The Descent: Book Three of the Taker Trilogy

by Alma Katsu

  Adair is dumbfounded. Unbelievably, she comes up to him, taking his hands in hers and—when he doesn’t resist her—slips into an embrace with him. This embrace feels as familiar to him as breathing. Held in her arms, he knows that they have done this thousands upon thousands of times. Yet, his skin crawls when it comes in contact with hers, as though they are incompatible, as though they are two chemicals that form a corrosive acid when they mix. He wants to escape from her, but he can’t. She holds him tight like the very embrace of death.

  “You’ve come back to me,” she whispers in his ear. Her voice is thick and sweet, like honey. “I knew you would come back to me, and to your kingdom. Nothing has changed; I have held it all in wait for your return. We have all waited for your return, all your faithful servants. Now that you are back, you will resume the throne as king, and as my husband, and together we will rule the underworld, as we were meant to by our father, the lord of lords.” The queen is nearly crying with joy, and, trembling, she brings her lips close to his. She pauses before she kisses him. “Welcome home, my lord.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  The room is still spinning. Adair feels as though he is in the middle of a Catherine wheel, one of the many torture devices in the Middle Ages (and one he experienced personally, he recalls with discomfort). The room revolves around him on a wild ellipse. He intuits that the bed beneath him is big, as big as a meadow, and he is sprawled across it carelessly. The queen sits beside him, running her fingers through his sweaty, matted hair, patting a cold cloth to his forehead. She cannot stop touching him, though he wishes she would—her touch makes his skin crawl.

  “You cannot imagine how hard I wished for this day,” she croons to him. “You are home at last. You have come home to me,” she says over and over, as though convincing herself.

  “Stop saying that. Stop,” he says, pleading grimly. The past has caught up with him, overtaken him, and now floods him mercilessly with memories. Each memory is hard and sharp, like the whack of a bat to the back of his head. Adair remembers why he left: to escape eternal wedlock to this woman; anyone but her. He could not stomach the two of them ruling the underworld as husband and wife. When there are so few deities, there was no option but for him to be forced to wed her. And yet she is a despicable choice he cannot abide.

  Have they been to bed already? His memory will not take him there. Is that why she behaves the way she does with him, why she is so stung, so hateful and resentful?

  He sits up abruptly, his stomach lurching, and jerks her hand from his head, pushes it aside in disgust. She pulls back, regarding him cautiously for a moment, and then digs into a pocket and presses something small in his hand—a vial encrusted with filigree loops. Dirt clings in the cracks. “I have something for you. Do you remember this?”

  He holds it up, squints at it to be sure—just as he’d feared, it is the very one he’d given to Lanore as their means of finding their way back to each other. As recognition crosses his features, she continues, “Our lord of lords, the power above us all, gave it to you when we were children. He gave one to me, too. He said it held the tears of his wife,” she says, nodding at the vial.

  Adair remembers the woman as perpetually sad—hence, the tears. Her tears had turned into a sticky resin and he had fed that resin, by drops, onto the tongues of mortals he wished to keep with him as fellow immortals. Adair brushes the dirt off the vial as best he can and tucks it in a pocket.

  He turns to the queen. “Look, I’ve no desire to stretch this out any longer than is absolutely necessary. You know why I’ve come back. I’m here for Lanore. She is all that I want. Return her to me and I’ll go. You can have the underworld all to yourself.”

  If his words have hurt her, she hides it well. She sits up straight and proud, her neck arched like a swan’s, but her head is bowed gracefully like an obedient wife. “I don’t want to rule the underworld alone,” she tells him with perfect sincerity. “And I am your bride—not her.”

  “I’ll not stay,” he warns her.

  “You can’t go,” she says. A simple statement of fact. “There is no way out.”

  “I escaped once,” he reminds her.

  “You won’t cross the abyss twice, you know that. You were lucky—infinitely lucky—to cross it the first time,” she says. A worried look flits across her face. “And you shouldn’t press your luck a second time. If you fail, the lord of lords might not forgive you. We are not irreplaceable. You know that, too.”

