💀 Skeleton Key

L&W5: Haides unlocks something musty, dusty, and never-used

Previously on 6 LITTLE SEEDS:

For centuries, Haides has sent marriage proposals to Persephone’s mother, Demeter. Since they were all ignored, he finally sucks up his pride and sends one to her father. Thus begins the waiting game. Zeus being Zeus, he can never reply to any messages from the Underworld in a timely manner—if he bothers to reply at all. As the the sands of the hourglass continue to fall, Haides works to keep himself distracted and his spirits up.

Zeus will say yes. He’s just being his customary needling-prick self.

Besides, there are still so many preparations that need to be made before the bride’s arrival, so the King of the Dead oversees it all. With his excitement brimming along with his nerves, he can’t help imagining what it will be like when she finally arrives.

But first, there is one more preparation that can only be made by Haides’ own hand…

—Start at the beginning
—Mature Content Warnings for this series

Also. Nobody calls Persephone by her true name. They call her KORE, “the Maiden,” and it’s pronounced like “ko-ray” or “kora” not like “core of the planet.”

And they lived happily ever…

HAIDES, LORD OF THE UNDERWORLD, KING OF THE DEAD

🔥💀🔥

At the merest imagining and an impulse of his will, he traversed the shadows in a blink. When he found himself in that hallway, his heart gave a thump. His breathing grew shallow as he stared at the great double doors. He hadn’t so much as glimpsed what lay beyond them in well over three hundred years. It had been much longer for anyone else, for an intricate adamantine lock kept them perpetually closed—another of Hephaistos’ commissions.

With a calming exhalation, Haides invoked the name. “HEKATE.”

The Mistress of Magic and Moonlight arrived within seconds. Coalesced into her singular form, she bowed with her hand on her heart. “My lord,” she murmured. Her midnight blue eyes locked onto his, entrancing and playful. As her countenance gradually shifted from youth through old age and back again, she fixed him with a knowing smile. “You have need of your key.”

He returned the bow. “I do.”

As the Mistress of Crossings, Hekate was the key-holder to all the most tightly guarded places in the Underworld. Over eight hundred years ago, he had entrusted her with the single key that could unlock this door. He hadn’t wanted it. It had cut too deeply to hold onto it.

“Well,” she crooned with a wink. “It’s about time.”

“It is.”

She drew out her heavy, jangling ring from within the folds of her moonlight-and-spidersilk chiton. It took her no time to find the correct key, for there was no other like it. Carved from a humerus bone, it had been fashioned into the shape of a skeleton. A yellow diamond shone inside its ribcage. Haides’ heart warmed to see it, which both surprised and relieved him, for he had feared that the sight of that key would leave him cold and bitter.

Not with Kore so close he could almost grasp her. He could smell it. Could taste in the shadows that lurked between Below and Above. She was coming.

She was almost here.

The excitement wormed its way through his innards once more. It burst into full-blown moon moths as Hekate folded the skeleton’s legs up, then extended its arms and inserted them into the lock. After a series of clicks, chinks and clanks sounded, the handles turned. The double doors swung open. After so long in disuse, he expected them to give some spooky haunted-palace creak.

They didn’t.

How could they? The Divine Smith’s craftsmanship was flawless and eternal.

Instead, the silence was as weighty as his waiting. Ominous, and ripe.

Before it could turn ominous and rank, Haides took three decisive steps inside. Tapping into the molten fires that ran ribbons, rivers, and lakes through his realm, he huffed out hard and shot a bolt of his vitality into the room. All the ever-burning oil lamps burst alight.

Although he had been to his bedchamber once to inspect its completion, and again when the lock was installed, he had never spent so much as a moment there since. He had forgotten that he’d had it decorated in his old tastes. More flames-and-wrath than the eerie elegance that had settled about him along with the weight of rulership. “The tapestries need to be redone,” he said. “Something more…sensual. And it needs to be cleaned. Aired out.”

Hekate cast her discerning eye over the place. “Thoroughly. Shall I have the lamps replaced with globes?”

He nearly nodded, but then paused. “Actually, no. Kore will be accustomed to firelight. I would like to give her a bit of familiarity in this room. What is to come will be…” His ichor boiled at the thought. “Unfamiliar to her.”

Spellweaver’s lips quirked up. “She is actually accustomed to the light of fireflies over her bed.”

“Is she? Well, I believe we have some of those out in the groves, do we not?”

“We do, my lord. And perhaps some flower garlands?”

“No. In this room, the last thing I want her thinking about is the time she spends with her mother. This will be her transition from Kore to Queen."

"Ah. Then I would advise against fireflies. It's a nightly ritual Demeter performs."

"Oh.” He bristled. “Very well. Corpse-lamps it is. And I—no. Do you know what I want? I want that entire wall lit up with a sculpture that echoes the Maelstrom. The flow of lava on this side, and the ice over here. The last thing I want while I’m introducing my bride to the finer points of being a wife is a bunch of moaning and groaning shades, being tortured back into their former luminosity over our heads.”

