by Vivian Wood
—L.H.
He’s left a postscript underneath.
The jewelry box is for you.
The note falls from my trembling fingers. A gift? I don’t even know what to think of that. I’d been thinking yesterday was a nightmare and last night was a continuation of a bad dream gone wrong, but now....
I can’t make myself wait. The velvet box feels new in my hands. Too light for what it is. It’s wide and flat, and when I lift the lid, the box ceases to matter at all. Because inside is the most beautiful necklace I’ve ever seen. Wait—two necklaces. Two diamond necklaces. I whip around to make sure nobody’s watching. I’ve never had a necklace like this. I’ve never had anything like this. Flower crowns and poppy jewelry are all I’ve ever worn.
The first one reminds me of a lace collar, only the lace has been woven from diamonds. I can picture exactly how it would look if I wore it. Heat tumbles over my cheeks. It’s ostentatious, and I bet it’s nothing to Hades. I saw his factory yesterday. He could have a million of these if he wanted.
And the second...
The second brings tears to my eyes.
It’s a simple chain, platinum maybe, and at the center dangles a delicate disk the size of my fingertip. Etched into the disc is a single poppy. I skim my finger over the tiny raised chips of diamonds and rubies that make up the flower’s stem and petals, and memories come crashing in. Sprinting across open fields, barefoot and laughing in the sun. A basket of flowers dangling from my hand. The sweetness of not knowing about the fence, or the train, or the world outside.
This is the one I want to wear immediately. When I lift the backing from the box to take it out, another note flutters to the floor at my feet.
One for special occasions. The other to remind you where you belong.
It’s easy to see which one is which. I put it on, and the slim coin dangles between my breasts while I eat a miniature assortment of some of my favorite foods.
While I shower, working the shampoo through my hair inch by inch and slicking conditioner through every curl.
While I tilt my head beneath the most expensive, quietest hair dryer I have ever seen.
While I hunt through the closet for something not quite as exposing as the rack of white nightgowns Hades has apparently chosen for me, which I’ve been wearing since I got here.
In one corner of the closet, I find a collection of slim dresses, slightly longer. They hit above the knee, though the fabric borders on sheer, just like the nightgowns. There’s no hiding what I’m wearing—or not wearing—underneath. I’m not sure why I didn’t see the knee-length caftan at first; it’s the only thing in here with any color. A shock of red, like blood. My eyes must have skipped over it, or else it’s new from when I went into the shower.
It’s perfect.
Sheer, like everything else. Light, like everything else. A strong breeze could take it away. But the red color makes me feel... new.
“Persephone?”
Lillian stands partway in the door to the oversized walk-in closet, frowning, dark eyes on me. Something isn’t right. In the mirror, I watch as she flicks her eyes back in the direction she came, lips pressed into a hard line.
“Is everything all right?”
“There are things you’ve asked me about.” I turn away from the mirror and find her expression transformed. What was I seeing in the reflection? She’s not worried; she’s determined. Very, very determined. Her dark eyes burn with it. “I got some answers. Come with me.”
She doesn’t have to say the rest—that only following her, right now, will give me access to the things I want to know. So I do it, stopping only to slip on a pair of white ballet flats. At the door, Lillian turns back and murmurs, “Mr. Hades is in his main office. We don’t have to worry about passing him in the hall.”
I don’t know how she could possibly know that for sure, but my curiosity has been piqued. More than piqued. It’s been grabbed by the throat and dragged out of me. Frankly, it interrupted my daydreams. But it makes my heart beat faster. Every change in the air on the way out of Hades’ private rooms is razor-sharp against my skin.
Long before we get to the rotunda, Lillian stops abruptly by an alcove in the wall. It’s nothing—there’s no door, just a blank wall. Maybe she’s lost it. Maybe I’m following a woman on a fool’s errand that will only make things worse for me. I need them to get better, not worse. I’m just not sure what better actually means in this scenario.
She steps up to the wall and presses her hand at a place that looks the same as the rest of the wall. A crack appears. A door slides open. Lillian steps through. Looks back.
“Persephone, hurry.”
Secret passageways. Of course he has secret passageways. This isn’t just a mansion, and it’s not just a factory. It’s a fortress. All fortresses are built for secrets.
I’m a secret.
A secret who follows Lillian into the narrowest hallway I’ve yet to see on the mountain. The door slides shut behind us, amplifying the sound in the hall. It’s a muffled quiet except for our breathing.
“We’ll have to move quickly.” Lillian turns her head so I can hear her, but she never slows down for an instant. “It’s best if we can get back before Mr. Hades decides to leave his office. There should be enough time, but....”
Enough time for what? I don’t dare ask. That gnawing need to know, know, know expands until my lungs could burst with it. If I let it out into the passageway, it’ll take down the whole mountain.
It gets narrower the farther we go, tilting down, almost like the passageway is herding us. My heart beats its fists against my ribs. If I’ve made a mistake in trusting her, it could be a long time before anyone finds me. It could be a very long time. And I have unfinished business. That’s an accurate way to describe yesterday and last night. Unfinished business. That kiss—that kiss wasn’t finished. I don’t know what possessed me, but I want to know.
