by Bree Despain
The blood that had soaked his tunic is gone, as if washed away by the golden light that emanates from the large golden bow in Eros’s grasp. As he sits up with the help of Ethan and Psyche, I notice the most curious thing about Jonathan’s new form. He has wings. Well, he is Cupid after all.
“Welcome back,” I say to Jonathan.
“We thought you were dead,” Ethan says, and I can hear the emotion and relief flooding into his voice.
“I think I was,” Eros says. “I was standing at the gates to the Underworld. I could see a boat on the shore in the distance. The gate was just opening and I felt compelled to enter, but then I heard you calling to me,” he says, reaching out to brush the tears from Psyche’s face. “And I had to come. You and I are bound by true love after all.”
Psyche throws herself into Eros’s arms. The two embrace and kiss in such a way that Ethan and I are both compelled to avert our eyes. After a few moments, Ethan clears his throat. “We should get going. Our time is limited before the exit changes locations and Terresa’s trail will no longer be good. We must find Persephone.”
Eros stands, drawing Psyche up with him. “This sounds like a job for a god,” he says, flexing his wings out and giving them a cursory flap. It must feel good to have them back after all this time.
“Will you fly through the prison then?” I ask.
“That will take too long.” Eros folds his wings in against his back. “As a god of the metaphysical realm, I can be a concept. The embodiment of love itself. I can exist in more than one place all at once.”
“Come again?” I ask.
“I will show you.”
Eros lets go of Psyche and takes a step back. He closes his eyes as if concentrating. I wait, holding my breath, for this conceptualization to happen. After more than a minute, I let my breath out in a cough.
“Is something happening yet?” I ask.
“Not yet,” Eros says, clenching his eyes tighter shut. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had my powers. It may take a few tries.”
We wait another minute. Ethan looks down at his wrist as if he were wearing a timepiece. Psyche clucks her tongue. I begin to wonder if we need to start a search on foot.
With a snapping noise, Eros vanishes into a cloud of golden mist. It swirls about us, ruffling Psyche’s hair, and then gusts out of the cell through the bars in the door as if carried by an invisible wind. The mist separates into several wisps and flies off in multiple directions through the corridor.
So that is what he meant.
Persephone will be found in no time . . .
chapter twenty-nine
daphne
He wasn’t there. When I finally managed to dock the boat—very little thanks to Charon’s clipped instructions as he read from his novel—the man I had seen just outside the gate wasn’t there. The man who had looked so much like Jonathan. I started to cry when no one was there. I don’t know if it was out of relief that he wasn’t dead or out of the desperation I had felt to see a familiar face.
“Looks like we had a return to sender,” Charon had said with his nose in his book. “No reason to get all blubbery about it. On to the next stop.”
It takes most of the night to collect the rest of the dead. While I had understood the Underrealm to have only two entrances, the main gate and Persephone’s Gate, I gather that those two entrances must have several outlets into the Underrealm, based on how many docks I must visit during the night. People seem to be grouped by ethnicity and I wonder if which dock they end up on has to do with their country of origin or which country or region they were in when they died.
I try to ask Charon about it. He looks up from his book with tears in his eyes. “Bah,” he says. “Can’t have ’em all arriving in the same place. It would be far too crowded.”
But that’s something I notice about the boat: No matter how many people I pick up—hundreds, perhaps even thousands, after only a couple of hours—the boat never seems to get overcrowded. There always seems to be room for the dead. Perhaps it’s because they’re not corporeal at this point?
My heart aches for every soul who files onto the boat. Most are deathly quiet, while others ask the same questions over and over again. Where am I? How did I get here? What happened to a various loved one. At first I try to answer, but that only seems to bring on hysteria in the asker. They moan and groan and wail and paw at me. After my second embankment, Charon tells me just to ignore the dead. “Bat ’em away if they get too friendly,” he says, flicking his hand as if the dead are merely like flies.
