by Lucy Auburn
So I squeezed and squeezed until there was nothing there anymore but a body. As I lowered her to the ground, all I could think was finally. She’d gotten what she deserved, and now I was free of her.
This time when I came out of the vision I was horrified—and then angry. All that time I’d spent being upset that I tortured the man when it turned out he was just some asshole who’d killed his wife.
Not only that, but he’d wanted to kill her. He’d dreamed about it for months—no, years—before he wrapped his hands around her throat and ended her life. When I thought of the happy little boy running into his father’s arms, I was horrified to realize that he was out there somewhere, real and probably living with the knowledge that his father killed his mother.
Suddenly I wanted to go back into that room where Persephone was keeping John and put my own hands around his throat.
But no, that was wrong—no matter what he’d done, I couldn’t let myself become him. I breathed deep and slow, in through my nose and out through my mouth, certain now that the last of the visions were gone. As long as I didn’t feed on him again, I wouldn’t have to see his life like that anymore. I could live in my own skin, and dream my own dreams.
This time, when I put my head against the pillow, I didn’t have any nightmares. What I’d done didn’t feel like something to lay awake over now that I knew the person whose screams had haunted me felt no guilt at all for his own crimes.
Now that I was in the Underworld, and quite possibly trapped with no escape, I was going to have to get used to living with the sounds of human souls screaming in agony.
Even though it felt like a long shot, I got up the next morning planning on finding a gap in Damen’s schedule and using it to explore again. There was a new hall off the south end of the throne room (it wasn’t really south, but I’d decided the throne was “north” as far as I was concerned). If I got the chance I would walk up and down it, searching the walls for another crack like the last one—but hopefully bigger this time.
The longer I spent living and sleeping in my mother’s portion of the Underworld, the bigger it seemed to become. She roamed endless halls and made more on a whim, living like a woman with boundless magic—or, more accurately, like the god she was. If her husband cared that she spent so much time away from him, there were no signs of it. Despite being afraid he’d storm in and kill me when I first came down here, I still hadn’t seen Hades. His name was rarely even spoken, and if it was, always in a hushed tone.
I still didn’t know how big the Underworld was, or what was on the other side of those double doors in the throne room. I’d tried to sneak into them more than once, but it had proven impossible for me. My mother’s magic was the only kind to open them, and she was too aware of my desire to escape to let me slip past her. I couldn’t even peer past her while she walked through the doors—the other side was nothing but blinding white light, though I knew there had to be something more there.
So I occupied my time looking for another crack like the one before. As soon as Damen’s night shift simulacrum went on relief, Damen showed up and I spent a few minutes watching him through a small crack in between my door and the door frame.
I could always tell whether it was Damen or a simulacrum standing guard. The difference between the real thing and the fakes was obvious, because real Damen didn’t just stand there staring straight ahead. He did things, like shift his weight or sigh, showing his very living boredom.
And he got distracted. He was almost always drawn into a conversation first thing in the morning with one of the demon guards who stood watch on a door across from mine. It was the moment I’d take to sneak past him.
How I did it sometimes worried me.
Somehow, in the course of my short time with Elah, I’d stolen a little of his powers. Most specifically, what he called his “shadow form,” an ability that let him (and his horse) sneak past enemy forces without being seen unless he wanted to be seen.
It didn’t make any sense; as a succubus, I shouldn’t have been able to take powers so easily when I drained people, much less keep them. My mother’s blood in me no doubt had something to do with it, as well as whatever magic held the Underworld together. My hair hadn’t grown at all since coming here, and even though we ate dinner every day I was never really hungry. Somehow, the powers I had from Elah were still with me too, as if I was frozen exactly the way I was when I first arrived.
I used that shadow form to sneak past Damen and the demon guard now. They couldn’t see me, though I knew from the things Elah told me that if I was too loud they’d be able to hear me. More than once Damen looked over his shoulder in my direction and I froze, but he never actually spotted me.
Maybe my mother’s blood was good for something, even though I would’ve chosen to be human any day instead of having her madness run in my veins.
As soon as I hit the back hallway I picked up the pace, no longer afraid of being overheard. There wasn’t much time; Damen’s morning conversations rarely lasted longer than a few minutes. As always, the darkness of these hallways seemed to whisper and curse at me, but over time I’d gotten used to just ignoring whatever tortured spirits lived in them. With a hand on one wall, I walked through the twists and turns until I saw a light at the end of the darkness.
Although it looked promising at first, the closer I got to the light the clearer it became that I’d gotten my hopes up. This wasn’t the bright blue-white light of the crack I’d found when I was first here. It was the distant orange-and-yellow glow of a fire.
I slowed down, gathering the shadow form to me again. I could feel my skin warm with the power of Elah’s abilities as I used them. When I looked at my hand I could see through it, which was how I knew that the powers were working.
Cautiously, I approached the light. The tunnel widened to a large, circular cavern at its end. It was like other rooms I’d found down here, various places that my mother seemed to have created for no other reason than boredom. They usually had mosaics on the wall, beautiful carved tiles, and the same ugly cooled lava ceiling the entire Underworld seemed to share.
