The Mad King (The Dark Kings)

by Jovee Winters

  “Then I began to age.” She brushed her fingers against her forehead, her eyes. “Wrinkles. Lines. He did not like it. Aegaeon wanted a nubile youth, not a woman grown. At first it was simply insults. But then it became physical. I didn’t know what to think at first, so I allowed him to do to me as he would. He was rich. I was not.”

  She shrugged as if it were the obvious and only choice she’d had, but my fingers clenched tight, and dead or not, I found myself wanting to find that sick bastard and beat him to a bloody pulp until he died all over again.

  “We were not wedded—without his support I’d be out on the streets to fend for myself. I had no place to turn. The first time he punched me, he shattered my eye socket. Left me blind in that eye for the rest of my life. He was sorry, of course.” She waved her fingers airily. “Vowed he’d never do it again. And I believed him. Things were good again. For a time.” Her words ended on a soft sigh.

  I shook my head, wanting to ask her to stop. I didn’t need this. I was here to forget my own past, not to learn of hers. Not to feel sympathy for someone I’d not remember the moment that water passed my lips.

  As if she knew what I’d been thinking, she looked askance at me, pretty eyes wide and knowing in her beautiful face. And my impatience and fury at that pedophile abated just a little.

  Soft pink lips tipped at the corners and I couldn’t understand how, for even a moment, Aegaeon could ever believe Amara to be anything other than utter perfection. If she’d been alive in my time, she’d have no doubt graced the covers of the Victoria Secret catalog, Vogue, and whatever else was high-end and posh. Even old, she’d have been a stunner.

  “A few days later, I bumped into my male cousin at the market. We talked. That was all. But rumors did what they always do, and when they reached Aegaeon’s ears, the rage returned. I almost died after that beating; it took months to heal and I never walked right again. Little by little, Aegaeon broke me. Turned me from something beautiful into something deformed and twisted, where no man would ever want me, would ever try to take me away from him. In the end, I took a blade to my own throat to escape him.” Her smile was weak, and the tears ran freely down both cheeks now.

  My sadness mingled with hers as I asked, “Why would you tell me this?”

  “Because though the latter years of my life were the most miserable, I would never want to forget the love I once knew. The memories of a family that I cherished until the day of my death. They sustain me even now, and I know someday I will find them again.”

  “Where are they? Shouldn’t they have come here with you?”

  She shrugged. “The underworld is vast. But I will never stop searching. Lethe is to your left.” She pointed, and I glanced over, noting the empty gazes of those who’d drunk from its waters. “But know this, little Alice Hu. If you take too much of those addictive waters, you won’t simply forget your life, you’ll forget it all. You’ll be nothing more than a shell. There is no returning from that. So make sure it’s really what you want.”

  Clenching my jaw, I shook my head and gripped my chest. Her story hurt me deeply, but I wasn’t Amara. Yes, I’d had a good family. But they would never come here. And it hurt to know that I would always be alone and trapped in this hell. I didn’t want to remember everything. Didn’t want to remember the hope, the disappointment, or the reality that I would always be alone in a land where I had nothing and no one I loved.

  “I see that you’re determined, and so I will share with you one final bit of information I have learned. I do not know whether it is true or not, but I’ve been told that if you were to merely dip your finger in its waters and trace your lips, you’ll only lose a very little bit.”

  My eyes widened. I’d wanted to lose it all, but if there was a way to erase the pain but leave my good memories intact, wasn’t it worth a shot?

  I wet my lips, the first faint stirrings of hope I’d felt in a very long time fluttering in me. “If that’s the case, then why wouldn’t you try to erase Aegaeon from your memories?”

  Amara held up her hands. “Because I do not know if it’s true, and I would never risk losing my family over him a second time. But if your heart is fixed, then I pray for your sake that it works.”

  I looked back to the river, heart thundering in my chest with nerves. Drink my fill and remember nothing at all. Be numb to everything, but always empty. That thought was bleak and depressing. Dip my finger in the water and taste of it, possibly lose only the pain, but keep the rest. Was it a risk worth taking?

