by Bree Despain
“As the newly restored god of love, I have my qualms about breaking up this little reunion—however, before you get too carried away, there are more of us who would like to say welcome back to both of you. In a less amorous way, I imagine.”
I look over my shoulder to see that the speaker is quite possibly the most beautiful man I have ever seen—if you have a thing for older men with Greek god–like good looks and wings, that is. At first I think he is a stranger, and I am even more embarrassed by my public display of affection, but then I recognize the crinkles around his eyes and the jovial smile. “Hello, Daphne,” he says as he enters the room.
“Jonathan?” I say, throwing my arms around him. He might be half his former size, but he still manages to envelope me in one of his bear hugs. “What happened to you?”
“Got my bow back.” He lets go of me and pulls a golden bow from where it was slung over his shoulder. He shows it off to me with great pride. “Got my wings back too,” he says, giving them a little flap when I reach out to touch the silky feathers. “And my wife. This is Psyche,” he says, introducing me to the woman who follows him into the room.
“The Psyche? As in the soul part of heart and soul?”
“The one and only,” she says, giving Jonathan the most loving look.
“The strangest thing,” I say to Jonathan. “I thought for a moment that I saw you in the Underrealm.”
“That’s a story for another day.” Jonathan exchanges a look with Ethan, who enters behind his mother.
“Daphne!” Joe says, bounding into the room and pulling me into a hug. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
“Me too,” I say, hugging him back. Tears fill my eyes and it’s hard to see who else is in the group that filters into the room behind him. That’s why I’m surprised when a woman grabs me next. She smells of flowers and sunshine.
“Mom?” My mom is here?
“You came back just in time,” Joe says. “Your mother was just about to murder me for selling your soul—before I knew you even existed, I might remind her.”
“I may murder him yet,” she says, throwing him a bloodcurdling glare, but she squeezes me tighter.
“You know?” I ask.
“Yes, your father filled me in.” From the way she says father, I can only imagine how that discussion went down, and I realize Joe is lucky to still have all of his pieces. “And now you and I are going to have a good long talk about this running off with somebody into this so-called Underrealm without telling your mother.”
I am hit with a wave of guilt, remembering the vow I had made to my mother before moving to Olympus Hills. Cross my heart, hope to die, I will not go running off with some guy. “Though technically I didn’t run off with Haden to the Underrealm, I went running in after him,” I say sheepishly.
Mom turns that murderous—though somewhat softer—glare on me. “Do not think you are getting out of the grounding of your lifetime—as in your whole lifetime—with semantics.”
“I am sure this is a discussion that can be revisited later,” someone else says. There’re more hugs to go around.”
“Dax?!” It’s Haden who says it. He’s sitting up in his bed, rubbing his tired eyes in disbelief. I take it Dax has been missing for quite some time. Dax gives me a quick hug and then bounds over to Haden. The two exchange one of those man-hug-slap-you-on-the-back-at-the-same-time deals. “How?” Haden says in disbelief. “Where have you been? What happened to you?”
“Terresa set me up the night of the school play. She used Abbie to lure me out to the old mill but had an army waiting for me. I’ve been in a Skylord prison ever since.”
“Nice of Terresa to mention she had my best friend locked up in her prison,” Haden says.
“Well you never did ask her,” Ethan says.
“Good point,” Haden says.
“I thought we were going to be trapped in there forever until Brim found us,” Dax says.
“Brimstone?” Haden says. “Yours must have been the scent she picked up on.” Haden looks around, expectantly searching for his tiny cat. “Where is she? Where’s Brim?”
Dax lowers his head. “She didn’t make it out. I’m so sorry, Haden. The minotaur was on our trail. She created a diversion so we could escape. She saved us but got lost in the maze in the process.”
A mournful tone spirals off of Haden, but there are still faint notes of hope underneath. “She’ll find a way out,” he says softly. “She always finds me.” He looks up at Dax. “Who’s us?”