  “I would be glad to be replaced.” He knows it will make her unhappy to hear him say this, but he must be true to himself. “I’m not repudiating you. Don’t take this as a rejection. It’s just that—I cannot be wed to you.”

  Her face hardens and she turns away from him in preservation of her dignity. “How can I not take it as a rejection? How can it not be personal? You don’t want me as your wife, even though we were meant to be together. This is out of our hands. It is the natural order of things. You can’t fight it any more than I can.”

  He can’t help himself; under pressure, the words blurt out like juice from a lemon. “You are not my wife. You must accept that I will never be your husband.”

  His declaration seems to tear something inside the queen. She leaps up from the bed and whirls on him. Her magnificence blooms when she is angry—the same as his does. They are mirrors of each other. “Do not think you can be rid of me so easily, my lord. Do not think you can be unkind to me and dismiss me. You cannot threaten me. Do you think you are my match? You’re not even close—you haven’t used your powers in a thousand years, whereas I have been a god for every day of those years. You are weak and in no position to oppose me.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You can snuff the life out of me, if that’s what you want. I would rather die than be with you.” The words leap from his mouth. He doesn’t think before he speaks; if he was impatient on earth, he is more so here, his old fury coming back on him swiftly. The queen winces; they are mean, these words, but true, and so he cannot take them back.

  “It doesn’t matter how you or I feel—you won’t be allowed to do as you please. Order must be maintained in the heavens. Do you think the gods will let you get away with this?” she asks pointedly. She is not going to remain to be insulted and affronted, and, having said her piece, she disappears in a puff of vivid blue smoke, as though she has exploded from anger.

  Adair is wandering through the labyrinthine suite of rooms in which he has found himself when he runs into Jonathan. His old friend and sometime adversary lounges on a chaise, reading what appears to be a book of poetry. He has the same inscrutable expression that he wore in life, both pleasant and yet unmistakably bored, as though nothing can possibly keep his attention. One never knew what was going on inside that handsome head. Jonathan always kept his thoughts to himself.

  “Hello, old man,” he calls to Adair in his usual lazily chummy way once he notices him standing in the doorway. Jonathan sits up and makes room for Adair on the chaise and the two sit next to each other, Adair sullen, Jonathan cautiously friendly. He puts the book facedown on the floor, open to his spot.

  “So you are the queen’s consort,” Adair says, not knowing what else to say under the circumstances.

  Jonathan says hastily, “Yes, though I will say in my defense that I only recently learned she is your wife. That fact was kept from me before.” He appears to reflect for a moment on the woman who has taken him to her bed. “There’s no hard feelings, right? It’s not as though I had any say over the situation,” Jonathan adds uneasily.

  “No, of course not,” Adair assures him.

  Another moment passes in silence between them, each man caught up in his thoughts. At length, Jonathan continues, his tone a little more anxious this time. “So you are king of the underworld. The prince of Hades. Lord of the dead.” The roll call of titles makes Adair wince. Jonathan cracks an ironic smile. “Did you really not know? The entire time you were on earth, you never had a glimpse of your previous existence? An in
kling, a hint? I find that—extraordinary.”

  Adair shakes his head. “No. It was kept a mystery to me.”

  “Ah yes, the barrier between the two worlds. I’ve experienced it myself. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense. I mean, you’ve always had quite a temper, haven’t you? And that cruel streak—you always were on the sadistic side. When you look at all the pieces . . .”

  “I am not the devil.” Adair feels the need to correct him. “I wasn’t born into the position, I was chosen. It has nothing to do with personalities. I am merely the keeper of the realm.” Pride flares inside him and he feels the need to educate Jonathan. “It is not a trivial position. It’s not an honorary one, either. It takes a strong will to rule over the dead.”

  “Oh, take my word for it. I know. I’ve seen it firsthand,” Jonathan quickly reminds him. “Your bride is the devil, however. I hope you don’t mind me saying that,” Jonathan adds. “Four years with her and it feels like four hundred—even though a year on earth is like the blink of an eye here.”

