by Amelia Wilde
I make a sound that’s meant to be okay but is more of an acquiescent mumble. It’s the middle of the night. Which night, I don’t know. I could have been sleeping for a full day. Two days, even. That’s how tired I am. It takes everything I have to swing my legs to the edge of the bed and wriggle out. Lillian kneels down and lines up a pair of shoes on the floor. Shoes? I should be wearing slippers. There’s no way I’m walking that far. But they’re soft shoes, and comfortable, so I close my eyes and let her tie them up.
“Good,” she murmurs. “Good.” While I’m still sitting on the edge of the bed, she tugs something around my shoulders and helps me get my arms into the holes. A robe, but thicker. Almost a coat. It has a row of buttons down the front but she doesn’t button them. Instead she takes my hand and tugs me to standing. “This way,” she coaxes. “He’s waiting. We don’t have much time.”
Hades’ private rooms are dark, but I don’t need to see much to follow Lillian. She keeps her hand on mine, at times curving her arm around my waist. God, I’m tired. I never thought I could be this tired. I never thought that I could ever be so at peace here in this mountain prison. It doesn’t seem much like a prison now. I haven’t sorted that out yet. In order to do that, I’ll need several hours curled up in the library. The book doesn’t matter much. It only needs to be a story that will hold my attention while my mind works in the background. No wonder my mother never let me keep many books. She must have known I’d figure out a way to escape earlier on.
I’m still thinking about sitting in the chair and the weight of a hardcover book in my lap when we go out into the hallway. I let out a little laugh. My voice sounds rough, like I’ve been up all night, though I know I’ve been sleeping deeply enough to dream. Is this a dream?
Lillian glances at me. “What is it?”
“His office.” I shake my head and laugh again. “It makes so much sense.”
She presses her lips together but doesn’t say anything else. That’s fine. It’s the middle of the night, after all. Someone had to wake her up in order to come get me. Hades could have fetched me himself, if that’s what he wanted, but who am I to judge what he does? I can’t even pay that close of attention just now. Soon we’ll be at his office, and then I’ll find out what he wants. Lillian can go back to her bed.
“I’m hurrying,” I tell her, feeling strange. “I’m hurrying as fast as I can.”
“You’ll have to go a little faster.” She looks around behind her. Behind her? If we’re headed toward Hades, there’s nobody behind her now. “But not for long.”
Exhaustion descends again, making my eyelids feel a thousand times heavier. We turn down one hall, then another. The big circular rotunda at the center of the house is empty. Our footsteps echo against the high ceiling and bounce back down to us. I’m intimately aware of the sound and how it feels hitting my skin. Can a person feel vibrations like that, just from footsteps? It’s an interesting question. I bet Lillian doesn’t want to talk about it right now. That’s okay. There will be plenty of time to talk later.
It’s not until we’re going down the wide stairs toward the train platform that I open my eyes all the way, blinking hard to try to clear the sleep from them.
The train idles on the tracks, massive engine turning over.
That familiar heat in my cheeks comes back full force, the combination of embarrassment and anticipation. Hades is taking me to the New York Public Library. He must know that I want to go there, and he’s taking me there in the middle of the night. I reach up and rub the coin necklace between my fingers. We’ll have to fly, or at least drive, once we get back to the city. That sends a thrill down to the tips of my toes. My mother relied on the train for everything. We’ve never owned a car. The thought of him behind the wheel...god, I don’t know much about driving, but I’d like to watch him do it.
Lillian takes one look at the train, hooks her arm through mine, and starts to run.
“What are you doing?”
“The train is leaving,” she shouts. “You have to be on it. Run, Persephone. Now.”
In that moment, the grass prickly and slick under my feet, I snap fully awake. This isn’t some romantic trip across the state line to the library. This is escape.
This is my only chance at freedom.