At first I think he’s unnecessarily being a cranky old coot, but I begin to understand his callousness when a young girl attaches herself to my skirt, crying for her mother. I don’t know how Charon can do this job day in and day out, and not go insane. I scoop the girl up into my arms and sing her the lullaby that my mother taught me when I was young. It’s the same song I sang to Brim all those months ago when she had gone into beast mode in the middle of a hospital. It had soothed her into submission. The song seems to have the same effect on the dead. The girl stops crying and leans into my shoulder. The other souls fall into a quiet reverie. Everyone seems to be almost asleep when we pull into a dock that looks different from all of the others. There’s a large white building with columns resembling the Greek Parthenon sitting on the shore. A second river with milky white water runs behind it.
No one is waiting on the dock here.
“Where are we?” I ask Charon.
“The end of the line.” He closes his book and stretches. “Everybody off!” he shouts.
The souls snap to attention and begin to file off the boat and into the building. It’s as though some sort of invisible force draws them there. The girl pats my cheek and then hops out of my arms and follows the rest.
“Where are they going? What happens to them now?”
“The souls will be sorted here. After they are judged, they will drink from the River Lethe, erasing their memories of their mortal life. The majority will then be turned into Shades. The few deemed worthy will return to the boat to be delivered to Elysium, and my rounds will begin again.”
“Turned into Shades? Even the little girl?”
Charon doesn’t answer.
I think about what Ms. Leeds, my original humanities teacher at Olympus Hills High, had said about Persephone during my first day of class. She said the earliest myths about Persephone claimed that she hadn’t been kidnapped into the underworld at all. But that she had freely chosen to go with Hades because she had compassion for the dead. She knew they needed a queen. Someone to care for them. At the time, I had thought that was a weird story. Why would someone give up being the goddess of springtime—sunshine, happiness—in order to become the queen of the dead? But I remember how Shady had said things were better here when Persephone reigned, and I find myself hoping beyond hope that Haden is able to find her. This place needs its Persephone.
Charon stretches and places his book on top of the pile of objects the souls had been compelled to leave for him in exchange for a ride on his boat. I gather that each person brought with them whatever it was they had on them when they died. The little girl had offered up a rather tattered-looking Barbie as her payment. “You don’t suppose there’s a sequel to Pride and Prejudice tucked in here?” Charon says, poking around the pile. “The book was quite good, but I am not completely convinced that Lizzie and Darcy are going to last . . . Ooh, this looks promising,” he says, pulling out a thick book with a torn black cover. I catch a glimpse of white hands holding a red apple on the front before Charon tucks it under his arm.
I clear my throat, hoping he isn’t planning on starting another book right away.
Charon hobbles over to me and takes the oar from my hands. “You did well tonight, Daphne. Your end of the bargain has been paid. I will take over from here.”
It strikes me that I don’t recall ever telling Charon my name. “You’ll bring me to the Key now?” I look at the shore, where the last of the souls file int
o the temple-like structure, and then at the horizon behind it. The sky has grown purple. First light is not far off. “How long will it take to wait for the souls who will be returning to Elysium?”
“No need, no need,” he says shuffling over to one of the now vacant benches. He sits and pulls a chain out from under the collar of his robe. A small glittering key dangles from the end of it.
“Is that . . . ?”
“The Eternity Key? Yes.”
“You had it with you this whole time?”
“As I said, one doesn’t leave the key to the Underrealm just lying about. It was safest on my person.”
“But it’s so small. And key-like.” The last time I had seen the Eternity Key, it was a large, two-pronged staff. A bident. The object dangling from Charon’s chain was smaller than my pinkie and looked like an ornate antique key, not a staff.
“Gods don’t always want to go hefting the tokens of their immortality around in plain sight. All Kronolithes will shrink in size and change in appearance if you know the magic words.”
“Mikro,” I say, remembering the word Jonathan had used to shrink one of his arrows to fit in my pocket.
He nods. “ ‘Megalo’ will make it large again.”
