The Shadow Prince

by Bree Despain

  “In what, like, Underlord primary school?” It would be impossible not to catch the sarcasm in her voice.

  “Something like that, I guess. According to that version, it was a traitor who stole it. A man who begged for one thing but took something else instead.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Orpheus.” There’s a bite to my voice when I say his name. We’ve been taught from the age we were nurslings to despise him.

  “The musician?”

  I nod. “He used his music to confound Hades—manipulate his emotions. He begged for his wife to be returned to him, and the goddess and god of the Underrealm were so moved by his songs that they agreed to let him take her back to the mortal world. It wasn’t until he was almost gone that they realized that Orpheus had taken something else while they were distracted. The Key. Hades sent an army of Keres to stop him. They grabbed Eurydice, but Orpheus escaped. Hades went after him in his chariot, but he never returned. He was ambushed without his Kronolithe, and the Sky God struck him down. Some say Orpheus was working for the Sky God; others say it was Orpheus’s father, Apollo, who orchestrated the theft, and that Hades’s death was unintentional. Others say Orpheus knew nothing of what he was doing and acted purely out of fear—he’d stolen the bident so he could lock the main gates, thinking nobody would be able to take his wife from him again. Whatever the case, the treacherous deed was done. Hades was slain and the gates of the underworld have been locked tight ever since, and the war has been at a virtual standstill.”

  “This may seem like an obvious question, but if Hades was the ruler of the land of the dead, and he, you know, is dead, then why isn’t he still in charge? And what about your mother? Why wouldn’t she still be with you there?”

  “It doesn’t work that way. There are many different lands within the Underrealm, and three different places souls go when they die. Tartarus is the land where people go if they have outright wronged the Gods. It’s a place of eternal torment, like what Christians and other religions believe to be their version of Hell. People who die with glory and honor—like victorious Champions, war heroes, and the like—go to the land of Elysium. It is what you would think of as heaven. But everyone else becomes a nameless, faceless shade in the Wastelands. They’re kind of what you would think of as zombies. Hungry, insatiable, mindless souls.

  “Normally, someone like Hades would have gone to Elysium, but as the stories go, fearing reprisal, the Sky God refused to give his brother a proper burial, and dishonored him by scattering his body throughout the Overrealm. As a result, Hades became just another shade, forced to wander the Wastelands. Most people believe Tartarus is the worst possible fate that could befall a soul, but I think it’s the Wastelands. Because even though you’re in torment, you’re still yourself.”

  “I agree,” she says. “So do you ever get to visit your mother in Elysium?”

  “My mother wasn’t a Champion or a hero. Only the honored go to Elysium. She is just another shade now.”

  “But there is more than one way to be honorable,” she says. “Doesn’t being a good person count for anything?”

  I don’t know how to respond to that. I’ve never thought of honor in any other way than I have been taught to consider it. I’ve never imagined my mother being anywhere other than lost to me forever in the Wastelands. “I don’t know,” I finally say.

  “So what happened to the Key?” she asks.

  “Nobody knows. But Dax has a theory that we need the Cypher to find it.”

  “And that’s supposed to be me?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll see about that,” she says. “Hey, wait a second. So how did you get here? If the gate is locked and all?”

  “Through Persephone’s Gate. It’s kind of like a back door to the underworld. Demeter built it to ensure that Persephone would always be able to return to the mortal world without Hades’s consent. I guess she was afraid he might try to stop her, depending on his mood. But I know what you’re thinking. Why don’t we just use that door to come and go from the Underrealm as we please? Use it to launch another attack on the Skyrealm? It’s because the gate only opens once every six months and it was originally built to transport only a single person. We can maybe get a handful of Underlords through it at once. It’s reserved now for the transport of Champions and their Boons.”

  “And what’s up with that? Why do you need Boons? Are they your mates?” A pink blush brightens her cheeks. “Erm … I mean, are Underlord girls just really ugly or something?”

  “There are no Underlord women. I don’t know if it’s a remnant of Demeter’s curse or just the will of the Fates, but no female child has ever been born in the Underrealm.”

  “Oh,” she says. “So that’s what’s with all the girl snatching.”

  “Nobody is snatched. The Boons must give their consent to come.”

  “But do they really know what they’re getting themselves into? Consent isn’t really consent if she doesn’t know what she’s saying yes to.”

  I am silent for a long while. I can’t deny that there is truth to Daphne’s words. I never knew why my own mother had agreed to follow Ren into the Underrealm—what he promised her to get her to come—but I doubt she knew that it would lead to her eventual death. A pang of guilt hits me. Daphne doesn’t know that saying yes means that she very well could be agreeing to a much shorter life span. But that is if she is only a Boon, I try to tell myself. If she is the Cypher, could that mean she would survive longer than an ordinary girl? Perhaps finding the Key to the Underrealm will grant her immortality, too, when it is restored to the Underlords.

  But how exactly will the Court use her to find the Key? What will be the cost?

  “The Boons live very comfortable lives of luxury,” I say at last. “I imagine that appeals to many girls.”

