Chapter 1
4 hours and 20 minutes ago
Hades and Persephone sit on paired thrones. Now they rule the kingdom and judge the souls of the dead as equals (or almost equals). Hades looks at Persephone and sees in her eyes the same emptiness that he once saw in the mirror. Hades achieved his goal: he "tamed" Persephone, the price of what was the complete destruction of her soul.
Their relationship was initially built on an imbalance of power. Hades is a figure of control, power and manipulation, and Persephone is the object of his experiments and "student". Their closeness is a «predator-prey symbiosis», where the prey eventually begins to adopt traits of the predator in order to survive.
Over time, Persephone finally accepts the rules of Hades's game despite the lack of a deep spiritual connection or passion between them. Neither of them will say «I love you» or «I hate you». It doesn't make sense anymore. She just sits next to him and understands that now they are one whole, not by love, but by right of shared emptiness. After all the years of humiliation and struggle there was no room left inside her for strong feelings. Persephone no longer struggles against Hades's influence, she accepts that she has became its continuation.
Notes:
Yes, remember the Slavic fairy tale where Ivan Tsarevich kissed frogs in the swamp, and then the one who turned into a princess was kidnapped by an immortal sorcerer. That would be an adequacy of the sorcerer, if Ivan Tsarevich himself gave the go-ahead for the kidnapping of the princess, and then went on to rape other frogs)
Adonis became the only ray of light in a dark world for the broken Persephone. She raised him on the terms she had adopted, but with love. Obviously he didn't give in when his mother started showing Jocasta affection, which became the final blow for processed Persephone