  That strange, echoing emptiness inside me pitched violently, opening up the fissure that’d closed for just a moment while talking with Amara. Yes, anything was better than this hollow yearning for a man I’d never known at all.

  And yet my feet refused to move.

  And so there I stood on the bank, watching others practically throw themselves into the waters as they sank beneath the coolness with ghosts and tears in their eyes and coming back up with nothing but a void, empty gazes staring back at me.

  I needed peace, but was this really the way?

  That same sense of disquieting “something” held me back, and even as I damned my inability to make any sort of decision, I was also strangely comforted that there was an escape for me, as long as I could work up the nerve to go take it.

  ~*~

  Aphrodite

  Marching up to Hades’s throne, I shook my head and gathered my teal-colored chiton in my hands with barely checked rage at the Lord of the Underworld.

  His gaze flickered briefly to my face before he began shaking his head. “And so you’ve returned?” he said, voice sounding as dead as the souls surrounding him.

  Angry, frustrated, I shoved at the tendrils of amber hair curling prettily around my face. “I found her,” I spat without preamble.

  A dark brow twitched, slowly rising on his broad forehead before lowering. “And so you have. You are fortunate I do not toss you out on your pretty little arse for continuing to interfere in the lives of my—”

  “Your what!” I snapped, my frustration over the entire situation taking over. “You ignore them all. You sit here on your throne day in and day out and you shut out the world around you. Those people”—I shot my hand out—“need to feel your presence. They need to know you’re real, that you love them, that you—”

  He growled, the sound echoing through his vast chambers like the snarl of a demon ripping out from the bowels of hell. An all too appropriate visualization for my uncle right now—his hair looked unwashed and unkempt. He was still surrounded by a field of raging snowfall and clinging to that damned sword like all the answers to life could be found in it.

  “You do not belong here, Aphrodite! You overstep yourself, coming to my lands. Trying to tell me what—”

  Crossing my arms, I snarled, “Oh, shut your pretty face, Uncle, and listen to me for once! She is even now agonizing over her decision to dip herself into the river Lethe. Look, believe me or not, that’s not my problem.” I slashed a hand viciously through the air. “But I am telling you that Alice Hu is your best shot at finding purpose and meaning again. If you let her forget herself, then that magic she and the Hatter forged in the alternate timeline will forever disappear right along with her. The lives of so many hinge upon them.”

  Lowering my voice, feeling cold and empty inside even as the rage still coiled tighter around my heart, I hiccupped on a sob. “Can’t you see, can’t you feel that what I told you before was true? Is there no part of you, Uncle, that doesn’t want more than this bleak existence you’ve made for yourself?”

  His features were shuttered as he stared hard at me, and it was all I could do not to cry. I was a goddess, used to getting my way in all things. But with Hades I wasn’t even certain I could use force on him. My uncle had always been different than the rest of our pantheon. And even if I could twist his actions, I could never do that to him. The choice had to be his alone—it was the only way this could work.

  I blinked, feeling broken a
nd desperate. Wringing my hands, I whispered, “I went to her, as one of your own, and told her that if she merely dips a finger into the waters of Lethe she will only forget the pain. I had to give her hope, you see. I had to make her believe she has choices.”

  His jaw muscle twitched. “You know that even touching the waters is far too dangerous for a spirit. Its coolness is addictive, its waters intoxicating. She might not be strong enough to resist its siren lure for more.”

  I nodded miserably. “I know. But a person with no options is a person without hope. You’ve got to help her, Hades. You’ve got to allow Hatter to come here.”

  Adjusting his position on his throne, a small spark of hope flared in my chest as I felt him truly give me his undivided attention for the first time. His beautiful dark blue eyes narrowed intelligently as he said, “I have listened to the little spirit’s soul, as you asked. Hatter is the very reason for her depression. I do not believe she would enjoy seeing him here.”

