by Bree Despain
“As I wrote in my paper: to very patriarchal societies, a tale about a young maiden who takes her own future into her hands, leaves her home and family in search of her own destiny—and possibly a bit of forbidden love—is a very dangerous story indeed. So, therefore, they changed her story to fit their purposes. To make her a victim—a morality tale to warn girls from wandering too far from home, like Little Red Riding Hood. They changed her story to take away her power. That is the true rape of Persephone, if you ask me.”
I nod in agreement and notice that Lexie does, too.
For the first time, I feel connected to Persephone’s story. Well, Ms. Leeds’s version of it anyway. We’d both left our homes in search of a bigger purpose.
Ms. Leeds launches into the rest of her lecture on other underworld myths, and I can tell she’s trying to spark another lively debate. But I keep quiet after that, and so does Haden. As Bridgette enlightens the class with her perspective on the plight of beautiful women in Greek mythology, I risk a glance back at Haden. He looks up as if he senses my movement, and for the briefest of moments, his eyes seem to flash a fiery mix of amber and jade green.
I run into Tobin on my way from humanities to geometry.
“Hey, superstar,” he says. “You doing okay after your dad’s big announcement?”
“Fine,” I say, “except for pretty much being nominated for class leper.”
I look behind my shoulder, feeling like I am once again being followed. I must look as shaken as I feel when I look back at Tobin, because he puts a hand on my shoulder and asks, “Are you okay? Lexie and her little mafia aren’t getting to you already, are they?”
“No,” I say. “It’s that … I saw him again. The guy from the grove. At least, I think it was him—he looks different somehow. But still the same.”
“What?” Tobin says, dropping his hand from my shoulder. “Did you see him somewhere outside? You didn’t go back there again, did you?”
“No, he was here. He was in my humanities class. He’s a student.”
The tone coming off Tobin is even darker than it was after we found Pear. “What’s his name?” he asks. “Do you know his name?”
“Haden,” I say. “I think it was Haden Lord.”
Tobin takes in a sharp breath.
I look down at my iPad. “Like I said, I’m not a hundred percent positive it’s the same.…”
But Tobin storms off before I finish my sentence.
chapter twenty-three
HADEN
“What the Tartarus is that?” Garrick asks, his eyes enlarged with horror as he looks from it to me and then back to it.
“Harpies if I know,” I say under my breath. I’m too busy scanning the room for a certain face to scrutinize the alien mass in front of me.
“Gods, it smells almost as bad as it looks.” Garrick picks up his knife and poses as if he is about to prod the glistening mass with the point of the blade. He hesitates and then pulls the knife back. “I mean, do you think it’s safe?”
I shrug. I don’t want to touch it, either, but it wouldn’t bode well for me to show any hesitancy so early in my quest. My eyes move over a group of girls sitting at a far table, and then scan the faces of the people who stand in line at the opposite end of the room. Where is she? Have I lost track of Daphne already?
I’d hung back and watched her leave the classroom after the bell rang, but had lost her trail in the hallway. It is impossible to make out one person’s scent in the cacophony of body odors and strange perfumes that permeate this place. I don’t know how these humans can stand it. The smell is even worse here in the cafeteria.
As are the sounds and sights that assault my senses. Human teenagers are just so loud. And the brightness that floods in through the long rows of windows above the tables makes my eyes burn. How am I supposed to locate Daphne in all of this chaos? How am I supposed to observe her if I can barely see?
I pull my sunglasses out of my jacket pocket and shove them on my face—despite Dax’s warning that wearing sunglasses indoors in public might make me look like a “creeper.”
Creep. Daphne had called me that in the grove. Does she still think of me that way? She hadn’t looked back at me again before leaving class, and I can’t help feeling like a dung spout for the things I’d said to her.
I worry my new strategy is failing. My online research into “how to get a girl to like me” had suggested, time and time again, that to win a human girl over, I had to be mean to her. I’d spent the bulk of class either ignoring her, contradicting her, or acting like a “bad boy,” which I gather meant showing off my muscles and leaning back in my chair after saying something sexually suggestive.
