The Dark Wife Read Online Free PDF

moment with her?” she asked, turning toward him. When her eyes moved away, I felt an emptiness , a hollow, a great, dark ache.
    Hermes frowned, shook his head once, twice, and shimmered into nothingness.
    She raised my hand, then, so slowly that I held my breath until her lips pressed against my skin, warmer than I’d imagined, and soft. Something within me shattered as she swallowed me up again with her dark eyes, said: “You are lovely, Persephone.”
    I stared down at her bent head, spellbound.
    “Thank you,” I whispered.  She rose.
    Where Zeus’s lips had been wet, rough, pushing hard enough against my hand to leave a bruise…she was the opposite—gentle. Yet I felt her everywhere. I shivered, closed my eyes. She did not let go of my hand but turned it over, tracing the line of my palm with her thumb.
    “It has been a deep honor, meeting you, seeing you. You defy my imaginings.” A small smile played over her mouth as she shook her head, traced her fingers against the hollow of my hand. “I hope to see you again.”
    She looked as if she might say more—she looked hopeful—but something changed, and her eyes flickered. She sighed, pressed her lips together, squeezed my hand. Hades turned and disappeared into the crowd of Olympians.
     “No—” I put my hand over my heart, breathed in and out.
      “In front of all the others.” Hermes was shimmering beside me, leaning close; he shook his head. “She’s either stupid or very brave.”
    I felt as if I were waking from a very long sleep. I stared at the floor, wondering what was real, what was a dream. “I don’t understand. That…she was Hades?”
     “In the death,” he snickered, and he held up his goblet of ambrosia to me, as if in a toast. “It has begun.”
     “I don’t understand…”
     “You’d better start understanding, and fast, little girl.” Hermes laughed at me, grinning wickedly. Quick as a blink, he grabbed my hand and turned it over. Where Hades had kissed me, where her skin had touched my own, was the lightest dusting of gold. It glittered now, beneath the light of the stars.
     “You, Persephone, Demeter’s daughter, daughter of Zeus…you will have choices to make. Very soon.” I could smell the sickly sweet ambrosia wafting from his mouth. “Everything that will be, or could be, is dependent upon what you choose to do,” he told me. “ You must choose wisely .”
    “But why—“
    He draped an arm about the shoulders of Artemis, who had just moved near, her brother at her side. Both stared at me with apologetic smiles.
    As one, Hermes, Apollo and Artemis turned toward the ambrosia-laden tables, speaking to each other in hushed voices, and I cherished the moment, the moment I’d been seeking all the night long, to be alone.
    I watched my hand, watched the gold dust sparkle. Above, beyond the columns of the titanic Olympian Palace, the stars still shone and sang.
    Was I enchanted? For the remainder of the night, no one spoke to me, touched me. I hadn’t even met Hebe, Hera’s daughter. Along with Harmonia , she was my rival, according to my mother. Rival for what? It all seemed so absurd, so irrelevant. All of this opulence, this false camaraderie.
    I sat outside of the palace and stared down at my lap and willed, wished, that Hades would find me. This was the only entrance, the only exit. Surely, sooner or later, she would come. Perhaps she would take my hand again. Ornament me with her dust of gold.
    But she did not come. At the end, when gods were strewn about the floor, ambrosia so thick that my sandals stuck with each step, I wandered, cautious, until I found Zeus unconscious and spent, sprawled, one leg dangling over the arm of his throne. I was safe. For now.
    Hades was not there.
    I woke my mother, drew her up, helped her into her chariot of cows that trundled us down, through the heavens, back to our beckoning earth.
    Through the warm air, through the forest, back in the bower, my lifelong home, I