by Bree Despain
Lexie raises her hand, waving it wildly. “I know. I know. You could pull a Chewbacca.”
Joe perks up, nodding. “That could work. But you’d need Terresa’s full involvement, not just the location.”
“A-chew-what?” I ask.
“Gesundheit,” Lexie says, with a quirk of a smile. I can see it in her reflection in the glass. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Chewbacca. You know, from Star Wars?”
I stare blankly at her reflection.
“Seriously, you’ve been pretending to be a human for six whole months and you haven’t heard of the movie Star Wars?” She shakes her head in disbelief. “Anyway, so these two dudes and this big furry guy named Chewbacca need to rescue this awesome princess from a prison inside this super badass battle station that’s the size of a small moon. Anyway, in order to do it, the two dudes pretend to be Stormtroopers—imperial soldiers—who have taken Chewbacca prisoner. They march him right up to the prison doors and the guards just let them right in.” She waves her hand at Ethan. “You said there’s probably a bounty on your head, so what if you can get Terresa to march you, Jonathan, and Haden up to the Black Hole as her prisoners?”
“That . . .” Ethan says, sounding a little dumbstruck, “. . . might actually work.”
I blink at Lexie. She has never struck me as someone who would watch that sort of thing for entertainment, but I’ve always suspected there was more to her than her obsession with clothing and manicures. I certainly wasn’t giving her enough credit, considering she’s the only one who has come up with a somewhat plausible—let alone any—battle strategy. “And this works in the movie?”
“Well, mostly. The princess ends up having to take charge and they all end up in a giant trash compactor . . . But the strategy gets them into the prison. Exit strategy is up to you guys.”
“I imagine we can handle ourselves once we’re in. We’ve got a god on our side, after all.” I nod toward Jonathan. The idea that I was rescued by Eros is no longer funny to me.
“Errr, about that,” Jonathan says. “You missed the part where I admitted to bluffing about being a god. I am Eros,” he says, countering my question before I can ask it, “however, as punishment for my forbidden relationship with the Sky King’s daughter, Psyche, my golden bow—my Kronolithe—was taken from me. My arrows and darts were all I have left of my power. After the battle with the Skylords, all I’m left with are four emotion darts. When the last one is gone, my immortality will fade away.”
“So then you’ll . . .” I begin, realizing what he’s saying.
“I’ll die,” Jonathan continues.
Lexie gasps, and then asks, “Can’t you just make more?”
“Not without my Kronolithe.”
I swallow hard, realizing that every time Jonathan doses me with one of his emotion darts, he’s giving up time from his own life. I am about to protest, but Jonathan holds up his hand and gives me a pointed look, telling me this is not an argument he wants to have right now.
Instead, he goes on, as if he didn’t just announce that he was almost out of immortality. “And in the mortal guise I chose for myself, I am not exactly in peak fighting form.” He gingerly pats his injured shoulder, but it’s obvious from his tone that he is also referring to his rather sizable girth. “I also neglected one other aspect when I suggested this plan to find Persephone: the Black Hole is a labyrinth. In my godly form, I could have searched the prison in a matter of seconds, but as a mortal, it could take years, decades if we get lost. But who’s kidding, we’d starve to death first. And if we run into the minotaur, we may never escape. I am afraid I am no good to you as merely Jonathan Lovelace in this fight.”
My confidence begins to sink and I can feel despair threading into my thoughts. He is right; without his bow, Eros is no good to us.
“Minotaur?” Lexie asks. “Did anyone else hear him say minotaur? Like a giant half-man, half-bull killing machine?”
I recall one of the late-night stories that Master Crue used to enjoy scaring the young nurslings with back in the Underrealm. It was one of the ancient myths, passed down for centuries, about a king who imprisoned the ferocious, unholy offspring of the queen and a bull in a great, mazelike structure. Master Crue used to tell us that if we weren’t good little Underlords, our fathers might toss us in the labyrinth to either get lost and rot or to be sacrificed to the man-eating beast who lived in the center. Perhaps this gruesome tale had been derived from stories about the Skyrealm’s prison? If so, the plan to find Persephone is looking bleak at best.
