The room was as impressive as ever. As black as the outside of the base had been, the inside of the room radiated a warm gold. Because it was gold.
Other than the door I’d used to get in, and a hallway that sloped under the room, there were no other entrances or exits. There was, however, a giant pile of cushions to lounge on. Or hide under. I flopped down onto them, ready to scurry underneath at a second’s notice.
So. Here I am again.
I tried to keep my mind blank but it was hard. My eyes kept dragging up to the black iron chandelier that hung on the ceiling. It wasn’t remarkable in any way. Not fancy or dancing with lava jets. Just a plain lighting fixture. It was only noteworthy because it was the last thing Persephone had seen as her life drained away.
The night Demeter had come after Persephone, the throne room outside had been deserted. Even though I knew that it overflowed with partygoers tonight, I still felt very alone here. And very vulnerable.
I burrowed deeper under the pillows. My eyes scanned left and right, all my senses on high alert for any approaching visitors. My entire body was tense. My heart pounded so hard and fast that I felt like it was going to burst free of my rib cage like in the movie Alien. I stayed that way for what seemed like eons.
“She wouldn’t come.”
I screamed. So much for hyper-vigilant. Festos had appeared and startled the hell out of me. He was dressed in gray slacks and a slightly lighter gray sweater. It was perfectly nice but not at all what he normally wore. “Servants’ garb,” he muttered at my stare.
I had barely recovered from the shock of his appearance when I realized what he had said. I jumped to my feet, scattering cushions. “No! She has to come!” I jabbed my finger at him. “Go back and convince her.”
Festos frowned. “You’re obviously distressed, which is the only reason why I’m not going to hurt you for touching me.”
I rubbed my hand over my face. If Aletheia didn’t show up, then my only choice to break this enchantment was waiting for Demeter to show up and try to kill me. What if she didn’t show? Or if she did, but it didn’t give us enough time to put everything in place for the ritual?
“I need to break this enchantment.” I was utterly frantic. “Fine, let’s free Prometheus and then he can try to get Aletheia here. He created her. Maybe she has to listen to his commands.”
“If she listens half as well as you do, you’re in for quite the wait.” That was Kai.
Great. Before I could bolt, he’d grabbed Festos and I by one arm each.
“Hands off the goods,” Festos hissed; sounding fed up, he tried to transport out.
Except Kai was still holding on to us.
The air rippled, a wave of pain sliced through my temples, and none of us went anywhere.
“Now what have you done?” Festos glowered at Kai. Then caught sight of me and looked suddenly confused.
Kai’s grip had slackened, so I stepped back warily.
He’d gone pale with shock.
I glanced around the room trying to figure out the problem. When I turned back to Kai, I found him totally focused on me.
And angrier than I’d ever seen him. With everything that had happened, that was a pretty impressive and worrisome feat.
Now what?
Twenty
“Walking. Suicide. Mission.” Kai sounded caught between relief and fury. “I swear I’m locking you up so you can’t get yourself into more trouble. You’ve outdone yourself on this one, Goddess.”
Goddess? Did he mean …? I snuck a look a Festos, who stared at me so hard he seemed to be trying to see through me.
My heart raced. In hope, not fear, which was a pleasant change. I glanced down at myself. I was still Persephone and Kai was still not my Kai so I wanted—no needed—to be sure I understood him correctly. Understood that exasperated tone of voice correctly. “You know it’s me? Me, me?”
Kai pressed his forehead to mine and put his arm around me. “Yeah. I know.”
I wanted to weep. My entire body sagged. If Kai hadn’t been holding me, I would have collapsed. Knowing that Kai and Festos were now firmly back on Team Sophie? Well, it made this entire situation so much more bearable. An incredible tension left my body. My shoulders felt like they dropped a good couple inches down from my ears, finally relaxing.
