The sound of our footsteps crunching on snow is the only sound on the path back to the fields. We should probably go somewhere else, but there is nowhere else—the gate is closed and locked, and walking alongside the train tracks seems too risky. Too tempting. If the train were go to by, I might get on it with him. And I want to. But I feel almost lightheaded from having his coat around my shoulders. I feel like I’m perched on the edge of a deep pool, and one false move will send me plummeting into the dark center of it.
I’m not ready for that.
Or maybe I am ready, and that’s what scares me the most.
How did you get here? I want to ask. Is my mother’s fence that weak? But instead: “Won’t you be tired in the morning?”
Decker cocks his head to the side. “How intense is this walk going to be?”
“Not—not that intense. Unless you need it to be.” What do I even mean by that? I have no idea. I have...some idea. But I’m not sure there’s a script for how to make small talk with a man you’re meeting illicitly in the middle of the night. The back of my neck prickles at the reminder that there could be consequences for this—and bigger consequences than a slightly awkward chat with Decker. If my mother finds out—
She won’t. She’s sleeping. Deeply.
“Let’s walk slower.” Decker catches me by the elbow and pulls me in closer to him. “Unless you’re leading me toward a trap.”
“A trap?” I squeak. “I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t even know how to set a trap. For a man?”
“I’m just kidding.” He nudges me, and every touch leaves a trail of heat down my skin. “I know you’re not here to trap me. We’re just here to talk, remember?” I do. I’m not done talking to you. “So tell me more about you. I already know some things.”
My breath goes out of me again. This can’t keep happening, otherwise I’m going to get truly lightheaded and tip over into the snow, which would be the opposite of cool. “That’s not true. Nobody knows anything about me.”
“I know you’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen. I know you only wear white. At least, the clothes I can see are always white.”
“You’ve only seen me twice. Maybe I wear other colors when you’re not here.” I don’t. I don’t have clothes that are other colors, except for a couple of forest-green dresses for photo shoots. That hasn’t happened in a long time. I bet they don’t even fit anymore. I can’t bring myself to say something witty about the clothes he can’t see. It feels like holding my hand above a flame.
“You don’t.” He says it with such authority that it sends a chill down my spine beneath both coats and my dress. People don’t see me. Decker has never seen me. Until this moment I was sure of it. He nudges me again, pushing me off balance just enough that he gets to be the one to right my balance again with a hand on my waist. Decker leans down. “I can tell you’re not the type to wear bright colors. Honestly, Persephone, the white looks good on you.”
He straightens up and we come to a stop in the center of my mother’s wide-open field. In the summer, it’s green and lush and covered in flowers, bright pops against the grass. I’ve only seen it like this—stripped of color and life—a few times. It looks like a brand-new start. A blank page. A beginning, all of it fresh and new and clean. Our footprints are the only marks. The moonlight pours into them and covers them up.
And something half-covers the moon.
From the vantage point of the field, we can see the mountain. It’s outlined in stark terms against the white disc behind it.
“Damn,” says Decker softly. “It’s like he’s watching you.”
My heart goes still, letting in the complete silence of the field around us. The faint whisper of the wind is the only sound. My chest starts to ache, trying to force my heart back into motion, and eventually the need to live wins out.
I have never, never, heard another person mention Luther Hades like Decker just did. The only person who ever talks about him is my mother. Her warnings amplify in my mind until she might as well be standing next to me now. If he finds you, he’ll kill you. He’ll do worse than kill you.
“What did you say?”
I try to keep my tone light, like I don’t particularly care or like I haven’t been highly aware of the mountain for as long as I can remember.
Decker shrugs, keeping his eyes on the black precipice. “You can see the mountain so clearly from here. It’s almost like he can see you, too. It has to be impossible, but on a night like tonight I could almost believe it.”
Talking about this makes me want to move away, but the bare expanse of the field seems threatening with his words hanging in the air. “What do you know about...” The man who wants to kill me? “You know. The mountain.”
