Why did he think she wasn’t a goddess of the harvest like her mother?
She wasn’t like Zeus. She’d tried to summon weather to help with the fields and that had been decidedly disappointing. He couldn’t expect her to be anything more than what she was. A plant goddess.
They reached the lower portions of the castle and all the words disappeared from her mind. A hundred stairs disappeared into the depths of a giant crater. Mist—or were they clouds?—flowed around the steps, hiding where they started and began. No stair seemed to descend all the way into the darkness. Instead, each one appeared to start and stop in whimsical patterns attached to the wall, but impossible to climb.
“What is this place?” she asked.
Hermes lifted his arms and floated into the open air of the cavern. He surveyed her with a critical eye. “This is the part of the castle where all the workers go. The ones who keep the castle going and all the souls in order. Didn’t you know that?”
No, she had known nothing about people even working within the castle. She’d known about Thanatos and Hecate, of course. But they were gods of death and magic, surely they lived in the Underworld all the time. There were more?
She twisted her hands in the fabric of her peplos, staring down into the darkness with a troubled expression. She was Queen of these people, or at least, she had thought to be when she had agreed to marry Hades.
Why hadn’t he told her about them?
“I suppose I should introduce myself,” she whispered. The wind whipped the words from her lips and tossed them into the mist.
“Yes, you should.” Hermes reached out his hands for her to take. “Come, it’ll take forever if you use the stairs.”
“Can I even use them?” she looked at the haphazard and crumbling structures. “It doesn’t look like they could hold my weight.”
She had the sudden vision of herself tumbling through the clouds and striking whatever was at the bottom. Maybe it was the giant maw of a creature that Hermes was about to feed her to.
A sudden shiver rocked her shoulders. She tucked her hands around her ribs and hugged herself tightly. Hades must not have shown her this because he knew it would have frightened her.
Hermes tsked. “Come on now, Your Highness. You’re supposed to be the Queen of these people. Let them see who you are.”
She swallowed hard and reminded herself that she was stronger than this. She could trust the strange god who had showed up in her doorway. Neither Hades nor Cerberus would have let him come near her if he’d meant her harm.
So she reached out and let him scoop her into his arms. Hard muscles bracketed her back, though they didn’t feel as good as Hades. His muscles felt... fake? He’d clearly wished himself into perfection rather than working hard to look so beautiful.
Kore hated him for it.
It didn’t take long for them to sink through the cloud. Below their misty cover, she could see there was a large room at the bottom. The ground had been carved then smoothed into something soft to the touch, almost glass like as Hermes set her down onto its surface. Sheets of fabric were stretched from end to end over their heads, creating a colorful canopy that hid the great height of the surrounding stone walls.
“Wow,” she said. “This is beautiful.”
“It is.” Hermes extended his arm and pointed for her to look elsewhere. “And so is that.”
She turned around and gasped. The entire cavern was built around a tree unlike anything she’d ever seen before. Though its branches were short, limiting its sight to the sun had likely stunted its growth, the leaves glowed bright gold and red. Each branch had grown so there was enough space for the leaves to be completely solitary, like a bonsai tree that was larger than ten men high.
The light burned her eyes, but she couldn’t stop staring at the glorious sight before her.
“Wow,” she repeated. “I didn’t know this existed.”
“Few do.” Hermes nudged the small of her back. “Go on then, explore. I’ll be right here.”
Could she? Kore glanced around them and confirmed no one else was here. “I thought there were supposed to be workers in the depths.”
Hermes glanced down at his nails, splaying his fingers wide to look at his own hand. “There are. But you’re queen of this place, aren’t