My mind whirred. The enchantment hadn’t actually broken. The fact that I was still in Persephone form, and that all of Hades was not on my tail, was proof. But it had been pierced, which was good enough for now. I stepped away from my boyfriend and started down the corridor that led away from the throne room. We could talk en route to Prometheus.
“Spill,” Festos said, keeping pace alongside of me, his cane thumping off of the green stone with every step.
“Wait. Where are you going?” Kai took hold of my hand and tried to pull me to a stop but I tugged him along, determined to keep moving.
“We need to go get some nectar.”
“What for?” Kai asked. He refused to let go of my hand, and the look on his face made me think he might never, which filled me with a happy glowiness.
I explained the plan and he laughed. “Soph, I’m Prince of Hades. I think I can get them to let Prometheus out.”
I mewled and he looked at me, concerned. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I sighed happily, pushing open a door that led us out into the night. “You called me Sophie.”
“Which I know you are.” Festos rubbed his temples, “Visual aid to the contrary. Explain already.”
I poked Kai. “You going to save some time and transport us into Tartarus?”
Kai shook his head. “Can’t. In and out of the Underworld? If you have that privilege? Sure. But not within Hades. It’s forbidden. Big painful consequences.” He smiled dryly. “Paranoia. My father doesn’t like people sneaking up on him.”
Now wasn’t the time to get alert Hades and set him on our heels. Not yet. Not until I knew the enchantment was definitively broken and I could leave the Underworld. Guess we were walking. Briskly, because I didn’t want Prometheus there a second longer.
Compared to all the noise of the party, the grounds were still and quiet. The air felt cool and refreshing after the stifling heat inside. The night was overcast, but there was enough light to pick out our route to Tartarus.
“Do you both remember everything that’s happened down here?” I asked.
The guys nodded.
“Fee, what happened between you leaving your place, and getting sucked in to all this?” Theo, Kai, and I had been together when Kiki threw down the magic. But Festos hadn’t been there.
He scratched his head, looking thoughtful. “I was pretty mad when I left. I just wanted to get out. Walk around. That’s what I did.” He laughed a little. “I was commiserating with the Fremont Troll.”
Kai looked confused. “Seattle has trolls? Trolls exist?”
I smiled. “It’s a massive statue under a bridge. There’s a roll holding an actual VW bug in his hand.”
“Ah.”
Festos went on. “Eventually I ran out of steam. When you guys didn’t come home that night, I figured you’d just decided to exclude me from the action.” Fee’s expression turned sheepish. “I was still mad. I didn’t start to worry until the next day. Monday. I was about to go find Pierce and see if he could help me track you all down, when I was suddenly in a workshop space here. Working on the chandelier because Hades had me on deadline.”
“You didn’t wonder about that?” I asked.
Festos’ forehead creased. “It didn’t even occur to me to question it. It was just where I was and what I had to do.” He frowned. “And it seems that Hekate must have spanned the enchantment between here and Olympus because when I went back to speak to Aletheia, she was caught up in it, too. Or I somehow carried it with me when I went to her.”
Kiki’s powers were impressive. All the more reason to believe that my only way out of this mess was to face Demeter. “Here’s what you missed,�
�� I said, and filled them in on everything that had happened, starting with me in the tunnel. Talking kept me from thinking, which mostly kept the knot of dread in my stomach from getting too big.
Kai and Festos both thought my sleeping-arrangement anxieties were hilarious. Although I smugly noted their grins dropped when I reminded them of their little spat.
I shoved at Kai. “Fee was your name for him. And you never told me.”
“Yeah, Koko,” Festos said with a glint. “How remiss.”
“Shut up,” Kai said.
“You two need to resolve your issues,” I ordered.
Their expressions grew stony.
“I mean it. I love you both, but this fight is stupid.”
“Can we not talk about this while you still look like her?” asked Festos. “I do love you, honeybunch, but the optics are clouding it a bit.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. I’ll finish the story.” I felt the ground go boggy under my feet and scooted back on to terra firma. I wasn’t about to short cut us through the Stygian Marsh, even though the detour added a bit more time to our journey.
