by Bree Despain
I glance away. “I’m sorry,” I say to him. I’m about to explain to him where he is but I have no idea how to go about informing someone that he’s dead.
“Sit down and remain silent,” Charon says, prodding the one-legged man with his oar.
Okay, so Charon might be old, but that doesn’t make him the gentle grandfatherly type.
“Do I know you?” he asks, after pushing the crying man back into his seat. It takes me half a second to realize the question was directed at me.
“Yes, we’ve met,” I say, fending off the hands of the young woman. She’s crying now, too, asking if I’ve seen her boyfriend. I can’t help but want to hug her, knowing how it feels to find yourself in a strange land, disoriented, and missing someone you love. “Well, we’ve sort of met. My friends and I found you unconscious on the beach near Persephone’s Gate. We were under attack by some Shades, so we put you in our boat and . . .”
“Oh yes,” Charon says. “So you’re the reason I woke up on the Elysium shore with a mighty fine headache.”
“Yes. But I don’t think I’m responsible for the headache.”
I try to step closer to him, but the girl wraps herself around my legs. “Have you seen David?” she asks. “Do you know where David is?”
“Sorry, the dead can be quite handsy,” Charon says, and bats the girl away from me with his oar. “That’s why I recognize you,” he says and points at me. “You were the girl with the Key.”
“The Key? Yes, yes,” I say excitedly. “That’s why I’m here. Do you know what happened to it?”
“Of course I know what happened to it.” Charon sticks his oar into the water and steers the boat away from an outcropping of rocks. “I took it. One shouldn’t leave the Key to the Underrealm lying around. I figured you were dead, so I didn’t think you would miss it.”
Hope swells in my heart. “Where is it?”
“Hidden somewhere safe.”
“I need it. Please take me to the Key.”
“Nuh uh uh,” Charon says, wagging a bony finger at me. “Everything has its price. You must make me a trade.”
I remember now that Garrick had said when we first arrived in the Underrealm that the boatman always required payment of some sort. As it stands, I only have four possessions in this world. The communication talisman that is my only connection to Haden, the sobriety coin that symbolizes my father’s commitment to me to become a better man, Tobin’s hat that is perched on my head, and the pomegranate necklace that makes it so I can travel through the Underrealm with ease—and without which I will never make it to Tobin or Haden in time. Each item is of great importance to me for personal reasons, but I don’t suppose all but one will be considered a fair trade for the Key of the Underrealm.
“I don’t have much to give you,” I say.
“I do not wish for payment,” Charon says, pulling down on the great oar in his aged hands. “I want a favor.”
“What do you want?” I ask, even though I have no idea what favor I could offer this ancient immortal.
“What do you suppose an old boatman who has been sailing this vessel day in and day out for all eternity may want?”
I shrug because I have no answer.
“Simple, girly. A break.”
“A break?”
“Yes, I want to sit in the corner over there,” he says, pointing toward a pile of cushions at the aft of the boat, “with a good book and read for a few hours. That’s what I want.”
“Um . . . okay. Why don’t you do that, then?”
“I think I will. Which means you get to be me for the rest of the night,” he says, shoving the handle of his great oar in my direction.
“Me?” I try to take a step back. “For the rest of the night? You don’t understand, I need the Key before first light. I need to take it to the palace—”
“You’ll be finished by first light. As long as I am done with my book by then.” He pulls a copy of what looks like an early edition Pride and Prejudice from his robe. “A young woman about your age gave me this in exchange for a ride on my boat about a hundred years ago. I don’t get much time to myself to read, you see, and I’ve been waiting a few decades to see if Elizabeth and Darcy ever get together. Which means I need you to act as me for a few hours, picking up the newly arrived dead and escorting them to their final destinations—if you know what I mean.” He raises a knowing eyebrow and makes a clicking noise with his mouth.
I blink at him. He wants me to become the boatman of death so he can read Jane Austen? Charon cracks a big old smile and slaps the oar into my hands while I am too dumbfounded to protest. “I’m not sure I’m the right person for the job,” I finally say.
