The Good Counselor Ch. 02

"Oh, you hadn't heard? A little nymphai reminded me that Queen Persephone sits as an equal to Aidoneus." Amphitrite turned to her. "I know how Chthonia operates. You can tell her, Persephone. Maybe she'll learn a little something and she can finally bring that insufferable man to heel."

Persephone sat stock still. Amphitrite was correct, but there wasn't any way she was going to say so. Persephone didn't know how to play this game. Fates help her if she was foolish enough to side with either of them.

Hera swallowed a polite sip. "How very strange to hear you speak that way about your sworn king, my husband, when it is well known that Poseidon's eye wanders far afield. And debasing yourself so shamelessly for his benefit has done you little good."

"No, plenty of good, I assure you. It was during a very enjoyable 'debasement' that we conceived little Eurypylus." She stroked her belly for effect. "And our bedmate Astypalaia was all too happy to participate."

Hera sighed, and set her tea aside. She dropped her head into her hand and squeezed her temples. Persephone didn't move.

"Poseidon desperately wanted to bed that innocent princess, but knew I was between the tides. He started caressing her, then lowered his lips to hers, and she was so enrapt that Astypalaia didn't even know I was in the room until I replaced Poseidon's tongue with mine. And it turns out, Astypalaia was not so innocent as Poseidon imagined. To men, sure enough, but not to women. Trust me, the sights and sounds the two of us treated him to drained him of his seed rather quickly."

Persephone felt the color seep from her face, and looked from Hera to Amphitrite and back.

Amphitrite snickered, then put her cup to the side before she doubled over. Her laugh echoed through the hall. "Alright, you win, Hera. I'll stop embarrassing her. Gods... you refuse to let me have any fun."

Persephone relaxed, relieved but exhausted. Hera exhaled and rolled her eyes. "Well since that's done..."

"I'm done, I'm done. I promise." She leaned forward. "One last thing though..."

Hera looked skyward. "Amphitrite..."

"Tell me, Persephone... have you considered inviting one of those delicate winged nymphs from the Styx into your chamber? I would be fascinated to find out what they are like."

"I have not. Nor will I."

"Surely after all these decades, you'd want to liven things up for the King of the Dead?"

"Neither Aidoneus nor I have any interest but for each other. And it will remain so."

Hera and Amphitrite looked at one another. Hera lowered her eyes to the floor, but Amphitrite smiled and held her belly, feeling her son turn. "It's only been seventy five years, Persephone. You have an eternity to truly find the limits to your marriage. And likewise an eternity to try for children."

Persephone scoffed. "Well rest assured, that despite Zeus's oath to us, I doubt a child will be forthcoming."

"Oath? What do you mean?" Hera said, her eyes trained on her tea.

"The Stygian oath he swore to us at the Pomegranate Agreement."

"Don't let him get to you." Amphitrite said. "Hermes told us everything. Cruel and selfish to taunt your husband that way. Zeus only made that promise so that he could bring Aidoneus to heel. He does that to my husband constantly. Not by promising that our child will become the heir to the heavens, mind you, but he has other ways of needling Poseidon."

"Thank you. As I said, it's of nothing, and his words on that matter bear little consequence. Aidoneus and I could be content if it never happens at all."

Amphitrite was silent a moment, then took Persephone's hand and squeezed it in hers, and gave her a reassuring smile. "As I said, it's only been seventy five years. Only the Fates know what the future will bring."

Hera stared into her cup, her serene smile set in stone.

***

Her chest heaved, her throat burned. But she refused to let tears fall. Hera wondered yet again, like so many other times in her long life, if this was the way mortals felt when their hearts broke and ceased to beat, and they passed from the living world.

Whores were one thing. That impulse that came not from his heart, but from that other part between his legs that relentlessly craved the embrace of new flesh. It happened, it ended, and she had deadened herself to that hurt long, long ago. Love was different. After their nuptials, after their hieros gamos, Hera had been blessed and cursed by their inextricable link. She could feel deep within her when he loved another. It was a pit in her heart— a hollow, like the well of the clay cup she gripped in her hand. The clay turned warm against her angry palm.

Tears fell onto its unvarnished surface.

