Midnight Kingdom

by Amelia Wilde

  I make a show of it, my heart pounding. Hesitating. Biting my lip. But then I put it carefully at the center of his desk and join him on the other side. They’re going to walk on either side of me, so I angle myself toward his pocket.

  We are almost to the door when I pretend to stumble, falling against him and reaching for the packet. I get it in one fist and yank it out, and my mother is busy wailing and Zeus is reaching for me when I pull out the knife. The packet goes into my purse with my other hand, tearing as it goes.

  It’s not as good as a gun but it’s recently sharpened with tiny serrations at the edge. It would hurt to get stabbed with it. Zeus stops, irritated.

  “I changed my mind,” I tell him. One of the naked women opened the door, so it’s open. All I have to do is get out. I have money in my purse and they can take me to the train, or I’ll walk. I’ll walk the rest of the way back. I don’t care. I don’t care about much of anything, which is an odd sensation, given that I’m fighting for my life and the life of the man I love. “Stay back.”

  My mother should be crying, should be losing her mind, but she’s just staring, a look of mild concern on her face.

  Come to think of it, my lips feel kind of numb. Numb like buzzing bees. My heart races, faster than a hummingbird’s wings. Zeus and my mother bow sideways and snap straight out. “Stay back,” I say again, but it doesn’t sound right. I don’t think I got the words right.

  “Demeter,” Zeus sighs. “What did you do?”

  “I made it easier,” my mother says, and then everything goes black.

  22

  Hades

  I go alone, even though Conor hates it and claws at the backs of my legs and snaps at the door. In the end Oliver has to drag him back inside so I can get in the car. I can’t wait for the train. I can’t wait for anything. Losing her is worse than being locked out in the sun, more painful by far, and that will kill me long before anything else does. The drive into the city is a blur. If Zeus has so much as touched her, I will burn his whorehouse to the ground, I will level the earth, I will take the whole city down with it.

  Where is she. Where is she. Where is she.

  Why couldn’t she have waited?

  I abandon the car somewhere on the sidewalk. It hurts to get out in the sun, a deep, splintering pain, but nothing hurts more than Persephone being gone. I have to see her. I have to see her now.

  The inside of the whorehouse is waking up. Women with gowns and makeup shrink back against the walls. I need something to destroy. Maybe today it will be Zeus. “Where is he?” I bellow into the room at no one in particular.

  His office, one of them says, and I have never been in Zeus’ office but I can imagine it’s just as hellish as the rest of this place. I imagine it’s dressed up like a fucking party, like something classy and respectable, and I can imagine it hides just how depraved he is. I know what he’s really like. I’ve always known. But I’m caught between the hope that he wouldn’t go this far, in the end, and the knowledge that he would. I don’t expect him to have more humanity than I do.

  I burst through the door that someone has thoughtfully directed me to and find the strangest office on the face of the planet. A long room, a huge desk at one end, where Zeus sits staring out the window. Enormous round chairs, three on each side, each one decorated with a woman wearing nothing but jewelry.

  I was mistaken.

  Five of them have naked women.

  The sixth one, closest to Zeus’ desk, has Persephone.

  She’s dead.

  I can tell it from the stillness of her chest and the fallen angle of her body and then I don’t know anything anymore. I’m a tower of rage, grief ripping me limb from limb, heart falling out of my chest, gasping for air. I must move but I don’t feel it. The next thing to enter my consciousness is the crush of Zeus’s shirt in my fist and my knuckles making rough contact with his face.

  He goes backward over his desk and both of us slam into the brick of his fireplace, the back of my head taking the brunt of it. I don’t care. He scrambles to get out from underneath me and lands a hit to the spot he damaged before. My body angles itself away enough for him to get purchase with his feet. There’s a brief struggle over my neck. He can’t get a solid enough grip to choke me, but he levers my head into the corner of his desk. But that only puts him into my hands again.

  Good. If I can put his head through the window there’s a chance it will slice his neck and then I can watch him choke on his own blood.