That’s when I see who is standing in the doorway now.
“CeCe!?” I take in her red curls, beaming smile, and friendly, syncopated tone. She looks and sounds just like she did back in Ellis Fields when we worked in the flower shop together, I forget momentarily that she had been living under an assumed identity while on the run from her Skylord father. “I mean Abbie.”
“You can call me whichever you like,” she says, taking my mother’s place and giving me a hug. I take it all in for a moment, basking in it. I have never felt so loved in all my life. Maybe I should get trapped in the Underrealm more often.
Abbie pulls away. “My brother?” she asks.
“Yeah,” Lexie says from where she lingers in the hallway. “Where’s Tobin?”
Tobin!
Haden’s peril, and then the reunion with my friends and family, had momentarily distracted me from the reason I’d run here. In an instant all my happiness is set aside. “Tobin is trapped. He can’t leave the Underrealm. He sent me to get help. The Keres are free and the gate is stuck open. And Garrick lied. You know how he said there were only a couple of dozen Keres? Yeah, try more like a couple thousand.” The others straighten up, paying closer attention when I say this. Ethan tries to hide his shock and fear behind a stoic mask, but I can hear it eking off of him. “And they’re coming this way.”
“So are the Skylords,” Dax says, indicating the darkening sky out the window. There’s a roll of thunder in the distance. “We came here to warn you. I walked into your room just as you were losing consciousness. I thought I was too late to save you . . . But at least I’m not too late to help you fight.”
“My half-sister, Terresa, she’s convinced our father to let her lead a Skylord troop this way,” Abbie says. “We heard her say that she won’t rest until you and all of your friends are dead.”
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” Ethan says, giving Haden a knowing look. He nods, and I assume there’s another story there that will need to wait for another day.
“What do you want us to do?” A deep, completely unfamiliar voice says from the corner of the room. I realize there are two more people here—and they’re the last two people I expect to see. Rowan is tied up in the corner, and his father, Ren, former king of the Underealm, steps forward. I can’t help shivering. One of our greatest enemies is standing before us.
“What is your command, Lord Haden?” Ren says with a slight bow to his head.
Okaaay . . . I think, blinking at Ren’s unexpected behavior, I’ve definitely missed a lot.
chapter forty
haden
The Keres are free. The gate is open. The Skylords are coming. And my father is deferring to me for guidance.
I hold my hand out to Daphne and see that my skin has returned to normal. No more black veins. No more poison. She has cured me with her kiss. Daphne clasps my hand and stands next to me. I don’t want to ever let go of her again.
I take in the group in front of us. Dax—returned to me in the nick of time; Jonathan with his godhood newly restored; Ethan, son of Cupid and grandson of the Sky King; Psyche, the former Skyrealm princess who has lived as a servant in her own home; Abbie, a half-human, half-Skylord who has been in hiding for six years; my father; and Daphne’s parents. Excluding Rowan who is restrained in the corner, they all look at me with the same expression on their faces. They want me to lead.
“What should we do about the Skylords?” Dax asks when I don’t respond to my father.
&
nbsp; I stand, finding my legs working once again. “Let them come. We’ll need all the firepower we can get.”
“You mean to lead them into the Underrealm?” Dax asks.
“Exactly. A messenger from the Oracle of Elysium appeared to me.” I almost tell them that the messenger was my mother, however I feel strange sharing that in front of Rowan and my father. As if it were something intimate for only me to know. “The messenger told me that darkness is coming. I assume she was referring to the Keres. But she also said the light is gathering in order to beat back the dark. That is us. We are the light. I do not think it is a coincidence that we’ve all gathered in this place now. The Fates have brought us back together. If we had not gone into the Skyrealm, we would not have gotten Jonathan’s bow back, and we would not have found Psyche. Brimstone would not have found Dax and Abbie, and my father would not have agreed to join the fight. Our mission to find Persephone may have been a failure, but it is what brought us all together.”