This was betrayal more potent than anything she'd ever felt— more than even the early days, when he had deeply loved and lain with Leto and begat the twins on her. She had been furious, their marriage still so new and fragile, and his duplicity and denial so deep.

That hardly compared.

Everyone knew but her. Demeter; Hermes, who had told Poseidon, and likely others; and of course Apollo. How many had been laughing and pointing at her back all this time?

Zeus had promised Aidoneus and Persephone the only thing that should never, could never, be given away: their children's birthright. It was the lowest mockery of their marriage and the one untouchable truth that set her apart from all others— that her children were legitimate, and the rest of his spawn were bastards.

Did he not realize that by giving them that, he was going back on his word to her, and passing the line of succession through his first born? Through Demeter's child? Even if growing Hades's seed was impossible, it was the gravity of such a thing. It was a Stygian oath made by the King of the Gods! Unbreakable, and beyond egregious, tempting the Fates into the unimaginable...

Hera could feel Zeus drawing closer to the room and stood, her hands tensing around the cup, nearly cracking it. His sandals thudded against the marble floors. As his shadow appeared around the corner, she cocked her arm.

The cup exploded against the wall and Zeus ducked beyond the doorway.

"What in Tartarus was that for?!"

"How could you?"

"How could I..." He leaned around the corner, and entered the room once he saw that her hands were both empty. Hera balled her fists and stood tense, her shoulders tight. Zeus approached her, and she trembled but didn't move. He scratched the back of his neck and chuckled at her. "Woman, if you want to spend an evening with me, there's better ways to get my attention. You needn't—"

"I have half a mind to never lie with you again!"

"Be serious."

"I am!"

"You've caught me on a night where I'm alone for once; I've said not a word I've done nothing to cause you to act out like this, so I'll ask you again. What daimones possessed you to throw that at me?"

"Persephone!"

"Truly? She never seemed fiendish to me. From what I heard, you were having a pleasant enough time with her and Amphitrite. You were the one who invited her, for Fate's sake." He sighed and folded his arms. "You didn't let Poseidon's sea witch get under your skin again, did you?"

"Amphitrite is nothing! This is about what you promised Aidoneus the day the Pomegranate Agreement was struck!"

Zeus knit his brow, perplexed. Then it dawned on him. He lowered his arms to his sides and took a step back. Hera watched him grit his teeth. He was painfully easy to read. That was the expression he'd made when she confronted him about Europa. And Danae.

"How could you make a promise like that?!"

"You trouble yourself over nothing, woman," Zeus said, pacing about his room. "It will come to nothing. They know that. You know that. So why pester me?"

"You have no respect for me. It is not enough that you fornicate with every woman who crosses your path? Now you give away my son's birthright to another?"

Zeus laughed. "What other?"

"To Persephone's first child!"

"Ha!" He scoffed, loud enough for it to echo and her to flinch. "This is why I cannot take your mood to heart and you shouldn't those words heart either. I might as well have sworn to Poseidon that the seas would boil. Hades and Persephone will have no children."

"Not Aidoneus, no, but—"

"And neither will she. Persephone sealed her fate when she ate those damned pomegranate seeds."

"You don't know that! She's the Goddess of Spring."

"Don't be ridiculous. She's part of the Land of the Dead. As much a Chthonios as her husband, no matter how much time she spends in the sunlight. She is as barren as their Fates-forsaken kingdom."

"Her fertility might overpower it." She leveled an accusing finger. "And I think you know that."

Zeus rolled his eyes. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"That you'll try to beget on her as you did on her mother."

He blinked hard, then looked nauseous, and Hera froze. She'd only seen him this unsettled one other time... but it had affected him. She silently congratulated him on mustering a reaction stronger than lying or vague dismissal. Hera folded her arms and pressed on.

"Given your recent depravity I would not even put laying with your own daughter beneath you."

"That is enough!" He advanced on her, trapping her between his body and the bed at the back of her knees. She faltered. His eyes narrowed. "And even if she were not my daughter... she looks too much like Rhea. Honestly, Hera. You wound me. Say what you will about the lovers I've taken, but for fatessake, my own children... For shame, Hera."

He backed away, his lip curled in disgust. She seethed. He was blaming her. How many times had he always turned it back on her? "It didn't stop you from bedding Alcmene."

