Midnight Kingdom

by Amelia Wilde

“Don’t be an asshole,” Hades says, his tone light. “You know why she’s here.”

  “I know she’s here. The whispers that got to my ship didn’t explain why.” Poseidon raises his eyebrows, a light in his eyes. “I’ve been waiting all this time to hear the story straight from your mouth.”

  Hades sighs impatiently. “There’s no story, other than what you already know.”

  He’s hedging.

  Why?

  I hate that everyone else knows so much more about this than I do. If my mother were actually here I might have the courage to slap her over it. Or at least yell. Crush a flower in front of her. Something.

  A grin spreads over Poseidon's face and he regards Hades with an admiration that makes my stomach turn. “I didn’t think you’d take revenge on an innocent. I approve, of course.”

  “This isn’t revenge.” I discover that my fists have balled up at my sides, hot anger raking itself down the back of my neck. How many times did I stand in my mother’s kitchen with a straight face and rage boiling in my belly, acid and thick. Hades puts an arm out and I run into it only to find that I’ve already been moving. What is my plan, even, to attack him? I don’t care. Someone else is going to be the one who’s confused and hurt and shocked. It’s not going to be me. “Take it back.”

  Poseidon chortles and I hate him with a perfect clarity. “She’s too much like her. How can you stand it?”

  Hades says nothing and the betrayal of it pulls the breath out of my lungs. I have no other choice but to look back at Poseidon, who’s looking back at me, eyes darkening.

  I know that look.

  It’s the look of a man who’s not seeing the present. He’s seeing the past. I’ve seen it on Hades's face before, and nothing good comes of it. I’m only protected because for some reason he wants me.

  Poseidon doesn’t care if I live or die.

  In fact, I’m pretty sure he’d like it if I was dead.

  Demeter offered you in exchange for services I provided. Her betrayal hasn’t mattered to me much in light of everything else that’s happened. I pushed it away. Who has time to worry about their insane mother when their house is under attack? But now I have the sickening sense that I ignored something important. And now I look like a fool.

  Poseidon shifts his weight from one foot to another and Conor scrambles in front of me, hackles raised. Across the room Oliver puts a hand to his belt. He’s reaching for his gun. My lungs fill up with ice, freezing from the bottom with the cold spreading out like a fast cancer. I swear the temperature in the room plummets. Poseidon’s eyes are depthless, and I've never been to the ocean but I know about the things that swim in the deep. Teeth as long as my arm. Powerful bodies. A way with water. A girl in a dress would struggle and sink, like I’m struggling and sinking now, waiting for jaws to clamp shut.

  He moves again and Hades's hand flexes, opening so that it covers more of my soft, stupid body. Tension pushes in at my ears, at my head, and now I know why he didn’t want Poseidon to come here. All these brothers are dry fuses waiting to be lit.

  “Why didn’t you take care of this?” Poseidon slashes a hand through the air, eyes going back to Hades. “Do you owe her?”

  Without this little fool here, none of the rest is in motion.

  “It’s not that way.” Hades finally speaks, and his voice is the only lifeline I have in this room, with the force of the ocean blocking the door. “Leave it, Poseidon.”

  “No, don’t.” I will never get out from this shame, never put the ground back together under my feet, until everyone stops burying the truth under code words and allusions. I want to rip out the overgrown grass and see the soil for what it is. And yes, yes. I’m terrified of getting my hands dirty like this. A lifetime spent digging in the dirt should have prepared me but this feels like driving a knife under the ground without knowing if there’s something living under the surface. I’m going to do it anyway. “Don’t leave it. I’m standing right here.”

  “Persephone—” Hades tone as loud as warning as I’ve ever heard.

  I curl my fingers through Hades's—I don’t care if Poseidon sees—and step out from behind him. “Tell me what you’re talking about.” They’re done talking over my head like I’m just Demeter’s daughter and not a grown woman. “Tell me about this revenge that you think you’re seeing.” I watch Poseidon with all the scorn I’ve saved up over the years. All the times I’ve never glared at my mother, all the times I kept my face expressionless—those times are dead and buried now.

