by Lucy Auburn
She slapped me, the sharp black nails on her hands scratching my cheek. I sobbed and put my hand to it, stumbling back at the rage in her eyes. I wondered if that was what I looked like when I was angry, because there was no mistaking our resemblance.
“I’m sorry,” I said, despite knowing that the pleading was useless. “I didn’t—I didn’t—”
“Mean to?” Her voice was cruel. I stumbled back into the darkness and felt the whispers rise around me, louder and more threatening than before. Persephone’s eyes flashed at me. “We both know that you meant to, my darling, and for that you will pay. Guards!”
I didn’t know who she was calling until they melted out of the columns beside the throne and marched towards me. There were four guards, simulacrums like the ones in front of the Collective, little more than animated clay. Falling to my knees, I pressed my hand to the necklace, the last thing I could think of to try: the thing that got me there.
As the guards reached out and grabbed me by the shoulders, Persephone looked at me and saw where my hand had fallen. She chuckled, the sound dark and empty.
“Don’t bother,” she said. “The present I gave to you when you were a baby was meant to bring you here and keep you here. There’s no way out, my darling.” Leaning in close, she placed a too-warm hand against my injured cheek, and I flinched as the heat doubled the pain. “You won’t be getting away from me again, daughter of mine. Not now that I can see what you’ve become. So much power.” The hand stroked my chin. “And not a single clue how to use it, or what it’s for.”
At the wave of her hand the guards dragged me through a previously unseen door in the wall, one that appeared out of nowhere like a spell. They brought me down twists of hallways until I felt completely lost, and threw me in a room.
One with a beautiful silk bed and a dresser full of expensive clothing. A room with everything a girl from a fairy tale might want: a bowl full of little candies that refilled automatically, a floor-to-ceiling mirror, a music box with animated dancers. A bedroom that, I soon came to realize, had been made for the little girl I hadn’t been in years.
Because I was here to be my mother’s life-sized dress-up doll, complete with moving limbs.
And the game had only just begun.
3
Selena
I’d tried more than once to find my way back to that crack in the wall. But as I’d discovered since my mother first started letting me leave my gilded cage—after more than a little begging and sucking up on my end—the Underworld didn’t exactly stick to the laws of physics.
Hallways around here had the tendency to move. Doors disappeared then reappeared, many times somewhere new.
It took me half a dozen escape attempts and a number of guards (culminating in the demigod who shadowed me now) to discover that there was any kind of pattern to the maze I was being held in. Persephone still seemed to believe that I was hopelessly lost and incapable of escaping, but I’d figured out that as much as things moved in the Underworld, they didn’t completely change. Not really.
My room, for one, always had the same carving on its stone door. It was a relief of two women, one kneeling at the other’s feet, swirls of power and magic around them. I’d always imagined that the cruel face on the standing woman was Persephone, and the younger, worshipful woman kneeling at her feet was meant to be me. No doubt in my mother’s fantasies I would one day stop rebelling against her and instead bend to her will, joining her side-by-side in ruling Hell. She’d said as much more than once.
Where her husband, King of the Underworld, fit into this fantasy, I’d never known or asked. Based on the way she said his name, I had the feeling that my mother’s plans for him included the killing of the god.
I gave her what she wanted when she told me about her grand plans for her future: soft smiles, murmurs of agreement, and nods of recognition. She decided to forgive me for my insolent stabbing of her and “move past it” for both our sakes. To help sell the lie, I claimed that my wandering around the Underworld was a human’s curiosity—and if she believed it was anything else, her hubris preventing her from seeing that I was learning and observing more and more each day.
But to keep that freedom I had to keep her trust. I had to go along with her plans and her games, or she’d lock me in my room again and I wouldn’t come out for years. So I did whatever she asked of me, whether it was letting her braid my hair or using Damen as her little experiment, feeding off him when she asked and showing her the powers that it gave me.
His mouth was always stiff beneath my lips when I pressed our mouths together to feed off him. If he opened himself to me and let me feed, it was only perfunctory and cold; nothing like kissing Tae Min, Naomi, Vincent, Leon, or Elah. More like the times I’d used my powers on suspects.
Afterwards I would hold my hands out and show Persephone how I could make electricity buzz between my fingers for a moment, the demigod’s powers becoming mine from the kiss. I never told her about the visions I got from him, how I dreamed of decades past and knew he’d fallen in love once—and promptly had his heart broken. It made me uncomfortable to feel anything other than distant curiosity and revulsion about Damen, so I buried it all and pretended like it didn’t exist.
My ability to use the guard’s powers always made my mother squeal with delight.
“So strong,” she would say, a flicker of something unsettling in her eyes. “What happened those times you fed off the demon guards I put at your door?”
I told her, haltingly, my stomach in knots. My demigod guard watched impassively as I shared everything with my mother; if our occasional staged kisses did anything for him, he never said. He wasn’t exactly the talkative type, and I had the feeling that his servitude to my mother was part of a fall from grace.
Sometimes I thought he didn’t see me escape my room on purpose. At times it almost seemed like he took his sweet time rotating the guards in front of my door—there were two others who were nothing but simulacrums of him—and that he frequently disappeared to “inspect” sounds he’d heard in other hallways, just so I could wander for a few precious minutes.
