Midnight Kingdom

by Amelia Wilde

  It’s so hypocritical that it makes my skin feel like it’s on fire. “You weren’t avenging me. You were just being horrible. You knew you weren’t supposed to be there, and you knew—” I swallow back the description before it can leave my lips. I don’t want to name these things, or think about them, but obviously there’s no other choice. “You knew what you were doing. And you know what you’re doing now. You’re evil, Zeus. You are unkind to every woman you meet. You use them.”

  “Thank you for noticing.”

  “They hate you, do you know that? They hate what you do to them. None of these women can stand the sight of you. They spend the rest of their lives cursing you at every chance they get.”

  Zeus covers his mouth with one hand, eyes dancing. His shoulders shake. “I like when you do this. It’s like being punched by a butterfly.”

  Frustration glows hot enough to burn, but Zeus is right. A bitter taste stings my tongue. He’s right, because he doesn’t care what I’m saying. He never cared about any of these women. He just wants their bodies and the money he can make from him, and nothing I say will ever make a difference. It’s like arguing with Poseidon. Pointless.

  I imagine the crown back on my head. I imagine Hades’ hands on my hips, the strength of his body at my back. I wrap the fierceness of all of his kisses around me like a shield and draw myself up to my full height.

  This room was quiet before, but now, with my breathing under control, I can feel the weight of the silence. A compact clicks shut and I realize everyone in the room is watching. And I am not, I am not, going to embarrass myself in front of these women.

  “Let’s negotiate terms.”

  Zeus laughs again, and I put a hand down on my purse to feel the outline of the gun. I loaded it on the train. I could shoot him right now, and then all this would be over.

  But if I’ve learned anything on the mountain, it’s that these people are a tangled web. Kill one and I might kill them all. Zeus must see the seductive pull of it in my face, because his smile drops away. He waves a hand at a chair across from his desk, but I don’t take it. Whatever happens next, I’m going to face it standing up. “What is it you think you’re going to get from me?”

  “You’re going to leave us alone. For good. Never come back to the mountain. Tell me what you want in exchange right now, Zeus. I’m not in the mood for bullshit.”

  20

  Hades

  Conor goes wild in the middle of our meeting, barking at the door to my office and wagging his tail so hard I’m briefly concerned he might hurt himself. I’ve been concentrating on battle plans. On fortifications. On all the various weapons and arms we have on the mountain. On how I’ll keep Persephone safe in the middle of all this looming chaos. If it’s going to be chaos I would prefer that would arrive already, so we could get to the aftermath.

  Instead, it’s the train that comes. I hear it several seconds after Conor and a moment before Oliver, whose eyes snap up to meet mine. “I didn’t have word he was starting the trains.”

  “Zeus is a self-absorbed man. How long did we expect him to inconvenience himself?” My diamonds and Demeter’s drugs aren’t the only things that are carried by the trains. The whole city is built up around its schedule. Zeus isn’t much for causing prolonged unrest if it will cause him money, and eventually the federal government would have taken notice. It’s odd, though, and sudden. I don’t trust it.

  The train makes its stop and I give my order for it to keep going through. This could be the first crack in the ice. As much as I hate Zeus, he is of more use to me if he’s not actively trying to destroy my way of life. People come to the mountain to escape him. I need fresh blood as much as he does. But I don’t expect it to be this easy.

  I put it out of my mind while we work on our plans, but after another two hours I can’t concentrate anymore. The rolling waves of pain in my head from the lamp become more intense by the minute and I need Persephone. I have plans for her, too. Plans that mostly involve hard fucking. She’ll like it.

  But she’s not in the library or the bedroom or anywhere in my private space.

  It’s not like her.

  I barge in on Eleanor who blinks at me as if I’ve shaken her awake. “She hasn’t been in today. Maybe down in the living area?”

  Of course. I told her to help those people. I gave her a crown and I put some of the responsibility of the mountain in her hands. Of course that’s where she is. She didn’t get on the train. Why would she have done that? No possible reason.