“What if we get it back?” Ethan asks.
“The minotaur?” Lexie asks. “I don’t want one of those.”
Ethan gives her an impatient look. “I mean Eros’s bow. What if we get it back?”
Jonathan shakes his head. “It’s been centuries. I wouldn’t know where to look—”
“I do,” Ethan says. “Grandfather keeps all of his important trophies in his private chambers. There’s a golden bow amongst them. It must be yours.”
“Are you sure?” Jonathan asks, sounding as though he doesn’t want to get his hopes up.
“When I was boy, I remember Grandfather ordering Mother to dust and polish his trophies—he’s kept her as a servant since your banishment—and I remember now how she always treated the bow with extra care even though handling it seemed to make her sad. I was decades old before I learned that you, Eros, were my father, so I didn’t think of it until now, but I am sure the bow must be yours.”
Jonathan lights up, a smile so mischievous and delighted crosses his face, and he really does remind me of a cupid.
“I know the ins and outs of the palace. I could get us to the bow with virtually no trouble, and then with your full power restored, and Terresa’s help, we’ll infiltrate the prison and rescue Persephone.”
“Sounds like a decent plan to me,” Terresa’s voice echoes through a speaker above my head. I stare at her through the glass. She smiles and points to a line of speakers in the wall. “You know I can hear every word you’re saying, right?”
Joe startles as he realizes that his elbow has been resting on the intercom button that connects the studio to the recording booth. “Then you’ll help us?” Joe says, speaking into the microphone in the control panel in front of him.
Terresa stands and places her hand on her hip. “Under one condition, and I will not budge on this. I get what I want, or no one is going to the Black Hole.”
“Name your demand,” Ethan says.
“Haden must kiss me first.”
A sinking feeling pulls at my gut. Now I know how Daphne must have felt when Rowan tried to demand a kiss from her in exchange for information.
“What is it with psychopaths and their creepy kissing requests?” Lexie says from beside me.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” I say. “I guess it is my turn to ‘take one for the team,’” I say, mimicking the words Lexie had used when she had volunteered to kiss Rowan in Daphne’s place. Although, she had at least seemed to enjoy that encounter with a little too much gusto.
“You can’t,” Jonathan says. “Daphne . . .”
“I think she’ll understand,” I say. I don’t relish the thought of kissing anyone other than Daphne, but I’m willing to do just about anything if it means bringing her home. That feeling in my gut pulls at me again. I cannot define what the sensation means.
“That’s not what I mean,” Jonathan says, leaning over to flip the switch that turns off the intercom between both rooms, cutting off Terresa’s ability to listen in on our conversation. He turns his back on the window, blocking both of our faces from her view. “Fidelity aside, it is imperative that you do not kiss anyone other than your true love—on the lips, that is—before the cure is sealed. Otherwise, it will fail, and the curse will take you immediately.”
I sigh, and that strange sensation moves its way up from my gut into my chest. It feels like creeping, crawling insects spreading through my body.
“Perhap
s she can be reasoned with,” Lexie says.
“I don’t think so,” Ethan says. “She’s as stubborn as they come. When she wants something, she’ll cling to the notion like a wolverine.”
I don’t care.
Terresa stands on the other side of the glass. She looks expectantly at me, wanting her answer.
“What do you want to do?” Jonathan asks me.
I don’t care.
“Haden?” he prompts.
The creeping sensation spreads down my arm. I lift my hand and watch my blue gray veins turn to black. Then the sensation stops. My arm goes numb. It has no feeling at all. “I don’t care,” I say.
I shake my arm. I can see it there, attached to my body, but I can’t feel it. As if it doesn’t really exist. I clench my fist, digging my nails into my palm, but I can’t feel a thing. I try with my other hand, but it has gone numb as well. I can feel the nothingness spreading through me again.
“Haden?” someone says, but I can’t tell who.
I slam my hand against the recording studio’s window. But I don’t feel the impact. I slam it again, harder, pulsing electricity into my fingers. Cracks in the glass splinter out from under my fist. My blood smears the glass. I should be able to feel the cuts on my knuckles. I long for the pain. I long to feel something.