“Failure?” Daphne asks. “You didn’t find Persephone?”
“No,” I say. “She wasn’t in the prison.”
A surprising look of remorse crosses her face.
“What’s wrong?”
“I promised someone . . . Never mind . . . This is more pressing. Go back to fate bringing us together and all that.”
I squeeze her hand, worried about the look of concern on her face. “Not just fate. Destiny. Even Terresa’s wrath and the Skylord army headed this way. It’ll take an army to beat back the Keres, and now we’ll have one.”
“You trust them?” Dax asks. “You were so against letting the Skylords help us before, and those were Ethan’s trusted men. Why would you allow Terresa’s army inside without a compelling reason to believe they’ll help us?”
“Rejecting Ethan’s help was a mistake. My mistake. I should have listened to Ethan and accepted his help. I thought we had to do this on our own and now I realize we need all the help we can get. Before we were working under the assumption that the Keres were still locked away in the Pits and the Skylords would go after our people instead of them, but I believe the Keres being free will be a compelling reason enough for the Skylords to help us. We want the same thing—to keep the Keres from entering the other realms. This is the same reason I believe the Court will help us as well.”
“The Court is gone,” Daphne says. “The Court, the royal guard, Garrick. Those were the first things the Keres destroyed.” Daphne quickly relates what happened when Garrick opened the barrier and released the Keres. It does not surprise me that they turned on him. What is surprising is Daphne’s account of being able to . . . What was the word she used to describe the way she transported herself through the Underrealm? . . . Teleport? That could be very useful to our cause. Another gift from the Fates.
“Our first priority needs to be keeping the Keres from crossing through the gate,” I say. “Our second is getting Daphne to the palace so we can defend the people against the Keres.”
“We’ll have to evacuate the palace and get everyone out of the royal grounds,” Daphne says. “My vocal powers don’t work anywhere on the royal grounds. I learned that the hard way.”
My confidence falters for a moment, but then I realize that this is also a gift from the Fates, in a way. If we had accepted Ethan’s help the first time around and gone into the Pits to make a preemptive strike against the Keres, we would have failed. We most likely would have died. The Pits are on royal ground and we would have had no idea that Daphne’s powers would not work. We would have opened the barrier and been completely defenseless.
“That complicates things,” I say. “But it is a complication we can work around. Ethan, are your men still willing to fight with us? I want trusted guards surrounding Daphne at all times.”
“I’ve already sent Jessica to collect them. Daphne will be in good hands.”
“Wait,” Daphne’s mother says. “What are you talking about? I’m not sending Daphne back into the Underrealm.”
“Mom, I have to go,” Daphne says.
“No, you don’t. You’re not a warrior and this isn’t your fight. I just got you back, I’m not letting you return just to help these . . . these . . . Underlords who wanted to kidnap you. You’ll have no part in this.”
“I am afraid Daphne plays the most important role in this,” I say. “The Keres are creatures of shadow. Daphne’s voice is the only thing that can make them solid enough to be killed. Without her, no one stands a fighting chance against them.”
“I don’t care,” Demi says. Daphne had once told me that her mother was like a force of nature, and I can see that now. She stands tall and commanding—unmoving. “They can find a different way without you. I forbid you to go, Daphne. You’re coming back to Ellis Fields with me. Where you’ll be safe.”
Daphne’s head cocks ever so slightly to the side. “Did you know?” she asks.
Her mother’s eyes narrow slightly. “Did I know what?”
“Did you know who I am? That I am a descendant of Orpheus and the Amazons? That my voice has special powers? That I was the Cypher? That I needed to be protected? Did you know that Ellis Fields is a safe haven for our people? Is that why you never wanted to let me leave?” Daphne’s voice catches. “Have you been lying to me all my life?”
