by Aimee Carter
“Tell me,” said Persephone. “Was that the kind of kiss you’ve spent the past thousand years imagining? Did your heart stop? Did the room spin and did everything else fade away?”
In the time it took for Henry to respond, I stopped breathing and lifted my head. Persephone was still in his lap, and they watched each other with such intensity that I expected him to kiss her again, but then I saw it. There was a distance between them now, as if she were pulling away. As if he were holding her at arm’s length.
As the seconds ticked by, a sliver of hope lodged itself inside of me, and I stood shakily to move closer so there would be no chance of me missing what he would say.
Except as I stepped forward, he leaned toward her again, and she didn’t stop him. My breath caught in my throat as the world dissolved around me once more, and Henry and Persephone disappeared.
* * *
I spent the rest of the night crying in bed with Pogo curled up at my side. Every half an hour or so, he would wake up long enough to lick my cheeks before falling back asleep. I wasn’t so lucky.
Whatever lesson Persephone had tried to teach Henry backfired, and even if she left the palace tomorrow, that wouldn’t change the fact that Henry would always love her more. I wanted to hate her for what she’d done, but she hadn’t been the one to burst into our marriage. I was the one who’d sought her out, and I’d convinced her to reenter her old life, despite knowing full well what the consequences of Henry seeing her again might be. All she’d done was try to discourage his feelings—in a twisted way that had failed miserably, but she had tried.
And now I’d lost him completely.
The sound of the bedroom door opening woke me up from a light doze. Pogo stretched, and when I sat up, he flopped down in my lap belly-up, apparently unwilling to let me go anywhere without him again.
Henry stood in the doorway, and for a long moment, we simply stared at each other. His ageless face was drawn and his lips turned down in a frown, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks.
Finally he stepped inside the room and shut the door. Without coming to greet me, he headed to his closet and began to sort through his clothes. I wiped my cheeks to make sure no evidence of my crying session remained, but they’d been dry for hours.
Once he’d picked out a fresh shirt that was indistinguishable from the one he wore, I expected him to say something, but he wordlessly disappeared into the bathroom as if I weren’t even there. Did he think so little of me that I wasn’t worth a hello?
While he was gone, I debated whether or not to continue pretending everything was all right. The coward in me wanted to, but I knew that if I tried, I would be as miserable as Persephone had been, and I didn’t want to be miserable anymore. I couldn’t spend my life waiting for him to set Persephone aside and focus on me instead.
By the time he came out, I knew what I had to say. Everything inside of me fought against the words that spilled from my mouth, but I needed to say it, and Henry needed to hear it.
“I can’t do this anymore.”
My voice was barely a whisper, but Henry stopped halfway between the bathroom and the door. He didn’t look at me, but his hands formed fists, and the cords in his neck stood out like they had in the room with the windows. Self-loathing washed over me. I was doing the same thing Persephone had done to him; I was giving up. Before we’d even had a chance, I was declaring it over.
No. Henry was the one who’d given up. He was the one who’d declared it over the moment he refused to touch me or treat me like his wife. He was the one who’d lost us somewhere; I was only giving up the search, as well. There was nothing I could do, no magical words I could say to fix everything if he’d already abandoned us.
“Cannot do what, exactly?” said Henry, and I heard the strain in each word he spoke, as if it took monumental effort for him to form them. My palms were sweaty, and more than anything I wanted to take it back and apologize and beg for him to talk to me so we could figure this out, but he wasn’t going to do that. And even if he did, tomorrow things would go back to this, and neither of us would ever be happy again. I couldn’t do that to him. I couldn’t do that to me.
“This,” I said softly. “Us. Last year, when we were—before we were married, I thought now would be perfect, and that I would be happier than I’ve ever been in my life, getting to be with you. Getting to love you for the rest of eternity. But no matter how much I want to love you, you won’t let me, and I can’t do this anymore.”
Henry didn’t move. I wanted him to come over to the bed, to take my hand and tell me he was sorry, that he’d try harder, but he didn’t. He stared at the door instead. “May I ask what precipitated this decision?”
There it was, the elephant in the room. The thing I wasn’t supposed to see. The thing that changed everything. “You kissed Persephone.”
At once, several emotions passed over his face. Shock, shame, humiliation, anger, pain—relief? Yes, relief, as well. “I did not expect her to tell you. I am sorry.”
Dead silence. Out of all the things I thought he might say, that had never crossed my mind. “That’s your response?” I blurted. “That you’re sorry I found out? Persephone didn’t tell me, Henry. It was this so-called gift. I was in the room with you. I saw every damn second of it. I heard every single word you said to her. I watched you do it.”
I blinked rapidly to stop myself from tearing up again, but I was fighting a losing battle. He didn’t care. He wasn’t even going to pretend he’d done something wrong. “You know what James told me at the end of the summer? He said I had a choice, and he was the only one who was going to tell me about it, because everyone else was so concerned with your happiness that they didn’t give a damn about mine. I told him I’d already made my choice when I’d married you, but he kept insisting I wait. I didn’t understand what he meant, but now I do.”