“You know, seeing me seeming to work with Kyrillos is just going to confirm every bad thing Prometheus ever thought about me.” Now that he knew the entire story, Festos looked glum.
“It won’t be for long,” I assured him.
“Only until Demeter shows up to try and kill you again.” Kai was not impressed.
I patted his arm. “I’m not thrilled about relieving that moment myself, but I’ll have you two. You won’t let anything happen to me.”
Kai frowned. “Yeah, well maybe you should have thought about that sooner and tried telling me what was going on.”
Great, now he sounded hurt. “Like you would have believed me? Hello? Enchantment.”
“You told Fee.” In Kai’s agitation, he didn’t even realize he’d reverted to his nickname for Festos. “But you couldn’t tell me?”
“To be fair,” Festos piped up, “I didn’t exactly believe her.”
“Irrelevant.” Kai’s voice was clipped. “She didn’t even try.”
Anger burned my cheeks. He did not get to be mad. I’d been the invisible girl. I’d been the one who had been stuck here in the body of his previous girlfriend. And it had killed me in a soul-destroying way every single time he’d failed to see me.
So yeah, I hadn’t tried to tell him because hearing his dismissive laugh, or seeing that “get real” look when, of course, he didn’t believe me?
It would have finished me.
But I wouldn’t and couldn’t voice all this. Instead, I shoved past him, and stomped ahead on my own, all the way to Tartarus.
Oizys had drilled me well on how to get there, so I didn’t have to concentrate too much on directions. Which was good because I was so mad, so fully consumed with righteous indignation, that I barely had the energy to focus on anything else. My palms burned. My skin glowed with my green light.
To make matters worse, I felt Persephone’s dark desires working on me again, straining to unleash. I was so set on limiting my actions to walking and fuming, that I didn’t even realize we had arrived until the bronze fence loomed up before us. But the cries of the damned didn’t work their usual soul-deflating mojo on me right now.
Seething worked like a protective shield. Good to know.
I motioned toward the door in the fence. “Who wants to blast it open?”
Kai muttered something, veered left, and started walking.
“Where are you going?” I demanded, scrambling after him.
“The son of Hades does not break into Tartarus through a back way.”
He had a point but he didn’t have to sound so imperious about it.
The ground here was rocky and the moonlight dim, so I worked on not breaking an ankle.
About ten minutes later, we arrived at two enormous gates. The official way in. There were no guards, just a lot more bronze and despondency.
The land around the gates was desolate. Windswept and barren. The ground sloped steeply down toward the River Styx, foaming and sizzling with corrosive orangey black water. I recognized a dock battened to the shore. I’d passed it on Charon’s raft when I’d snuck in with Theo to retrieve my pendent.
Kai placed a hand on the left gate. All the bronze seemed to leech into his palm, as if his skin were a sponge. It left the fence oddly colorless. I don’t know if it was verifying his identity, but the bronze suddenly flowed back into the gate and it swung open.
A number of dead people rushed us, misery spewing from their mouths in howls. They stopped, frozen in their tracks as Kai strode toward them. With a single imperious look from him, they bowed low, scampering backward, eyes on the ground.
Kai didn’t even check to see if Festos and I followed. He pushed forward, the gate closing behind him as he moved deeper into Tartarus.
“He’s in fine form,” Festos said, as we jogged after him.
If I hadn’t been so worked up, I might found it mildly entertaining to sweep along in the Princeling’ royal wake.
No one dared approach him. Or us by association. Even the inhabitants seemed to mute their cries of despair in deference to his majesty.
Kai stopped beside a smaller yet still fine-means-of-containing-people gate. Without speaking a word, he pushed that one open as well.
We stepped through and I found myself back on the bottom of the crater, under the violent sky. It was crazy because there had been no sense of the storm outside the gate. But in here, it was absolute and everywhere.
Prometheus was still bound to the rock, still unconscious, the chain still flaming.
