This is not his Underworld anymore.
Beneath him, the ground is cold and wet through the thin material of a prisoner’s rags. Stone unrelenting, refusing heat. There is no warmth here, no sun, no fire except for the crackling torches lining the walls of cells, failing to illuminate such darkness, failing to penetrate the unrelenting shadows that swallow him whole. Once, he called himself this darkness. Once, he ate it alive and let it power through his veins, hollow out the nutrition in his marrow and fill his insides. Once, he did not fear it.
Once, he did not fear anything.
The smoke, the wisps of decaying robes of monsters patiently waiting to devour him lurk outside the metal bars of this broken palace, metal bars that contain him at night once they grow bored and tired of toiling torture through his beaten body all day. Desolate eyes follow the way the tendrils of their edges seep back and forth across the locked door, hungry. At night, he nearly begs them to take him, his soul, his last breath —
— he is already gone, is he not? Rotting empty, graying flesh twitching with each chill through the crack in the wall, heart holed and ceasing the beating of a useless organ, scraped bare from his chest and left miles away to wither red like a plucked pomegranate spoiling in her longing hands. First, it bleeds red. The crimson stains her skin, her palms, and when she wrenches the thing desperately within her clutching, pleading fingers, it leaks black and crumbles to ashes. Far away, he feels the moment it molders to dust.
The only thing that cuts through the freeze is the the screaming. Some he recognizes. In the first days, the harrowing sounds of the shrieks of his comrades pierce his insides, twist them terribly until he retches sick into the corner. He hears one that he knows too well, one belonging to a man that belongs to him, rattling an helpless agony that leaves him a collapsing collection of crestfallen sobs on the rocky floor — alone. Always alone.
Days pass by enough that he stops counting. The screaming does not stop, but eventually, he does not hear it any longer. He recognizes nothing. He does not recognize the wretched tear of his own from his throat. He wonders if he actually makes any noise at all. He wonders if he still exists at all. He wonders how numbing this cold can chill before it freezes him to death.
He wonders if he is already dead, and this is Hell. The Underworld that does not crown him a king. Here, he loses his reign, a shriveling skeleton of a man broken in the Fields of Punishment as he suffers, his throne rusting and deteriorating without the ruler perched high upon it.
The chair he sits upon during his judgement is no throne. His queen does not wear diadem while she cries for his feigned innocence, lies hidden by slipping tears on cheeks and the sanguine stain on her hands hidden by the wring of them in her lap. She does not play well in the darkness without the safety of his fearlessness, but the light does not accept her any longer now that she basked too long in the shade, now that she let the crimson bite of his forbidden offering paint her lips, her lioness teeth. She does not smile. Her lips tremble instead, soft graze of fingertips brushing tiny cranium of their young prince on her thigh, little eyes like his own bleary and searching in the mass of deciding faces watching mother and son beg for defeated conqueror.
Her voice quakes an echo in the courtroom, his queen. He stopped hearing the echoes of screams in that hell, but he hears hers so shrilly that he digs fingers into the arms of his seat, ignores the strain of shackles bound on raging and shaking arms fighting for release, fighting to escape and wrap themselves around her. How numbing could that cold chill until it froze him to death? Not cold enough, not cold enough — he answers himself now. Now, his heart a fire rising from its ashes, catching searing flame at the sound of his queen’s wails, at sight of his prince’s lonely stare fixed on a father torn away, the reminder of a kingdom stolen out of his grasp, but waiting — waiting for him to seize back power and palace, return to glory beside his winter goddess and their young one, waiting for its king to conquer victorious back on his throne.
Once, he did not fear anything.
His throne recaptured, he learns to silence this new constant trepidation and ignore the chill of the seat through his robes while he watches woman and child silently remember how to move in his existence. He wonders if he exists at all. Some nights, he feels too cold again and wakes up screaming, part of him still locked behind bars to be tortured and tormented and plagued in that frigid purgatory filled with the rotting thieves of souls already too shattered to fight their abduction. She runs touch through his hair and wipes the sweat from his brow, red lips whispering comfort and calm into his ear as she curls her form cravingly around his own.
It takes too long for his hands to remember how to touch her back.
It takes too long for his mind to snap aware of his baby boy’s cries. The screaming never stopped, but eventually, he did not hear it any longer and he must have forgotten how to hear pain when he spent so long deaf to the music it makes. It takes too long for him not to startle at the clash of metal — when their silver drops accidentally to the marble floor, he hears the slam of iron bars latching into place and his lungs deflate and he wilts terrified to his knees. Those metal bars that contained him at night, but opened in the morning, once the monsters grew hungry and ready of toiling torture through his beaten body all day. It takes too long for him to find might in the darkness once more, darkness that once meant home. These shadows here, how can he be sure that they will not try to swallow him whole, too?
In the evening, when neither can fall asleep with memories such a persistent bedfellow, she slips pomegranate seeds on his lips, pinches them to ooze red between her fingertips, laps at their blood there with the tip of her tongue. They both pretend that they do not miss the fractured god that once shared this dominion, this bed, who tasted these seeds and spit them back out through grinning teeth. They both pretend this kingdom feels like home again, that he did not return a cadaverous corpse of a gone ruler unfit for his crown. They both ache with a gentleness unfamiliar between what they once were, too scared from the countless nights he spent away from her to frighten each other with the furious passion of before now, before then, before broken, before gone, before lost, before.
I will love you like before, he whispers into the delicate curve of her neck as they melt together for the first time again, her thighs holding him within her, her flesh a roadmap to recollection he kisses to remember his way back. Back home, back here, back to before. He traces her face in the heavy and quiet afterglow of tangled silk sheets and intertwined limbs, finger over cheekbone and nose and jaw, dancing graceful shadows where he touches her, and he does not fear this shade, not when his queen radiates so beautifully within this crepuscule of their reclaimed kingdom. I will love you like before, he whispers as he beckons mouth to taste the hollow pit of her collarbone, just remind me how.
I will not leave you like before, he promises as he squeezes his eyes shut and rests forehead against tiny temple of tiny baby boy. He teaches their son words like victory and strength and resurrection. In the gloom of dawn, he rises the heir from his crib, holds him tightly until he remembers the instinct of fatherhood that faded dormant after too long away. Before, he refused to hold him like this. Then, he ached to feel his child in his arms instead of the cold, instead of the vacant nothingness there. Now, he refuses to put him down. I will not leave you like before, he promises as he clutches baby prince against his cowering chest, never will you be alone.
Never again will he leave them alone, he knows as another night falls after a crushing day and sinks over their rubbled kingdom here, walls of passed down estate the ruins of a perished aforetime. He will rebuild their kingdom from the dust. He will mortar foundation from its cinders, frame new palisade from its embers. He will burnish his queen’s throne, wash the soot from its seat. He will forge a new crown for his prince, gilded worthy of this prevailing reign. The only cold they will know — the biting, bitter sting he would inflict to any that dared to endanger them. The only screams they will hear — the last words of anyone that he rips apart to keep them safe. The only monsters they will see — the memories of loneliness and pain in nightmares he will love away and gone. The only darkness they will meet — the twilight in this palace, the soothing silence of shade that protects them, endows them in sheltered sanctuary of a restored rubbled kingdom he gives to them, his queen and their prince, his family, holding his hands in their reconquered realm.
Their crowns — they do not tarnish now. Even in the darkness, the jewels encrusted within their gold gleam. Here, they reign together once more. This is his Underworld again, and when his queen slips bloody and plump pomegranate seeds to the lips of her king, he smiles against her fingers.
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