Thalia's first sensation was not the marble's cold, but the heat in his eyes.
It was a foolish thought, of course, induced by too many hours straight spent working in the museum restoration lab, isolated by the soft swishing of the brushes and whir of the air control for company. The statuette was exactly that, a hunk of black, volcanic rock, roughly shaped, its edges smoothed down by centuries on some forgotten Aegean shipwreck. It had turned up in a box of ordinary pieces of pottery, an afterthought. But when her gloved fingers stripped away the final flourishes of dry packing straw, the laboratory air thickened. It grew heavy, heavy, with the smell of ozone and rich, oxidized soil.
She knew it was Hades. Not Pluto, not Dis Pater. This was the older, more austere god, the one who governed through silence rather than a bellow, but through an unbreakable oath. The statue was simple, gigantic. It presented him not as a frightening commander but as a man in the prime of his power, sitting, a helm at an angle under one arm, his face not cruel but very piercing. And his eyes, shards of obsidian, shone with a radiance that consumed the very light of the lab and reflected back only an impossible depth.
Thalia stretched out, her nitrile glove cracking, following the curve of his shoulder. A spurt of static electricity, pure and sweet, leapt from the rock to her fingertip.
"Curiosity," a breathed secret, a muted rumble of voice like moving tectonic plates, ponderous and slow, "is very human. And so often it leads you to my doorstep."
Thalia pulled her hand back, her heart drumming like a stampede against the cage of her ribs. She spun around, but the laboratory was empty. The voice had not been uttered inside the room; it was uttered within her mind, a shiver in the bone marrow of her.
"Who's there?" she gasped, her own voice miserably reedy against the force of that presence.
"You know who I am," the voice stated, and this time started to solidify out of the corner shadows in the lab, folding them into a denser darkness. "You've been unwrapping me for the past hour. Gently, I'd say. I like that effort."
The shadows darkened, stretched, and took on form. A form stepped forth from the darkness, but he was not made of shadow. He was bigger than anything in the room. He was taller than any man should be, with wide shoulders, wearing garments the color of pomegranate seeds and deep burgundy. His hair was the black of plain night, and his face was the face from the statuette, but alive, breathtakingly so. He was vicious, beautiful in the way a fault line is beautiful: a harbinger of immense, sleeping power.
This was no ghost. This was no mirage. This was Hades.
Fear should have come first, and only. But the fear was a brief frisson, simultaneously scalded off by a wave of rough-hewn, icy wonder. He projected an ancient power, earthiness that opposed fear. He was the unmoving earth beneath the weathered topsoil.
"My Lord," she whispered in a breath, the words tumbling from her lips in reflex.
A faint, hardly noticeable smile danced upon his lips. "Thalia." He knew her name. He said it quietly, as though it was a secret they shared. "You spend your life reconstructing shards of history, trying to glimpse infinity reflected in shards of clay and departed hue. It's an honorable pursuit. A madness."
"I can offer you something more than a glance," he said to her, his voice lowering to a level of intimacy that vibrated through her and heated her blood. "I can offer you a vision from the source. I can offer you eternity itself, not as an idea, but as a sense. A taste."
"How?" The question was a whisper.
"One night," he said, stepping forward. The air about him was an icy river, moss of stone, damp, clean air underground. No whiff of decay, but of buried mysteries. "One evening in my kingdom. As my guest. As my…" He smiled, his black eyes savoring her, from shaking hands to large, bookish eyes, "….beloved companion. With that, you will be aware of what your books and your artifacts can only imply."
It was insanity, bargaining with the God of the Dead. And yet, every surviving cell in her body, every academic ambition, screamed yes. This was the ultimate first-hand account. This was to be knowledge.
"What would it entail?" she asked, catching glimpses of her professional self.
His smile flashed, a quick glint of white amidst the fair pallor of his face. "A conversation. A walk among gardens which even Olympus cannot match. And, if you wish, an adventure. I am a king, Thalia, and not a beast. I do not seize what is not offered. Your curiosity invited me. Now I am replying. The choice is, and will ever be, yours.".
He offered his hand. Not a skeletal claw, but a strong, lovely hand, with long fingers and unblemished nails. Power radiated from it, living energy.
Thalia gazed at that hand. She gazed at the statuette on her worktable: a pale copy of the divinity in front of her. Years of training in shadows, and now, standing before her was the reality.
She tore off her glove, letting it fall to the tabletop. She placed the hand she had left bare into his.
The world's destruction into brimstone and flames never arrived. It dissolved instead. The lab unwound like liquid with water-dyed thread, and for a moment there was a sensation of colossal speed, of diving in. And then her feet struck a hard, smooth surface.
They stood in a draped court of boundless twilight sky; dark, rich amethyst glowed with pale flowers that hung from the high black marble arches. The air was clean and perfumed with jasmine night bloom and something richer and more musky. Faraway faint whispering was from the gentle murmur of the water. It was quiet and magnificent and so serene.
"Welcome to the inner gardens within my home," Hades stated, his voice a soft growl beside her. He still had not released her hand. His thumb slid over the knuckles of her hand, a gesture of possession so automatic that it felt more like a fact in this new world.
He led her among stands of black cypress and silver-leaved willows, past pools where liquid silver flashed in the fish. He showed her libraries filled with every lost tale ever told, and chambers where memories of the greatest passions in human history hung, like perfume. He was a dazzling host, his mind expansive and strong, his sense of humor scorching and unanticipated. The horror was a legend of the past. It had left an exhilarating, intoxicating infatuation.
