Hades stepped into the Wellness Centre and frowned. The decorative plants were drooping more than usual, their leaves browning at the edges.

A familiar ache of longing stirred in his chest, a quiet reminder that his wife had been gone too long, visiting with her mother and ushering in the spring season in the mortal lands. Without her presence to brighten the Underworld, everything was duller, more lifeless than usual. All the colour had leached from his surroundings.

He’d often considered going up to the mortal lands for a short visit, just to get his daily dose of sunshine — and by sunshine, he meant Persephone. But Demeter would likely declare war on him for intruding on her time with her daughter.

“Two weeks,” Hades mumbled to himself. In two weeks, Perse would be back in the Underworld, at his side, where she belonged.

He adjusted his necktie and smoothed out imaginary wrinkles from his suit. It was Hermes who’d introduced him to twenty-first-century fashion, after discovering that mortals of that era had a thriving fashion house named after him. Hades found he had a particular fondness for three-piece suits, as did Perse. Especially the neckties, which she loved helping him knot around his neck.

Today, he hadn’t worn the suit to entice his lovely wife. He had a therapy session scheduled with a group of Shades who, for whatever reason, had been buried without the required coin to pay Charon for passage into the Underworld. He didn’t want them dwelling too much on the fact that their group therapy session was being led by Hades himself. Doubt creeped in. Perhaps he should have dressed in normal, civilian looking chiton to put them at ease.

For some of the Shades still wandering along the banks of the rivers Styx and Acheron, Hades and Charon evoked intense negative emotions. The only reason the selected few agreed to come at all was because Perse and Hermes had convinced them it would be worthwhile; that therapy could help them cope with the tedious hundred-year limbo before they could finally cross into the Underworld.

No one, Hades had found, could say no to his wife. And apparently, Hermes was greatly loved by mortals as well. Praying to Nyx that the session would go off without a hitch, Hades made his way toward the room where he hosted the group sessions, stopping first at reception to check if there was anything he needed to know before meeting with the Shades.

To his surprise, it wasn’t Charon seated behind the huge onyx desk.

His daughter, Melinoë, had her chair tipped back, balancing on its two rear legs, with her metal-studded sandal-clad feet resting on the desktop while she read what was no doubt one of her favoured macabre stories.

He cleared his throat.

Melinoë lowered her book to reveal a pale face. A few days ago, she’d hacked off her luscious dark tresses into a choppy bob that brushed against her jawline. Her beautiful eyes, so like her mother’s, were rimmed with thick black liner. Blood-red lip rouge painted her lips and eyelids, and a ruby-red piercing adorned her nose. A bronze lip ring sat in the centre of her bottom lip, and four studs lined the shell of each ear.

“Pops,” Melinoë greeted, flashing a cheeky grin.

“What are you doing here? Where’s Charon?” Hades glanced around, half-expecting Charon to pop out from behind a corner with a harried expression. Melinoë’s favourite pastime, after all, was finding creative ways in which to annoy the ferryman.

“He was too chicken to face the group of Shades coming in today, and asked me to hold down the fort. So, here I am,” she said, wiggling her ring-adorned fingers.

Hades offered his daughter a close-lipped smile. “Thank you for stepping in, daughter. Wish me luck in there.” He knocked his knuckles lightly against the onyx desk.

“No luck needed. You’re Hades, Lord of the Underworld. What are a bunch of disgruntled Shades going to do to you?”

“The point is not to terrify them and make these group sessions into a recurring thing. Try not to drive any incoming patients mad while I’m gone, yeah?”

Melinoë rolled her eyes. “How else are you gonna get ’em to keep coming back for more sessions?”

Pasting a genial smile on his face, Hades walked into the group counselling room and was immediately met with a tidal wave of emotion from the assembled Shades. Despair. Confusion. Anger. Resentment. Helplessness. A dozen other tangled feelings hung thick in the air, turning the room’s atmosphere heavy and stifling. If there were windows, he’d crack them open just to let some fresh air in.

Persephone had done her best to decorate the room in bright, inviting colours to put his patients at ease a stark contrast to the bleak minimalism and neutral palette of the rest of the clinic. Cornflower blue walls, wall tapestries depicting magnificent landscapes painted by artists blessed by the Muses and Apollo himself. She’d also found the plush seats, which were currently occupied by ten Shades seated in a semicircle, all staring up at Hades with varying degrees of animosity, fear, and mistrust.

Ten.

Five men and five women. Hades was pleasantly surprised. He hadn’t expected so many to be interested in receiving counselling.

“Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Underworld Wellness Centre’s first grief support group counselling session. I’m Hades,” he said, pulling up a seat at the front of the semicircle.

The two Shades closest to him, both female, whimpered and not-so-subtly shifted their seats as far from him as they could get, which was a few millimetres away, at best. The rest, save for one male, were shaking so hard that had they not already been dead, they might have dropped dead from heart failure on the spot.