“Haden, what are you doing?” Lexie shrieks.
Terresa drops her lunch and runs to the window. “That’s it, Haden. Break the glass and we can be together.”
I don’t care what Terresa says. I don’t care what she thinks. I don’t care about Lexie trying to grab my arm. I flick my wrist, flinging her away from me. She stumbles into Joe and the two crash into the chair in front of the mixing board.
“Haden, stop!” Ethan orders. “You’re out of your mind again and you’re endangering your friends.”
“I don’t care,” I say.
I don’t care about anything.
I pull my arm back, preparing to slam it through the glass just in front of Terresa’s face. I imagine the flesh being ripped from my fingers. Perhaps I could feel that.
As I am about to swing for the glass, Ethan grabs me from behind. I ram my other arm into his side as he tackles me to the ground. He pins me to the floor and Jonathan scrambles for something in his quiver. I try to push Ethan off me, but Jonathan stabs me with another dart. I can see it protruding from my chest. Otherwise I wouldn’t know it was there.
I lose the will to fight back. I lie still as Jonathan grabs one of my numb arms and inspects it. Black, bulging veins pulse under my skin.
I expect to feel that strange bubbling sensation spread through me like the last time Jonathan dosed me, but instead a sick heaviness rolls in my gut. I turn my head as I am gripped by the overwhelming urge to wretch.
“We’re losing him,” Jonathan says. “Too soon.”
chapter ten
daphne
I’m pretty sure I’ve got a goose egg the size of Maine on the side of my head. I prod at it gently, and a throbbing pain pulses through my skull. I sit up slightly to inspect my surroundings and find that I have been lying on a bed of those ghostly gray flowers I saw growing along the road in the Wastelands. More flowers have been scattered on top of me. At first I think someone has placed me, with great care, in a bed of flowers to rest—but then I remember the Shade and his large bone club, and suddenly realize that perhaps this isn’t a bed for sleeping. Perhaps I am the protein portion in a bed of greens—a meal for a hungry Shade.
I sit up quickly. Too quickly. My head swims.
It’s dark. The only light source is a flickering torch a few feet away. I try to push myself to my knees, but my left one aches so much I can’t support my own weight in a kneeling position. The fall from the chariot must have done some real damage. I hobble to a standing position and put my weight mostly on my right leg. So far, no one has protested my movements, so I pray I am alone.
I hear the drip of water in the distance.
I half hop, half limp toward the torch. I pull it from its perch and use it to inspect my surroundings and discover what I had already suspected. I am in a cave.
Stalactites and stalagmites surround me like great, jagged teeth, and I feel as though I am standing inside the jaws of some great beast. Considering I’m trapped in the underworld, I wouldn’t be too surprised if that were the case. Swinging the torch back and forth, I limp away from the sound of dripping water and search for an exit.
It strikes me that in my effort to run away, I had only exchanged my queenly prison cell for a far less comfortable one.
What was it my humanities teacher had said about Greek myths? That they were invented to teach us mere mortals that the more we fight our destiny, the more we bring it upon ourselves. Perhaps this is the Underrealm’s way of telling me it’s never going to let me go?
I shake off the thought. Now is not the time for negative thinking. There has to be a way out.
I slide my hand along the cave wall for support and hobble along for another couple of minutes. I am about to turn back and head in the other direction when I see a circular crack of light up ahead. I move closer. Sunlight—or whatever you call the Underrealm equivalent—streams in through a narrow crack around what I realize is the cave entrance. A twelve-foot-tall boulder has been rolled in front to block the opening.
I hear a grunt from somewhere nearby and swing my torch in that direction. The large Shade who took me captive lies curled up and sleeping in a nestlike bed only a few feet away.
I pull the light away, not wanting to wake him, and inspect the boulder. I push at it with my hands, even lean my shoulder into it, but it’s too large. There’s no way I can move it by hand. But I might be able to move it with my voice . . .
I take a step back and glance at the sleeping Shade. The moment I start singing, he’s going to wake, which means I need to be fast. I pat my aching knee and hope adrenaline will be enough to push me through the pain.