Decker breathes in, and I can see the evidence of it sparkling in the light in front of us. “I know the devil lives there. The worst man in this world or any other.”
My mouth has gone dry. A nervous laugh gathers in my throat and dies on the tip of my tongue. “I was hoping that was only a story.”
A stray cloud passes over the moon and the mountain, dimming the light. A fresh wave of goosebumps travels over my skin. It takes a moment to realize Decker is watching me with a glint in his eyes. “Who would be telling a girl like you stories about a man like that?”
I shouldn’t say another word, because now we’ve strayed into territory that I know is dangerous. Saying her name might bring her here. I shake off the superstition and do it anyway. “My mother. She’s always warned me about—” Saying his name also doesn’t seem like a great idea. “About the man in the mountain. She’s terrified I’ll go outside the fence somehow and get caught up in his claws.”
It’s a joke, meant to lighten the tension pulled tight between us, but Decker’s expression goes solemn. “She’s probably right. A guy like him, and a girl like you?” He shakes his head. “He’s bad enough to do it.”
To do what? A strange desperation wells up at the center of me. I want details. If I’m going to be trapped here the rest of my life, I want to know why. But I can’t make the words fit together in a question that makes sense and will break Decker out of his weird stare and crack open the heaviness of this moment. I didn’t come here to talk about Luther Hades and his mountain. I just came here to talk. And here we are.
“I heard he killed a man for leaving work with diamond dust in his pockets.” He looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “Not even a full diamond. His body didn’t even make it onto the train home.”
“Diamond dust?”
He turns to face me, to search my eyes for truths or lies or something else, I don’t know. “Your mother talks about Luther Hades but she didn’t tell you what he does?”
My cheeks glow. I hope he can’t tell. “She’s—she’s never said.”
Decker gathers me into his arms again, like he can tell I’m on the verge of blowing away in the breeze, and somehow, so easily, he shifts us so that I’m standing in front of him, leaning against him in the shelter of his arms. We both face the moon and by extension the mountain, and I have a flickering vision of him holding a knife to my throat. It’s a wild thing to think and my body stills in the face of the imagined danger. But there is no danger. I tell it to myself again, a second time, a third time.
“Well, I’ll tell you. The inside of that mountain is a diamond mine. That’s how he gets all his money.” Decker’s voice has the tone of someone telling a ghost story. Only...owning a diamond mine doesn’t seem that bad. A person having money doesn’t make them evil. A seed of doubt embeds itself at the back of my mind. “But for the people who work there, it’s worse than a mine. It’s hell itself.”
“Why?” I swallow hard and wrap an arm around Decker’s so that I’m at least part of this and not just standing here like a would-be captive. “Because it’s hard to mine diamonds?”
“It’s especially hard when you replace all your machines with people. He doesn’t care how many men break their backs trying to carve precious ston
es out of the mountain. They’re all the same to him.” Decker takes a deep breath, his ribs bumping against my back. “I don’t know if I should tell you anymore. It might give you nightmares.”
I turn around in his arms and he raises a hand to my cheek and strokes his fingers down the side of my face. “I’m not afraid of nightmares.”
“That’s good.” I wish he would stop looking so serious. It was his wide grin that made me want to come here in the first place. The playful light in his eyes. In the moonlight, he looks...older. Darker. “Because real life is much worse than your dreams could ever be.”
”Don’t try to scare me.” I push against him, but he holds me in place. Finally, finally, he smiles again, and the fearful weight on my shoulders lifts. ”I thought you wanted to talk.”
Decker laughs, his voice sinking into the snow. “It’s better now that you’re not looking at that damned mountain, isn’t it? Now we can focus on each other. Because I do want to talk.” He bites his bottom lip, which causes an echoing flush across my cheeks...and other places, too. “Can I tell you something else?”
