You had met him, the God of Death, in the deadliest corner of Earth, among withering trees and dying blooms, close to his realm, the kingdom of lost souls that had always enthralled you.

You who had come from the light, a land full of flowers and sunshine and warmth. You who had petals blooming under your fingers, blossoms sprouting out of the ground at the touch of your feet. Spring followed you everywhere but not here, not now when you came running.

Where did you intend to go to? Or was there something after you? You didn’t dare to look, not until you ran into a solid, cold body just when you reached the end of the world known to mortals.

“What’s after you, little bird? Did you get lost?” a low grumble of voice asked, resonating through the chest you fell upon. It wasn’t kind, the man’s tone, nor it put your trembling to a halt but when you stepped back on wobbling legs, he held your arm firmly, steadying you. It felt nice.

“No, I… I just needed space,” you mumbled almost ashamed of your childish act but you didn’t regret it. Oh no! You really weren’t ready to… To what? To admit that you were weak? Or too greedy? Was it so wrong to want something selfishly? To put yourself before others, to not care about expectations and consequences? These reasonable questions echoed in your mind poisoning the obedient daughter your mother birthed and freezing the following words onto your reckless tongue.

You looked up hastily, frightened deer eyes searching for help but you were welcomed with the black pupils of soundless misery itself. Staring straight into the dark, endless pitches, you shivered. His eyes were colder than the kiss of water nymphs and it made you wonder. Were all the tales true? Did he really have a black heart carved out of his chest, lying in a golden box with seven keyholes, locked down deep in Tartarus, keys forgotten way before human history? Did he really feed on the flesh of dead bodies and lived among rotting corpses, enjoying the havoc he caused with every flick of his pale wrist?

But oh, the man before you was nothing like the gossips you heard: he had no horns, no bony skull with bloodshot eyes. No, he wasn’t anything like the farmers who feared him described the God of Underworld himself. Nor he was like the intimidating, ruthless ruler your mother had always warned you about. He was rather beautiful, a masterpiece in a vitrine, hidden from the world unworthy to see. Moonless night-like eyes, velvety-looking hair, snow-coloured swan neck contrasting his dark cape was like an art piece on display. An outstanding being at the border between his kingdom, the darkness and the land of eternal dawn. He was truly a sight to behold, so much different from his brothers, the gods you knew too well, the bloodline that betrayed him and banished him out of Olympus.

"You are not from around here,” he commented nonchalantly, stating a fact with eyebrows cocked, head tilted and silky black strands of hair falling onto his forehead.

With quivering lips you didn’t deny the statement. It was too easy to tell: the flowers in your hair had already withered leaving nothing but dry petals in-between your dark locks, the curls around them hanging like grape tendrils. Your flowery dress was crumpled but still smelled like strawberry fields, your arms bare, exposed and suddenly you felt under the curious gaze.

“You shouldn’t be here,” the man continued when you didn’t say anything. His thin, rosy lips formed a firm line. The grip on your elbow loosened, and his hands dropped back by his sides. His touch had been as cool as it could get, however, you only felt the numbing coldness when he let you go.

You should have been afraid, shaking in fear and yet, hope bloomed in your naive, child-like heart. Because that was when you heard it: the sorrow in his voice, the longing… the loneliness. Your heart ached for him.

“Can’t I stay? Please,” you begged trembling like a leaf in the storm and the god who had fought too many wars to count looked taken aback. He widened his eyes in surprise, his own lips twitching in a silent scolding, mocking him that a young girl like you just found his blindside and attacked where he wasn’t looking? He was dumbstruck to say the least and decided to simply ignore your question. (What a coward, his heartbeat hissed in shame.)

“You know who I am, right? Aren’t you afraid?” He narrowed his eyes looking for signs of a trap, another slap into his face. He couldn’t comprehend for what reason Demeter’s daughter would have been there at the threshold of his reign pleading for entrance. It didn’t make sense at all. The more so as it had been a while since a goddess stepped into his territory.

“Why would I fear death when what life offers is much worse?” you mused over this question, asking yourself from time to time, but this was actually a first to ask it out loud, voicing it out for somebody who you hoped might understand. But was death really that considerate?