So why do I feel like I am in an even worse place with her now than before?
What’s more, she’d deserved my derision for the offensive things she’d said—her accusations against the god of the Underrealm had bordered on blasphemy. Hades is everything we Underlords aspire to be, but both she and the text of the book had treated his memory as if he were a villain. How could I not be angered by her words even if I wasn’t trying to be rude?
“It’s just so vile,” Garrick goes on, about the foodlike substance on his tray.
Vile? Harpies, why did saying those things about virginity and exploring sexual desires to Daphne make me feel so vile now?
I mean, it’s not as if I know what I’m talking about. Only Champions who ascend to the Court are allowed to mate—and only after they’ve returned victorious with their Boons.
I can’t help wondering if Daphne really is this Cypher, and not just an ordinary Boon. Will she still be my mate when I bring her back to the Underrealm? Or will the Court claim her for another purpose? Gods, I hope not, I think as I imagine the possibility of she and I together.…
“It’s wrong. Like … like … I don’t know. What on earth could it be?” Garrick’s voice trails off in disgusted awe.
That strange heat I’d felt when I first met Daphne in the grove fills my hands. I try to pick up my knife, but little sparks jump off the metal when I touch it. I tuck my hands into the pockets of my hooded sweatshirt, not sure how I could have lost control so easily.
“I believe it’s called mashed potatoes and gravy,” I say, looking at the sign that hangs over the cash register, where I had paid a woman with the credit card Dax had given me.
Garrick picks up his tray and plops it back down on the table as if to test what would happen. The yellow, congealed gravy moves as one mass and slops over the side of the mashed potatoes, laying waste to what I think are kernels of corn.
“Gross,” Garrick says almost gleefully.
He had been reluctant when Simon informed him that he would be attending school with me, but this environment has a strange, enlivening effect on him. I don’t think I have ever heard a Lesser speak so many sentences in the presence of an Underlord.
A warm breeze rustles through the room, and I look up toward one of the cafeteria doors, which leads to a grassy courtyard where some of the students eat. I expect to finally see Daphne—maybe my strategy is working after all—but instead, the person standing in the doorway is the boy I saw her with on Saturday. The one who’d had his arm around her at the lake. I almost stand to see if Daphne is somewhere behind him, but then he looks in my direction. An expression almost as dark as an Underrealm storm crosses his face. He leaves the doorway and advances toward our table.
“Harpies,” I whisper under my breath. I know that look on his face all too well—it’d been perfected by Rowan years ago. My first instinct is to pick up a knife and ready for an attack, but it takes all my willpower to do the opposite. I drop my head and hunch my shoulders, as if making myself smaller will deflect some of the other guy’s anger.
“Are you Haden Lord?” the boy asks as he comes to stand at the opposite side of our table.
I don’t respond.
“Are. You. Haden. Lord?” he says, more forcefully this time.
I give a slight nod, hoping
he’ll go away once I’ve answered his question.
“Then you’ve got about five seconds to vacate this table.”
I can feel Garrick twitching beside me. His gravy-smeared butter knife is in his hand. Do Lessers even know how to fight?
“Don’t move. Don’t speak. Don’t even breathe,” I growl at Garrick in a low voice. “Let me handle this.” I feel my fingerprints starting to burn into the wood surface as I grip the edge of the green cafeteria table. Not so hard, I remind myself, and my fingers relax slightly as the boy comes around the table and stands in front of me. I do not know what I have done to offend him, but if a fight is truly what this boy is looking for, it will not end well for either of us.
“I told you to get lost.”
Electric heat courses through my body, but I stay silent, with my shoulders hunched forward. I don’t dare respond. Not out of fear of this boy—but out of fear of myself, what I’m capable of doing in this room filled with humans, if I lose control again.
“Do you need me to count to five for you?” he asks.