  “No, you’re wrong.” I clutched my hands together. I had to make him see, had to make him believe, or bringing Alice here had been for nothing at all. “He is her heartbeat and she his. She just doesn’t remember. But he can make her, he can unlock her memories, her true memories, and restore order to Kingdom.”

  He snorted. “And what is Kingdom to me? I do not care, nor do I—”

  “She resides in Kingdom, Uncle. Surely you know this. I’ve caught you peeking in on Calypso.”

  “You spy on me?” A growl reverberated through his words, rocking the very foundation of the ebony-colored marble floor beneath my feet. I notched my chin and held his fiery gaze.

  “Aye. I do. And I will not apologize for it. You know who I am and why this is so important to me. I would see you all restored. Please, Uncle, I would give you anything in return if you would just believe in me.”

  Closing my eyes, I held perfectly still. I’d played my last hand. My final ace. There was nothing more precious in all the pantheon than to be owed a favor. It didn’t matter what he asked of me, I would grant it.

  And judging by the way I felt the tension in the room suddenly thicken, I knew I’d finally gotten to him.

  “Anything?” His question echoed like rolling thunder through the chamber.

  Opening my eyes, I didn’t flinch at the sudden greed in his gaze as I said, “Anything at all.”

  “Leave. Leave my realm and never return.”

  I gasped, not sure why I was surprised, but I was. “What?”

  “Go. Your entrance here is barred. Now go!”

  And with those words, I was cast out of the underworld. Startled, confused, I stared at my opulent chambers and clutched at my heavily beating chest.

  This couldn’t be how it all ended.

  It just couldn’t be.

  Chapter 9

  Hades

  A promise made was a promise kept.

  I could no more tolerate Aphrodite’s censorious gaze or her constant meddling in my affairs, but she had stirred a curiosity in me I’d been unable to forget.

  She was right. I did study Calypso.

  In the waters of a world that I knew not, I watched the elemental goddess, curious for the first time in a long time as to how it could possibly have been her and me.

  And something restless in me came to life. Like a caged lion, I paced back and forth, drowning in so many questions.

  First and foremost, how I could possibly have forgotten someone who supposedly meant the world to me? Not that I believed Aphrodite entirely, but I’d been making inquiries of late.

  I told no one, but I had made a visit to the sands of time, and I’d asked Time only one question.

  Had time moved?

  His answer had been simply... yes.

  For days since visiting Time, I’d pondered all that that could mean. Was Aphrodite lying? I no longer thought so.

  And though I could not fathom a world in which I’d ever known love or true joy, I grew more and more curious by it. And so I watched Calypso.

  Studied her lithe movements, her violent tempers, and bit by bit, little by little, I found myself at times fidgeting and restless. But Calypso was an elemental. A primordial form of us, not as evolved or as intelligent.

  Everyone knew primordials were primitive and far too ancient to ever change. They simply weren’t as developed as the rest of us.

  And then one day I’d heard her song carried upon the currents of my own waters. The song was haunting, melodic, and full of angst. It’d touched me deeply. And though it’d only lasted a few moments, I could not seem to forget it.

  Calypso had no form. She was simply water. But in that song, I’d heard a reflection of my own soul. I couldn’t understand it and couldn’t hope to make sense of it, but I had to know more.

  Feeling irrational but determined, I set out to find and study this mysterious little human that Aphrodite seemed to care so much about. If unlocking Alice Hu’s past was the key to learning my own, then there was no other choice.

  ~*~

  Alice

  I felt his eyes on me. The Lord of the Underworld watching me, his mood pensive. I knew he was rethinking his decision to bring me here. Or at least it’s what I’d suspected. For many days now he’d visited me, always keeping to the periphery of my vision, but not trying to hide either. Letting me know he was there, though keeping enough space to put me at ease.

  Hades was as tortured as I was. It wasn’t hard to figure that out. I felt it to the very marrow of my being.