  Poseidon pretends to shiver. “It’s like that bitch stepped out of the past.”

  Conor barks.

  Just once.

  Hades has gone completely still by my side, hardly breathing. I can’t tell if he’s thinking of killing Poseidon or bringing the walls down. A creeping fear—maybe he can’t. He’s gone to great lengths to prove that the fight with Zeus was nothing, that it had no effect, but I know it does. I know, because sometimes the blankets brush his skin and he flinches in his sleep.

  I’m tired, exhausted, from trying to reason this out. I can’t imagine what it’s been like for him all this time, making all these decisions, tracing the threads of every decision forward and back until they weave themselves into something coherent. The mountain. The city in the mountain. All those lives.

  I can feel Hades watching me without turning my head to see it. He’s watching me for the inevitable collapse. The moment when I cry or rush as Poseidon or demand to leave. It would prove Poseidon right. I don’t have to know what happened with my mother to be able to repeat it.

  But I do have to know.

  So I get my face back in order, let the heat melt away from my cheeks. I pretend Poseidon is another version of her, furious and unpredictable in such a way that it’s better to be a blank nothing than it is to react.

  Words. Find words to say. Say them. Get past whatever this horrible tension is.

  “We’ve been—” I almost choke on them, but queens don’t go around gagging on every distasteful thing they have to say. “We’ve been so rude. You’ve been traveling.” I’m relying on the things I’ve read in books and three blink-of-an-eye years in boarding school. It’s not enough to play hostess to a sea devil, but here we are. “We should obviously sit down and talk.” Obviously. “But first, let me get you a drink.”

  I clench my teeth tight, expecting him to laugh again. This time, I won’t lose my composure. I’ll handle it. And we’ll get the supplies, and everyone will live, and I will go deal with this gnawing need for the truth by myself. I’ll fold it up into a tiny box then crush it even smaller, and then tuck it away where I can pretend it doesn’t bother me.

  Poseidon shrugs, the darkness receding from his eyes. He blinks and it’s not gone, but it’s not as intense. It seems...survivable. “Fine. But I want to see the bottle first. New ones only.”

  11

  Hades

  Twenty-one years ago

  The knock at the door comes an hour after my father—what a fucking joke, calling him that—dropped a thick stack of papers on the kitchen table and ground his knuckles into the top while he explained in no uncertain terms that if any of us—me, Zeus, Poseidon—fucks up again, he won’t be able to get the charges erased when we turn eighteen. “Not fucking up” means staying near the house and not killing each other. It was a condition of release and now he’s bartered it into something better.

  Poseidon is displeased.

  He’s been down in the basement since Chronos left for his apartment in the city. Another crash comes from down there. Glass shattering. He prefers the antique medicine bottles we’ve dug up all over the property. They’re more satisfying to crush against brick, or so he says.

  “Go away, Zeus.” This knocking thing is a new refined habit of his. He thinks it does a better job of hiding that he’s an animal, ready to sink his teeth into the nearest available warm body.

  “I came to ask you about something.”

  Not Zeus then. I focus back o
n the reflection in the window instead of searching the yard for any shadows that could be Rosie coming back. Demeter’s in the doorway, backlit by a weak light from the hall, and she looks wrong.

  Really fucking wrong.

  I get out of my chair and stand up. It’s always better to be on your feet when Demeter appears out of nowhere. Nowhere in this case means the second floor of the farmhouse.

  “You’re not supposed to be here.”

  She lifts her chin, defiant despite the fact that she is obviously pregnant. And not slightly pregnant, but obviously pregnant. So pregnant that it had to have happened before she accused the three of us of gang-raping her in the barn. This is the first time I’ve seen her since we were released, and now it makes complete sense.

  This is worse than a lie. This is a truth wrapped up in a very fucked-up veneer. The hairs on the back of my neck pull up. She’s small. Small enough to be easily overpowered by the three of us. But being small hasn’t stopped her from being absolutely fucking crazy. She spends half her time in the greenhouse, growing things she won’t talk about. I have no idea how she’s kept them from Chronos all this time. Probably because he forces her to spend the rest of her time in her room. She’s not allowed to go outside. Greenhouse. Attic. That’s it.