I nod in return, wishing I would have known I could shrink the key before I’d gone running headlong into the Underrealm with it. Perhaps I wouldn’t have lost it in the first place if I had been able to keep it around my neck. But we had been in mortal peril and in quite the hurry at the time, so I can’t blame anyone for not telling me.
Charon unhooks the key from his chain. I notice another small charm around his neck. This one looks like a creature that has the front half of a horse and back half of a fish—a hippocampus, I recall from my mythology textbook. I wonder if that is Charon’s own Kronolithe. He presses the key into my hand. “This world needs someone like you, Daphne Raines. It is almost first light, go save your friends.”
“Thank you,” I say, knowing I definitely never told him my full name. Nor exactly what I needed the Key for.
I attach the key to the chain around my neck and then clasp my fingers around my pomegranate pendant. My first thought is to go back to the dock near Persephone’s Gate to look for Shady, but I realize that we never established whether he was going to wait for me there. What if I can’t find him? What if it takes too much time?
I look up the horizon and watch the first fingers of pinkish light stretching into the purple sky. There isn’t time for delays. I say good-bye to Charon, close my eyes, and picture the spiraling stairway that leads into the Pits, where I am supposed to meet Garrick. My feet lift off the wooden deck of the boat.
chapter thirty
haden
“She’s not here,” Jonathan says when he rematerializes outside the prison cell where Ethan, Psyche, Brimstone, and I wait. He had only been gone for a minute at best.
“Are you sure?” I ask. “Search again.”
“I’ve been through the prison three times. Persephone isn’t here, and we need to go. Now.”
I have no reply. Every last bit of hope I have left in my blackening body was hanging on this plan. How can she not be here? “Search again.”
“You’re not hearing me. We need to leave. Now. The minotaur is headed this way.”
“How close?” Ethan asks, reaching for his mother’s hand.
“If we move fast, we may make it to the exit before it sees us. But like I said, we need to go now.”
Ethan and Jonathan usher Psyche into the corridor. I don’t follow.
“Come, Haden,” Ethan says.
“No. I have to stay. I can’t leave without Persephone.” Maybe Jonathan missed something. Maybe I can find her on foot.
“Trust me, Haden, she isn’t here.” Jonathan’s voice is flooded with urgency. “Either she was moved, escaped, or was never here to begin with. We need to outrun the minotaur, unless you want this place to become your grave.”
“Maybe it would be better to stay in our cell, rather than outrun it,” Psyche says.
“We’ll lose the exit,” Ethan says. “If we wait too long, it will shift locations and we may never find it again.” He looks at me and holds out his hand. “Either come with us or hand me the Arachne’s thread. I will not let my mother get trapped in here.”
I look at the spool of translucent thread in my hand. It’s my only lifeline out of this place. Brim butts her head against my ankle, trying to prod me forward. A roar echoes through the corridor. The minotaur is coming.
“Now, Haden,” Jonathan commands, his voice echoing with godly authority.
I wrap my fingers around the spool and dash out of the cell. Brim bounds over my feet as I run. Her back and tail bristle when another roar from the minotaur fills the corridor. The others are close at hand as we jog through the maze, following the trail of the fragile string. I can tell Jonathan wishes he could fly, but the corridor is too narrow to spread his wings. After several left and right turns that I would not have recalled on my own, I finally see a shimmering rectangle in the wall up ahead. It must be the exit. The rectangle wavers as if it were blinking in and out.
“It’s fading,” Ethan says, pushing his mother toward the exit. She reaches back for Jonathan’s hand and the two cross through the exit together, vanishing from my sight. Ethan goes next, disappearing into the fading light.
I’m only inches from the exit when I realize that Brim is no longer underfoot. I turn back, looking into the bright corridor, and see that she has come to a halt several feet back. She faces away from the exit, her nose in the air as if she’s caught the scent of something. Hellcats are the world’s most efficient trackers—Brim could find me anywhere, and once she locks onto a scent it’s almost impossible to dissuade her. “Not now, Brim,” I command. “Come.”