  The depths of his depression and loneliness. How swirls and torrents of ice and snow always seemed to follow in his wake, even if he walked through the fields of Elysium, which were supposed to be eternally green and verdant.

  Flowers withered and died beneath his feet.

  The ground shuddered.

  The skies turned gray.

  A lot like what happened with me. We were two sides of the same coin, and in that at least, I felt a strange kinship to him.

  For some time now, I’d heard the chatter among the dead. Something was terribly wrong with their Lord of the Underworld. The dead were not happy. They spoke of a time when Persephone had first arrived here, when for a period, things had been better. Livelier. But it had been some time since Spring had made her presence known, and things were just different.

  Sitting on the banks of the river Lethe, I ran my fingers through the water, watching in a numbed haze as the waters of forgetfulness dripped from between my slender fingers. It’d been days since I’d spoken with Amara, and though I’d not yet drunk of the water (that I recall), I was starting to forget things.

  Maybe it was because I played in the water so long. I wasn’t sure. All I knew was I was starting to feel better. I could no longer remember what it was that’d brought me to these waters; the only thing I remembered with any sort of clarity was the memory of that pain. So deep, so all-consuming that there’d been no peace even in death.

  It must have been awful, whatever it’d been that brought me here. I still remembered parts of my past. My living. Though it was hazy and there were holes in my memories, images that simply felt smudged out and blurred around the edges so that I couldn’t really recall much of anything.

  Emptiness coursed through my veins. I’d come to forget. And now I had. But suddenly I worried that I’d made a terrible decision, because whatever it was I’d forgotten felt like it’d once been vital, necessary. There was a hole inside me, a yawning emptiness that stretched like fingers toward infinity.

  I shivered and then sniffed, wiping at the near-constant, fat tears coursing down both cheeks.

  “Why do you cry, little human?” The voice was deep, melodious, and made me tremble from the raw power trapped behind the words.

  Looking up, I stared into the dark eyes of Hades himself. Trapped within the depth of his gaze licked bright curls of fire. He was nothing like the Disney version I’d grown up on. He didn’t have the head of blue flame or the angular, sharp features that nearly always conn
oted a villain in disguise. Hades was a beautiful man.

  Dark, shaggy hair that made my heart clench with the echoing memories of that which had been lost to me. Dark eyes and swarthy features.

  A devil...

  I frowned, wondering where that thought had come from.

  Moving slowly, seeming not to want to startle me, he knelt beside me. The circle of grass around his booted feet began to slowly curl inward, turning from a deep jeweled green to a light jade, to yellow, brown, before turning to particles of ash and blowing away on the chilly breeze.

  Snow drifted lazily around his shoulders.

  “Why does she fight for you, little Alice Hu?” he asked, voice grown thoughtful.

  I blinked, realizing he still waited on me to speak. I swallowed hard. Grabbing hold of my stomach, I forced myself to speak, though my vocal chords were woefully out of practice and no part of me wanted to.

  It felt so much easier to breathe when I was numb.

  “No one... wants me,” I croaked haltingly, voice rough from disuse.

  His strong jaw clenched and his shaggy brows lowered into a tight vee. “You’re wrong there, spirit.”

  I shook my head, feeling the malaise begin to wind through me again. Tipping my hand over, I held very still as a flake of snow drifted upon it, and was pleasantly surprised to note it did not melt.

  It was a beautiful, jeweled thing, with seven spikes and a glassy flower at its center. Starlike shapes surrounded it, framed in frost. I smiled. I’d always loved winter. Or at least the idea of it. Having grown up in Oahu, I’d never seen it for myself. But a memory tried to worm through my mind.

  Something tugged at my consciousness.

  Amorphous visions of moving shapes rolled through my mind. Black skies and gray clouds, snow falling like powdered sugar all around. Something warm burned through my belly, curling and winding snakelike in on itself.

  That heat began to undulate up my arms, settling into my fingers. I didn’t know what I was doing.