A bemused expression settled on Hades’ face. ‘There’s no need to look so concerned. You will no longer face the body’s slow creep towards death. To wield the powers you have, you must have tasted the Hesperides fruit. Therefore, from the moment the apple passed your lips, you ceased to age.’
There was that strange name again. ‘I …’ Once more she tried to argue and found she could not. The evidence had been plain ever since Prometheus revealed to her that she and the gods were the same. But until now, she had not been ready to see it.
She was ageless. Just like the gods.
She did not know which was worse, the prospect of watching all those she knew and loved grow old and perish or facing the terror of one day ceasing to exist.
‘Of course, your body may still be wounded like a mortal’s,’ Hades continued. ‘You can be killed.’
Danae stared at him, unable to form words.
Hades waved a hand, as though weary of this vein of conversation. ‘In the centuries since gaining control of Mount Olympus, my family have become preoccupied with mortals’worship, as though it is their love that makes us gods. They have forgotten the true nature of divinity: creation.’
Finally, Danae found her voice. ‘You are not gods,’ she spat. ‘Prometheus told me the truth. There were only ever mortals, and those mortals chosen to become Titans.’
Hades raised an eyebrow. ‘How would you define a god? One who has power over life and death? Over creation itself?’
She did not answer.
‘Come.’ Hades beckoned her closer to the desk. ‘I want to show you something.’
Tentatively, she stepped forward.
There were two drawings sketched upon the parchment Hades had been examining. Spindly writing and numerical calculations were detailed around them, filling the rest of the page. The first diagram was that of a man and beside it a smaller creature with a hooded head and a squat, reptilian body. Each likeness was painstakingly detailed. A straight line spliced the man’s body in two, the left side revealing the sinews and muscles beneath his skin as though it had been peeled away. Heart pounding, her eyes trailed to the lizard-like creature. An image flickered across her memory. A pair of crimson reptilian eyes darting away across the Asphodel Meadows, the creature’s body invisible. Then she thought of the patchwork of scars lacing Charon’s otherwise similarly invisible skin and the gorgons’ strange questions.Were you born or made?
Bile nauseated her insides, bubbling its way up her throat. Her knuckles turned white as she gripped the edge of the desk. Without it, her legs would have given way.
‘I discovered the Aether lizards when my brother exiled me down into the bowels of the earth, and I thought how marvellous it would be, for a man to have such changeable skin. So, I made it be. Charon was mortal once, then he becamethe first of the Oneiroi, my dream children. The ferryman is an ever-constant reminder of how far I have come since his creation.’
Blood roared so loud in Danae’s ears she could barely absorb what Hades was saying. He had fashioned the shades out of people and the hides of these Aether lizards.
‘In my mortal life I was a healer. But once I ate the Hesperides apple, the world opened to me like I was the sun and it a budding flower. I never dreamed what miracles would be possible if I applied the power of life-threads to my work. I made Charon my protégé and allowed him too to taste the golden fruit so we might carry on our work together without the inconvenience of death taking him from me. But in time I came to realize that when one is ageless, one has no need of a successor. And so, my apprentice took on a different role.’ Hades’ eyes shone with a brightness she had not seen before.
‘I am a creator. All the beings that roam this kingdom were made by me. I take ordinary creatures and turn them into something magnificent. The harpies my brother, Zeus, commissioned to do his bidding, the Earthborn you faced in the land of the Doliones, even the creature you arrived with is my child. I bred the most intelligent horses for centuries until foals were born that could understand human speech, then I gave them wings. But I do not just make beasts. You have seen my botanical work on the island of Lemnos. The territory was a gift for my niece, Artemis, grown before my brother forbade me from setting foot above ground.’ His expression hardened. ‘I am called the Lord of Death but in truth I am the God of Life. Just think what we could achieve together once you eradicate my brother.’
Danae backed away from the desk. ‘You … mutilated them. All those creatures … the shades …’
A note of irritation clipped Hades’ voice. ‘I do not grow my creations as the great Mother does, from seed or egg or womb, but I elevate that which is already alive.’
She did not know who this Mother was, but there were other questions that clamoured to be voiced. ‘The shades … they were all human once?’
Hades nodded. ‘They were mortals plucked from a group known as the Missing.’
The irony was bitter: the people who vanished every year from all across Greece were transformed into the very beings who kidnapped them.
Danae felt as though every drop of blood had fled her body as realization crashed over her. ‘A baby … One of your shades took my nephew from Naxos three years ago. What have you done to him?’
The furrows deepened between Hades’ dark brows. ‘I do not work with infants; their bodies are weak, they require constant care –’
‘But a shade took him.’ Panic strangled her voice. ‘If you don’t have him, where is he?’
Hades was silent for a moment. ‘A baby, you say …’
‘Yes,’ Danae urged. ‘His name is Arius. He was taken on his first birthday.’ She drew a breath, fortifying herself to say the words she had not yet been brave enough to utter to anyone since Alea died. ‘My sister believed Zeus was the father.’
She expected Hades to laugh, but instead a strange expression rippled across his face. ‘Indeed … the fates work in mysterious ways.’
She stared at him, her entire body trembling. ‘Is it true?’