But that was impossible. The demigod served my mother, a goddess far more powerful than he would ever be, being half human. He would never defy her. If he intentionally turned his back and ignored my creeping around, it was because my mother told him to.
And if she punished him for losing me, it was only another sign of her madness.
Madness that I saw most clearly when she brought the human to my room and happily announced that she’d be teaching me how to torture him.
“It’ll be such fun, Selena,” she said with an impish smile, as all the blood drained from my face. “They squeal like pigs when you cut them. You’ll see.”
Behind me, I could hear the demigod breathing, his throat no doubt bruised from my mother’s inhuman grip. He stared over my shoulder at the trussed-up human man, but if he had any opinions about torture they didn’t show in his eyes. As passive as ever, that Damen.
In comparison I felt like I was going to scream and gag until I drowned in my own bile.
“Surely there’s something else we can do instead of... that.” My stomach was queasy at the fear in the man’s eyes. “It just sounds so unpleasantly, uh, messy.”
Persephone quirked a brow at me. Her tone became petulant. “I thought that you wanted to bond,” she said, eyes flashing. “Or isn’t that what you told me last night at dinner?”
Dinner was a drawn-out affair we had at a table that sat much more than two people, with enough courses for royalty—which she was. If I’d told Persephone that I wanted to bond with her, the memory was buried in all the lamb chops and berry ice cream we’d eaten.
“I didn’t realize it would be like this,” I said, afraid that she would sense my weakness and somehow find a way to punish me for it. “Doesn’t the blood get all over your nice silk wraps?”
That was the wrong thing to say, apparently, because she gestured towards her br
ight red clothing with a smirk. “Red on red never shows. You have five outfits like this one. Change into one in your dressing room.”
For some reason I found myself looking over at Damen, as if he was going to do something about this. But that was foolish; he wasn’t even looking at me, just straight ahead into the distance like all this didn’t exist.
I went into the room that adjoined my bedroom—I had four rooms in my suite now total, as a reward for being good—and changed slowly into the red outfit. It had gold embroidery and thickly stitched hems, and was light but non-revealing. I did my best to wrap it and throw the end over my shoulder. As always it took several pins to keep it from falling apart.
I spent as long as possible getting dressed, but it wasn’t long enough. One way or another I had to go out now and face what Persephone had in store for me.
I walked back into the room and glanced over at the man she was going to show me how to torture. Looking at Persephone’s cruel and heartless face, I wondered if this was how I would lose my humanity, or if, as her daughter, I’d never really had any to begin with.
“You may go now.” The flatness of her eyes and dismissive way she flipped her hand at me made it clear that Persephone wasn’t pleased with my performance. “I can see now that I was wrong to hope you would grow in your time here with me. Clearly your upbringing made a deeper impression on you than I’d believed in the beginning. Clean yourself up.”
As I walked towards the door I slipped on the blood and shuddered all over. It was on my hands, my feet, and my mouth. There was a little sticking my hair to my forehead, and more than a little soaked into the silk of my wrap.
Damen walked with me towards my room; his shift was over, but I didn’t ask him why he hadn’t yet called in one of his replacements. The other guards who took over his duties were simulacrums who he lent his power to so that he could sleep or eat or... whatever demigods did when they weren’t looking at you from the corners of their eyes, no doubt judging the tears slipping down your cheeks.
I wanted to stop crying. I didn’t want to show him my weakness. But the tears just wouldn’t let up. Even as we turned the corner and headed towards my room, I could still hear the man’s screams. I could still remember the way it felt when Persephone made me put my hands on him and seduce him with my powers, taking the pain and unwillingness away.
Until she had me snap our connection so that it all flooded back to him at once. The look in his eyes—the betrayal and fear—was the worst part of it. His expression hadn’t been all that different from my foster mother’s face when I used my powers on her to get her to tell me a secret she’d been keeping from me. After, when I realized what I’d done and stopped myself, I’d seen the monster I was reflected in her eyes.
And now I got to see that monster every day when I looked at my mother.
I stopped in the middle of the throne room on the way back to my suite, heart pounding erratically. My hands were trembling so bad that I couldn’t even wrap them around myself properly, as hard as I tried. Shaky and exhausted, I wanted nothing more than to just stop. Stop moving. Stop letting my mother turn me into this monster. Stop trying so hard to escape when it was impossible.
Falling to my knees on the smooth tile floor, I bent over in the middle and closed my eyes. A ragged sob clenched my throat, but I held it in, trying my best to keep the tears from falling. The last thing I wanted was to fall apart in front of Damen. He wouldn’t say a word, wouldn’t even care, but I would know that he’d seen me at my weakest.
At my darkest.
I bit down on the pain and horror so hard that my teeth hurt, clenching my shaking hands in my lap and breathing through my mouth so I wouldn’t have to smell the blood on my skin. I could still taste it, though, against my mouth where she made me kiss him, made me use my terrible, cursed powers to leech the strength and goodness out of the man.