Festos ran for him, brutally shoving Kai out of the way. We followed close behind.
Prometheus looked worse than the last time I’d seen him. His clothes were little more than ragged threads, exposing the burns on his skin as the flames danced across his torso. He was pale and waxy.
Constant contact with the elements hadn’t helped matters either. The air swirled against my skin so hard, I felt like I sandblasted by dirt and tiny rocks and chaos. How much worse must it have been for him?
I held my whipping hair out of my face, eyes slitted against the debris.
Kai didn’t say anything, a muscle in his jaw twitching at the sight of Prometheus.
“Yeah, you should feel bad,” I said, yelling over the winds. That earned me a hard look.
As Festos went to work on freeing his real-world boyfriend, the ground beneath our feet shook. The three Hekatonkeires were lumbering toward us.
Lightning arced across the sky. As long as it wasn’t trying to hit me, I didn’t care. Besides, between the winds knocking me sideways and quaking at my feet, I was too busy trying to stay upright.
The Hekatonkheires reached us and the ground went still. All of their shaggy, bristly, hideous heads snapped to attention when they saw Kai. “My Prince.” The closest one saluted him in a voice so loud, it made the wind sound like a lullaby. To be clear, the head farthest from us, on the closest giant, saluted him.
I didn’t pay too much attention to the other one-hundred forty-nine heads, because they were too wide a swath of ugly. The head that spoke, despite a festering boil on the side of his lip, was the heartthrob of the group.
Speaker Head looked at Festos, then back to Kai, waiting for clarification.
Kai looked to the sky. The giant flicked a hand at it and the storm stopped. It would have been impressive, but the stillness in its wake made me feel like we were in limbo. The sky froze in a savage swirl. The silence was so absolute that it was kind of freaky.
I didn’t trust it. This sudden stoppage so we could have a little chat. My eyes darted left and right, waiting for the destruction to return.
“I am moving the prisoner, Gyes.” Kai sounded indifferent.
“But my Prince, we have prepared—”
“Enough.” Kai’s voice was cold and commanding.
It shut up the giant.
Thing is, now I was cu
rious. “Prepared what, matia mou?” I asked in my sweetest voice.
Kai turned to me, matching my syrupy ugh. “Nothing you need trouble your pretty head with, kardia mou.”
“Bite me,” I said through a smile, in a voice low enough that only he could hear. “What did you have planned for Prometheus?”
“It doesn’t matter now. I’m not doing it.”
“Tell me,” I insisted. I wanted to know how far Kyrillos would have taken his imprisonment.
“Don’t push me, Goddess,” Kai warned. “I’m not feeling very charitable right now.”
“Back at you, sweetheart.”
Kai’s eyes glittered angrily.
See now, there was the dynamic I knew and, well … knew.
Gyes lumbered off to his fellow giants for a little confab. One of them shook himself, much like a dog, flinging off water, and making all his very many bits jiggle.
Their spines must be made from titanium to support all those parts. I waited, one eye monitoring Fee’s progress, the other on the giants.
The three of them returned, presenting a many headed, many handed, united front. “We will not allow the Olympian to take the prisoner,” Gyes’ speaker head informed us.
We swung to face to Festos, who had just freed Prometheus and scooped him up in his arms. He was still unconscious, head splayed back, arms and legs spilling limply. It couldn’t have been easy for Fee, holding this enormous dead weight. Especially since in order to hang on to Prometheus, he couldn’t use his cane. It was tucked under one arm. But Festos stood tall, firing an imperious look of his own. “You will do as your Prince commands you.”
Never thought I’d hear him defer to Kai like that.
A look passed between them.
It spoke of past secrets and mayhem, and made me uneasy.
Kai looked uncertain.
Festos looked insistent.
I probably looked confused.
The giants stopped looking, broke formation, and came roaring after us. The storm resumed its crashing above our heads. Winds howled around us, churning up a dust thick enough to choke me.
My Life From Hell Page 24