Demi’s hardened stance wavers ever so slightly. “No,” she says, reaching her hands out toward Daphne. “No, my little sprout. I mean, there were stories. Family legends, you know. Mostly a joke about how we must be descendants of the Amazons because we’re so tall, and how our family had been living in Ellis since before the town was even a town, and how no one in my family ever wanted to leave. But I have never known why—it was always just this driving feeling. A need to keep you safe inside Ellis—as in the very idea of leaving Ellis Fields brought on panic attacks. But I never knew why. Not until now. I always knew you were special to me—priceless—but I swear I never knew anything beyond that. I didn’t know how special you were to this Underrealm . . .”
Daphne finally takes her mother’s outstretched hands. “And that is why I need to go, Mom. There are women and children in the palace. They’re completely defenseless without me. I have to go.” It’s not a question. She’s not asking for permission. She says it with authority, informing her mother that she will be going and nothing will stop her.
Daphne’s determination and compassion are two of the things I love the most about her. She was only their queen for a few days, and already she feels responsible for the people of the Underrealm.
Demi lowers her head, as if resigned to the idea that Daphne’s fate is no longer in her control. “I just don’t want to lose you.”
“I don’t want to lose you, either,” Daphne says. “That’s one of the reasons I agreed to join this fight. If the Keres get free in this world, I will lose everything and everyone I care about. Including you.”
Daphne embraces her mother. Demi doesn’t let go until Daphne tells her it’s time for her to go. She returns to my side and takes my hand again.
“What about you?” Daphne asks me quietly. “Are you okay to go with us? I mean, you basically just died and all. Maybe you need to rest.”
“No,” I say. “I’ve slept enough for this lifetime. I actually feel strong. Stronger than ever, now that you’re back.”
I hold her hand tightly in mine. I understand her mother’s plight. I wish nothing more than to keep Daphne out of harm’s way, but I know that is not where she belongs. The Fates have reunited us for a reason. It’s something I’ve known since she very first took my hand back in Ellis Fields and insisted that she help me find the Key—that if we are going to succeed, we can only do so together. Our destinies are intertwined.
chapter forty-one
daphne
The sky grows darker and darker with storm clouds, and the air is thick with the smell of rain. We all know what that means—the Skylords are upon us.
“We need to get to the grove,” Haden says. “We need to drive
the Skylords away from town and into the gate.”
As much as I wish I could just revel in the presence of my loved ones for a few more minutes, I know he’s right. There isn’t even time for planning.
Haden approaches Rowan, who is tied up in the corner of the room. There wasn’t much opportunity for storytelling, but I’ve gathered that Rowan had something to do with Haden’s near-death. I can hear the angry tones rolling off of Haden. Rowan flinches away from Haden’s touch and at first I think Haden is going to wring his brother’s neck, but instead he pulls the bindings from Rowan’s hands. Haden’s tone changes suddenly from angry notes to a tight, restrained tune. As if he were willing himself to remain calm and collected. “I should hate you, Rowan. I should want to punish you for what you did to me. For what you’ve always done to me. Alas, what is happening today is bigger than you and me and we need all the help we can get, so instead I will offer you a second chance. Will you fight with us?” he asks Rowan. I can tell from his inner tone now that Haden has had to humble himself quite a bit to offer this olive branch to his horrible brother. It makes me love Haden even more. “For the sake of the Underrealm?”
Rowan stands, rubbing his wrists. He looks from Haden to their father, who stands behind him. His lip curls in disdain. “I’m done with this,” he says. “I’m not going to risk my life to clean up your mess. Find someone else to watch your back.” There’s a dark tone wafting off of Rowan that makes me shiver, but there’s not time to analyze what it means now.
“Then you are free to leave,” Haden says, showing him the door. “But I never want to see you in this town again.”
“As if you will ever see it again? Have a nice death, little brother.” Rowan throws Ren and Haden one last glare and then marches from the room. I watch out the window until he’s down the driveway and on his motorcycle that’s parked a few houses down. He drives out of sight.
Good riddance.
“As soon as we go I need you to get my mother out of here,” I say to Joe. “Drive her as far away as you can get.”