You wanted to believe that you were ready to die, to be free of the chains of the life you didn’t want but you knew goddesses didn’t die painless, peaceful death.

“Why is that?” the man asked the right questions, stepping onto your guts, trampling on them, turning your soul inside out.

“A cage can have golden bars and crystal chains but it’s still a prison,” you said voice sad and melancholic, not taking your eyes off of him. You reminded him of cherry blossoms, songs at sunrises and hope but your confession upset him as no truer words had ever been spoken.

The god swallowed, tasting his own poison on the tip of his tongue and he looked away. How could somebody so young and pretty like you know about pain anyway? And why would you want redemption from him?

“Leave,” he whispered yet it sounded like a loaded order. Leave until you can… until I let you.

It was an unsaid threat but it rang in your ears so clearly. Frightened and hurt, you turned around and ran away sobbing.

This was the first time he made you cry and the last time you listened to him and Yoongi had felt weak for wishing you didn’t.

But you came back. A harvest season later, fresh flowers in your hair, still so young and beautiful. You ran until your slippers almost touched the rippling water of river Styx but you weren’t allowed to cross the border. You were stuck there in-between the life you wanted to leave behind and one you couldn’t have. In the one place you knew they wouldn’t dare to follow you, never.

Yoongi had been watching you from the darkness, a girl as fragile as you struggling to find another way to break into his domain. What a fearless, rebellious little one you were! It fascinated him and curiosity grew in him striking root deep down and the leaves of its tree poked his chest, urging him to move, to reveal himself before you.

“Are you looking for me, little bird?” he emerged from the shadows slowly and soundlessly like death creeped up on humans. He appeared right beside you, leaving only a few steps of space between you. Startled you looked up at him with wide, shining eyes but you weren’t crying. By now, you were stronger than that.

“Your boatman didn’t let me in,“ you replied offended, shakiness missing from your tone, not denying his statement at all.

"He had every right to. That land is for the dead. Or are you that desperate to run into death’s loving arms?” Yoongi croaked an eyebrow challengingly, his gaze not wavering at all. It burnt your inside with the flames of hell but you welcomed the warmth and bathed in it.

You had always loved danger and trouble had been a constant companion of you. Maybe that’s why your mother feared for you so much, hiding you far away from the Olympian gods.

“No. But you are there, too,” you retorted finding an exception to the ultimate rule.

Ever since you met him all that time ago, you often wondered: wasn’t he lonely? Down here all alone, only surrounded by ghosts and corpses and dying memories…

“Somebody has to maintain the peace,” the God of Darkness shrugged looking over the river, at the gate made of metal and bones painted crimson with dried blood. One of the entrances to his kingdom, the Underworld he ruled. If Hell set loose nobody stayed put, it would destroy the mountain of Olympus and Tartarus would swallow everything like a black hole. It was a responsibility too heavy to be carried by one person, you thought.

“What is it like?” you let curiosity take the worst out of you, questions recklessly flowing from your mouth like the water in rivers running fast whenever your father and Poseidon had a dispute. “Is it a dangerous place?”

Maybe it was the phasing or the question itself but Yoongi blinked dumbfounded. Staring at you, dressed up pretty, you looked so innocent but he wasn’t somebody to fool. He knew the game you were playing and he had seen enough to know curiosity could kill if you weren’t careful enough.

“For you, it certainly is,” he nodded imagining the colourful valleys full of nice-smelling flowers he associated with you. “You would suffocate there, in the dark, in the cold and in the emptiness. You would fade away like your precious blossoms. It’s always night there, only gemstones are shining instead of stars and the ground is made out of dust, the remains of dead mortals. The food has no taste and you are always thirsty. There’s nothing and everything there, silent cries of the burning ones and rivers of blood. Dreams, hopes, memories, everything people cannot let go and bring with themselves to death, they are always there, constantly like fog and ruthlessly like plague.”

The sight he described was an art in words like stories your mother told you. She thought it would deter you, ease your nosiness but it was like adding oil to fire. You couldn’t grasp the meaning of the realm of eternal night until you saw it with your own eyes, this world totally different from yours, the land of prosperity.

“Would… would you show me?” you asked bluntly, nibbling on your lower lip.