“Yes.” I sound breathless and girlish and I hate it a little, but Decker doesn’t seem to. And that’s good, because he’s the first person I’ve spent time with since I came back from school. Aside from my mother—and every conversation with her is a high-stakes game of don’t upset the person with the key to your bedroom. “Tell me. Tell me anything.”
He leans down low, and this time his lips brush the shell of my ear. “I want to do more than talk.”
8
Persephone
I should push him away, throw his coat at him, and run for home. That’s what I should do. I should have run for home a long time ago. This kind of thing—it’s dangerous, it’s reckless. My mother would be furious. The threat of that fury dances in the back of my mind, and part of me wants to give in.
But the bigger part of me—the part that was brave enough to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night, snow be damned, and meet a boy to talk—wants to do more than talk, too. Delight knits itself together with anticipation at the base of my spine. I can’t imagine feeling cold in this moment. I’m hot. I’ve never been hotter.
Decker hasn’t taken his hand from my face, and I lean into it, feeling positively feverish. The fact that he’s touching me, and I’m letting him, is so forbidden it’s hard to breathe. I don’t care.
“Me, too. I shouldn’t,” I say firmly. “But I do.”
He groans. “That is the sexiest thing I’ve heard in weeks.”
I let out a laugh. It sounds good. It sounds...mature. “You don’t have to say that just so I—so I like you.”
“I think you already do like me.” He raises one eyebrow. “But I more than like you.” His fingers move up to my hair, and he twists one of my exposed curls gently around his knuckle. “I wasn’t going to say this—you know, at our first meeting, but....I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”
“There’s not much to think about.”
“Are you kidding?” Decker bursts out. “You’re gorgeous. You’re intriguing. Honorable, and innocent...you’re not like the other women I’ve met.”
Something about it strikes a discordant note in the very back of my mind, but that prickling feeling is swept away under a tidal wave of—what is this, even? It can’t be love. It can’t be anything close. It just feels so good. So warm. Like I’ve won a prize, and the prize includes a one-way ticket to New York City. It feels like the rush I’m going to get when I’m finally standing outside the public library, when a pair of stone lions are the only things between me and the one place I’ve always wanted to go.
He drags his gaze over my face, every inch of it. “You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met.” Decker shivers a little bit, breathing hard. “I just want to—”
He leans in and kisses me.
I can’t breathe. What do I do? Frozen shock shoots from where our lips meet to the tips of my toes. His lips are so cold and his tongue is so warm, demanding entrance to my mouth. He’s so confident. Like he’s done this a thousand times, and I can’t wrap my mind around this. His mouth. On mine. Kissing.
I move in closer on some instinct, I don’t know what, and the tug of his hand on my face. He’s so tall that I rise up on tiptoe. Searching, searching. I’ve gone outside my body and now I’m looking down on us. Decker’s tall frame is bent over mine, one arm firmly around my back, a gentle grip that feels like iron anyway. I can’t get a breath, it’s so intimate and new.
The newness fades almost immediately and I’m very much in my skin again. Too close. We’re too close. He’s too close, and he tastes fine, it’s just that his tongue is too big for my mouth and his hand is on an awkward spot in the middle of my back. We’re like the wrong puzzle pieces, bashing into each other again and again but never quite fitting. Not how I imagined. Maybe it’s me, maybe I just haven’t kissed enough people. Or anyone, aside from Decker. What am I doing with my mouth? Oh my god. What is he doing? I can’t, I can’t—
I shove myself back and out of his arms, gulping in air like he’d been holding me underwater. Decker reaches for me and I take another big step back. “I’m sorry,” I gasp.
“It’s okay.” He’s smiling, charming as ever, but he shoves his hands into his pockets. “It’s really okay. I got a little carried away.” He takes one cautious step forward and bends down so I’m forced to meet his eyes. “Being this close to you makes me lightheaded. Hard to think straight.” Decker rubs a hand across the back of his head. “Can you blame me?”
Yes. No. I don’t know what to think, or what to do, against the rush of sensation. I still feel his mouth on mine, though we’re a couple feet apart. “I have to go.”