We run, awkward and stumbling, down the side of the platform. It doesn’t make any sense, but I’m too busy trying to catch my breath to figure anything out. Hades doesn’t ride in a car at the back of the train—he just doesn’t. And I’ve been mistaken about the size of the platform. It narrows, heading back along the tracks, the wood getting more worn as we go. Up ahead, shadows move in and out of sight. Not shadows—men. They’re loading a train car. A tone sounds, a one-two melody.
“It’s leaving,” Lillian cries. “Go.”
She pushes me forward at the same time the activity ahead increases. They’re loading the last few crates. I keep going until I’m level with the men and then—
Decker runs out, a crate in his arms. He hops up onto the train car and sets it down, then jumps back out.
He’s not even looking at me. He looks over my head, back toward the tunnel. His eyes go wide. “No fucking way.”
Something black and metal appears from the waistband of his pants. I have just enough time to turn—to see Conor barreling toward us, coming at top speed. My breath stops short.
“No!”
My shout is drowned out by the gunshot.
The bullet is close. So close. But it doesn’t hit me—it goes past, faster than I can see, and Conor goes down hard. He howls, wounded, angry, the howl becoming a desperate whine. My heart shatters and my ears ring, and everything is coming apart. Where did he get a gun?
“Persephone, now.”
He reaches for my hand and pulls me onto the very last train car. It’s empty aside for the crates. Decker slams the door shut behind us and throws down a simple wooden bar over the door. It’s like something out of the past. It is something out of the past. I’m sure of it.
He bows his head.
He’s...praying.
The train starts forward, slow for only a breathless moment, and then it picks up speed, whisking us out of the mountain. The moment we’re out under the starry skies, Decker rushes to the window.
“Yes.” His voice is full of triumph. “We made it.” He comes back to me and looks me up and down. “We both made it. Yes. You’re out, Persephone, and I killed that fucking dog.” Decker’s eyes shine with a strange light. He looks...unhinged. For the first time since I’ve met him, I’m afraid of him. Which doesn’t make any sense at all. Decker is here to save me. He sits down heavily on one of the crates and rubs his hands over his face. “Sit down, okay? Relax. We’ll be there soon. And then...then it’ll all be over.”
The reality of this crashes over me like the sound of glass shattering.
This was it. This was his escape plan.
And I don’t want to escape. The certainty washes over me like a bucket of cold water. Every nerve ending on my skin screams in protest. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I don’t know if we’ll ever make it to freedom on this train. Don’t know if I’ll ever see the New York Public Library, but in this moment none of that matters.
Hades. He matters. And the pain he’ll feel when I’m gone.
The pain I feel speeding away from him.
“Decker,” I say carefully, wide awake, painfully awake. “I don’t know if this is a good idea. He’s going to catch up with this. And when he does—”
He stands up, the motion sudden enough to shock me. The backs of my knees hit one of the crates and I go down hard enough to wince. The wood is unforgiving. Then Decker is right there, throwing his arms around me. My body wants to relax into him, but I can’t.
He waits until I can’t resist him anymore.
“Don’t think too much.” He shakes his head against my neck, pressing a kiss there. “Don’t worry. It’s all going to work out in the end. You just have to trust me.”
I don’t have a choice.
There’s no way out of a moving train, and no way away from Decker. No sudden moves. No sudden moves at all. I let him hold me, then sit next to me, and I try my best not to do anything at all. But with every moment that passes, I know one thing: I don’t trust him. There’s a desperation in his movements that make me nervous.
Time blurs, erasing the distinctions between moments. Still, I recognize the landscape around us. We get close to my mother’s house, to the platform in the woods.
I hold my breath, waiting for the train to slow.
It doesn’t slow. We speed past.
“Good fucking riddance to that place, too,” Decker says under his breath.
What does that mean?
I press my lips together and clutch my stomach, trying not to be sick. It shouldn't feel this way, heading toward freedom. It shouldn’t feel like I’m going in the wrong direction. Keeping it together becomes my first priority. Second priority; figure out a plan. Eventually, Decker is going to get off the train. Right? He has to. He’s not going to ride it back to the mountain.