I try to keep my eyes trained on the yellow gravy congealing on top of my mashed potatoes. I can only hope Garrick will follow my lead and stay still.
“I’m talking to you, creep.” The boy leans down and pushes his face right up to mine. He shoves my shoulders. My elbows slide sideways, hitting my lunch tray and sending its contents toppling into both my and Garrick’s laps.
Garrick shoots up from his seat. His fists are clenched and red.
“I said not to move!” I seethe at him. I grip the table harder—almost too hard—as electric heat surges into my fingertips. Garrick steps back and loosens his fists, but I need to do something fast to keep him at bay. I remove my sunglasses. Gravy and bits of corn ooze down my pant leg as I slowly stand and face the angry boy. He is not nearly as big as he is acting. I square my shoulders and lift my head, making myself at least eight inches taller than him, and look him in the eye.
But the boy doesn’t back down. He sends a fist flying at my face. I see it with enough time to block it, but I don’t. If I touch him right now, the electrical current that would leave my hands could kill him. And Simon would surely have my hide for exposing my powers in public. Instead, I duck, and the boy swings wildly at the air above my head. He goes for a lower blow, and I twist out of the way.
The boy’s eyes widen, and for a split second, the angry look on his face wavers, and I realize he is not nearly as brave as he’s pretending to be. He raises his fists to block his face, thinking I’m going to retaliate.
“If you want our lunch table, then you can have it,” I say as calm and coolly as I possibly can, but I can feel my voice crackling with energy. “No harm done.”
“No harm?” he says. “This isn’t about a lunch table. I couldn’t give a crap where you sit. As long as it’s nowhere near this town.” His voice is shaky, but he stands his ground. “I know you don’t belong here,” he says. “So I suggest you and your friend go back to where you came from before some actual harm gets done.”
His words surprise me, but it’s the look in his eyes that makes me take a step back. It’s a look of recognition. My shock leaves me unprepared for the blow he lands against my chest with the heel of his hand. I fall backward and my back slams into the edge of the table. I slump onto the bench. The boy pulls his arm back to strike me again while I’m down. I close my eyes, willing myself to take the punch without losing all control.
“Tobin!” A new voice rings out behind us. I know it’s her without seeing her face. “Stop.”
I open my eyes in time to see a flash of long, golden hair as Daphne throws herself between her friend and me.
“What on earth are you doing?” she asks him.
I want to know the answer also, but Tobin doesn’t get a chance to respond. I feel a swift movement and burst of heat as Garrick lunges, his fist swinging ferociously in the direction of Tobin and Daphne. I push up from the bench and fling my arm out at Garrick, catching him by the collar of his shirt, and wrench him back just as his red fist is about to slam into Daphne’s face.
She stumbles backward and covers her cheek with her hand, even though I’d stopped Garrick before he struck her.
“Are you all right?” I ask, reaching for her.
She jerks away from my grasp like she had in the grove.
Tobin steps in front of her, angrier than ever. “Don’t you touch her.” He tries to wrap his arm around her shoulders, but she twists away from him.
“Don’t either of you touch me,” she says. She looks at me. “And you, stop stalking me!” She stumbles away, still cupping her hand to her cheek.
It’s against my nature, but my first instinct is to go after her, and it must have been Tobin’s also. We both start in her direction, but a woman steps in front of us. I assume she’s a teacher who’s been summoned from her lunch, because she’s still holding half of something that resembles what Simon had called a sandwich in her hands. “All three of you”—she points to Tobin, Garrick, and me—“principal’s office. Now!” she commands as if she were the king of the underworld.
The teacher is a small, middle-aged mortal, and I can hear the arthritis grinding in her knees. It would take me less than a second to disable this feeble mortal and make my escape, but I am in barely enough control to know that probably isn’t the wisest course of action. I watch the human boy for cues to the proper reaction. He hangs his head and says, “Yes, Mrs. Canova,” and surrenders himself to the teacher. I do the same and give Garrick a stern look until he follows suit, and we allow the teacher to propel us toward the main office. She leaves Garrick and me to sit in two chairs under the watchful eye of a dark-haired woman with glasses that remind me of the shape of Brim’s eyes.