Concentrating, I close my eyes and listen for the tone of the boulder. All I hear is the drip, drip, drip, of water and a skittering sound of something like a rat.
How big are rats in the underworld?
I take a deep breath. If the boulder won’t sing for me, then I will have to make it listen. I think of the words to the grove’s song; that one seemed to have the best effect. I brace myself, readying to run, and open my mouth to sing.
No sound comes out.
Damn it!
I can guess where I am now. I’d bet just about anything we are in the network of caves beyond the pomegranate grove. And I’d double that bet and guess that this particular cave runs through the royal grounds. Which means my powers don’t work here.
Perhaps if I turn back and follow the cave, I could find another exit? Perhaps cross into another cave that would lead me off royal land? But that could take days, according to what the boy had told me about this place.
Wishing I’d eaten a bigger breakfast, I turn away from the boulder, and set off in the opposite direction. I only get four gimpy steps when a moaning groan echoes off the cavern walls. I try to run, but the Shade is too quick.
It grabs me by the arms. The torch drops from my hands and nearly starts my skirt on fire. The Shade lifts me away from the licking flame and throws me over his shoulder. The next thing I know, it has thrown me back down on the bed of flowers.
The Shade points a too-long finger at me and lets out a moan that sounds like it is scolding me. Then I notice it, the sound coming out of its gaping mouth isn’t just a moan. There are words.
“Yoooou staaaaay!” it orders. “Yooouu staaayyy.”
“Okay. I stay,” I say, trying to placate him. “I stay.”
The Shade cocks its head. If it had eyes, I’d say it was staring at me. It drops down to a squatting position, so it is closer to my level. “Yooouu underrrstand?” it moans.
“Yes.” I nod. “I understand. I stay.” I pat the flower bed to show him I’m not planning on moving anytime soon.
&nbs
p; “Howww?” The Shade moves in closer, for a second I think it’s about to climb on top of me. I tense, readying to fight it off, as it reaches its gangly gray hand toward my chest. Its fingers almost brush the pomegranate necklace Garrick had insisted I wear on our journey, but then the Shade snaps its hand away. It scurries back a few feet, and huddles against the cave wall. It reaches a hand out, gesturing in a way that seems to indicate my necklace. “Howww? Howww?”
“My necklace?” I ask.
It nods its head up and down. “Howww?”
“How did I get this?” I ask, hazarding a guess. “My . . . um . . . the King gave it to me.”
“Yoouu Kooorrree?” it asks in a way that I might describe as excitedly—but it’s hard to tell without facial features. “Beeelong to Kooorree. Youuu Koreeee?”
The Shade sounds as if it’s making a better effort to enunciate, but I still don’t understand what he’s asking.
“Youuu Koooree?” it says, seeming agitated now.
I say the word to myself, trying to figure out what he means. It sounds like it’s saying Kory or kohr-ee. “Kore?” I finally ask, remembering where I’d heard that word before. It means “maiden” in Ancient Greek. Another name for the goddess of the underworld. “You mean, Persephone?”
“Yesss.” It comes a little closer. “Youu herr?”
“No, I am not Persephone.”
It makes an imperceptible grunting noise and rocks back so it’s sitting on the ground. “She’s gone?”
I nod. “I was told she left a long time ago.”
The Shade clasps its hands on top of its head and moans. It’s a terrible noise.
“Were you saying this necklace belonged to her?” I say lifting the pendant.
It shakes its head up and down while rocking back and forth. I don’t like the idea of making it upset. “How do you know? Did you know her?”
“Yes,” the Shade says. “I think I knewww her.”
My mouth drops slightly open and it really sinks in that Shades are not just monsters, they’re the souls of the dead. The ones who die without so-called honor, and are doomed to haunt the wastelands instead of going to the paradise of Elysium, where dead heroes dwell. “How much do you remember from your former life?” I had been under the impression that the dead had their memories wiped. Haden’s mother, who I had met during my very brief stay in Elysium, had no memory of her son or who she was before she died.