Yoongi couldn’t believe his ears but you certainly earned his interest. The eldest daughter of Demeter coming to the God of Withering to catch a glance of his kingdom? Merely out of sheer curiosity? It was unheard of.

“Why are you asking? Once you step in and decide to stay, there’s no way out of my palace. We don’t welcome visitors,” he said and even though his voice was freezing cold, his eyes were swimming in one particular kind of warmth. You couldn’t help but fall for it.

“It’s different when you choose your own prison,” like an addiction. Like commitment.

You were absolutely convinced in the veracity of your statement. Unlike him who didn’t seem to agree with you.

"You are naïve to think I can save you,” he claimed leaving no place for argument but you would have rather been naive than a prisoner. Nevertheless, it hurt that he thought you were that stupid… or did he really think he was your last option? You wanted to curl up in your bed in shame but instead you kept your chin high up proudly.

“Are you telling me you are like them? Would you hurt me too?”

Yoongi’s throat closed up hearing the blame and he was looking at the rosiness of your cheeks more closely, searching for cuts and marks and imprints of a palm on your sensitive skin but he knew that physical pain and wounds weren’t the worst.

“Why would anybody want to hurt you, little bird?” he asked quite stunned, barely believing anybody would have had the heart to do so. You seemed so pure.

“Ask your brothers,” you bit out casting your eyes down, nails sinking into your palms forming half-moons.

They were cruel, you both knew. Your father, Zeus had never seen you as anything else than an asset waiting to be sold for the highest bidder. Alliances between gods, their holy and almighty plans, politics you couldn’t care less about while they thought it was so important. More important than your free will or your feelings. Just like Yoongi’s. He didn’t choose to rule over this part of the world, the unliving and unforgiving. But if he left, it would have been chaos.

Therefore, he couldn’t leave but what he could do was to let you in. To let himself have company, to lose himself in your presence trying to solve the mystery of you, this living paradox.

He stared at you for a long while, eyes like black stars and something that couldn’t be comprehended flickered through their skyline. Then he took a step back, towards the river and bent down to put his hands over the water nobody should touch. It stirred, ripples tearing up the surface, pulling a small boat with them to the shore out of nowhere. You gaped at the sight while your heart, that stupid, was already fluttering in excitement. But you didn’t move, you couldn’t. Not until the man allowed you to do so.

“Remember the rules, right? You can’t eat or drink anything from the Underworld,” he warned you, glancing behind his shoulder. His deep voice was stern but still light enough for you to not really pay attention to. All you did was nodding without much care and took the hand he offered to help you onto the unsteady watercraft. It was just another proof of the lies your parents told you. He was so gentle, so reserved, so broken-hearted… How could he have been so bad they were that desperate to keep you away?

“You are cold,” you shivered slightly, involuntarily but hold onto more tightly as you stepped onto the unsteady boat.

“The weather isn’t quite lovely down there. Living things don’t usually survive the harshness of death,” he explained plain and simple but looking at him, you wanted to argue: even if they were only ephemeral beings, they were beautiful. Maybe they were meant to be like that because everything had a definite end. Unlike suffering.

You settled on the boat comfortably as Yoongi showed you around in his realm. Your pretty gown got soaked in the misty fog but you seemingly didn’t care. You were a lot more fascinated by the scenery and the  sights you had never seen before.

“Is that a pomegranate tree?” you pointed at a branches growing close to the river, the fruits’ shiny burgundy colour resembling of blood and rose petals. On this barren land it was the first specimen of greenery you saw.

“Yeah, that’s the only fruit that grows here,” Yoongi hummed and quickly changed the topic as you arrived near the Meadow of Asphodel and the place where the dead were judged. Then you stopped by at the gateway of Underworld, the lookout post of Cerberus and the hollow where the Sun never shone. All of it was utterly different from the world you had grown up in, the world you didn’t miss one bit so saying goodbye had never been so hard.

You kept coming back running with wide smiles and more questions. You never talked about what was after you, chasing you straight into his arms, and he never questioned it, just took you to the outer fields of Underworld and told you everything you were curious about. He fell deeper and deeper into you, the forbidden fruit, a bride promised to one of his brothers, so he decided to scare you off, sparing both of you the pain. He showed you his worst side: full of rage and rampage, ripping out hearts just like the king they whispered about, the nightmare everybody feared. You saw the monster they told you about, the merciless god but it didn’t scare you. How could it when you looked into your own soul and saw the same horror and ambitions?