  “Some,” she says. “But I don’t fancy giving up my free will for comfort.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  “And I don’t fancy finding this Key for you people, either. You think I want you restarting this war and trampling my world again in the process?”

  “It’s not just for opening the gates. The Key is also needed to stop the locks on Pandora’s Pithos from failing. Imagine what would happen to your world if more of the Keres got out. They would multiply and do far more damage than any fight between the Lords.”

  “Oh,” she says, quietly. “Could that really happen?”

  “I don’t know for sure. There are rumors.…”

  “So you don’t know anything, really.”

  I start to say something, but she stops me.

  “I don’t want to hear any more. I’m not going to be your Cypher, so stop trying to use scare tactics on me.”

  We are both wordless for a long time after that. Daphne fiddles with the touch screen, trying to find a radio station, but we’re too remote to get anything clear. There’s only one car in front of us and one car behind.

  “All my music was on my phone,” she says, turning off my radio.

  “I have half a dozen MP3 players.… But I left them all in my other car.”

  Daphne starts to hum to herself. It’s a song that sounds vaguely familiar to me, but I can’t say that it’s one of the ones I downloaded from the music store. I listen to her, melting into the melody, until a sudden pain pricks behind my eyes. I rub at them and realize I’ve got tears welling in the corners. I wipe them away quickly, but not fast enough for Daphne not to notice.

  “What is it?”

  “That song. I think I’ve heard it before. I think my mom used to whisper it to me when no one was around. It made me feel … safe. Protected. Maybe even happy.”

  “She loved you,” she says. “And you loved her.”

  I shrug, but the tears build faster in my eyes. Almost to the point that I can’t see the road. “I don’t even know what that feels like.”

  “You just described it,” she says. “I think you’re feeling it right now.”

  I
wipe the wetness from my eyes. “That’s just blubbering. What else would you expect from ‘the boy who cried?’ ” I say sarcastically.

  “It hurts and it makes you feel vulnerable, but there’s nothing wrong with crying like that. My mom always says that tears are the price we pay for having love and compassion in our lives.”

  “Sometimes it feels like too high a price.”

  She shakes her head. “You know, I don’t think it was losing control of yourself that made your father disown you. It had nothing to do with that. I think it’s because he was afraid of you.”

  I blink at her, the tears drying up. “Afraid of me?”

  “At seven years old, you stood up to the king of the underworld. You challenged him. You were just a little boy who loved his dying mother and that gave you strength. A strength he couldn’t even fathom. I bet that scared the crap out of him. Like that Kronos guy, who was afraid his children would become more powerful than he was—but you know, instead of eating you physically, he ate at you emotionally. Your father needed to knock you down as far as he could. Because if you could challenge his authority as a boy, then what would you be capable of as a man?”

  chapter forty-eight

  DAPHNE

  “You mind if we make a pit stop?” I ask Haden. I’d been waiting for him to have to pull into a gas station or a charging station at some point, but his car never seems to run out of juice.

  “We’re only an hour and a half outside of Vegas.”

  “That’s nice,” I say. “You might be made out of fire and shadow and all that jazz, but I’m human, which means I need to eat. And honestly: I have got to pee.”

  Haden lets out a short laugh. It strikes me again how different he looks when he smiles. It happens so rarely, it feels like getting a glimpse at a Christmas present through the edges of the stiff wrapping paper.

  “There’s an exit up ahead with a diner,” I say, checking the map on the touch screen.

  There’s a moan from the backseat. In the mirror, I watch Garrick push himself up to a sitting position. He presses his hand to the sides of his head like he’s trying to keep his brain from throbbing.

  “Good,” I say. “Looks like our prisoner has woken up. I bet he could use a Coke or something.”

  “I’ll place our order,” Haden says, rubbing his hands on his pant legs to get rid of the stickiness from the menus. “Take Garrick with you and find a place to sit.”

  He says that like this place is crowded, but we’re the only ones here. Other than the trucker at the counter, nursing a milk shake.

  “And watch him,” he says, nodding at Garrick.

  “Okay,” I say, and lead Garrick to a booth in the back of the diner, but I’m not quite sure what I’d do if Garrick tried to bolt. Sit on him, maybe? I’ve got at least twenty pounds on the scrawny kid. But from the way he collapses into the booth and rests his head in his arms, moaning like Joe with a hangover, I’m guessing he’s not going to try to make a break for it anytime soon.

  Haden heads to the counter, and Garrick looks up at me over his elbow. “He didn’t tell you the whole story, you know. About what happened when his mother died.”

  “You were awake when he told me about that?” I had a feeling Haden wouldn’t have shared his story with me if he’d known Garrick had been listening. Then again, Garrick already knew how it went. He’d been there, after all.

  “I was in and out, but I heard enough to know Haden left out the part when he gave me this scar,” he says and runs his finger over the thin white line that mars his pale cheek. “He threw a broken crystal chess piece at my face. All because I tried to help him clean up after his father left and the servants carried out his mother’s body.”

  “That’s terrible,” I say. “But I mean, his mom just died and he was only seven.”

  “I was only five,” Garrick says.

  “And you were a servant already?”