Hekate giggled. “I rather think a different type of moaning and groaning would be more appropriate for your wedding night.”

He couldn’t help a grin himself. “Exactly. But a sculpture made from the Rivers of Fire-and-Ice? That will provide all the illumination and ambience I need.”

“A fine choice, my lord. I will set the daimons on it.”

“And I want these drapes around the bed replaced with a great canopy of sparkling spiderweb.” His face slid into that mushy grin that had Kore’s touch all over it. “She likes spiders.”

Hekate beamed, too. “That she does.”

For a long moment, Haides stared at the bed. He had never so much as laid down on it. It was immense and inviting, in spite of the thick layer of dust on the coverlet. Kore would look amazing, lying there with that rose-gold hair spread out amongst the jewel-toned fabric, her eyes glowing like emeralds, her skin like creamed peaches. The most delectable blossom, ripe for the plucking.

He had no doubt she would be shy. Perhaps a little frightened. He would have to show her that not all things that dwelled in shadow were scary. That darkness was not evil by its nature. Olympians tended to have reservations about such things. He certainly had, upon his first descent.

As such, he would have to be tender with her. He would have to take his time—oh, such a travesty, that. She would need to be awakened gradually to passion, and eventually to that raging firestorm he’d witnessed engulf the forest around her bathing pool amidst her…

Moment.

Until she she was ready to welcome him at his reciprocal full blaze, he would have to remain cool. Not icy, but reservedly inviting. Patiently instructive. He would have to let her set the pace.

Until she and I finally slam together and become the maelstrom ourselves.

His heart raced, and he started to go a bit fanged at the thought. She was so tiny. In order for her to be able to take in the immensity of him, he would have to—

“Ahem,” Hekate said. “Have you had reply to your message, my lord?”

Haides blinked, then glowered. “I have not.”

“Well, then…” Spellweaver’s gnarly, spotted finger traced the edge of an incense burner. As the digit shifted into its adolescent sleekness, she said, “Perhaps the Sky King is not the one you should be asking.”

“What?” Haides snarled. “No. I’ve already asked Demeter. Too many times.”

“Then perhaps you should ask her once more.”

At such a pointed tone, his head jerked toward his Seer. “Have you been shown something?”

“I have. In order to speed the resolution you seek, it is the girl’s mother with whom you must speak.”

“Oh, Nemesis. Anything but that.”

Hekate shrugged with a noise that said, “If you don’t want to take my advice, it’s your funeral.”

Which Haides had learned the hard way was unequivocally true. Her prescient visions were never to be ignored. “Fine. Then how do I get her to actually reply to me this time—no. How do I get a swift, enthusiastic ‘yes’ to my marriage proposal for Kore, and have it come to fruition without further delay?”

Hekate glanced away with a knowing chuckle. It sounded more like, “You caught me. Well done. You’re learning.”

Haides’ eyes narrowed as if to fire back, “Yes. It only took me how many centuries of blundering into your traps?”

One had to be specific when querying the Divine Sorceress, and even then it was no guarantee, for she loved to play games, to be cryptic and leave things open to multiple interpretations. The recipients of her “advice” could quickly find themselves plummeting into the abyss of doom if they didn’t choose the correct door from the choices she presented.

She said it was to “help them grow.”

Haides said it was for her entertainment.

She amended her stance to admit that it was both.

So no surprise, a sly smile toyed about her sensuous lips, until her mouth shifted into crone form. Then that single tooth appeared as she flashed a brilliant leer. “Ask for Blossom’s hand once more, in a way Earth Mother can no longer ignore.”

He waited…stared…shifted his eyes…shifted them back. His head craned forward. “That’s it?”

“Have you another question for me?”

“No. I just…I want a clear answer to the one I just asked.”

“Then you have it.”

His growl shot out as he clawed the hair back from his face. “I hate your riddles.”

Hekate’s face shifted so quickly that all three of her countenances seemed to be grinning at him at once. “I know.”

And with a cyclone of purple smoke, she was gone.

He grumbled, gnashed his teeth, and shook his head. Like usual, it was a game of Rise and Fall between them. Only this time, the consequences of blundering would be so much steeper than a stinging prank or a dare or an expensive gift.

Setting his focus, he faced the empty stone wall alongside the double doors as though envisioning all the different players on this intricate, precarious board. Kore, Demeter, Zeus, himself. Darkness, Light, Dawn, Eternal Night. Marriage. Love. Time. Earth—

His eyes widened.

Chink-clink-crrrrick-clank.

He glanced at the double doors, and the idea unlocked within his mind as efficiently as when Hekate had slid that skeleton key home. Oh, this would not be a problem.

He flashed off his own brilliant leer, for he knew exactly how to get Earth Mama’s attention, and no. She wouldn’t be able to ignore this message.

Up Next: Haides and Demeter come face-to-face for the first time in a millennium in VALUABLES.

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