  Here, they are on cosmic time, the interminably slow drip, drip, drip of time. The impartial clock by which the cosmos unfolds, during which stars form and burn and finally burst, for planets to be reduced to dust and scattered to the farthest reaches of the universe. All of it just another day, for the gods. “I am the age of the cosmos,” Adair says, and he feels the truth of it in his firmament, down to the electric pulse that runs through him.

  Another minute passes in silence between the two. Adair wishes he had a nice whiskey to help ease the time with Jonathan. It seems like the proper gentlemanly accoutrement for the situation and, before he can even think twice, a tray appears at his feet bearing a crystal decanter and two heavy tumblers. He pours generous dollops of whiskey and hands a glass to Jonathan.

  Jonathan gestures about the dingy room, whiskey sloshing onto his hand. “Now that you’re back, maybe you could do something to spruce the place up. It’s infernally dismal here, so dark and drab.”

  Adair gives Jonathan a strained look. Here he is worrying about his future happiness and Jonathan wants to talk about interior decorating. “What difference does it make how things look? I could give two figs for the atmosphere. Besides, do you think I have the slightest interest in remaining here?”

  Jonathan takes a bracing swig of alcohol. “It’s obvious that you’re depressed. The queen is depressed, too. It couldn’t hurt to brighten things up.”

  Adair knows there is some truth to what Jonathan says. He is depressed. Memories of his past existence continue to crowd into his head, stuffing his mind to bursting, and it’s noisy in there, buzzing like a nest full of hornets. He doesn’t want these memories back. He’d be happy to live the rest of his life without them. He wants to hold on to his memories of being Adair—he wants to remain Adair.

  He drops his head into his hands and moans. “I don’t care about all this other stuff. I don’t want this kingdom or these responsibilities. I didn’t ask for them.”

  Jonathan gives Adair a surprised look. “Why, I never thought I’d hear you talk like that, Adair. You always knew what you wanted, and that was all that mattered. You’ve changed.” He sounds a touch disappointed.

  Adair grunts. He has been stripped to his essentials, and he knows it. “I only came here for Lanore. Where is she, Jonathan? Do you have any idea where I can find her?”

  “I have seen her. But the queen had her taken away, to some place she called ‘the pit,’ but I don’t know anything more,” Jonathan says.

  “How am I going to find her?” Adair moans.

  That self-pitying remark is the last straw for Jonathan, who gives him an annoyed look. “Dear lord, Adair, just listen to you. Stop acting like a mortal. You’re a god, for goodness’ sake. You can do anything—or rather, practically anything. So stop your whining and put your mind to it.”

  Repressing the urge to knock Jonathan across the room for his insolent remark, Adair sees the truth in it. Jonathan may be impertinent but he is right. The universe is his to command—up to a point, he knows, but finding Lanore should be within his power. He has done it twice, after all: once to find her home in Paris, and the second time on the island, when all he had to do was wish and the ocean obeyed. This is not earth or the ocean; this is the underworld, his own kingdom, for God’s sake. The queen’s words have made him doubt his ability to channel his power, and for a moment he hesitates. Then he pushes that doubt aside. He is in his kingdom. It should do whatever he commands.

  Adair stands and starts to walk back to his chamber. The more he thinks about what it is that he wants, the more he feels the power swell and rise within him, a muscle plumping to attention. He may have been away for a millennium, but here in the underworld it has been no more than a few blinks of an eye. The slowness of cosmic time will work in his favor. His power wells up within him, coursing through his body, surging to his hands. Bring her to me, he thinks. Bring Lanore to me.

  One minute, I am at the bottom of the pit, huddled on a rock and speaking to Stolas. And the next, I am levitating through the air. I’m carried along through space, up, up, up the long shaft of the pit. I can feel Adair’s presence again, clear as a bell in my head. I have never been so happy to feel his presence. Once a sign of his domination and oppression, it now means something else entirely. I know he’s here and I feel so many emotions at once—happiness, joy, relief—that I don’t think I can contain them all. Thank God we will not go another eternity-filled minute without seeing each other again. Thank God I will have the chance to tell him that I love him. I know it now with all my heart. My prayers have been answered.