Decker turns back toward my mother’s house as easily as if he’s been there a hundred times. He holds his arm out for me to take it. “Let me walk you.”
“No, no, no.” A wild laugh bubbles out of my mouth. “You can’t come that close to the house. Not ever.” The gravity of what we’re doing here, in the middle of the field, strikes me like the hammer of a church bell. “We—we can’t do this again.”
“Oh, don’t say that.” He reaches for my hand and pulls until I’m level with him. Until I have a clear view of the way he bites his lip and watches me. “Say anything but that.”
“It’s not a good idea—”
“It’s the best idea. Tell me you’ll meet me again. At least one more time.” He lifts my hand in both of us, almost like he’s going to kiss my knuckles, but he doesn’t. “It would mean the world to me if you would let me make up for my mistake.” There’s that smile again, sheepish and somehow knowing at the same time. “Don’t let it end here, when there’s so much more we could...talk about.”
He’s just so handsome. Anyone would think so. He has a fine jaw and bright eyes and nice muscles, all of it on display for me even though it’s the dead of winter. And we might not have fit together this time, but...we could, right? Given enough practice. Given enough bravery. I chose to stay here, didn’t I? I should at least have the nerve to do something for myself.
And nothing bad happened tonight. Nothing except one stupid conversation about Luther Hades and his mountain. Maybe next time, it’ll be cloudy.
“Okay. I’ll come.”
Decker thrusts a fist in the air. “That’s what I like to hear.”
“But I really do have to go home.” A spike of wind draws itself across the back of my neck, even through my hood. Time to go. I get moving before I can stop myself. “Good night, Decker.”
“Wait.” Decker makes a pretty picture in the snow with the moon and the mountain over his right shoulder.
“What?”
“My coat.” His white teeth flash in the dark. “I shouldn’t leave without it.”
“Oh. Right.” I’ve been holding it so tight that letting go takes more work than I thought it would. He stands still and lets me bring it back to him. His fingers linger on mine for a second lon
ger than necessary.
Decker shrugs on his coat, shaking his head. “You do look amazing in white.” He pauses, like he might say something else. “Good night, pretty girl. Sleep easy.”
I have the strangest urge to watch him—where is he going, after this? Where does he live? How will he get home? All things we didn’t talk about. But instead I turn around and head for the house. It’s a clear night, but I keep my eyes on the sky. I only need one more thing out of tonight—a fresh fall of snow, to cover my footprints. That’s all, that’s all, that’s all.
9
Persephone
I had my first kiss.
That’s the thought that rings in my mind, over and over again, all the way back to the house. The windows are reassuringly dark, which means my mother must have turned off her light at some point and gone back to sleep. For the first time in a long time I’m totally alone. Nobody’s watching.
I always assume somebody is watching, because my mother is paranoid about Luther Hades, but I can’t see them now. I can’t feel them. That has to count for something.
But what really counts is that I had my first kiss.
Decker couldn’t help himself.
And that feels...
Intoxicating.
I work the memory in my mind, trying to turn it into something perfect. Something with fireworks. Something soul-deep. But maybe one kiss in the middle of the night doesn’t have to be soul deep. I don’t know. I don’t know anything at this point, except that I can’t wait to get out of this coat and into my bed.
One more happy sigh, and I reach for the door handle. Holding my breath won’t make it quieter but I do it anyway. For all I’ve thought about leaving it feels good to come back here now. Hopeful, almost. If there’s someone like Decker here for me...
It’s too late to have such deep thoughts about it so I shut the door softly behind me and flip the two locks. Then I have to open them again and tap my boots against the single step outside. Look at me, planning like I know what I’m doing. I don’t, but I at least know that leaving snow-encrusted boots to melt on the floor is only going to give me away. Coat, too. I brush it off outside. I hope the cold lingers on my hands for a little while longer.
Prince of Chaos Page 4