“James.” His name was twisted and ugly on Henry’s lips. “Yes, of course he would fool you into second-guessing yourself. For purely selfless reasons, I am certain.”
“I’m not second-guessing myself,” I snapped. “I’m second-guessing you. I’ve given you every chance in the world to show me that you want me here, and you’ve given me nothing. You run off whenever you think you’re going to have to be in a room alone with me for more than two minutes at a time. You don’t touch me, you barely talk to me, you haven’t so much as kissed me since I got here, let alone treat me like your wife. Like your equal. James warned me you’d do something like this, and I was stupid enough to insist he was wrong.”
Throwing James in his face again and again was cruel, but I couldn’t stop myself. Out of all the people in my life besides my mother, Henry was the one who was supposed to understand and know me best, not James.
“Then perhaps I should leave you and James be,” said Henry, and the thunder in his voice gave me goose bumps. “Is that what you want, Kate? My permission to be with him? You have it. For spring and summer, you may do whatever you wish with whomever you wish.”
“And what about fall and winter? Am I supposed to sit pretty and wait for the day you decide you love me?”
“I do love you.”
“Then show me.”
“I am trying,” he said sharply. “My apologies if it is not good enough for you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Doing nothing is never going to be good enough, Henry. Right now, from where I’m sitting, it looks like the last thing you want to be is my husband. You can say you love me all you want, but if you only ever act like the opposite’s true, then I can’t trust your words anymore.” My voice cracked. “Dammit—is this what it’s going to be like forever? Tell me now. Save me the misery if you’re never going to look at me the way you look at Persephone.”
“I cannot simply stop feeling something for her,” said Henry through clenched teeth. “She
was part of my life for a very long time.”
“I know. I know you love her. I’m not asking you to forget she ever existed—I’m asking you to put her in the past, where she belongs, and live your future with me, not a ghost.”
Henry’s throat constricted. “That is what I am trying to do.”
“But you’re not.” I ran my fingers through my hair, frustration building up inside of me. “Henry, you kissed her.”
“She kissed me.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I slammed my hand down on the mattress, and Pogo scurried underneath my pillow. “Don’t you get that? You wanted it. You enjoyed it. You wanted more once it was over. And everything she was trying to show you—she doesn’t love you anymore, don’t you get that? I do. I love you, and you’re going to lose me because you’re too afraid or too—too uninterested or—I don’t know. I don’t know why you won’t let me love you the way I want to.”
I waited for Henry to say something, anything to help me understand, but he was silent. Wildly I searched through every excuse I’d made for him since arriving, every possibility that had occurred to me. Anything that would explain the man I loved turning into a stranger.
The thing he’d said to Persephone, the reason why he’d bolted from the throne room that afternoon. “Is it because you think Calliope’s going to kill me the moment you let yourself feel something real for me? Because I’m immortal now, Henry. She can’t kill me anymore.”
“Cronus can.” The words came out so choked that I hardly understood them, but there it was. His excuse. I softened.
“Cronus didn’t.” I slid to the edge of the bed, close enough for him to reach me in two steps, but he stayed put. “He hunted us down, and when he had the chance to kill me, he didn’t.”
Finally Henry looked at me, his eyes glittering with confusion, but I kept going. If I let him change the subject, I would never be able to finish this.
“You don’t need to spend every waking moment protecting me now. I’m supposed to be your partner, not your burden, and if that’s all I’m ever going to be to you, then I don’t want to be here anymore. I want you to love me. I want to look forward to coming here every fall. I want winter to be my favorite season because I get to spend it with you. So tell me that’s going to happen, Henry. Tell me things are going to be better, that you’re not going to think of Persephone every time you touch me. Tell me that you’re going to love me as much as you love her, and that I won’t spend the rest of eternity paling in comparison to your memories of my sister.”
Silence.
“Please,” I whispered. “I’m begging you. If you don’t…if you don’t, I’m going to leave. And I don’t mean for the summer. I’m going to leave the Underworld, and I won’t come back.”
He flinched, and I instantly knew I’d said the wrong words, but I couldn’t take them back now. “Perhaps that is best,” he said. “You will be safer on the surface, and the others can protect you.”
“I don’t need protecting.” I was crying in earnest now, and my throat was thick and my voice strangled, but I kept going. “I need to know I’m not going to be miserable for the rest of my life.”
“I should not be your only source of happiness,” said Henry stiffly. “If that is so—”
“It isn’t. You’re not. I have my mother and Ava and—”
“James,” he finished for me, and I wanted to tell him he was wrong, but I didn’t want to lie to him. James was my best friend. “Yes, I am aware. I will not give you an excuse to leave. If you wish to do so, then there is the door. I am sure James will be happy to have you all to himself. Now, if you will excuse me, I have preparations to make.”
I opened my mouth to tell him where he could shove his assumptions, but his last words caught me off-guard. “Preparations for what? What’s so important that you have to leave when we’re in the middle of this?”