The roar of the minotaur grows louder. It’s just around the corner. Brim takes off down another corridor, running deeper into the maze. Following whatever scent she picked up. “No, Brim! We need to leave!”
A hulking, dark form careens around the corner. All I can see are its blazing red eyes, glinting horns, and a mouth full of teeth. I drop the spool and lunge to follow Brim—only to be caught from behind. A strong grip closes over the back of my neck and I am yanked backward. I fall back through the exit. The last thing I see is the hulking creature thunder into the corridor where Brimstone had disappeared.
The hand that pulled me through the exit releases me. I try to scramble for the opening, but the shimmering rectangle evaporates right before I touch it. The exit has moved. All that stands in front of me is a stone wall. No, the mountainside. I claw at it with my fingers, as if I can pry the mountain open. “Brim!”
I sink to my knees, clutching my head. Once again, an invisible barrier has cut me off from someone I love. I don’t know how to save her, as I don’t know how to save Daphne. Not now that the hope of Persephone is gone. “Brim, no.”
“I’m sorry, Haden,” Ethan says. “We can come back. We can find another way in. Another day.”
“Another day?” I say through clenched teeth. “No, we get Terresa and we find Brim now. I promised I would never leave her behind again.”
“There’s no time. The new entrance could be hundreds of miles from here. It would take too long . . .”
“She’s with the minotaur!”
“Your cat will be fine,” Jonathan says, stepping forward. I can hear the doubt in his voice.
“She’s not merely my cat. She’s my friend. She’s my family. And now she’s gone. Just like Daphne.” I stand, feeling the sudden urge to take a swing at Jonathan. “All because of you. This was your plan. You’re the one who led us here with your false promises of finding Persephone.”
“They weren’t false promises.” He flaps his wings. “It was a hope.”
“A false hope. A lie,” I say, realizing it. “You tricked us into coming here. You knew Persephone wasn’t here. You knew it, but convinced us to come here anyway. To storm the palace and get your b
ow back. You even finagled it so we’d rescue your wife from servitude. You don’t care about Daphne. You took advantage of my love for her. You used me. You’ve gotten everything you’ve ever wanted, you conniving koprophage, and I’ve lost the last good thing I had because of it.”
I lunge at Jonathan, ready to strike, but Ethan jumps in the way. I take a swing at him. He grabs me by the shoulders and wrestles me to the ground. I feel a surge of electricity building in my chest. I’ll blast his face off and then do the same to his treacherous father.
“You’re being unreasonable,” Ethan says, shoving me away. “It’s the poison talking, not you.”
I raise my fist, holding a crackling bolt of blue lighting. I don’t care what excuses he has. I don’t care. “Get out of my way so I can send your father back to the gates of the dead where he belongs. Where he should have stayed!”
Ethan raises his own bolt of lightning. “You’re out of your mind, Haden. Look at your hands!”
I look at the hand that holds the lightning bolt. Every vein has gone black. My fingernails are dark and clouded, like each one has been smashed by a hammer. I am doing it again. Giving into the poison. Being unreasonable. I extinguish the bolt and Ethan lets me go. I roll onto my knees. “She’s gone. They’re both gone.”
First I lost Dax, then I lost Daphne, and now I’ve lost Brim. I have absolutely nothing left to lose. I have nothing left to give.
“We’ll figure out a new plan,” Jonathan says, stepping closer. “I love Daphne as if she were my own child. By Apollo’s Chariot, I promise you I will not rest until we find her. I didn’t even let death stop me, need I remind you.”
I nod, pretending to let him comfort me, but I know there’s nothing more he can do.
But there is something left that I can do, I realize. There is one thing left I have to give. One last course of action I can take. The idea has been prodding at my brain since Jonathan told us about standing at the main gates of the Underrealm. No living thing can pass through those gates without it being unlocked with the Key. No corporeal thing can get through. But the gate will open for the dead.