But I am.
A weight lifts off my shoulders the second the idea comes to me. I’ll just stay on the train. I might get punished for it, but I’ll get back to the mountain. I’ll finish what I started.
My body aches from sitting by the time the train rolls into the city. It’s been hours. My heart lifts despite my stiff legs and the pain in my back from sitting on the crate at an awkward angle. I’ve thought my new plan through from every angle. I will step off the train with him, and at the last moment I’ll jump back on. He’ll have no choice but to let me go. It’ll be another long ride with the crates, and then I can go back to sleep. After Hades deals with me. A shiver of anticipation runs down my spine.
The train comes to a stop, and I pull the coat tighter around my body. The air is cool for the summer, and my outfit isn’t exactly the one I’d choose to be running around the city in. Thank god I’ll only spend a few moments on the platform.
Decker opens the door.
Get out, then get back in. I chant it to myself over and over.
He puts his hand on the small of my back and the look he gives me is so off it’s all I can do not to flinch away. But I don’t. I walk out with my head held high.
Onto a dark train platform.
That’s not right.
At first it seems right, because so many of the places in the mountain were dark. Here, it’s not right. There should be lights. Decker steps out in front of me and whistles, the sound like one of the birds in the forest by my mother’s house.
“Deck, this seems weird.” My voice only trembles a little. “I’m going to get back on the train.”
He turns around, movements jerky, and clamps a hand around my wrist. “You’re not.”
I pull it back, fresh panic turning my stomach.
“Decker, let go.” I try to yank my wrist out of his grip, but he’s too strong. He doesn’t look strong compared to Hades. But he doesn’t need to be strong compared to Hades, does he? He only needs to be strong compared to me.
No. No.
The train whistle sounds and I move on instinct, rushing toward it. Decker doesn’t quite know what to do with his arm and he loses his grip. I sprint for the door, picking up speed.
I make it two steps before my toe catches an uneven board on the platform.
My knees hit with a crack and the air goes out of me. I’m going to have to walk back. Back where? Back to my mother’s house at least. Back to the mountain at worst. There’s no way it’ll be better climbing. But I can’t stay here. I wait for Decker to lift me up, to dust me off, but he doesn’t touch me.
He leaves me to get to my feet alone.
My knees are killing me.
“Deck?”
I turn around. Maybe he’s gone. Maybe I can get back on the train.
Or maybe he’s standing there with four other men, all of them looking at me.
“Decker.” Horror closes my throat and brings tears to my eyes. I don’t let them fall. “What did you do?”
I loved him. I loved him. Or maybe I never even knew him.
He shrugs, hands in his pockets. There’s a new bulge there I didn’t see before. Empty pockets, now full. He’s a stranger to me.
“I had to get paid, Persephone. You have to understand that.” Money—his pockets are full of money. Cash.
“Paid for what?” He looks down at the floor. “Paid for what, Decker?”
The train pulls away behind me.
The men with Decker step forward, advancing one by one.
And I have nowhere to go.
24
Hades
The one night I want to lie down, some foreman in the mines can’t handle himself.
I take my work seriously. Seriously enough that when the call came in, I left Persephone sleeping in her bed. I did not want to do that. Fuck no. If I took my work less seriously, I’d have told them to go fuck themselves while I woke her up for another round. I needed to keep my mind blank, and they stole that from me. My one concession was to leave Conor guarding her door.
It’s not blank now.
I feel...alive. Awake. Obnoxiously so. All of my senses are turned up to maximum input. Every light is too bright, every sound too loud, and every distance is too great. I need her next to me.
And I’ve finally accepted it.
In reality, I was forced to accept it when fucking her took me over the edge into something like ecstasy. I haven’t felt that in years. With any woman. It’s like discovering a brand-new craving that’s been there all along.