“What have we to grieve, my lord? We are naught but ghosts you’ve refused to welcome into the Fields of Asphodel.” The belligerent retort came from the one Shade who didn’t seem to care that he was in the presence of a god. The speaker belatedly realized his mistake and sat upright, looking chastised. “Respectfully speaking, my lord,” he added.

Hades crossed his legs and balanced his notebook atop his knee.

“I understand that you’re all frustrated with your current situation, but the rules of the Underworld are clear and immutable. While I empathize with you, I ask that you also understand this is how things have always been, and how they will remain. If you can’t pay Charon, even if it’s through no fault of your own, you have to face a penalty. I know this is hard on all of you, hence the grief therapy. You are not only mourning the lives you’ve lost, but the afterlife you’ve been denied for now. And I want to help you work through that.”

A short pause to gauge the Shades’ expressions. No one dared look back up at him. Sighing, he continued.

“All I ask is that we respect one another during these sessions. None of you are compelled to stay or keep attending. If you’re uncomfortable, you’re free to leave. There will be no penalties. Okay?”

The group murmured their assent, albeit reluctantly.

“Right. Starting with the lady to my left why don’t we introduce ourselves? And if you're comfortable, share a little about who you were in life.”

The female Shade shrank into herself, as if trying to escape Hades’ attention. He stifled a sigh, doing his best not to let frustration creep in. Maybe these sessions had been a mistake. Mortals didn’t carry the same reverence for him that they did other gods. All humans, no matter how great, feared death to some degree and that trepidation trickled over to how the perceived Hades himself.

How could to ease their suffering and offer comfort if they trembled at his very presence?

“M-my name is Agatha. I was a seamstress while I lived… I think,” she said, her brows drawing together in a frown. “I was married to my wonderful husband, Demetrius, who sadly passed before me a month after I gave birth to our fourth son. I died of old age and was very much looking forward to reuniting with my beloved in the afterlife…”

Her voice cracked with a sob. The man seated beside her reached over, took her hand, and murmured soft words of comfort. She dragged in a shaky breath and started at her weathered hands.

“My relationship with my sons had grown strained after they got married, but I never thought they’d be as cruel and uncaring as to bury me without proper funeral rites. I worked myself to the bone to ensure they never went without basic necessities. But those idiots married the vilest women they could find and let them poison their minds against me!” She seethed, her despair quickly giving way to anger. She glared at Hades. “And you, my lord how can you be so cruel? I was faithful in making offerings to the gods. I never blasphemed or uttered a single bad word against your name! I was a good, virtuous woman, and yet you deny me a reunion with my husband. Why?”

Hades cleared his throat. “I understand your frustration, Agatha. Unfortunately, my hands are tied. All I can offer is a safe space to vent, something to help you stay sane until Charon is ready to ferry you into the Underworld proper.”

“But a hundred years is too much, my lord!” cried the man from before.

Holding back a grimace, Hades turned to the next Shade.

His name was Philemon a young man in his late teens who had perished in his first battle and still wore his bloodied armour.

And then there was Helene. All she remembered was that she’d died in childbirth and had no idea why she’d been buried without Charon’s fare.

Next came Atticus, the angry man who glared at Hades as if he were the one who had taken his life.

“I was murdered by my own brother. I always suspected he was jealous of me, and now I know for certain. I was a merchant in life, married to the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen—”

“Careful now,” said a female Shade who had yet to introduce herself. “You don’t want to draw Aphrodite’s ire with that kind of declaration.”

“We are protected from the prying eyes of the gods,” Hades assured them.

Atticus clicked his tongue. “My so-called brother drove an arrow into my back while we were out hunting. And with no heir to inherit everything I worked so hard for, that prick gets it all. I bet he’s already bedded my wife by now.”

One by one, they continued introducing themselves.

There was Kallias, a warrior who had fallen in battle and remained fiercely loyal to his king. He had expected his king to at least offer him proper funeral befitting a general such as he. Finding himself confined to wander the banks of the Styx for a century was a betrayal that hurt more than any wound he’d sustained in battle.

Kleo, the woman who’d warned Atticus about Aphrodite, had perished from illness. Her family had been too impoverished to afford medicine. She wasn’t too surprised to find herself in this state of limbo and was resigned to her fate. “My life was miserable to begin with, why would I expect death to be better? To be honest, I was hoping that we faded into nothingness when we died. What am I supposed to do in my afterlife?” she sighed.

The next was Dorothea. She had been murdered by her husband. That was all she was willing to share.

Niko and Lysander, brothers and sailors, got caught in a storm and perished along with the rest of their crew. They claimed they always carried the ferryman’s fee with them, and it must have been swept to the bottom of the sea when their boat capsized.

The last woman only knew her name and how she died nothing about her life in the world of the living.

“My name is Sophia. The last thing I remember before winding up on the banks of the Styx is a man… violating me. I think I trusted him, and I remember feeling so shocked that he would do that to me. And shame… I felt so much shame at what was being done to me,” she whispered, her expression filled with pain and horror.

Hades wanted to reach out and comfort her, but he doubted she’d welcome it. He was grateful when Agatha and Helene both got up from their seats to comfort her.