Summer Queen

by Amelia Wilde

  “What do you dream of now?”

  My eyes fill with tears behind my eyelids. I let one or two escape. My throat tightens but I swallow it back. I’m not going to cry over this. If I cry, it will be because I’m wrung out and ragged after this morning and being taken over Hades’ desk. I get full control of myself before I answer him.

  “Being outside.” That was my last burst of energy. I tumble down into sleep. Hades’ hand slows in my hair. I don’t care if he’s watching me now. I can’t help it. His hand is still, a calming warmth. “I really like to be outside.”

  “Picking flowers in your mother’s fields.” He sounds so far away. Stay. I need to stay and ask him what he means, but it’s too late.

  17

  Persephone

  I didn’t lie. I dream of being outside, someplace wide-open and warm. Bare feet on new grass. A basket in my hand. There’s no boundary marked by trees, so I can see for miles. It’s miles and miles of wildflowers. Rare flowers. I can fill my basket. I could walk for hours. On the next step, the sole of my foot meets something shiny and flat. Way out here, in the middle of nowhere? I lift my foot away from it like it’s a land mine, holding my breath.

  It’s not a mine, it’s a card. A tarot card. I recognize it from all those years ago—the purple and black pattern on the back of the cards. This one has a small tear in the corner. Dream-logic compels me to bend down and pick it up. Sweat breaks out on the back of my neck. If I don’t look, then I won’t have to see which card it is. But I already know.

  Death.

  I flip it over in my hand—there’s that skull, that darkness. “Death,” a voice says. A presence lurks behind me but when I turn, nobody’s there. The card sticks to my fingers when I try to let it fall. It reminds me of a mayfly. It has wings, like a mayfly. It won’t get off, it won’t get off—

  I wake up with a muffled shriek, fighting with the blankets in Hades’ bedroom. He was here when I went to sleep but he’s not here now. The window offers zero clue as to what time it is, but judging by the sleepiness clinging to my bones, it’s been a long time since I fell asleep. Maybe the rest of the afternoon and night. That seems right. I’m still in the same clothes as....before. The ache in my ass has subsided, but it’s not gone. The next day. I’ve lost an afternoon and a night with Hades.

  Or maybe without him. I don’t know where he went. On the way out of the Ed a glimmer catches my eye. A piece of jewelry, high on his pillow. A gift.

  I hold my breath while I pick it up. A bracelet. Diamonds in a silver thread, like he took the sky and made it small enough to hang around my wrist. Is he watching? No, but my face flushes and I put it on quickly before I get caught. Doing what, I don’t know. Having a crush, maybe. Embarrassing.

  Showering would be a good first step, but before that I pad out into the sitting area to make sure he’s really gone.

  Hades is.

  Oliver isn’t.

  He’s bent over a newspaper when I step through the door and he startles, dropping his pen. What was he doing with the pen, annotating the newspaper? Seems weird. But then again, Oliver seems weird. “Shit,” he says softly under his breath. He leans down to get his pen off the floor and sits back up. “Good morning.”

  “Hi.”

  Good morning. If Oliver is here in his capacity as my secondary jailer, then he doesn’t seem like it. He hasn’t made a single move to remind me that he’s a threat. In the muted light of the sitting room, he looks like a slightly rough-and-tumble man. But what do I know? Nothing. I thought Decker looked innocent. I thought I was innocent.

  It occurs to me that I’m really, really rumpled. I have no idea what my hair looks like and my dress is definitely not on straight. All I did was add a diamond bracelet to my look. I reach for the straps and adjust the fabric. Oliver decides he shouldn’t be sitting on the sofa and stands up.

  “I didn’t—I hope I wasn’t interrupting you,” I tell him. I should have gone for the shower and fresh clothes first. There’s that saying about hindsight.

  “No, of course not. It’s my job. Security is my job.” He takes a breath and starts over. “Mr. Hades didn’t want you to think you’d been left alone.”