“Someone has to do it,” he says as he nestles himself into his nest of cushions. “The dead don’t wait. They just keep on coming and coming. In fact, it looks like you’ve got a new arrival over there.”
I follow his crooked finger to where a large black gate stands on the shore of the river, just beyond a new set of docks. I didn’t realize we had already traveled so far down the river. Charon’s boat must move supernaturally fast. My eye catches the slow movement of the gate swinging open and see a rather large man about to enter. I wonder if these are the main gates of the Underrealm—the ones only the souls of the dead can pass through without the Key. I squint, trying to make out the features of the man who stands at the entrance. Something about him seems familiar. My heart plummets into my gut. I almost drop the oar, rocking the boat precariously.
“Jonathan?”
chapter twenty-eight
haden
Terresa handles me with such roughness as she marches us to a cluster of chariots behind the palace, I start to worry that the love spell has worn off and that she really has taken us as her prisoners. Luckily, Brim pokes her tiny head out of the satchel that Terresa carries over her shoulder and gives me a reassuring meow. My worry shifts to gratitude for Terresa’s quick thinking in facilitating our transfer to the Black Hole. Only, I wasn’t planning on Ethan’s mother, Psyche, coming along for the ride.
This means one more person I need to protect as we escape from the Black Hole. One more soul in my hands—that are still shaking from losing Jonathan.
I watch Terresa’s men struggle to load Jonathan’s large, limp body into one of the chariots. He was supposed to be our secret weapon. He was supposed to be the one who could find Persephone in the labyrinth with his godly powers. Now, searching for her will have to be done on foot. A task Jonathan warned us might take decades, when we only have hours. The confidence that propelled me into the throne room is nearly gone now. I try to cling to it. I can’t afford for my mood to go black before our mission is through.
If only the bow had restored Jonathan to Eros. Why didn’t it work?
Perhaps it wasn’t even the right bow? I didn’t get a good look at the weapon, and come to think of it, I haven’t seen it since Terresa and her men stormed into the throne room. Did it disappear in the confusion, or did one of the guards confiscate it?
“Where do you want us to take the body?” one of the guards asks Terresa.
“We’ll dump it with the other prisoners,” she says, “Until the Sky King decides what to do with it. He may want to make a new trophy for his collection.”
I shudder at the idea of a giant bronze-dipped Jonathan adorning the Sky King’s palace. Those bronze statues that lined the throne room had seemed far too lifelike to merely be statues. I shudder once again at the idea of breaking the news about Jonathan’s fate to Daphne. If I ever get the chance.
I don’t protest as Terresa drops a black hood over my head. She lets her fingers linger a little too long as she pats me down, as if searching me for weapons, caressing the skin on my arms and throat. Apparently the love spell is still working.
For how much longer, I don’t know.
It’s a shorter ride to our destination than I expect it to be. I am glad for this, as I feel the familiar aching of the black poison spreading through m
y veins.
Terresa leads us blind into what I assume is the prison. I can’t see anything through the thick material of the hood that covers my face. The air grows colder, wetter, the longer we walk. My feet scrape against the hard ground, and I stumble more than once. We must be in the labyrinth. The feel of the air reminds me of the network of caves just beyond the pomegranate orchard in the Underrealm.
Remembering those caves makes me think of Daphne. For all I know, she’s still trapped in that dreadful cave with the Shade that has taken her prisoner. If she’s even still alive . . .
I can feel the weight of the small dart tucked into my belt that Terresa didn’t bother to confiscate, and I remember the vow I made to myself when Jonathan lay dying. My word must be my bond. I will not give in to the nothingness again.