  Demeter rubs her hands over her belly, eyes enormous and silver in the shadows from the doorframe. “I wouldn’t be here if I had any other options.”

  “It looks like you’ve had lots of other options.”

  Her teeth crack together, she’s gritting her teeth so hard. “Hades.”

  “Demeter.”

  “I can’t live with him in the world.”

  “That’s not my problem.” Cold? Callous? Maybe. But I’ve seen the bodies of the animals in the woods. Zeus doesn’t care for hunting and Poseidon prefers fistfights.

  “You have other problems.”

  I glare at her now. If she loses her shit entirely I’ll have to throw her out one of the windows, which would probably be construed as “fucking up” by Chronos. Especially if...

  If.

  “What are you offering? It had better be fucking good, Demeter, I’m not doing a damn thing for free.”

  Her lip curls. “You never do anything out of the goodness of your heart.”

  “What goodness of my heart could I possibly have after my foster sister sent me to jail for gang-raping her? What the fuck is wrong with you?” This is not a fair question and I don’t care. What’s wrong with her is living here, same as the rest of us. And now she has an added difficulty. It doesn’t make me hate her any less. “Get out.”

  “I made something that can help you.”

  I lean against my desk, shoved up against the wall and rickety as fuck. “If I wanted to die I wouldn’t use poison.”

  “It’s not poison.”

  “What, then?”

  “Painkillers. Good ones.”

  “Don’t fuck with me.” The amount it would take is enough to kill a person, or make them an addict.

  “Not like that.” She takes a step into my room, which is obviously forbidden, and for the first time in this conversation I get a full look at her face.

  She’s desperate. Tears gather in the corner of her eyes and her pulse ticks at the side of her neck. Her face is blotchy, like she’s been crying for a long time. Demeter doesn’t cry.

  “Explain to me how you’ve found some miracle drug out in your greenhouse.”

  “I didn’t find it, I made it.” Demeter sticks out her chin at me. “And I’ll keep making it for as long as it takes.”

  I run a hand over my face. It’s still sore from the day before. I’m still an aching wreck. I’m still hiding it. “I don’t like deals without an expiration date.”

  “Pick then. You can have another attack and die or you can make a deal with me.”

  “I didn’t die from the last one.”

  “Doesn’t your throat hurt?” She cocks her head to the side, eyes suddenly clear and dry. “Even a little?” I stop myself from rubbing at it but I can’t stop my hand from twitching. Fuck. “See? He had his boot on it. Chronos has always liked theatrics. Boots. Necks.” She giggles and a chill hooks into my spine. “Everybody saw, Hades. You’re not going to make it out of here if you don’t work with me.”

  If she’s right, then that is the most seductive promise I’ve ever heard. To know that this will all be over? Good. Fine. Let it happen then. But a competing impulse drowns it out. My stupid heart wants to stay alive. It beats fast and afraid, hiding its face from the dark veil that covers death. I scan the yard again. No sign of Rosie.

  There will never be a sign but I can’t stop looking.

  “What, then?”

  Demeter comes and stands next to the desk, close enough that I can see how tight her dress is over the bump. She tilts her face down to look at it. Curiously. Like she’s continually discovering that it’s there. Her expression empties out like a room at the end of a concert. Nobody’s home. And when she looks back at me there’s something worse than emptiness.

  “It’s just one person.” She rests a hand on the top of her bump but decides against it and drops it to her side. “He’s a lot smaller than you.”

  “No.” I’m eighteen in three months. Chronos is powerful, but not powerful enough to erase a murder charge. Not right now.

  Demeter gazes out toward the barn, moonlight skimming along the lines of her face. “Do you know what you looked like out there?”

  Shame blows out a hole somewhere near my kidney, letting blood seep into the wound. There was nothing I could do about it. Nothing. “Fucking pathetic, I imagine.”

