Hades passes like a shadow through his own palace, back from walking the mortal realm and hearing their wailing laments echoing off the ice that coats the world.

He pauses in the doorway, looking into the dark of the bedchamber; there is a crumpled and still heap in the night-blue sheets, and he sighs as he settles beside his wife. "They mourn for you," he tells her softly, not to hurt her - she has been crying for weeks, and every crystalline tear is a spike in his heart - but in hopes that she will return to her duties, for much as he longs to keep her, she belongs to the mortal world as much as his own, "will you not go to them once more?"