  But it wouldn’t matter.

  It wouldn’t matter because nothing does, not now that Persephone is gone and Zeus killed her, what the fuck, what the fuck.

  Glass shatters and Zeus kicks out, catching me in the ribs, and the pull to go to her is so strong that I’m tempted to give up. But no. No, He’s not dead yet, he only has a cut above his eye, and he’s coming for me.

  Saying something.

  I don’t care what.

  I charge him again because the rush of blood in my ears is too loud to hear over and I will never understand anything again, now that she’s gone. Nothing is ever going to make sense in the world. The only thing that has any structure is this fight I’m having with Zeus. I will hurt him and I’ll kill him for what he’s done and when I’m finished, that’s when I’ll take her home with me and bury her—and bury her—

  It’s an unbearable agony and my mind rejects it wholesale, the thought of Persephone in the ground, the thought of an endless winter, because that’s what it would be. The sun would never come out again. I hate the sun so much, it hurts me so much, and I would stare into it for the rest of my life if I thought it would bring her back.

  I swing Zeus around so his head meets the wall. More exposed brick. He gets one hand up to shield his face but I do it again. It’s experimental now. How many hits does it take to crack a skull and spill a man’s twisted brains to the floor? Let’s find out. He whips a hand out toward the other side of my head and I flick it away. The noise he makes does not soothe me at all. Nothing will, except the sight of him dead on the ground. If she’s dead then everyone else will have to die, too. Some screaming has started in the back of the room, naked women at the door, calling for help. Who’s coming to help them? Nobody here. Nobody here can stop me.

  Zeus lunges forward and my hands fall to the front of his shirt. Very well, then. This is how I’ll kill him. With his shirt, or with a hard fall to the traffic outside. I expect him to reach for my wrists but he reaches past me for the sides of my head. He’s still shouting and the pressure at my temples brings his voice into focus.

  “—not dead,” he says. “She’s not dead.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I roar into his face, and I’m dying. This is it. This is me, dying, my ribs falling out. I throw him backward, into the fireplace mantel, and it cracks. Blood runs down from his nose, onto his shirt, and he holds out a hand. Stop.

  “Hades,” says a soft voice.

  I shouldn’t turn my head, because Zeus could use this moment and come after me, but I do it anyway, and find Persephone half-up on one elbow, her eyes open. Alive. One hand on the purse she started taking with her to hide her gun. Her fist is clutched tight.

  Zeus slumps down in front of the fireplace, hands folded over his nose, and I leave him there like he doesn’t exist. He does not exist now. I go to my knees by the chair, this stupid fucking round chair, and gather her up, touching her hair and her eyes and her chin.

  “Don’t kiss me,” she murmurs. “There could still be poison.”

  I kiss her anyway, my soul breaking and coming back together, shards flying backward into place. Flowers come back from the dead and bloom. Birds with snapped wings take flight. Dark birds, streaks in the night, but they can still fly.

  “Did you kill Zeus?” Her fingertip traces the side of my cheek, brushing against a new bruise. “I heard you fighting.”

  “I love you.”

  Persephone smiles, and some color comes back into her cheeks. “I love you.”
Then she frowns a little. “My mother’s crazy. I’m pretty sure she tried to kill me.”

  I hold her close to my chest because she is the only thing that keeps my heart beating. Fucking Demeter. She would. She would do that. She would rather have Persephone die than give her up. We’re opposites, me and Demeter. I’d rather die myself. “Why did you come here?” The anguish of almost still guts me.

  “Queens solve problems,” she says. “I was going to solve some of yours.”

  “Don’t ever do that again.”

  She gives a weak laugh. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

  I stand up and she’s so light, she’s almost weightless, and I cannot fucking believe that she put herself on that train and in this room because of me. For me. It occurs to me that there’s someone missing. “I’ll kill her for you, if you want.”