He rolled his eyes. "Not this again. I told you, it's over between her and me. Her new husband was rutting in her well-traveled passage hardly a night after I rose from her."

She stamped away from his bed. It was too dangerous to stay there. He'd cornered her during an argument there and 'soothed' her out of her protests too many times before. This was different. He had dishonored her. He had dishonored their children. "I cannot believe that it falls to me to know more about your harlots than you do."

"What are you muttering about?"

"Alcmene is the daughter of Electryon. Who was the daughter of Perseus. Who was your own son!"

"Perseus..." He chewed his lip.

"Oh, Fates save me for having such a forgetful husband!"

"If you would just let these pass, as I do, instead of holding on to your hate for generations you might be happier, Hera."

"He slew the sea monster. Cetus. Took that Ethiopian girl, Andromeda, to wife."

He cocked his head to the side and smirked in the unnerving way he always would when he found her anger amusing. She wanted to cry, or flail her fists against his chest. If she did it would give him an opportunity to comfort her. Or draw her close. All roads lead to his polluted bed. She stood her ground.

"His mother was Danae. Who you... appeared to... as a golden rain."

"Ah! Now I remember!" His voice lightened, taunting her. "Her miserable father had locked her away. Trying to defy the Oracle, for fear that her offspring would kill him. And as luck would have it, Perseus did! Accidentally, mind you, but..." He guffawed.

"And so you sleep with your own great-granddaughter."

"Please..."

"She has your blood running through her!"

"So does nearly every noble family in Hellas," he chided. "And I've bedded half of them."

"So does Persephone. Will you bed her too?!"

He lunged at her and she tried to twist away. Hera shrieked. Her wrists were trapped in his hands and her struggling only brought her closer against his chest. "Let me go!"

His breath teased the stray hairs on her forehead. "Listen to me."

"No!"

"Hera," he said, his voice soothing. "Hera, they cannot have children. Look at me."

She kept her gaze firmly on his chest, not wanting him to see her crying.

"Wife, gynaika mou, look at me."

She sniffled, and brought her deep brown eyes up to meet his sky blue. He let go of one wrist, and brushed a tear away from her face.

"I would never, ever, betray you like that. Persephone and Hades cannot have children. I said it to taunt him that day because of all the destruction and waste his selfish infatuation with her had caused. It was meant to put him in his place and drive a wedge between them. Nothing more."

"What..." she swallowed, trying to keep from leaning into the fingers stroking her cheek. Her voice wavered. "What if they do conceive?"

"They won't. I hear tell they've tried just about anything. So my empty oath to him did all it was supposed to do. It put Hades in his place. It will eventually drive them apart because Persephone, though she ate the seeds willingly, would never have done so if she'd known it would condemn her to an eternally barren marriage bed. In that way, he did trick her, as the mortals say. Even if there were a way they could, even if they found some dark sorcery that could give them a child, I would never make a spawn of theirs heir to Olympus. Never. Besides... if such a creature were even possible, it would be rooted to the Underworld the same as its dismal parents."

"You promise?"

"I promise, Hera." He kissed her cheek.

"Then why didn't you tell me at the time?"

"Because I thought it to be of no consequence then. Just as it is of no consequence now."

She dipped her head.

"You see? Nothing to worry yourself over."

She tensed. This was becoming too easy for him. "What about Alcmene?"

"I told you, it's over."

"Her sons— twins, Zeus..."

"It's doubtful they are even mine. She slept with Amphitryon before the sun went down on the day I left her."

"But their blood will be that much stronger if divine lineage is on both sides."

"No they won't. They'd be mortal hemitheoi at best. To amount to anything beyond their mortal years, they would need to drink ambrosia. And that won't happen either."

She nodded.

"Now," he said, kissing her neck, "how can I make this up to you? How best should I apologize?"

She closed her eyes and leaned in. "Apologize?"

"Of course," he said, his lips lingering on the juncture of her shoulder and neck. "I should have told you right away the thing I said to taunt Hades. Would you have been as distressed by what Persephone let slip if I had?"

"No," she whispered back, feeling heat against her thigh through his himation and loincloth.