  Conor struggles to keep up with me on the way to the village, which is how I’ve come to think of the living space by the mines. It’s busy this time of day, around dinner, but the whispers spread quickly. A man tries to rush by me and I have him by the throat before I’ve had time to think about it. “Persephone. Is she here?”

  He kicks until I let his feet touch the ground. “Saw her here earlier. She was talking to Scarlett.”

  “Who the fuck is Scarlett?” His face is turning red and I release him against all my more violent urges. “Take me to her.”

  The guy turns around and leads me down past the first set of apartments. He gestures to one with a shaking hand. I pound on the door with enough force to take it off the hinges, and one of them cracks. A moment later it swings open to reveal a blonde woman with fire in her eyes that turns to suspicion in a heartbeat. “Mr. Hades.” She swallows. “What can I do for you?”

  “You saw my—” My wife. She’s not my wife. “Persephone was here. Do you know where she went afterward?”

  Pride lights up her eyes. “Oh, yes. She got on the train.” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “She’s going after Zeus.”

  If I thought my life had been a series of hand grenades before, then I am now coming face to face with an atomic explosion. I’m breathing in radiation that skims along all my muscles and veins until it’s eaten everything in its path except a howling fear and rage. I put a hand on the doorframe. “Did you encourage her?”

  “Yes.” She’s flippant, defiant. “She wanted to know how to get to him, and I told her. Why wouldn’t I? That man is a nightmare and he made my life a nightmare.”

  There aren’t enough words in the universe to show this woman what she’s risked. What she’s done. I’m going to rip her apart. I’m going to make her meet a permanent nightmare right now. I’m going to—

  “Mama?” A small voice is the first to emerge from the back bedroom in the tiny apartment. I’m a thousand pieces of shattered glass, all cutting edges and splinters in open wounds. This girl—I remember this girl. She and her mother came here from Zeus’s whorehouse and I let them stay here, far away from him. And this is how her mother has repaid me.

  “Go back into the bedroom, Jill,” Scarlett says evenly. “I’ll be right there.”

  “No, you won’t. Get your things and get out of my mountain.”

  Scarlett’s eyes go wide. “The train isn’t here. I can’t just leave. Where am I going to go? The city’s dangerous, and—how am I supposed to get back there?”

  “Walk,” I tell her, then lift my hand from the doorframe without shattering it. “And walk fast.”

  21

  Persephone

  Zeus smirks, and I feel small, like a child, like I’ve walked into a pond that’s way over my head and now I need someone bigger and stronger to help me. But nobody is coming to help. Fear dissolves in the face of it. No one here will help me. Not Zeus’ women, and not Hades, and definitely not Zeus. For a moment I’m invisible. He can smirk all he wants, but I’ll be a blade in his ribs until he gives me what I want or I die trying.

  I’m willing to die trying.

  I don’t think death is imminent, here in this room, unless it comes directly from Zeus. And Zeus doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who would kill in a fit of rage. It would mess up his pristine suit. “If you’re in a hurry, then let’s skip to the best part. Send her in.”

  Before I can ask him what he’s talking about, or who, there
are footsteps on the marble floor behind me. I don’t dare turn around. I’m not sure I can turn around. I keep deciding to be a queen and my own body keeps betraying me. The big doors to Zeus’ office open and the curl of a whisper reaches me, but not the words.

  A keening, choking cry splits the room and I wheel around, a puppet on the strings of my stupid, pointless emotions, and there is my mother.

  The shock that slams into me doesn’t make any sense—I thought she might be here, I thought I was prepared for it—but the sight of her is a blow to the soft parts of me that still haven’t made it out from behind her fences. The hairs all along the backs of my arms leap for the ceiling and I don’t know that I’m backing up until I run into Zeus’ desk. “I’m not negotiating with her,” I say flatly. “I’m negotiating with you.”

  “Same thing,” says Zeus, and I’ve never been lowered into a vat of boiling water before but this must be what it feels like. It’s intolerable. A scream rises up and I choke it back.

  She’s crying.