“My apologies,” he said coolly. “I thought you had already made your decision to abandon me.”
I snatched a pillow from behind me and hurled it at him. Without moving an inch, he deflected it before it was halfway to him. “You’re a jerk,” I snapped. “If this is how you treated Persephone, then you know what? I don’t blame her for leaving you. In fact, she was an idiot for waiting so long.”
Unspeakable agony flashed across Henry’s face, and I clapped my hand over my mouth the moment I realized what I’d said. “Oh, god, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“Yes, you did,” he said. “You meant every word.”
I buried my face in my hands and stifled a hiccupping sob. My lungs burned, and all I wanted to do was curl up on the bed and cry, but I couldn’t. Not when Henry was here. Not when he was finally talking to me. “I hate this,” I whispered. “I hate fighting with you. I’m not asking for the moon and the stars, I promise. I just want you to love me, to want me, to spend time with me, to talk to me.”
“And you expect to achieve that by behaving like this?” he said. “You believe that saying such things to me will somehow make me forget the eons I have already lived?”
“As opposed to what? Not saying anything at all? I’ve tried giving you time. I’ve tried risking my life to save yours. I’ve tried everything I can think of, but when you won’t even talk to me—”
“Henry.”
I looked up at the sound of Walter’s voice. He stuck his head in the door, and as he focused on Henry, he pointedly ignored me. I wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or offended.
“We are about to begin,” he said, and Henry nodded tersely. As soon as the door shut, Henry released a breath as if he’d been holding it for centuries.
“We may continue this later, if you wish, but I must go now. We are planning for the battle.” He hesitated. “Titans are strongest on the solstices, and we expect Cronus will escape completely sometime in late December, so there is not much time.”
I closed my eyes. If I hadn’t been stupid enough to sneak into the cavern, Persephone would have handled things, and none of this would be happening. “Would you mind if I took a day or two before I left? I want to say goodbye to everyone.”
At first Henry said nothing, but finally he nodded. “Take as long as you need.”
He was halfway out the door when I blurted, “Can I visit you sometime?”
In the moment it took him to turn to face me again, I thought I saw a hint of a smile, but it was gone before I could be sure. “Whatever happens between us, Kate, I will always want to be your friend. It—” He paused. “It is more than I have had before.”
More than what Persephone had given him. That brought me a small amount of comfort, though the distance in his voice kept me from smiling. “I’ll come see you sometime.”
“Then I will do what I can to ensure that you will not come back to an empty palace.”
“I— What?” He thought he wasn’t coming back? Or was he going to fade? Die in battle with Cronus? Did it even matter? “Henry, what do you—”
Before I could finish, thunder rumbled in the room, and Henry blinked out of sight, leaving me alone with fear and questions with no answers. I hurried to the door and threw it open, hoping in vain he’d be there, but I was alone.
It was over.
Chapter Sixteen
Battlefield
Henry didn’t come back after the meeting ended.
I stayed in our bedroom all day as I waited for him, preparing what I was going to say over and over again in my head, but nothing sounded right. Demanding the things I wanted from him—needed from him—wouldn’t fix anything. He had to decide to change; to work on this with me. To treat me like an equal and do whatever it took to keep our relationship alive. I couldn’t do it for him, and no amount of pressure was going to help. If anything, it would drive him away.
However, short of
a miracle, I was leaving. I’d set aside the clothes I was going to bring with me, and all day I thought about what I was going to do and where I was going to go. I didn’t know anyone else on the surface, and I had no idea how the others lived. Did they have homes like Henry did? Did Mount Olympus really exist? Did they have mortals they loved and stopped in to see every few years?
Part of the reason I wanted to delay my trip was to give Henry the chance to realize what had gone wrong between us, along with the opportunity to fix it. We wouldn’t be perfect in a day, I knew that, but there was a chance he would try. In the end, that was all I really wanted.
However, the other reason I was delaying was simply because I didn’t know what to do. I could ask my mother, I supposed, or James or Ava, but they were planning their strategy to survive a battle with a Titan, and the last thing they needed was something else to worry about. I wasn’t going to abandon the council and walk away from my immortal life, but I didn’t know where to go or how to get there, and for now that was a good enough excuse to stay put.
The day passed slowly. Every time I heard footsteps in the hallway, I held my breath and waited for the door to open, but it was never Henry. My mother checked on me twice, once after the meeting to tell me she would be scarce while helping the others set the trap for Cronus, and the second time to wish me good-night. With each hour that passed, my heart sank a little more, and finally I gave up hope of seeing Henry that night.
I wasn’t tired, but Pogo was. He curled up on the pillow beside me and snored while I stared up at the ceiling and tried to picture how this would end. Would Henry say goodbye? Would he really want me to visit him? Would the other gods ignore me? My mother wouldn’t, and I could count on seeing Ava whenever she grew bored or lonely, but the others—even James I wasn’t sure about, unless he decided to pursue me once I was no longer married. Would I let him? I didn’t know, and I hated myself for my uncertainty. For even thinking about hurting Henry like that, whether we were still together or not.