Except unlike those other rooms, this one wasn’t empty.
I stood at the edge of the darkness for a moment, observing the figure sitting in front of the fire burning in the middle of the room. He was tall and hunched over, wearing all black, the little of his skin that I could see a dark rich brown. Ashes fell from his hair into the flames, which burned bright and gave off a lot of smoke. It looked like he’d made the fire out of furniture from the room; there were a few table legs and chair backs sticking out of it.
On four points of the room, their bodies made out of hellfire and nightmares, four demons stood guard. They looked like they were keeping the man here in this room, but when he looked up from the fire towards one of them I got the sense that he chose to be guarded more than anything.
While I watched, silent and wary, the man uncurled from his hunched-over position and walked towards the demon guard closest to me. Now that he was standing away from the fire’s smoke I could see him more clearly. He was tall and broad-shouldered, his thick wrists suggesting he’d held a sword more than once. The stiff collar of his uniform went all the way up his neck and brushed against his jawline, and his modesty seemed to extend even to his hands, which were gloved and covered.
There was something about his eyes that seemed familiar. They glowed with a kind of orange-yellow flame, one that jolted me with memories. This was no Elah, my ex-fiancé, but he had the same eyes. I wondered if he also shared the same abilities—and if he’d started the fire with his hand.
The mysterious man stopped in front of the demon guard.
“She has a way with hospitality, doesn’t she?” His voice was deep and raspy. “Tell your mistress that I don’t appreciate being kept here against my will.” What he did next shook me to my core: his eyes flicked over towards my hiding place, and for a moment I froze, certain he could see me.
But that was impossi
ble. I was sure of it.
Until he said, “And tell her daughter that her tricks can’t fool me. I see all that I made.”
Stunned, I whipped my eyes towards the demon guard, who was turning in the same direction as the man dressed in black. Knowing that my time was up, I turned on my heels and dug my feet into the ground, running as fast as I could.
The tunnel’s darkness swathed around me and buzzed against my skin like a swarm of wasps. I ignored the voices whispering at me, their madness echoing around in my head. I heard footsteps behind me and didn’t dare look over my shoulder; if one of the demons was following me, I didn’t want to know.
It was only when I reached the entrance of the hallway that I remembered I had others to hide from on this end as well. Slowing down, I gathered the shadow form to me again and walked through the throne room as quietly as possible, twitching every time I heard a noise behind me. Somehow I managed to get past the throne and to my door, and just in time: the demon guard was standing at the end of the hallway, sniffing the air.
I paused outside the door, watching as Damen went to the demon and spoke to him in a low voice. The thing responded in a grunting, halting language I’d never bothered to fully learn—though every time I’d attacked one of them to escape, I’d had visions of their ghastly lives. Whatever the demon said, it made Damen’s eyes go straight towards me, and I froze.
If I opened my door now he would see it, not to mention hear me. I’d be caught, once and for all, and find out for sure if I really was escaping with my own abilities or if this was another game of my mother’s to test me.
Damen dismissed the demon guard. It shuffled back into the darkness, taking its noxious glow with it. On the other side of the throne room, the guard he’d been talking to was heading into his second shift, the door behind him melting away; whatever he guarded there was moved on a daily basis. That left just me and Damen in the room, and he was rapidly approaching.
Thinking fast, I moved over a step, hoping that somehow he’d go into my room and I could sneak in behind him, then pretend like I’d been there all along. It was a paper thin plan, but I was quickly running out of options.
Damen scanned the door I stood beside, a peculiar look on his face. Then he turned in my direction, his eyes looking right through me. In a quiet voice he said, “Next time, get back here a little faster. I can only talk to Yannaway about dart games for so long before it starts to look suspicious. You’re slipping up, Princess.”
I stared at him, stunned that he’d just revealed so much. Damen started to walk past me, but I couldn’t just leave it like that. “Did she tell you to?” I blurted out, keeping my voice low like his. Damen’s back stiffened and he glanced back to me. “My mother, does she... know?”
“That you sneak out almost every day to explore the Underworld like a loon, no doubt believing you’ll be able to escape one day?” Damen snorted, his eyes sharp and cutting even though he wasn’t looking right at me. “As far as I know Persephone has no idea. But if someone else catches you, I won’t be taking the fall. Get it together, Princess.”
I swallowed roughly, wincing at his tone of voice. “Don’t call me that.”
“Get back in your room,” he hissed.
Quietly, I reached out to grab the doorknob and slid inside my room, heart hammering a mile a minute. None of it made sense. Damen’s piercing eyes, the loathing in his voice when he spoke to me, the way he called me “Princess,” and how he looked when my mother made me kiss him. They all added up into an angry demigod who hated my guts, and yet he’d just covered for me, claiming that he did so on a regular basis.
I didn’t know what to think of it, so I just sank down onto my bed and napped fitfully, waiting for my mother’s inevitable summons, knowing that Persephone no doubt had another game for me today.