The teacher takes Tobin to an office marked VICE PRINCIPAL JORDAN and knocks on the door. “Your mother just happens to be meeting with the administration. I’m sure she’d like an explanation of your behavior.”
Tobin hangs his head lower.
The door opens, and I catch a glimpse of a man who must be the vice principal and a woman in a bright red suit. She looks surprised to see Tobin in the teacher’s grasp.
“What’s the meaning of this?”
The teacher gives a quick recount of the scene she’d broken up in the cafeteria, and then I hear the woman ask, “What is this all about, Tobin?” before the teacher shuts the door and leaves them to talk it out.
“A guidance counselor will be with you two shortly,” she says, and then instructs the dark-haired woman to buzz the “new guy” and tell him, “He’s got a couple of fighters waiting out here.”
Guidance counselor? I think. Like any of these humans could offer me guidance.
Garrick twitches in his seat next to me. As a Lesser, he’s probably even more keen on avoiding authority figures than I am.
“Don’t even think about it,” I whisper, knowing he’s calculating how many seconds it would take him to cross the room and escape. It would take him seven. Three for me. I know because I estimated the distance before I even sat down. “Sit still, keep your head down, and follow my lead. I’ll do the talking.”
“Why should I listen to you?”
I blink at him. It’s an awfully insolent question for a Lesser. “Because I’m giving you an order. We might not be in the Underrealm anymore, but I am still the Champion and you are still my servant. I’m ordering you not to do something now, just like I ordered you not to do something in the cafeteria.”
“Follow your orders? You expected me to sit and do nothing after that human dumped food on me? Yeah, right.” Garrick surprises me with his bold words, and I have to admit that he is scrappier than I would have ever given him credit for. “You could have easily taken that guy, you know,” he says.
“I know,” I say.
“But you just let him attack you. You did nothing.”
“I know.”
“But you could have blasted his face off if you wanted.”
�
��I know!” I whisper through gritted teeth. “That’s why I didn’t do anything. Don’t you understand that? Now drop it.”
“But you could have at least let me—”
“And then where would we be?”
And how badly would Daphne have been hurt if I hadn’t stopped Garrick in time? It is harder to control our powers here—I am starting to see that—and humans are far more fragile than the people of the Underrealm. Imagine Ren’s wrath if something happened to the Cypher.…
“Anywhere but here,” Garrick says, bouncing his knee. “I hate this place.”
I hate this place as much as he does, but I’m not going to show it. “You should be grateful to be here. This place might not be ideal, but I’m betting it’s infinitely better than the Pits. You should be clamoring to do what I want. Thanking me. I’m the one who took you away from that miserable life.”
“Thanking you?” he says, his voice rising louder than my whisper. “Do you really think I don’t know why you chose me?”
“What do you mean?” I ask with a lowered voice, but dread his answer. Shame bites at my insides. What if he really does know why I chose him? What if he knows what I did to him all those years ago—
“I know you chose me so you could make Rowan look stupid in front of the Court.”
His answer rings somewhat true, but it’s not what I was dreading he would say. Maybe he has no idea what I did, after all?
“In a way,” I say, trying to hide my relief.
Garrick looks away. “But you didn’t think about what that would mean for me, did you? You didn’t stop to think how Rowan might decide to take that out on me when we return. My life might have seemed pitiful to you before, but it’s nothing compared to what it will be like when we get back. Rowan will make sure of that.”
No, I hadn’t stopped to consider that. Just like I hadn’t considered the consequences of another decision I’d made concerning him several years ago. Both had been impulsive choices.…
I don’t know what to say, so I sit and watch the woman with the glasses as she picks up the receiver of a large beige-colored phone.