I’m about to grab Lillian by the elbow and tell her to take me back right now, when we come up against another flat wall. This side has a notch in the rock at about waist-level. She puts her fingers in it and tugs. The door comes open. On the other side is a hallway, pitch dark—no. Not pitch dark. Lit by... flames? Faint flames.
“What is this?” The question sneaks out before I can stop it. “Lillian, where are we?”
Then a form fills the doorframe, and for a horrible, sickening second, I think it’s Hades. He caught us. My heart leaps up into my throat. This would deserve a good punishment. I wouldn’t be able to argue with him. He’d pin me down and—
“Persephone.”
It’s not his voice. And now that I look, it’s not his body, either; the person in shadow is too tall and thin, almost gaunt. But his green eyes haven’t changed.
“Decker. Oh my God, Deck.”
Lillian flattens herself against the wall just in time for Decker to barrel through the passageway and close me in his arms. He curses gently against the top of my head.
“It all went so wrong.” His voice is muffled by the air and the space and his arms around me. “So wrong. It wasn’t supposed to go that way.” He pushes me back to look at me. “And now he’s done things to you.” Decker’s eyes search mine, a hard set to his mouth. “They made me watch.”
“I know. I’m sorry, Deck. That was probably my fault.”
He takes my face in his hands, and I wait to feel the flood of relief that I... should be feeling. Right now. It should be cascading over me with all the strength of every waterfall on the face of the planet. Decker is alive, even after yesterday. He managed to keep himself alive after witnessing what he witnessed. But that potent relief doesn’t materialize.
“How could it have been your fault?” He whispers the words, and I’m stricken with the fear that he might try to kiss me. Fear. Real enough to make the hairs on my arms stand on end. I don’t want him to kiss me. If he kisses me, I don’t know what will happen. Hades might taste it on me. He might feel it on me. “None of this
is your fault.” He frowns just a little, guilt like heat-lightning in his eyes. There. Gone. In less than a blink, it’s gone. Did I imagine it? Decker screws up his mouth and strokes my cheeks with his thumbs. “He’s a piece of shit.” Thunder in his voice, a tremor in his hands. “That guy—he’s pure evil.”
He’s not.
That’s what comes to mind and to the tip of my tongue. He’s not. The necklace Hades left me this morning sits lightly over my collarbone, the chain whispering on my skin. He knew about the poppies, somehow. Or he guessed that they mean something to me and always have. And the food—the food.
“I’m all right,” I say instead.
“There’s no fucking way you could be. The things he’s doing to you, they’ll make you—” Decker shakes his head. He can’t finish. “Look, I don’t have much time before I have to get back. You probably have to get back too. But it’s okay, Persephone.”
“I was so worried.” Worried he’d be dead. Worried that it would be my fault. Now that he’s standing in front of me, I should feel relieved, but I’m not. I’m more on edge than I’ve been since we arrived at the mountain. I rise up on tiptoe, trying to ease myself away from the sensation. It’s a wild anxiety that can only be soothed by going back to my own room.
“I’m fine.” A glint comes into his eyes. “Better than fine now.”
“You have to leave, though. If Hades catches you—”
“Forget that asshole.” Now, a smile spreads across his face. “You don’t understand; we’re getting out of here. We’re getting out of this hellhole.”
“We have to leave, Persephone.” Lillian’s voice is low, urgent.
“I can’t leave.” What the hell does Decker mean?
“I have a way to get us on the train.” He glances back over his shoulder at the open door. “Just trust me. I’ll send someone to get you. Okay? Be ready.” Decker looks me up and down. “Try to wear something better for traveling, but if you can’t, then I won’t complain.” His smile is the same smile from back at the farm, big and genuine and handsome. He looks exactly the same. He even smells the same, faintly dusty and warm.
Something is different. Me. I’m different.
“What happens after the train? He won’t just let me go.”
“You let me worry about that. I’ve got it figured out. Then we’re gone, and you never have to see him again. Soon. Got it?”
Soon, I’ll be on the train, heading toward New York City. It’s where I always wanted to go. That’s my dream. How can I even hesitate? Except, there’s dread in my stomach. I signed that contract, fully intending to follow through. Fully intending to trade my own freedom for Decker’s life. Except, now he’s here offering me escape.
It’s more than that, though. I’ve been on this mountain for minutes, hours, days… and it’s enough to make me feel safe. To make this feel almost like home. It’s a crazy idea. I’m not safe with Hades, no matter how many orgasms he gives me.
And even if I was, I’ll never find freedom locked up in my room here.
“Soon,” I say, ignoring the knot in my stomach.
In the far distance, a whistle sounds, and Decker lets go of my face. “Be ready.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
His face softens, lights up. He blows me a kiss.
Lillian nods. “We have to get back to the room.”
Decker stops one final time, his dirt-stained hand on the door panel. He looks back, and his face is almost completely in shadow. “It’s almost over, Persephone.”
Chapter Twenty
Hades
Demeter is out of control.