"You could have laughed her off, just as I do her husband." Zeus teased his fingers along the small of her back and grazed his beard along her jaw.

"Amphitrite knew."

"Amphitrite is a gossip." He kissed her lips quickly. "And a hastily promoted nymph." He kissed her earlobe. "And a shameless whore."

Hera sucked in a breath as his tongue danced across the shell of her ear.

"And you are the queen." He slipped a fibula free on her peplos, the fabric shifting and falling from her shoulder. He breathed against the skin he had freed. "You are my queen."

She touched his chest, gingerly, inhaling his scent of warm oak and petrichor, then stared up at him, blinking. He loved her eyes; she knew he did. It was why she emphasized them so heavily with kohl and malachite. She also knew that her paint would be smeared before the night was over, because he loved that too.

His head dipped and his tongue lashed against her nipple. Hera lost her footing, pressing up against him just as he squeezed her rump, catching her as she tottered. He slid the other pin away and her arms flew around his neck, then pushed his himation off his shoulder.

Why was she always so helpless against him? She knew the moment she walked through that door that it would end this way. It always did. Hera puzzled over that for a moment, then felt her girdle unclasp and slink down her falling skirts to the floor, its precious jewels and gold muffled by the pool of fabric at her feet. She bucked against his hand.

"Eager, are we?"

"Don't push your luck," Hera said before nipping his neck. She felt his large hand grip the back of her neck and pull her to face him.

"Oh, I will. I'll push whatever I want, gynaika mou." He hitched up one of her legs and threaded his fingers through the folds of her vulva, fingers on either side of her bud, and Hera trembled and braced herself, knowing from before, from so many previous times just like this, what he would do next. Her skin prickled from the bottoms of her feet to the hairs on her neck. Then a current, setting off every vital nerve with relentless perfection. She arched her back, and the world around her disappeared as she came.

Tears leaked from her eyes and she cried out, feeling him close in on her, as he caressed her through the exquisite waves. His fingers settled there again. He had become so adept at this. Zeus used the very energy that coursed through the sky, the gift he'd received during the war, to turn her into a mewling pet. The same jolt sent her over the edge again, and again, wrenching her pleasure from her body until she quivered.

"Zeus, please... mercy..." Malachite trickled down her temples and into her loosened hair. His eyes darted across her face and neck, pleased and triumphant with the quivering mess he'd made of her.

"Is this not merciful enough?" He rubbed his engorged phallus against her thigh. "That you should be thrice satisfied..."

He traced circles with his finger, each pass producing another jolt, and kissed her. Zeus swallowed her plaintive cries as each wave built, crested, crashed, ebbed, rose again, and left her sobbing and pliant. Another rise and fall and she was breathless and shaking.

"...Or should I say sixfold satisfied while you leave me painfully aching for you?" Zeus growled into her ear and ground against her thigh.

"Please... please..." The dry words stuck in her throat. She was delirious. Her head was craned back and she felt a soft pillow cushion her neck, replacing his hand. Her legs canted upward in anticipation, but she felt his hands on her hips and he turned her over so she lay prone. He pulled up her hips and with a single thrust, buried himself to the hilt. Hera sighed in relief. No matter how skilled he was with that lightning quick touch, it left her clenching around emptiness. He knew this. He would draw it out of her until she could stand no more, then fill her with hardness and heat.

Zeus gripped her hips so hard she thought they would bruise, crashing into her, and when she tried to lift herself up onto her elbows, his heavy palm in the center of her back pressed Hera to the bed again. He leaned over her to keep her pinned to the sheets.

"Why," she said, catching her breath, "can you not love me like a good husband ought?"

"Because that's not what you need."

"What if I wanted it?" She squealed as he circled his thumb around her anus.

"You hate it," he growled. "You always have. This is what pleases you."

"So you disrespect—" she lost her words, gasping as he pushed forward. He snapped his hips, stretching her, and she mewled his name, her eyes closing.

"You were saying?" He rasped into her ear. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and turned her head so he could kiss her. She bit at his lip to break their kiss and he removed his invading digit and pulled her upright, holding her taut against his body.

"You're a brute," she cried out through clenched teeth. He increased his tempo savagely and she leaned in to take him deeper, their voices blending together, animalistic.