  “It was worse than that,” she says. “You were defenseless.” She meets my eyes again, a smile playing around the corners of her mouth. “Anything could have happened.”

  This thing I’ve been flirting with, courting—a love affair with an easy death—crumbles and blows away on the breeze. It’s like all the times Chronos has shoved my head underwater and held it down. It lets me see clearly. I’ll be damned if I let Chronos do it. Or Demeter.

  “Who?”

  She blinks at the question and purses her lips.

  “The father, I assume?”

  Demeter sighs. “There was a rape, Hades. I didn’t lie about that.” Her chin trembles when she says it. “Things got out of hand, and then—” She must see on my face that I don’t care to hear her explanation of why she sent the three of us to jail. “I can’t use poison,” she says bluntly. “Obviously I have enough access to make me a suspect.”

  “If it’s Chronos—”

  “It’s not. It’s not,” she says quickly. “It wasn’t.” She names a man I’ve never heard of who lives at an address fifteen miles across the woods. It’ll take most of a night to get there and back if I don’t steal a car.

  “Fine.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  “Okay.” She trails back to the door.

  “The baby stays alive,” I call after her. I don’t know why I give the slightest fuck about this child. Maybe I don’t. Maybe it’s the prospect of a baby in this house of horrors. Or whatever house Demeter winds up in.

  “Of course.” She pastes on a smile and pats at her belly. “Of course she will.”

  She.

  “I don’t mean now. I mean until it’s—until she’s—eighteen. Then she’s mine.”

  Demeter giggles again. “Wow, Hades. That’s big of you.”

  “It’s nothing of me. It’s a life for a life.”

  She considers me. “You care that much about killing some—some criminal?”

  “No.” I sit down at the desk, but I don’t turn away. You don’t turn your back on someone like Demeter. “I don’t care about anything at all.”

  12

  Persephone

  The trowel goes into Eleanor’s flower beds so easily that it pisses me off. I want hard-packed soil with big rocks. I want to work for it. But digging out in the ravine is pointless. I’m no
t going to grow anything out there that will mean anything. I’ll settle for planting new seeds instead. She brought them out for me when I got here, told me I reminded her of a thundercloud, and left again.

  Things are supposed to be better now.

  Poseidon brought more than we needed, and now everybody in the mines is going to be all right. They’re rebuilding the outer gates from when Zeus blew them apart. There are plenty of jobs. Overtime.

  I’m the thing that’s still broken. Me.

  Because I served drinks and invited both men to sit down and took my place on the sofa next to Hades and then I sat there while they told some story about a lie my mother told when all of them were seventeen. That was the lie that landed the three brothers in jail then prison, and ultimately made them beholden to the father—the foster father—they all despised. He was the one who bailed them out, who paid off the prosecutors, who got the charges dropped.

  And then Hades took me back to the bedroom and when I finally thought it was over, by the time I finally thought there were no more secrets, he told me another one.

  The promise my mother made afterward, for me.

  I don’t know what to believe anymore.

  The seeds spill out of the packets in a mess, my plan for neat lines in the planter destroyed, and I let the trowel fly. It hits the opposite wall and sparks fly off the rock. I almost wish those sparks could fall onto dry tinder and light this place on fire, but it’s all made of rock. Only the living things would die. The fortress would remain.

  Of course it would.

  The planter is in the same state as the story they told—a mess. I pick up the seeds one by one and try to make the lines even, the spacing correct.

  I’ve read a lot of books. If this were a book, the story wouldn’t have started with me. No. You always have to go one generation back to see where a story starts.

  The house. The four of them. A collection of lies. Someone raped my mother but it wasn’t Hades or Poseidon. It wasn’t Zeus. It was some other man, some faceless man. Those were the services Hades was talking about. He killed a man for my mother. She promised him drugs and she promised him...me. Which hurts all over again, that she didn’t care. It stings my eyes, puts an ache in my chest, makes my hands unsteady on the seeds. She wanted me gone before I was even born.