Once you came in a dress of white and gold, the colours of weddings, and he took you to his palace like he had promised long ago. He watched you marvelling at the silver decors on the bare wall standing a couple of feet away, in a safe distance even though his hands itched to touch, to feel your warmth on his cold skin.

“Why are you always calling me little bird?” you blurted out another point of your endless list of questions and you managed to take the god by surprise once again. He felt guilt and want building up in him as his gaze followed your perfect bodyline under the sacred wedding dress. He couldn’t stop thinking about it: had you left before Zeus could bless your union with another man? Or had you only run away after? Who had dared to claim you as his?

“Because you’re just trying out your wings but one day when you learn how to fly, you will leave,” he replied caught up in his own emotions, the lies he couldn’t tell you and he looked you in the eye when you turned towards him.

“What if I don’t want to?”

“I would say you are lying,” Yoongi shook his head ever so sure of himself, eyes not even twitching. It was the saddest truth he knew: everybody left. Whether by accident or intent, alive or dead, with or without saying goodbye but people left one by one. A habit nobody could shake off.

You wanted to prove him wrong, to prove that you were meant to stay not caring about rules, expectations and responsibilities. So you dared to ask for the most reckless thing:

"Feed me,” you pleaded. Oh how much you yearned for the taste of bitter pomegranates in your mouth!

But no, he didn’t feed you, he didn’t bind you to him to stick with him in this rotten hell. No, he did worse: he broke his own damned heart.

He squeezed your hand and lunged forward so fast your eyes couldn’t quite follow the movement. He was like lightning: unexpected and blindingly bright, a flash in the dark. Then he was on you, his body so impossible close to yours, you felt his trembling, you saw the freckles on his cheeks, his dark lashes, his chapped lips and the way his gaze dropped to your pink mouth, slightly open, wet with saliva. It was a new kind of intimacy, one that shouldn’t have happened but you enjoyed every bit of it. The silky texture of his cape under your fingers, his hands grabbing on your waist over the lacy material of the dress and even his breathes hitting your own lips, his inhales stealing your oxygen.

“What do you want from me?” Yoongi asked in a hoarse and desperate voice, clinging onto the last bits of his sanity.

“You. I want you.”

You told him bold and honest because why would you have settled for nameless gods if you could have a king? You deserved a king! And you wanted him.

The crash of lips on your own came as expected but tasted twice as bitter. You melted into him like snow on a hot day, gradually. His kiss reminded you of a rose with thorns: pretty and soft but leaving painful scratches behind. You didn’t enjoy it any less though, oh no, you were hungry for more! You didn’t care about the cold floor under you, his marble throne digging into your back and the baldachin bed not made to be slept on. You down his chest, fingers only stilling on his belt, looking up, asking for permission. He was still the king you adored after all. And he worshiped you like nobody before, touched you like nobody could. You spent your wedding-night with him instead of your should-be-husband, the man your father had chosen for you and you wouldn’t have had it any other way.

It was all about passion, power, rebellion and for the sake of not being lonely. It didn’t have anything to do with your cold, unloving hearts. Flowers long forgotten in your hair sprayed all over the bed with pitch black duvet, a lovely contrast of day and night, you and him. He treated you like a gift wrapped up in silk as he striped you bare, out of the gilded dress. You arched into his touch and it was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen: you on his sheets, ready to give and take, lacking the slightest of fear in your opalescent eyes.

When he loved you, he loved you so well only a king could, giving you exactly what you wanted: harder and rougher when you asked and slower and softer when you were close in order to savour the moment. He called you pretty names despite the burn of your nails on his back and when he moaned your name, it was the most beautiful litany you had ever heard.

Rumours said you were kidnapped, chained to a boat, kept as a slave or a hostage. Nobody knew or believed you were a queen, having a throne, your righteous place beside him, being the only one who made the God of Death weak. They thought you were the victim, innocent and weak but oh how wrong they were! You were more than willing to stay there, in Yoongi’s arms eating the fruit he offered on a plate alongside with his heart. It was all your doing after all, because you had darkness in you and for that, he loved you endlessly.