  Persephone leans her head against my shoulder, all of her relaxed, and I can’t tell if it’s because she still has poison in her blood or because she’s not afraid anymore. She doesn’t seem afraid. She tips her face up and kisses my neck. “No. That would be too kind.”

  There is so much pleasure to be had in her eyes. They’re so alive and bright and everything I’ve ever wanted to see. It’s a good thing I didn’t take my own eyes out. I would have missed so much. “I didn’t give you enough credit.” I kiss her again because I can’t stop myself. “You’re ruthless.”

  “Only sometimes.”

  “And other times—” I’ll tell her later. We have a long time. “Let’s go.”

  Judging by the muffled groans, Zeus has gotten himself up off the floor. I give him one glance. He looks wrecked, his shirt torn, buttons missing. He leans over his desk, palms flat on the wood and a glare twisting his face. “Demeter left,” he says. “And you owe me an apology. You’ve ruined my shirt.”

  “Bill me for it, fucker.” And then I leave with Persephone, her face turned to my chest. We won’t be visiting again.

  23

  Persephone

  Hades traces a finger down the line of my spine, edging over each one of the bones. He’s been touching me like this for what feels like forever. Minutes. Hours. I don’t know, because I can’t see a clock. As soon as he woke up this morning he shook me awake and then inspected me for any lingering sign of the poison my mother used on me. I don’t know if she was trying to kill me or just drug me so she could drag me back home. I’ll probably never know, because I’ll probably never have a sit-down chat with Zeus again in my life.

  That’s all right.

  Because when I woke up, body still sluggish and heavy, she was gone and Hades was there. He was gentle on the way back to the mountain. Exquisitely careful, with fear in his eyes. He thought I’d been dead. I felt that in every one of his kisses. I still feel it now, though the time for gentleness is over.

  He brushes his fingers down over the curve of my ass and the backs of my thighs, all the way down to my ankles, which are tied to the posts of his bed. Same for my wrists, up in front of me. I can barely stay up on elbow and knees like he’s ordered me to. My muscles are already tired and shaking. It only makes him laugh to see it.

  He palms my pussy and makes a noncommittal noise while my face gets red. Even if there were a mirror here, I wouldn’t see myself blush. The blindfold took care of that.

  “Your body is made for punishment,” he says. “And so are you. Do you know why?”

  I shiver under his touch, wanting to rock back into his hand and stopped by the way I’m bound. “Because I almost died?”

  “Because you belong to me, and you disregarded that to go into the city and put yourself in danger.”

  “I won’t do it again.”

  “No, you fucking won’t.” His hand leaves the space between my legs and I’m in the middle of whimpering for it to come back when he spanks me there. Hard. And then again. If I was worried he’d been changed, that he’d become someone else, then I was wrong. Hades is as cruel as he’s always been.

  I relish it.

  His hand snaps between my legs again and again, and now I know why he touched me so much before he began. He wanted me to be ready for him. To be wanting. He is showing me now what happens when the wanting comes face to face with consequences. These are the consequences, and it makes me unbearably wet even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts. I keep thinking he’ll stop, but he doesn’t—not until there are tears running down my cheeks and splashing against the backs of my hands. “Yes,” he hisses. “Now you understand. But I think you could understand more.”

  There’s a release near my ankles and then Hades turns me over, still blindfolded, and now my wrists are stretched above my head. It was one thing being bent over for him—it’s another to have my whole body exposed like this. He spreads my legs wider and I let myself sink into the lingering ache between my legs and the slow panic coming in like the tide. My body knows better than to think this won’t hurt, and it wants to get away.

  I want to stay.

  Hades brushes his hands over my nipples and over my ribs, then rakes his nails down over my belly. Spreads my folds open with his fingers and sweeps a finger inside, testing. He’s working me, arranging my legs so that my pussy could take more punishment.

  But it’s the soft inside of my thighs that gets the kiss of a belt.

