoms in a storm.

A blush bloomed across her cheeks—soft, damning. As if she felt the desire rising like thunder beneath his silence.

He dragged a finger across his bottom lip, savoring the tension that pooled between them. “A throne becomes you,” he murmured, dark and warm.

She stood too quickly, as if the seat had burned her. “It is yours,” she said, a touch breathless.

Her gaze flickered away, searching for refuge—

There was none. Not from him.

In two strides, he closed the space between them. His hand lifted, brushing a curl back from her face. His touch followed the curve of her jaw, then stilled at the hollow of her throat, where her pulse danced.

Alive, untamed, maddeningly sweet.

Her eyes lifted, darkened with emotion. Her lips, slightly parted, seemed caught between words and want.

“I would have you rule with me,” Hades replied silkily, his thumb stroking over her pulse.

“In the judging of souls?” she breathed.

He stilled, meeting her eyes. “In everything.”

For a moment, green eyes searched his. “It’s a great responsibility, is it not?” she asked softly. “To judge them?”

“It is,” he acknowledged. “A burden I have long carried.”

Then a shadow crossed her face. “You knew he lied, the king. I thought—” She faltered momentarily. “I thought he spoke the truth. I would have believed him.”

The admission hung in the air, and he heard the faint distress within it.

Hades threaded his fingers through her dark hair. “This is my dominion,” he said, softer now. “Not merely a throne I sit upon, but a nature woven into my being. I see the soul as it exists—what the living bury, what the dead cannot outrun. All is laid bare before me.”

His thumb grazed her cheek, gently reassuring. “Do not regret your merciful heart, Persephone. It is not weakness.”

A breath left her—not quite a sigh, her fingers lacing with his.

Then her gaze shifted, drawn over his shoulder to the fountain beyond, where water rippled endlessly over black stone.

Slowly, she stepped away, her hand slipping from his. He let her go, watching the graceful rhythm of her steps, the soft radiance of her presence moving through the shadowed hall.

She stood before the fountain, gazing into the sluicing water. “But the water... it changed him.”

“No.” Hades stepped down from the dais, following.“It revealed him. It is Stygian water.”

She looked up. “Stygian?”

“The River Styx is the mother of all waters,” he said, stopping beside her. “Even the springs of Olympus flow from her veins. We gods swear our most sacred oaths by the Styx. The oath-bearing waters strip away all falsehood.”

Persephone’s brow furrowed, eyes returning to the fountain. “I didn’t know.”

“Few do.”

For a moment, there was only the faint ripple of water.

Then she spoke again, softer: “The woman and her children killed by the Greeks… they were innocent.”

The grief in her voice wrapped itself around him like ivy, delicate but resilient.

“Should the gods not protect mortals like them?”

Compassion radiated from her, raw and ungoverned. A tenderness born from her time in the world above, from seasons spent in sun-warmed soil, where life grew and faltered and reached. It had shaped her, softened her divinity in ways that both stirred and unsettled him.

“Mortals’ lives are often unjust,” Hades replied gently. “But Zeus has forbidden Olympus from interfering in their war.”