  “I’m a Lesser. I was born to serve.” He sniffs and rubs his nose in his sleeve. “Working in the palace was a lot better than working in the Pits, though. I’ve been there since I was seven.”

  “You work in the Pits. With those awful Keres?”

  “Thanks to Haden.”

  “Haden?”

  “I bet he didn’t tell you that part of the story, either.…”

  “What story?” Haden asks, sliding into the booth across from me. “What are you two talking about?”

  “I was just about to tell Daphne what you did to me two years after your mother died,” Garrick says. He has no inner song, no tune coming from him, but I can tell he’s trying to upset Haden from the very loaded glare he throws his way.

  It works. Haden goes ashen and a nervous little melody, like the tapping of anxious fingers against a table, comes off him. “We don’t need to talk about that,” he says.

  “But she should know,” Garrick says. “If you’re going to give her your woe-is-me, disgraced-prince sob story, you really should tell the whole thing.”

  “This is not the time or place,” Haden says, almost as if it were an order.

  “But she wants to know,” he says. “Don’t you?” He turns that pointed glare on me. I can’t deny that I am dying with curiosity now.

  “Tell her how you couldn’t stand having me around after I witnessed what you did when your mother died. Tell her how you lied just so you could get rid of the walking, talking reminder of your shame. Tell her how you had me banished to the Pits. Tell her how two little words could have saved me from seven years of living a nightmare, being clawed at by every terrible thing that lives in the blackest part of the Underrealm, fighting for scraps, and praying to the gods that I’ll make it one more day. Or when things are really bad, that I won’t.”

  My breath catches when he says this. I look at Haden for his reaction.

  From the dark tones coming off him, I expect him to lash out at Garrick, to order him to be quiet, but instead, he lowers his head, as if resigned to letting the truth come out.

  “Tell her,” Garrick says. “Or do you want me to?”

  Haden sucks in a deep breath and lets it out. “When Garrick was seven, two years after my mother’s death, he was found with one of my mother’s pendants in his possession. It was made of rubies and shaped like a pomegranate. It was her favorite. He was banished to the Pits for stealing it from the palace.”

  “But I didn’t steal it,” Garrick says. “She gave it to me. You knew that. You knew she gave it to me, but you told them that I took it.”

  “Haden?” I ask. “Is that true?”

  “In a way. He would have taken it if she hadn’t given it to him.”

  “But she did give it to me—”

  “Because she caught you trying to steal it.” Haden looks at me like he wants me to understand. “My mother and I walked in on him going through her stuff. He was supposed to be cleaning, but he pocketed the pendant right as we walked into the room. She saw him do it. We both knew she did, but instead of demanding it back or calling for the guards, she told him he could have it. I asked her why, and she said that Garrick was only different from me and Rowan because his mother wasn’t able to protect him the way she had protected us. She said that if letting him have the pendant would help his life be a little better, then the least she could do was let him have it. She said that we should show compassion and mercy for everyone.”

  “A lesson you forgot as soon as she was gone. As soon as it was convenient for you.”

  Haden lowers his head again. “I made a mistake and I’ve felt shame for it every day of my life.”

  “You turned him in for stealing it?” I ask him.

  “After my mother died, my father chose a new Boon from the harem to become his queen. He wanted to give her the pomegranate pendant, but when it came up missing from my mother’s possessions, the Court originally concluded that I was the one who stole it. When my father demanded to know what had happened to it, I told him that Garrick had taken it—and when they found it on him, they
didn’t believe that she had given it to him.… I didn’t corroborate his story.”

  “How could you do that to your own cousin?” I ask.

  “We’re not cousins,” Garrick says. “We’re brothers.”

  “Half brothers,” Haden says quickly. “And I did it because I hated Garrick at the time. He was right; he was a walking reminder of my dishonor. A walking reminder of what my life would have been like if my mother hadn’t protected me with that oath. It hurt me every time I looked at him, and so I wanted to hurt him back.” He sits up and looks Garrick in the eye. “I didn’t know how bad it would be. I didn’t know they’d banish you to the Pits. I thought maybe a few lashings … I didn’t know.” He pauses for a moment and then says, like it’s the most painful thing he’s ever had to say, “I’m sorry.”

  I hear the shift in Haden’s tone, and I know he’s being sincere—I can hear the remorse coursing off him—but Garrick treats him like he’s just spat in his face.

  “Take your apologies and shove them up your ass,” he says.

  “Garrick, please,” Haden says.

  Garrick looks at me. “Be careful, Daphne. Haden’s selfishness and his obedience are a dangerous combination. He’ll do anything to try to win his honor back. If he’s willing to let a little kid be thrown into a Pit full of monsters because he didn’t like seeing him around, what do you think he’s going to do when he doesn’t get what he wants from you?”

  His words strike a dissonant chord inside me. His view of Haden doesn’t match the remorse that I hear in Haden now. They just feel wrong to me.

  But then again, I barely know Haden at all.

  What would he do if I couldn’t convince the Oracle to change his mind? What would he do when I continued to say no? Because I’m sure as hell … or Hades … never going to say yes to helping him.