Her daughter has barely been gone a week, and the reports come in fast and furious. She’s stormed into the city, looking for Zeus. She’s hired a man to search the city underground for her.
She’s lighting her fields on fire, one by one.
“Oliver. Tell me you’re fucking kidding. Tell me this is one of your jokes.”
Oliver shifts his weight from foot to foot, hands in his pockets. He’d rather not be out in the relative openness of the office. He’s a man who’d rather cling to the shadows. That’s where all the real work gets done.
“I don’t tell jokes.”
“Then tell me which field she started with.” It’s the information that means the most to me now. I have to know. Lives depend on it, mine included.
He shakes his head.
“Find out.”
Oliver leaves without another word. I wait until he’s gone and then leave the office too. Silence expands around me as I go. It’s earlier than I’d normally leave, but fuck, the news has made me want to tear down all the glass just to hear it shatter.
Fucking Demeter. There was once a time I could admire how ruthless she is, but if she thinks this is the way to smoke out who has Persephone?
She’s probably fucking right.
Because as much as Demeter likes to pretend she’s in the bridal business, that’s only a front. It’s always been a front. Her real business is far more lucrative and far more dangerous than bouquets wrapped in white ribbon. And if she’s become so unhinged that she’s burning her business to the ground to force someone’s hand…
To force my hand.
I can see it now—Demeter with lighter fluid in the dry evening of early summer. Demeter lowering a match to the ground. Flames swallowing the fields whole.
The woman is going to kill me. She’ll kill me, and then what will happen to Persephone? If I’m dead, this place will riot. They’ll come for Persephone first. They’ll come for Demeter second. We’ll all end up under the ground, but it’ll be me first. And then who will protect Persephone? No one.
My skin feels too tight, my mood too thunderous to be contained in this body. I have been containing it for years. I have been denying myself for years. I have kept everything so close to my chest that my biggest secret is a throbbing dagger through my heart. I can’t take a single fucking step without feeling it there, lodged in deep. Not a single step. Conor shoves against my legs hard. He wants me the fuck out of here, away from the factory’s bright lights. Not even the tinted windows of my office can mitigate them fully.
I have to clear my head.
The easiest way, the path of least resistance, would be to go down to the mines and find some criminal fucker who’s been sentenced here as a cheap alternative to a prison sentence and squeeze the life out of him. But the easiest way won’t be enough. Not tonight. Not when Demeter’s fields burn and Oliver takes the train at top speed to see whether it’s my life or someone else’s that’s rising into the sky like so much ash.
I don’t know that I’ve gone to find her until I’m pushing open the door to Persephone’s suite. Conor stays to guard the door. He’s learned.
The lights are down low, but they’re on. No sign of her in the bed. Her dinner tray, with a ruby red pomegranate in a silver dish, sits nearly untouched on a table by the window.
Where the fuck is she?
I don’t call her name. She’ll learn soon enough that hiding from me like this… it’s not a fucking option. She’ll pay for this. She will. I strip off my jacket and let it fall to the floor. If I have to search the entire mountain myself to find her, I will. She’d better pray I don’t have to search the mountain.
Every sense is jacked up to its maximum sensitivity as I make my way down the narrow hall, shoving open doors as I go. She’s not in the bathroom. The shower is dry. She’s not in the closet, with all the white nightgowns that double as dresses. I put them in here to embarrass her. It’s been worth it to see her face every time I scan a hemline.
For a heart-stopping moment, the library looks empty too. Rage squeezes at the muscle in the center of my chest until my blood flows backward. Then her foot, curled up at the edge of the overstuffed chair by the fireplace, catches my attention. She’s here. My eyes burn, but not from tears. Never from tears. I don’t bother to take quiet footsteps on my way to the side table. The lamp in here, I must’ve missed it.
I can see echoes of Demeter in her face.
I can see Persephone doing the same thing, laughing as she burns down the world.
My pulse pounds in my ears.
But I make myself wait.
Even now, I make myself wait.
I unbutton my shirt and roll the sleeves up to my elbows. I loosen the top button. I watch her breathing, slow and even.
What does she dream about?
Not this.
“Get up.”
Persephone’s eyes snap open at the sound of my voice, wide and terrified. The energy in a tight ball at the base of my gut bursts apart, all static and lightning and anger. She doesn’t know where she is, and now it’s dark. I can see her in the kind of stark detail that makes her panting fucking mouthwatering.
“Does ‘get up’ mean keep lying there to you? Get up.”
She scrambles to get up, but her arm is asleep or else I’ve scared her so badly she can’t move. “I’m trying.” Her cry reverberates off the glass statue on the top bookshelf. “I’m trying.”
“Get. Up.”
“Why?”
Her gasp blows apart the very last shred of my restraint. It’s been weakened by the drumbeat of my own heart in my ears, by the flames in the fields, and having to touch her sweet body and not fuck her for what seems like an eternity.
I haul her up from the seat by her clothes, the seams ripping in my hands. Straight into the air. Straight up until she’s level with my face, her lips opening and closing. “Because I need you,” I growl into her mouth, and then I kiss her.