Several days later, after I had convinced myself that it didn't mean anything, that I was safe, that he wouldn't be there, I returned, and he was waiting. He smiled when he saw me, and handed me a bouquet of Asphodel flowers. I scowled and threw them back in his face. He just laughed, and kissed me again.

We met often, those next six months. Sometimes we argued. Or rather, I argued. He would never fight back. Sometimes we talked. Once we spent the whole night telling each other stories. I learned more about my father than I had ever known. Always he would kiss me three times before he left.

I never kissed him back.

At my mother's home, things did not get better. I finally ejected her from my room after an argument that brought half of Mount Olympus down to check on us, but it didn't make things better. She kept me at her side by day, working in the fields, helping to prepare the harvest as the months ticked by to my eventual departure.

By night, I sought out Hades more and more often.

"You're a wild thing." He said when I complained about my mother's clinging to me more than once. "It's part of why I took you." He tucked my hair behind my ear again, a favored sign of affection from him.

"You shouldn't have taken me at all." I grumbled halfheartedly.

He chuckled. "I wanted to offer you your freedom in the Underworld. To rule it beside me." He sighed. "Perhaps I was a little short sighted. It was Zeus's idea."

I groaned. "Why would you listen to him?"

He smiled and leaned forward to kiss my cheek. "Because I am in love with you."

A month before I was to leave, Mother caught me sneaking back in. It was... not one of our better days as mother and daughter. After that she forbid me to leave her house, and assigned three nymphs to watch me at all times. I raged and cried the first week, dying to get outside, but I was trapped this time, and there was no escape for me

It was at the end of the first week that I began dreaming. Little dreams at first. Hades holding my hand. Hades tucking my hair behind my ear. Hades smiling at me when I'd said something nasty to him. At the end of the second week they changed. Hades caressing my cheek. Hades holding me against him. At the end of the third week it changed again, in earnest. Those three kisses felt engraved on my lips. It was like he had been casting a spell over me the entire time. But I looked, and he hadn't. The only spell was in my mind.