In my heart, I still hoped that I’d escape the Underworld.
But I was starting to think that my heart was a fool.
5
Selena
“You’re needed.” Damen stood in my room, having unceremoniously opened my door and walked inside without knocking. “She wants you for something.”
There could be no doubt who “her” was. I grumbled, sitting up with hair sleep-plastered to the side of my face. “The least you could’ve done is warn me.”
“You shouldn’t even be asleep right now,” Damen pointed out.
I wasn’t going to admit it to him, but he was right. Trying to nap away the day hadn’t worked, because my mind kept going back to the strange man I’d seen in the cavern, with the eyes like Elah’s eyes. Thinking of my knight stirred so many emotions in me, and more than anything I was regretful of how I’d left things with him. But there was no changing it now, and no doubt he’d forgotten me in the weeks I’d been gone.
How many weeks had it been now? I couldn’t keep track anymore.
“Let me make myself presentable,” I told Damen, flicking my eyes up to him. “Any hint what she wants from me?”
He gave me a look. “You think your mother tells me anything? Just recently she almost choked me to death. But sure, we gabbed about you. She told me all about her plans.”
Damen was in a mood today. “Get out of my room so I can get dressed.”
“You have a whole room just for changing clothes,” he pointed out, but he left at my glare. Apparently Damen wasn’t the only one in a bad mood today.
I just couldn’t shake the terrible feeling that I was going to be stuck in Hell forever. The only thing that kept me going this whole time was the crack in the wall on my first day: a sign that there might very well be a way out, if I could only find it again. Now I was no longer so sure of that, or of anything at all.
Staring at all the clothes Persephone had gotten for me, I picked out something that felt appropriate for my mood: a deep burgundy silk with black embroidery. This one had short sleeves sewn into it and a wrap skirt, making it easier to put on than some of my other outfits.
When I was done wrapping it around me and stared into the mirror, something about the outfit felt familiar. Picking the amulets up off my nightstand where I kept them when I slept, I realized that Elah’s stone was the same colors as the silks that swathed me.
I shouldn’t have missed him so badly; we’d barely begun getting to know each other when I left. But there had been potential there, and I’d wanted to know if there was a future, too. Now there was nothing but the taste of ash in my throat, and powers that just wouldn’t go away.
Looping the amulets around my neck, I left them out and on display this time. The necklace from my mother was nowhere near—I kept it put away now that I knew what it really was, and that I could never use it to go home.
Damen was waiting for me when I stepped out of my room. He was wearing his guard uniform, as usual, which would’ve made him look handsome if not for the constant downturn of his mouth and bitterness in his eyes.
“Ready, Princess?”
I resisted the urge to tell him not to call me that, knowing he was only trying—and succeeding—to rile me up. “Let’s get this over with.”
As he led me down the twisting halls, a few of them looked unfamiliar. “Are you sure you’re going the right way?”
“She moved her room again,” he explained.
I frowned, glancing at all the doors we passed. “Her domain grows by the day.”
Damen snorted. “More like her playground, if you ask me.” He was silent as we walked past one of the other guards, then told me, “This didn’t come from me, but your mother has been moving certain guests into this area.”
Perking up, I realized that once again Damen was pushing up against the line of decorum to tell me something. I slid my eyes over to his face, studying him to try to figure out why. There was one possible reason that seemed most obvious.
“Damen,” I said cautiously, “do you… like me?”
He stopped abruptly, raising a sharp and pointed eyebrow at me. “Are you going to pass me a note with two boxes
? ‘Check yes or no?’”
I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t mean like that,” I said defensively, though maybe I had meant it that way, at least a little. “Look, forget I asked.” He turned back towards our destination, and I paused for a moment before following him. “Just… this morning, why did you do that?”
Damen glanced over his shoulder at me, shrugging like it was nothing. “It’s better for me if we both get what we want, without your mother knowing.”
I deflated, catching up to him and following in his steps silently now. How silly of me to think he might’ve actually begun to feel something like friendship towards me. Damen was only letting me sneak out of my room from time to time because it kept me docile, while he knew I’d never really get what I wanted: a way out. As long as my mother knew, he didn’t care what I got up to.
I was a duty, nothing more. His reluctant assignment. Keeping me caged was the only way he would survive down here. And it would do me well to remember that.
Persephone had a complex layout of rooms that were more like her own Underworld house than a simple bedroom. The entry rooms into her chamber alone were enough to put most palaces to shame, from the high swooping ceilings to the chandeliers dripping with gold. Ruefully, I wondered what she would’ve thought of the home I grew up in, or my foster home. Somehow I didn’t think she would approve.
The Queen herself waited for me at the end of a Victorian-style fainting couch, her hair tightly braided at the crown of her head. It was lightly oiled and shone in the light coming from above; her dove-white silks and blood-red embroidery set off the paleness of her skin. My own complexion was becoming almost as milky and translucent as hers, after months of winter aboveground and now zero sunlight in the Underworld.
“Finally.” Her eyes flicked up and down me, and she frowned. “You really need to start styling that hair of yours.”