  I am dropped out of the air to the floor of a room. There he is, waiting for me. I have wanted this so badly, I almost can’t believe it’s him. He looks different in a way I can’t quite place—there’s something softer about him perhaps.

  We rush to each other. I have never cried so hard in my life, crying for joy, but it seems to upset him. “Don’t cry,” he says, trying to wipe my tears away with his thumbs.

  “Forgive me for being so stupid, for dragging you here. I should’ve listened to you,” I try to say to him, but he shushes me.

  “It was inevitable, Lanore. I would’ve been called back to the underworld eventually, by one means or another. It is not your fault,” he says. “There is nothing to forgive.”

  The moment when he kisses me is sublime. He cradles my head in his hands, turning my face up toward his. He slips his mouth over mine and it is all warmth, all heat and need and desire. But his need is tender now, all tenderness. It feels as though I will melt into him right there, be lost in him right there. My tears make our kiss salty, bittersweet. Bittersweet, too, because I know it can’t last. He is the king of the underworld and he has a queen, a queen who will not be denied.

  He sees that I am still crying. “What’s the matter?” he asks, hurt and perplexed.

  I tell him. “This cannot last. I know it. But I love you, Adair. I cannot give you up.”

  He presses a finger to my mouth. I can taste his skin, metallic and sweet. “I am a god, my love. I can have whatever I want, and what I want is for us to be together forever. It will come to pass—you can trust me on that.” He wraps his arms around me and draws me to him. There is no gap between us, no space, no air. Pressed up against each other, we are aflame, so hot that I think our bodies will fuse into one. We are one, and yes, he is right, we will remain one. He picks me up and carries me to the bed, that beautiful bed of my dreams and my nightmares, and I know that we are going to be there for a very long time.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Afterward, Adair and I lie together in a tangle of sweat-dampened sheets. He holds me against him, my back against his still-moist chest, my derriere nestled in his lap. One of his hands is on my abdomen, right around my navel, and his other arm is wrapped around my rib cage under my breasts. He hugs me tightly as he kisses the back of my head. Such tenderness seems out of keeping, not for the man I know as Adair, but for the for
ce I now know him to be.

  As we lie in bed together, he sighs contentedly in my ear. “You haven’t asked,” he says, reluctantly. These are the first words we’ve said to each other since he summoned me to him.

  “Asked what—if you really are a god? I haven’t asked because I can see that it’s true.”

  “There’s nothing more you want to know? No questions?” he asks, sounding as though he fears it’s too good to be true.

  I try to turn around to face him, but he holds me in place. “Now that you mention it, yes, there is something I’ve been wondering about.” Now is my opportunity. I tell him about Stolas and our encounter in the pit. “He explained to me how you were able to leave the underworld, but he wouldn’t tell me why you left. He said that it was a secret and he couldn’t betray it.”

  Adair sighs. He seems pained that I have it brought up now, and I can’t bear to make things complicated when we’ve just been reunited, so I rush to answer my own question. I want to spare him from telling me something I probably do not want to hear, anyway. “It’s obvious, isn’t it?” I continue, in a rush. “You left to get away from that woman, the queen. I understand, Adair. You don’t have to say anything more if you don’t want to.”

  He stops me, releasing me from his damp arms and turning me to face him. His eyes are solemn and downcast, afraid of what he has to tell me. He holds me square to him though he still can’t look at me. “There is something more I have to say to you. There is a reason I left the underworld.”

  Again, I try to stop him from speaking. I’m afraid of this confession, afraid that it will ruin what is between us now, which was so hard to attain. “You needn’t be afraid, not of me. Who am I to question you, whatever you’ve done, whatever the reason—”

  He gulps, hurt. “You are the woman I love. If I am not accountable to you, then who would you have me be accountable to?” He gives me a little shake, but it is a sign of his impatience with himself and not me. “You must listen, Lanore, because this is something you will hear as soon as we open that door, and you must hear this from me and not someone else.” He closes his eyes and squeezes them tight. Draws a deep breath, and I watch his sternum rise and fall. When he opens his eyes again, they are racked with pain. “The queen is my sister. We are meant to rule this place together, as husband and wife.”