  My mother doesn’t seem to see the naked women on the big, round chairs. She doesn’t seem to see anyone but me. Her hair is a wreck, flattened and tangled at the same time, and deep marks under her eyes give away that she hasn’t been sleeping. There’s a strange cast to her lips. What has she been drinking? Suspicion prickles down the bones of my spine. All the things they’ve told me about her fall into place. Her greenhouse. The secrecy. Locked doors, locked cabinets.

  All those wedding bouquets were distractions for the uglier things my mother has done. How did I not see it? How could I have ever thought that she was, in her way, dedicated to beauty?

  She’s not. She never was.

  “What’s wrong with her?” I whirl around to look Zeus in the eye because I need to see his face for this. “Did you give her something?”

  He shoots me a dark look. “Demeter doesn’t take drugs from other people. She’s the one who makes them. All kinds. So many varieties, each with her own twist. She’s been my supplier for years and years. Longer than you’ve been alive.”

  “Then why is she like that?”

  Zeus looks at her over my head. “Grief, I imagine. Losing a daughter to her own brother—”

  “Stop.” He does, but the smile he wears after isn’t an improvement. “You let her get this way? Your own sister?”

  It feels wrong, fatal, to have my back to my mother but I can’t turn my back on Zeus again either. I settle for standing sideways at the edge of his desk. Fine. Good. I need her here, too. That’s part of the plan. Yes. Remember? You have a plan, Persephone, don’t fall to pieces now.

  This is the most dramatic I have ever seen my mother. She trails up the center of the room in one of her linen dresses. It hangs off her newly thin frame, the hem dragging on the ground. Someone—probably her—has torn the collar. While I watch she reaches up a hand and pulls at it again, like she doesn’t know, like she can’t stop.

  Something’s missing.

  I cast around the room. Something’s not right, something’s not here.

  It’s me.

  Or it’s the way I used to feel when I saw her coming—an overpowering mix of love and fear and desperation. Desperation to please her. If I loved her enough, she would love me back. If I feared her enough, she would see that I loved her.

  But it doesn’t come.

  I feel vaguely sad for her, this pathetic woman whose sobs fill the room. She wipes at her face over and over again but the tears keep coming. I’m not certain they’re real. I’m certain that I don’t care.

  Every step brings her closer until she’s a foot away, red-faced and pale-lipped. “Persephone,” she cries, and reaches for my face. I go still on instinct—if I don’t move, she can’t see me—and she strokes the side of my cheek, her thumb grazing against my lips. It snaps me out of the trance I’ve been in, watching her, and I knock her hand away.

  “Don’t touch me.’

  She clutches her hand to her chest, rubbing the fabric hard and fast and then dropping her hands to her sides. “Come home. Please, Persephone. It’s all I want in the world.”

  Is she joking?

  After a lifetime of pain and fear, a lifetime of fingerprint bruises on my arms.

  When I left, I was running away. Hiding away in the cover of night. Now I’m stronger than that. I’m strong enough to face her and tell the truth.

  “All you want in the world? What about what I want, mama? All I want is to be away from you. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. Really, Mama, you are the goddamn worst. You are the worst thing that ever happened to me. Do you think I’ve forgiven you for the lock on the outside of my door? Do you think I forgot how often you hurt me?”

  “Hades lies.” She somehow manages to say it with conviction, but her gaze slides over to Zeus and she flinches back a little. “He lies, and you don’t know—”

  “I know you accused them of raping you, and you, and you know what? If you had told me that story, I would have believed it. But it wasn’t true. You just wanted to mess with people. You thought that the fact that you got hurt gave you permission to hurt everybody else. Well, it didn’t. You were a terrible person. You were a terrible mother. You are still a terrible person. Why are you working with her?” I wheel around on Zeus because my mother, my terrible mother, is a disgrace. “How can you stand to have her here? After what she did to you?”

  He looks unrepentant. “I’m no saint, sweetheart.”