I clench my fists, straining against the heavy shackles at my wrists, and will my dark thoughts to depart. I concentrate on memorizing the paces and turns as we walk. I know I hadn’t been paying close enough attention when we first entered, but maybe I can at least get us closer. After six lefts, three rights, and another three lefts—no, maybe it was four more lefts—Terresa pulls me to a halt. I hear the sounds of metal scraping against stone, and then I am thrust forward and to the ground. I hit my elbow hard when I land and find myself grateful for the shock of pain that shudders through my arm. Pain means I am still in control.
Terresa tears the hood from my head. The following brightness makes it feel like I’ve been jabbed in my eyes. I had expected it to be dark or dim in this cavern-like cell, but a row of blaring lights fills the high ceiling. I realize something I didn’t notice before: I haven’t seen a single torch since entering the Skyrealm. They have some form of electricity here. Solar power, I assume. Everything in the Skyrealm is overly bright—which makes sense, since the Skylords do not see well in the dark. I wonder if the lights ever go out in the Black Hole, or if the prisoners are expected to sleep in full light.
I watch as Ethan and Psyche are pushed into the cell and four sweating guards drag Jonathan’s body in after them. It seems quite the insult to injury to lock his family in a cell with his corpse. Terresa kneels down in front of me. She clasps her hands against my face and stares into my eyes with such intensity that I am afraid she is going to try to claim her prize early. I brace myself, straining against my chains, as she leans in.
One of the guards clears his throat. “Are you ready, Lieutenant Gordon?”
Her lips stop only an inch away from mine. “You have three hours until the entrance to the labyrinth moves,” she whispers. Meet me at the hut where your father sleeps. I will collect my reward in full.” She drops something in my lap and then pulls away. “I’m ready,” she says to the guards.
She backs out of the cell and one of the guards latches the barred gate.
“This prison hasn’t seen an Underlord in almost a century and now we have two in only a week. That’s quite the prize, Lieutenant.”
“Just you wait,” Terresa says to her men. “I have a lead on a much bigger bounty. I expect you’ll be calling me Captain Gordon soon. I have a feeling the king will be promoting me to Ethan’s position shortly.” She gives her former commander a smirk.
As she takes her leave with her men, one of the guards calls back, “Someone will come along to feed you . . . eventually. That is, if the minotaur doesn’t make a meal of you first.”
The moment the guards round the corner back into the maze, Psyche collapses over Jonathan’s body.
“Mother, please, come away,” Ethan says, reaching for her.
She hisses something at him I don’t understand. Perhaps she’s been taken by hysteria. I call Ethan away from her, letting her have a moment to mourn uninterrupted. “What do you think this is?” I say, holding up the thing that Terresa dropped into my lap. It appears to be a spool of very thin, very fine, translucent string.
“Arachne’s thread,” Ethan says, pulling a bit of it from the spool. It looks almost invisible on its own. “Spider’s string. Look,” he says, pointing to where the light glints against the invisible thread that is strung from the spool out through the gate. “The guards use it so they don’t lose their way in the maze, but to anyone not looking for it, it would either go completely unnoticed or only appear to be cobwebs.” He gives me a sarcastic smirk that surprises me, considering the pain I see etched on his face. “She must really like you to risk leaving this with you. She’s left us a trail to find the exit.”
“Thank you, Terresa,” I say, then I feel a pang of guilt in my stomach. I feel like a rogue playing on her emotions—however artificially induced—in order to get what I want. Especially when what I want is someone other than her.
Ethan inspects the bars of the cell door. The opening between them is barely big enough to fit his fist. “Now we only need to figure out how to get through this door.”
Almost as if waiting for her cue, a tiny cat head appears between the bars of our cell from the outside corridor.
“Brim!” I say, realizing that I’d thought Terresa had taken her with her.
She gives a muffled meow, jumps through the bars with ease, and prances over to me. She spits something out at my feet as if she were bringing me a dead hellmouse as a gift and rubs against my ankles, looking for approval. I inspect her present more closely and realize it’s a set of keys.
“Good girl,” I say, giving her a good chin scratch before plucking the keys from the ground. The smaller one fits the shackles at my wrists. After using it, I toss the keys to Ethan. I suspect the larger one will open the door.