They stood on a balcony overlooking an asphodel field, the white blooms shining like an ocean trapped in slavery of starlight. He stood behind her, not reaching for contact, but the heat of his presence was a brand on her back.
"Eternity," he murmured, his warm breath stirring her hair, "is not a slow, drawn-out passage. It is a depth. A layer of reality mortals feel only in their most profound moments. In the interval before a first kiss. In the unspoken knowledge of seasoned lovers. In the absolute peace after passion ."
Thalia leaned back against him, her cheek on his chest. His arms wrapped around her, and it was the most natural conclusion in the world. He was hard, unbending, and his need was a low, thrumming vibration along the length of her spine.
"Show me," she breathed, her body twisting in his arms to face him.
His eyes turned darker, the pits of obsidian radiating with a light from within. He touched her face with his hand, infinitely gentle for a god who had legions of shades at his disposal. "You are certain?"
"I have never been more certain of anything."
His kiss was not what she had anticipated. It was not cold, nor superior, it was a taking, yes, but one of patient gentleness and ruinous finesse. His lips were warm and tasted of wine and darkness. It was a kiss that unwound her, that tugged at the very seams of her mortality. She kissed him with an appetite she didn't know she had, her fingers tracing the soft dark creases of his tunic to come to rest against his shoulders, the muscle there hard and unyielding beneath her fingertips.
He broke the kiss, his breathing a little rough, a moment of humanity that made him even more breathtakingly handsome. "I would have you in my bed, Thalia. I would gaze on the light of mortality in your eyes as I introduce you to the pleasures waiting in the darkness."
He led her to a room of dark silk and low couches, lit by the same soft, inner light as the gardens. There was no haste in him. He adored her with his hands and mouth, removing her contemporary clothing with reverence, as if she were a precious jewel. His lips traced the sweep of her jawline, the thrum of her pulse in her neck, the rise of her breast. When he fastened his mouth over a nipple and drew hard, she let out a cry, her spine arching away from silken sheets. His tongue was fire in liquid form burning, his teeth a sweet promise of exquisite pressure.
He studied each inch of her, as if memorizing the geography of her mortality. His strong, beautiful fingers spreading out her folds, found her wet and needy for him. He stroked her, a slow, curving motion that wrapped an increasing tension through her body.
"You see," he breathed against her wet skin, "this moment, we can prolong it. We can be in it. This is a piece of my eternity."
And he was right. Time lost all meaning. There was only the feeling of the pressure of his hands, the thrum with soft, loving sounds, and the vision of that regal body towering over her in the dim light.
He was well-proportioned in wonder, his muscles all where they ought to be, toned to perfection, the great arrogant erection between his thighs: he was a god, gazing at her from the midst of all existence.
When he finally thrust into her, it was all at once, with one long, annihilating plunge that overfilled her to overflowing and stretched her to a breathless, perfect boundary.
She gasped, her fingernails scrabbling into the unyielding flesh of his back. He was enormous, not just in dimensions, but in presence. He simply waited, wedged to the hilt, allowing her body to accommodate him, allowing her to take him.
"Look at me," he growled, his voice heavy with dominance.
She opened her eyes, being overwhelmed by his ageless depths.
"This," he began to move with a slow, rolling rhythm that stroked something deep in her essence, "is the bargain fulfilled."
And then he began to move earnestly. He was not wild in his movements; his movements were hard and insistent, every stroke a vow, every withdrawal a tortured pleasure. He kissed her as he stroked, his tongue rising to the tempo of his hips. He made promises of admiration to her body, her bravery, her sensuality. He was a generous lover, sensitive to each gasp, each shiver, each inarticulate plea of her flesh.
The coil of her orgasm tightened to breaking point. The pleasure was not bodily, however; it was a dissolving of self. She was not a mortal woman being fucked by god; they were two points of consciousness meeting in a dissolving union of energy.
She was falling into the abyss of his eyes, and it wasn't fear, it was orgasm.
Her orgasm engulfed her like a quiet tide, pulling her down, ripping a harsh cry from her throat. He watched her, his own contr falling apart, his face etched with a savage ecstasy. Spasms drained him and he let out a gasped, animalistic sound and spilled in her, pouring in with a heat that was liquid starlight, a claim that thrummed into her very soul.
He tumbled down beside her, holding her against him. They lay there motionless for what seemed like forever, the slam of his heart an edged, timeless pulse against the lobe of her ear.
At last, he moved, his words rumbling inside him. "The night is waning, Thalia. The dawn breaks in your world."
A mournful melancholy touched her, but not a single atom of regret. She had witnessed eternity. She had grasped it.
He dressed her himself, his fingers lingering. He brought her back to the lab. The world shifted and solidified.
And then she was standing in front of her workbench. The statuette rested upon it, lifeless stone again.
She was different.
Hades stood here, half-transparent already, a king returning to his realm. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it. A faint glow, like a thread of starlight, lingered for an instant on her skin before it disappeared.
"A token," he said. "A piece of my shadow is within you. Anytime you touch something ancient , you'll feel it. You'll recall."
And then he was gone.
The lab was a lab once more. But Thalia knew, to her very bone, that things would never be as they were again. She picked up the statuette. It was chill to the touch now.
But deep within her, there grew a heat, a secret, silent warmth of the god's touch.
She had bargained for a moment of eternity.
He had given her something far greater.