A Touch of Darkness

A Touch of Darkness is the first novel of Scarlett St. Clair's Hades x Persephone series, published in 2019. It is a modern retelling of the myth, set in a version of the present in which the gods of Olympus still take an interest in mortal affairs and the god of the dead runs his business like an empire, with gambling halls and contracts rather than a throne.

Persephone holds the title of Goddess of Spring and nothing else, because plants have shrivelled at her touch since she was a child. She moves to New Athens hoping to lead an unassuming life as a mortal journalist, and loses the plan in a single night at a card table in a club she had no business entering. The stranger across the table is Hades, whose gambling operations are the most powerful in the city and whose favourite bets are the ones nobody can win, which is a detail Persephone only understands afterwards.

The offer he makes her is a contract with a deadline attached: create life in the Underworld, or forfeit her freedom along with it. Persephone has never managed to make anything grow above ground, so the task is close to impossible, and the terms of it put her in the one place her mother's protection cannot reach. What begins as a bargain neither of them expects to enjoy becomes a contest of wills in which both of them have something to lose, and neither of them can afford to walk away from the arrangement first.

St. Clair writes the series from Persephone's point of view, and it is one of several books set in the same modern Olympus, with other volumes following different couples. The first novel establishes New Athens, the pantheon, the contract and the two leads who spend it negotiating over the same idea of freedom, and it is a fantasy romance rather than a straight retelling of the myth.