  I put the back of my hand to my forehead. “Whatever would I do if I were left alone? Die, probably.”

  Snoop, probably. Get punished for it, probably. But not everything can be as heavy as yesterday was. I’ll get crushed under the weight.

  Oliver cracks a smile, which has the effect of making his scar less noticeable. “He wanted me to tell you—”

  I hold up one finger and he stops, eyebrows raised. “Can you do something for me, Oliver?”

  His shoulders stiffen. “That would depend on what it was.”

  “It’s nothing wrong. Nothing Hades would be upset about, I’m sure of it.” I’m not sure of anything, actually. Hades could turn good behavior into a reason for a brutal punishment, which I would then love. It’s so wrong. “Can you pretend I haven’t come in here yet?”

  His mouth quirks. “Going back to bed?”

  “Better. I bet you’re going to wait here either way, right? Just—go back to what you were doing.”

  I go back into the bedroom to the sound of Oliver settling back on the couch and wait for the press of anxiety around my lungs. Hades wouldn’t let someone untrustworthy into his private rooms. But why does he trust Oliver? I don’t want to know—at least not right now. But any man who could protect Hades would have to be at least as dangerous as he is.

  And yet I’m pretty sure he was doing a crossword puzzle in a newspaper.

  What’s more important than this latest development is my shower. Hades has put everything I might need in exactly the places I would think to look for them. Overnight, it seems, I’ve gotten my own drawer in his bathroom. While I’m brushing my teeth I watch myself in the mirror. Does this count as my bathroom now? Probably not. In a way, I’m on the same level as the bathroom—another piece of his sprawling property. But I get glimmers of something else when he—what did he say? When he loses control.

  Freshly dressed in leggings and a tunic the color of a real poppy—this time with a pair of soft shoes, because I don’t plan on spending the rest of the day in bed—I go back out to the sitting room.

  Oliver folds the newspaper over and puts his pen on top. “Good morning, Persephone.”

  “Good morning. How’s your crossword puzzle?”

  It is more than surreal, having this kind of light conversation with a man who’s certainly a killer at best. The only real thing in the world is Hades.

  “It’s good.” Oliver lifts his chin. “Fine.” He seems to struggle with what he’s going to say next. “I’m not very good at crossword puzzles, to be frank with you.”

  “I’m not, either.”

  This drags another smile from his serious expression. “You’re always in that library, reading. How could you not be good at crossword puzzles?”

  It makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, but I’m not sure why. I’ve never seen Oliver in the library. I’ve never seen him watching at all, but he knows. Should I be terrified or comforted? If they’ve been watching me so closely, how could Decker have planned my escape?

  Or Hades told him about you.

  That’s not quite as scary, but it is...unsettling. It’s unsettling because I can’t picture Hades having a friend. Employees, yes. Contracts, yes. but a friend? Oliver might be the only one.

  “Lack of practice, I guess. My mother didn’t buy a lot of puzzle books.”

  “Neither did mine. Got a late start.” Oliver rubs his hands together. “I’m supposed to deliver a message from Mr. Hades. He left to put down some trouble in the mines, but there was something he wanted you to see.”

  “Okay. Where is it?” I scan the sitting room. A low sofa. Two chairs. Black chairs on a white rug. A narrow window to let in some light, but it has the same strange quality as all Hades’ other windows. They must filter out the sun somehow. A tablet and a book
sit on the table by the sofa. And...that’s it. There’s no art on the walls. No extra colors. Oliver’s hair and my shirt are the brightest things in the room.

  Oliver waits by the door. “Not in here, in case you hadn’t already reached that conclusion.”

  We go out into the main hallway and make a sharp turn to the left. Surprise—another hallway. It must have been here all along, but I never noticed. At the end of the hall Oliver presses a switch in the wall. A door swings open. I suck in an enormous breath. Because on the other side of the door is the valley.