“He wasn’t an angel, you know.” That was Damen’s voice, clear and in control as always—but coming from closer than I expected. I looked up from my own misery and was shocked to see that he was kneeling right in front of me, an unfamiliar look in his eyes. “They don’t wind up down here because they’re good people,” he continued, sounding more like he was giving me a lecture than comforting me. “What she does to them, it’s exactly what they deserve.”
My mouth twisted at the excuse buried in his words. “You’ve done it for her too, haven’t you? Tortured humans.”
“Yes.” He said it so simply, nothing emotional in his tone, but my eyes were drawn to his hands. They clenched and loosened, and he swallowed visibly, a look in his eyes like he was remembering something unpleasant. “Your mother has tests she gives us to prove our loyalty. This was yours.” He leaned forward, a troubled line crinkling his smooth forehead. “You should try better the next time she gives you one. Otherwise you’ll wind up finding out just how inventive she can get when someone crosses her.”
I stared up at him, irritated and ashamed of everything he no doubt saw when he looked at me: weakness, naivety, and hypocrisy. “I’m not going to torture someone just to save myself.”
“Then what did you do in there?”
My stomach roiled, and I was thankful that Persephone gave me this test before our elaborate nightly dinner. “I took away his pain,” I whispered, hearing the excuses in my own voice. “I tried to... to convince her not to go quite so... far.”
There was something kind in Damen’s voice when he responded next, and somehow that made it worse, not better. “You may be her daughter, Selena, but even you won’t be able to change her. She is who she is because of the life she’s lived for millennia. You won’t get through to her.”
I knew he was right, even though I glared at him for it.
The thing was, though, I had to keep trying to get through to her. Even if it was useless. Not because I wanted to have a mother-daughter relationship with her, or because I thought she would be merciful to me if I could just... somehow convince her to be good.
No, I was determined to get through to her for one very selfish reason: if I could turn my mother into someone with an ounce of light in her, maybe that was proof that I wasn’t doomed. That I wasn’t all darkness and despair, with nothing redeemable in me but the faint whiff of my unknown father’s blood.
If Damen was right, though, I had a better chance of pulling the moon down from the sky.
4
Selena
That night I had a nightmare.
I wasn’t actually asleep for it. It was a waking vision, because I couldn’t seem to sink into real dreams. Despite the comfort of my bed, I tossed and turned for hours. The dinner I’d eaten with Persephone sat uncomfortably in my stomach; we hadn’t talked through all seven courses, most of which went cold and uneaten on my plate.
My discomfort continued into the night. I could see his frightened face when I closed my eyes, but worse than that was the look on his face when I used my powers on him. He’d been so easy to take over and control. The more time I spent in the Underworld, the better I seemed to get at being a succubus. Using my powers on my demon guards, and later Damen, had proven to make me capable of more and more each day.
It haunted me how easy it was now. Especially with a human like the one my mother brought to me. His soul, still taking the physical form of his body from when he was alive, bent to my will like clay in a potter’s hands. I could’ve made him do—or say—anything that I wanted.
Anything at all.
So I didn’t sleep. And I didn’t dream. But I did see things: images, and memories, until eventually they turned into something else. I sat up in bed as I felt it close around me, impossible to avoid.
A vision from the man’s life.
I was standing in a park, green grass beneath my feet, a grin on my face so big that I could feel it. A little boy, no older than five or six, ran through the grass in front of me. He laughed and laughed as I swooped and stomped, making silly faces and voices as I faux chased him.
&
nbsp; “I’m gonna get you!” My voice was the voice of the man I’d tortured with my powers; it was hard to recognize him at first, because I’d only ever heard him scream, but I knew that it was him. “C’mere Ryan, Daddy is gonna get you!”
The little boy giggled as I took a great step forward and bent down to tickle his middle, making silly noises. Despite myself I knew that I smiled outside the vision, too; it was impossible not to, when I could feel the father’s love for his child.
But then she came.
I saw her car—the one I’d bought for her—roll up to the curb. Tension stole the grin from my face as she got out and strode towards us, her strides quick and long, the twist to her mouth unhappy.
Her eyes snapped to me and she said, “What the hell are you doing, John?”
The anger in my chest was something horrifying and growing. I wanted to reach out and wrap my hands around her neck, to squeeze the life from her and watch as her eyes faded. But the little boy was there, and I had to protect him.
For a moment I snapped out of the vision and I was me again: Selena, Selena Pierce, I reminded myself. Daughter of Jake and Leah—no, daughter of Persephone and the unknown man, fae and succubus, as well as something more.
But just as quickly as the vision left me it pulled me down again, and I was him once more.
This time things were different, though.
Instead of standing in the park with a child I was in a home, the lights low, looking at her. I felt the loathing in my chest, the anger and rage. She was looking at me with wide eyes, and all I could think was: how dare she. How dare she look at me like I was some kind of monster, when I gave her everything, and she would be nothing without me.
That was when I did it, when I advanced on her and put my hands around her throat. It felt amazing, like every dream I’d ever had but better. The sound of her whimpering, the way she clawed my arms until blood flowed, the flutter of her pulse against my fingers: all of it thrilled me. None of it horrified me.