Like I’ve needed her all along, but now I’m finding her.
It doesn’t make any fucking sense, and it doesn’t need to. I’m going to fuck her until I figure out what to do about this little conundrum. Eventually, Demeter will have to know. She won’t be thrilled. But I’ll come up with a counteroffer. I’ll buy her cooperation. I should have pushed harder on a deal already to avoid her temper tantrum. Live and learn.
Those jackasses down in the mines learned something tonight. They learned that if they fuck around enough, I’ll come to set them straight. The ones that lived will pay far better attention to the foreman from now on.
I rub my eyes on the way back to my quarters. I want a shower. I want darkness. I need it. The house has been designed for me, and still, the lights become a problem. The special bulbs only delay the inevitable.
They switch off one by one as I approach, which is how I need things to be right now. Though I hate thinking in terms of need. I suppose it’s something I’ll have to get used to, now that I’ve gone ahead and fucked Persephone senseless. Can’t give that up now.
I’m looking forward to being alone for the ten minutes it will take to get clean, then destroy her room a little more.
Only Oliver is waiting outside the double doors to my rooms. No sign of Conor.
“What is it?” His face is pale, almost green, the scar across his cheek standing out, angry and red. “Did those fuckers in the mines give you any more trouble?”
“One of them did,” he says. “He’s dead.”
“Well, yes, Oliver. I thought you saw that I paid a visit.”
“A different one. And one of the maids is missing, too. We have a situation on our hands.”
“Which maid?” I don’t give a fuck about the maids.
But I very much give a fuck when Oliver’s gaze slips toward Persephone’s bedroom.
“Her personal maid? What the fuck?”
I wrench her door open before I know what I’m doing. The frame shrieks in my hand. It’s supposed to be strong enough to withstand anything, but it’s not. Not today.
She’s not here.
I tear the blankets off, the sheets, the pillows—they still smell like her. Like new leaves and sunshine and something unbearably sweet. I claw the fitted sheet off the bed and shove the mattress off the boxspring. She should be here. She should be here somewhere.
The closet comes apart under my hands. There hasn’t been time for her to wear all the dresses that fall like feathers onto the carpet, but they all carry her scent. I yank every one of them off the hangers. I search behind every cupboard. If she’s here, anywhere, I don’t care what I have to destroy to find her.
She’s not here.
She’s not here.
A cold dread, colder than the hand of death, grips the back of my neck.
Running footsteps announce Oliver. He looks worse than before, if it’s possible. “I got a call.” His face twists, and I don’t know if it’s fear or grief or both. “We have to—we have to go to the platform.”
“Did our people find her?”
“No. They found—fuck, Luther.” A rare slip, calling me that. “Conor.”
I’m not aware of the mad rush to the platform, only the searing pain in my lungs. In my heart. Everywhere. A group of people are huddled around something on the ground. They’re standing in a growing pool of blood.
Most of them try to get out of the way when they see me coming. The ones who don’t, I throw to the side. One man goes over completely. I don’t fucking care. The last one standing—kneeling, really—is the veterinarian I keep on the mountain. He owes me a great deal. I’ve never seen his face so bloodless until I’m gripping his white coat, pain’s fists around my own neck. I could die of it.
“What happened?”
“Someone shot him.” Three words, like rocks on glass. My head throbs, splintering. Too much light. I twist around without letting him go.
“Who was it?”
Oliver’s right there, right behind us.
“The person who took her. The same person who took her.” His voice shakes. He knows what this means.
I let go of Dr. Martin. Conor tried to stop them. No fucking doubt in my mind. I ignore the blood and stroke Conor’s head anyway, numb horror seeping in at the edges of my consciousness. I can’t tell if he’s still alive. My own heartbeat is too fucking loud.
“They left on the train,” says Oliver.
“Did you find her, then?” I’m numb. I’m on fire. I’m beneath the ground.