  How can Hades hate the sun so much and still have such easy access to the outdoors? It’s right here. All along, I thought I’d been imprisoned in miles of stone. The valley could have easily been another trick of the window. But it’s real. It’s here.

  Oliver beckons me forward and I go, glad with every step that I put some shoes on.

  There is no boundary between the door and the grass except for a short, three-inch step. I hesitate at the exit and find myself looking at Oliver for reassurance.

  “It’s fine.” He nods into the open air. “He gave his permission.”

  Something in Oliver’s tone makes me think that Hades gave more than permission, but I’m too dumbstruck by the sight of green to care. I take one tentative step outside the mountain. For all I wanted this, I feel...bare. Exposed. I take a half-step back. In open air like this, anyone could get to me. Decker. Zeus. Anyone.

  “It’s safe,” says Oliver. But I’m busy taking in the steep slope of the valley, the green rise...and the small cottage at the other side. I can’t believe this is here. Here, high on the mountain. The angle of the rock must be perfect for all this to have grown, or else Hades forced it to grow by brute force. Either is equally plausible, but it looks like a plain miracle to me. A breeze whips past the door, stirring my hair. It’s colder than it looks out here. Bracing. Wonderful.

  A woman comes out of the cottage.

  For a heart-stopping instant I’m seeing my mother. Not my mother with her hair flying behind her, but my mother as an old woman. Slightly slower. Still as confident. This person could be my mother. She’s not, though—she’s too old.

  This is not the woman who has pinched me and locked me in my room and told me how I could die every day of my life. Who kept me inside by the force of her anger. Who kept the world from me. It’s not her.

  “Who is that?” I want to run back inside and slam the door and I want to run out into the valley and throw my arms around this stranger. It turns out that being out in all this green isn’t simple. It’s not simple at all. “Who is it, Oliver?”

  “That’s Eleanor.” Oliver doesn’t seem inclined to come out here. He looks out over the valley with me, scanning from side to side. Always checking.

  A new curiosity pushes out all my tormented thoughts. “She’s really old.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did she live here before he built this place?”

  Oliver lets out a short laugh. It’s more of a bark than anything else. “No. That wouldn’t—with all the dynamite—” He shakes his head. “No. Mr. Hades brought her with him. From home.”

  Home.

  From home.

  This is all...a lot. The things Hades mentions—a family, his father—they’re all common concepts. They just don’t seem to fit him. It wasn’t too long ago that I came to the stunning realization that Hades had a childhood, he had a life—so there must have been other people in it. Snap out of it, Persephone. You had a life, too.

  Oliver is handing me a piece of that past right now.

  He blinks at me. “What?”

  “I can’t picture him living anywhere but here.” In the next breath, I can. We ate him alive. All the disparate shreds of information knit together into something coherent. I can picture Hades living somewhere else. I can’t picture it being good. The woman who knows more secrets goes back into her cottage, reappearing a minute later with what looks like a watering can.

  “Is this—” I wave at the valley. “Is this all I get?”

  “That’s the other thing Hades wanted me to relay.” Oliver looks mildly uncomfortable, like he knows what this means but isn’t in any position to stop it. “You can go out and meet her, if you want.”

  18

  Persephone

  Once again, I was wrong. Eleanor couldn’t be my mother. But she could be my grandmother. My nerves jangle on my way across the valley.

  For one thing, it’s an extremely steep valley and one wrong step could send me tumbling down into the ravine at the center. That would not make a great impression. For another, she could be my grandmother. Having a grandmother is my oldest, silliest, most impossible wish. The characters in the books I read had grandmothers. Big, sprawling families. From what little I’ve learned from Zeus and Hades, I don’t think a big family is less complicated than a little one—maybe it’s worse.

  But a grandparent. I can’t imagine it.

  Eleanor sees me coming and waves.

  “Hi,” I shout across the breeze. When the wind dies down it’s plenty warm and summery, but the moment it picks up again it reminds me that we are almost on the top of a mountain. It’s frigid up here under the best of circumstances.