“Now we only need to find Persephone,” I say as Ethan unlocks his own chains. I glance at Jonathan’s body, wishing he were here to fulfill his role—he’d said he could search the labyrinth in a matter of seconds, but I don’t know exactly how he had planned on doing it. I had been so overcome with confidence, I hadn’t bothered going over every detail of the plan before storming into the Skyrealm. “Do you think we could subdue a guard? Coerce him or her into telling us Persephone’s location?”
Ethan shakes his head. “My father has bought the loyalty of every guard in the Black Hole. They won’t betray him.”
“My kingdom is rich. We could promise them more . . .”
Ethan shakes his head again, a grim expression on his face. “The price is their families’ lives. If they betray the king, everyone they love will be put to death. That is how he ensures their loyalty, and I could not live with myself if that happened to someone because of me.” He glances at his father and his voice dips lower. His mother is still huddled over Jonathan’s body. At first I thought that she had fainted, but now it seems as if she is searching his tunic for something.
“No coercion then,” I say. “Just a good old-fashioned wild hydra chase.”
“The chances of coming upon a guard are slim anyway. Unless they’re transporting a prisoner or delivering food a couple of times a week, the guards don’t stay in the prison.”
“A prison without guards?” I ask. “I thought this place was impenetrably secure?”
“Between the ever-moving exit and the complicated labyrinth, there’s no need for guards in residence. They leave that to the minotaur. I only know of one man who has ever escaped . . .” Ethan’s eyes grow wide as he watches Psyche riffle through the folds of Jonathan’s tunic. Her hands are still shackled and her movements are clumsy and frantic.
“It has to be here,” she mumbles to herself. “It wouldn’t leave him on its own.”
“Mother, let me unlock your chains,” Ethan says in a soothing voice. “We need to leave this place.”
“No,” she says, glaring at him in a way that almost reminds me of a feral animal. “We will not leave Eros behind to become one of your grandfather’s trophies. I will not leave him.”
“Mother . . .” Ethan trails off and glances at me. I know what he needs to say but can’t bring himself to do so. He can’t carry Jonathan’s dead weight. Not on his own. It had taken four exceptionally large gu
ards to haul him in here.
“We’ll manage,” I say, clenching my fist, trying to will the numb, weakening sensation that tingles into my fingertips. I don’t have much time left.
“He’ll carry himself,” Psyche says, pulling something from inside Jonathan’s tunic. I think perhaps her grief has driven her mad, until she holds the object up in her hand. It looks like a small golden archer’s bow, no bigger than her palm. “I knew it wouldn’t leave him. Which means there’s still a chance.”
“Mother, there’s no time. We need to go now.”
“There’s always time for the ones we love.” She presses the minuscule bow against Jonathan’s hollow chest. Tears stream from her eyes as she leans over him. “Come back to me, Eros,” she says and brushes a kiss over his blue lips.
Her words remind me of what Daphne had said to me when she called my soul back from the Underrealm—when I had been trapped by a communication talisman in my father’s throne room. If it hadn’t been for her words breaking through to me, I would have died at my father’s hands. The love in Psyche’s actions, her determination not to give up on her husband, makes me feel as though my heart is shattering into pieces. Tears flood my eyes. I don’t fight them back because I am grateful for the emotion, but I have to turn away.
That’s why I don’t see it at first. The golden light that fills the room as if it were sunrise and we were standing on a mountain peak. It’s Psyche’s shout that grabs my attention. I whirl around and find her leaning over a man who lies on the ground where Jonathan had been. Only it isn’t Jonathan. Or is it . . .
The man is much younger than Jonathan and quite a bit more . . . fit, with curling hair and a chiseled face and arms that remind me of a perfect statue. But his eyes are the same, I see it now as he cracks them open. As is the rosiness that fills his face when he smiles. “Psyche,” he says, holding his hand out to her.
“Eros,” Psyche says, embracing him. Ethan kneels next to the two.