  It snaps my mind in two. One is the woman, the queen, who is stoic in the face of danger. And the other is the girl who met him on the train station that night. One of them is gritting her teeth. Both of them are crying, begging, but he doesn’t stop until my thighs are burning, too.

  A sudden slack in the tension at my wrists startles me and Hades rips off the blindfold and takes me up into his arms, kissing me with an angry, desperate bite. I don’t know what’s happening or why I’m free and I’m so off-balance. The only thing that’s steady is him. Steady arms, steady legs, a vicious mouth. On mine. He kisses me hard, then again, then stares into my eyes like he’s searching for a secret there. And then he pushes me out of the bed.

  I land on the floor, on my knees, and catch myself on the bedspread.

  His eyes meet mine, and I get my first real look at him since the bleary glance I got earlier, when I was still waking up. He’s wearing a dark-t-shirt and underwear, and if he were anyone else, I’d think it made him look vulnerable. Almost weak. But he is a king no matter what he wears.

  “Run,” he says.

  My body obeys before my mind can figure out why he’s saying this or whether it matters. I sprint for the door, getting through just ahead of him. His fingertips brush my skin but I put on a burst of speed. At his office I put a hand on the doorframe and fling myself inside the room. I have some vague idea that I’ll circle his desk and skirt around him on the way back out, but being chased—being chased—

  It turns me into prey.

  I’m afraid of him in an animal sense, my eyes and ears working in overdrive to hear him on the hunt. He is not subtle, because he doesn’t have to be subtle. He doesn’t have to rely on the element of surprise to catch what he wants. I’m two steps into my plan when his arm comes out and catches me around the waist, knocking the wind from me and taking me from the floor.

  It’s different here than it was on the bed, still scrabbling to get away from him because he hasn’t told me to stop. He hasn’t and my hand hits the side of an end table, knocking it over. A lamp crashes to the floor. I gain six inches on him and he drags me back, my peaked nipples electric on the rough rug, and he jerks my legs apart. Wider.

  “I caught you,” he says, sounding almost breathless. “I’ll always fucking catch you.”

  And then he drives himself into me in a single impatient stroke, pinning my hands behind my back while he does it.

  I’m a mess.

  Cheek pressed to the carpet, hair in my eyes, tears making everything slick. I keep struggling because that’s what he told me to do, and I don’t disobey. I will never disobey again. Something else falls off his desk—he can reach the drawer from here, even in
the middle of fucking me so hard I can’t get a breath, and then he lets go of my hands to spread my ass. The cool, slick wash of lube comes down onto my heated core and then something thick. Not him. Not a finger. Bigger. Harder. Cold.

  I fight it because I know he wants me to and because I can’t help it. He tenses inside of me, pulsing, and forces whatever it is in another fraction of an inch. I can’t let it inside so he delivers a slap to the outside of my thigh. “Open,” he orders. “Now.”

  No other choices, then. A sob breaks loose from me. It was the most difficult thing, having all those options. Taking all those risks. I hated it. But I’d do it again for him in a heartbeat. I will do it again. Just not outside the mountain. It’s big, what he’s putting inside my hole, almost too big, and I’m sweating by the time he’s finished, still splayed over his lap, still with my face in the carpet. I’m destroyed.

  But when he starts to move inside me again, taking his time, I’m remade.

  Hades fucks me until he gets a hitch in his breath, and then he fucks harder, each stroke bringing the full force of him to bear on my body. In the end he growls at me to hold still and empties himself into me, the heat of his release making me even hotter.

  And then he pulls out, putting a hand beneath my chin and turning me around so that we’re eye to eye. “Who do you belong to, Persephone?”

  “You,” I pant. He hasn’t let me come yet and it isn’t far.

  “I couldn’t hear you.”

  “I belong to you.” It breaks me open a little. It’s going to take days to let everything sink in. Maybe weeks. But I almost lost him. I almost lost myself. I won in the end, but death was at my doorstep and I still feel its kiss everywhere I go. Or maybe that’s just Hades. I think he’s more powerful than death.