  As I approach, Eleanor bends to pluck one flower from the grass, then another. What am I going to say? What am I going to do? What kind of conversations do people have with grandparents? I don’t know. I’ve never had one. My mother’s creepy old assistant is the oldest person I’ve ever known, and he got replaced by Decker, who then...

  Best not to think about that now.

  Best to just breathe in the clean, fresh air and feel the sun on my face.

  Up here, it’s like the summer is set back in time, to several weeks into spring. No humidity hangs in the air. The world on the mountain is just waking up. Under my feet, the earth still has hard chunks beneath the grass. My feet would freeze without my shoes. That’s okay. I don’t need to be barefoot to appreciate this. This is not a fantasy—this is real, it’s real, thank god it’s real.

  I come level with Eleanor and fold my hands into my sleeves. The blue sky is an upside-down bowl above us, the jagged edges of the mountain keeping us in. That’s for the best. If I could see down the side I’d get vertigo and fall.

  “Good morning, Persephone.” Eleanor straightens up and smiles at me, and her smile is warmer than the sun. She has a cute, crinkled face. She’s so old, but so...sturdy? Yes. That’s the right word.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” She waves a hand in front of her face. “I’m being entirely rude. I should have pretended not to know your name until we were properly introduced.”

  I laugh out loud, the breeze carrying the sound off into the valley. “It would be weirder if you did that, I promise.” So much excitement has filtered into my blood that I don’t care. It makes me brave. “Everyone here knows who I am.”

  “I doubt that.” She bends to pick another flower and comes up again with another smile. “Luther tends to play his cards close to his chest. Then again, rumors do spread quickly in a place like this.”

  “I’d like to hear more of them.” I sound so foolish, but there’s nothing to do but press on. “I would really like to talk to you.”

  “Then talk to me.” Eleanor heads back toward the cottage and I fall into step beside her. “We can talk as long as you have time, but I have work to do.”

  I’m fully ready for her to head around the back of the cottage—work with flowers happens outside, unless she has a greenhouse—but Eleanor opens the front door and steps inside without looking back at me. This is—this is something else. I have no sense of being a guest, or an outsider.

  “Keep up,” she calls from somewhere toward the back of the cottage. It reminds me a lot of my mother’s cottage. Same whitewashed walls, same braided rug. Simple wood furniture. A bright kitchen with a faded dishrag hung on the stove. My heart aches for it. I close the door on another gust of wind and head through the kitchen and living room, following t
he sound of her voice.

  I find Eleanor in a back room. A huge back room. It’s a smaller version of the rotunda by Hades’ train station, with the same dark marble. When I get far enough in a hidden door glides closed behind us. Eleanor flicks on a light, but the light comes from the wrong direction. The floor. It’s a luminescent glow under our feet.

  What the hell is she up to?

  “Your house looks a lot smaller from the outside.”

  She wrinkles her nose. “Doesn’t it? Luther insisted on a direct connection. I wouldn’t call that warren of hallways direct, but you can see where his space begins and mine gets bigger.” Eleanor laughs at her own joke. Oh, I like her. It’s an instant, comfortable affection. It’s probably not allowed, to like someone so quickly, but too late—it’s already happened.

  Eleanor looks down into a planter in front of her, the top edge at waist height. Seeing the first one makes the rest of them come into focus. There are forty of them, maybe fifty, set into slots along the outside of the circular room. And what’s in the planters makes perfect sense, except for the weird lights and the dark.

  Plants.

  Flowers.

  “I’m growing flowers.” She laughs softly to herself. “As you can see.”

  I can, but what I can’t see is why. It doesn’t seem half as risky to ask questions here as it does in the light of Hades’ bedroom. Hades wouldn’t have sent me out here if he didn’t want me to ask questions. Or maybe he would have. Either way, I have to know about these flowers—flowers that bloom in the dark.

  “What are they for?”