  “I did what I had to do.” My mother gulps back another wave of tears. “I’ve always done what I had to do to survive. And then I had to protect you, Persephone. There are so many bad people out in the world. It’s so nasty, so wrong. Come home with me, where you’ll be safe. I promise I’ll take the lock off the door. You can go wherever you want to go as long as long as you’re with me. You can spend the summer in the sun. And then we can talk about the future.”

  “I’m never going to do that.”

  “You are,” says Zeus. “There are other arrangements in play. Look.” He crosses his arms over his chest and pushes his chair back from the desk, almost lounging. “You’ll be better off at your mother’s house. She only wants the summer, Persephone. She wants to start with one summer. Now’s your chance to get something for it.”

  Get something for it.

  “Show me what you brought.” She studies me intently. Too intently. “Now, Mama.”

  “What I brought for Zeus? That’s between the two of us, darling. It doesn’t concern you.”

  “Show me what you brought for Hades. I know you have it.” I’m going to die if I’m wrong, my heart will give out right here and that will be the end of all this. “You know I love him.” No gasp, no surprise, except a lifted eyebrow from Zeus. “And I know you would use that against me. I know you brought what he needs. Show it to me.”

  My mother hesitates.

  And that’s when I pull the gun out of my purse and aim it at her heart. New tears spill down over her cheeks and she puts both hands up. “You’re killing me,” she whispers.

  So be it then. “I haven’t shot you yet. Show me now before I do.”

  “He’s made you into—”

  “Someone strong, I know.” I gesture with the gun and she slowly puts her hands to the sides of her skirt. Those linen things have deep pockets. I know, because I used to have to wear one every day. Thank god I’m not wearing one now. I’m in gray and black, the opposite of all her flowers. “Hurry up.” My mother comes up with a pill bottle and I laugh in her face. “Put it on the desk and then show me what else you have.”

  “What else? I—”

  “I’m not leaving with you for a bottle of pills. I want the seeds. I know you have them. Skip the part where you cry and tell me you don’t, and put them on the desk.”

  She produces a white packet and worries it with her fingertips, letting out a choked sob. “I won’t have anything left if I have to give this up. Nothing to protect me.”

  “You’ll have me.” I try to keep m
y tone soothing, even though I’m definitely pointing a gun at my own mother, my finger skimming toward the trigger with every breath. “If you want me to come home with you right now—for the summer—then these are the terms. This is what I want.” Silent tears cover over the old tracks, her hands shaking on the packet. She lurches over to the desk and drops it there. I let my eyes slide to meet Zeus’ gaze. “Open it and make sure it’s not empty.”

  He does, then gives me a nod. I have no good options in this moment. I’m past the edge of the cliff and there’s nothing to grab on the way down.

  “You’ll send those to the mountain,” I tell him. “Mama, write down the instructions for growing them and adding whatever it is we need to add.”

  She hesitates again. What the hell is she waiting for?

  “Demeter, do it,” snaps Zeus. He’s starting to look uncomfortable, impatient. I don’t think he planned on the scene getting so out of hand. “I’ll send it. I agree to the terms.” My mother mumbles to herself and steps over to the desk. Picks it over for a pen. Scrawls something on a paper and hands it to Zeus. “I’ll send one of my people to be sure she’s not lying.”

  I blink. “Why would you do that?”

  “Her products are useful to me. But only so long as they’ve not been tampered with.” Zeus purses his lips and looks at my mother. “These haven’t been tampered with, have they, Demeter? These are the seeds that Luther needs, and the pills that will keep him from becoming useless to us?”

  “I didn’t tamper with them,” she grumbles, a flicker of her old self showing through. But then her eyes glisten. The pen meets the desk with a metallic clatter. “I love her too much to play games with this. There. It’s done.” Her chin trembles and she bursts out into another sob. “I can’t believe you took this from me, Zeus, after everything.”

  “Please. You got your daughter back. What more could you want?” He scribbles his own name at the bottom of my mother’s instructions, then sweeps all of it—the bottle, the packet, the note—into his pocket. “Persephone, put the gun down. It’s time to go.”