by Aimee Carter
An hour later, I’d strewn half my closet across the bed, and Pogo was buried underneath a pile of sweaters. I didn’t know where Ava and I would be going, so I had to prepare for any possibility. Where did a Titan stay without being noticed anyway? Up on a mountain somewhere? Antarctica?
The Sahara desert? Either way, the possibilities were endless and not very promising, which meant I had to be ready for anything.
“Think you can put up with missing me for another few months?” I said as Pogo dug himself out. My clothes would smell like puppy now, but I didn’t care. It would be a nice reminder of him when I was lonely.
He let out a soft yip, and I grinned in spite of myself.
“He will miss you,” said a voice behind me. Startled, I dropped the boots I was stuff ing into the only suitcase I could f ind.
I’d expected him to stay away, but there he was, his shoulders squared and his eyes stormy.
Henry.
CH APTER EIGHTEEN
ROCK ED
My mouth went dry, and I picked up the boots and tossed them on the bed. I’d been so convinced that he wouldn’t want anything else to do with me that I hadn’t bothered to think about what to say. I had no real reason to apologize, except for maybe calling him out in front of everyone, but that was the only part I regretted.
“I’m sorry about the mess, I was just—”
“Packing. Yes, I see that.” He waved a hand, and my already overstuffed suitcase seemed to empty. When I opened my mouth to protest, I saw that he hadn’t made anything vanish; the suitcase had only gotten deeper. “Is this a bad time?”
The last thing I wanted was to f ight with him, but I couldn’t very well leave the Underworld before f inishing this one way or the other. “I have a few minutes,” I said, folding a pair of jeans. “What was all of the arguing about?” The corner of Henry’s mouth twitched with annoyance.
“What you might expect. Diana was not pleased with me, and neither was Walter. I suspect that despite our earlier discussion, you are not, either.”
I considered lying, but it wouldn’t do any good. “No, I’m not,” I said. “We never—f igured it out. But I don’t want to be the person who tries to force you to feel something you don’t. I meant what I said. I won’t leave you unless you don’t want me here anymore.”
“I wish for you to stay, yet here you are, packing three months early,” he said quietly, and I stopped.
“You know why,” I mumbled. “I’ll be back as soon as I find Rhea.”
“For how long?”
I gently extracted the boot I’d dropped from Pogo’s mouth. “As long as you’ll have me.”
“That will be for a very long time.”
I exhaled and smiled, feeling as if a weight were lifted off my chest. “Good.”
He stepped toward me and touched my cheek. “I enjoy seeing you smile. It means I have done something right. I am afraid that sometimes I cannot tell.”
“It’s okay.” I tilted my head into his hand. He cupped my face and brushed his thumb against my jaw. “Persephone told me that you said it wasn’t as good as you expected.
When she kissed you, I mean.”
Something f lickered behind his eyes, but it was gone so fast that I couldn’t tell what it was. “No, it was not. I f ind little joy in showing affection to someone who does not return it.”
“Yeah, me, too.” I covered his hand with mine and pressed my lips against his palm. “It hurts being the one who loves more.”
Henry stepped closer so our bodies were only inches apart. Despite the warmth that radiated from him, I shivered. “If I had been unchained, I would have ripped Calliope to pieces in the cavern. Had Walter allowed me, I would have done it the moment I had her alone in the palace.”
I snorted softly. “Is that supposed to be romantic?”
“It is supposed to be the truth.” He stared at me, and my breath caught in my throat. “If I were a better man, I would be able to show you the love and affection you deserve. As I am not, I can only offer you what I am capable of giving.
But I assure you, just because I do not show it doesn’t mean I do not feel it.”
It was exactly what everyone had been trying to tell me since September, but hearing the words come from Henry f inally made me believe them. “I think I’m getting that,” I said thickly. “I don’t want you to be anyone you aren’t.”
“Then trust me when I say there is no one else I would rather be with.” He ran his f ingers through my hair and tickled my neck with the ends. “Not even Persephone. She was my past, and I was never her future. There was a time when I fought for her, but f ighting for someone is meaning-less if they are not happy with you.”
“Am I doing the right thing, then?” I said. “Fighting for you.”
He circled his arms around my waist, and he was so close that I could feel his breath against my cheek. “No,” he said, and the word made my stomach contract. But before I could panic, he continued, his voice smooth and meant only for me. “You never had to f ight for me to begin with. I am yours and have been from the moment I saw you.” Everything I’d worried myself sick about, every awful thought I had, every doubt, deserved or not—Henry could have prevented them all if he’d simply said that in September. Even the way Persephone had kissed him, I could have understood if only I hadn’t been left alone with my fears for so long. Or maybe if we’d talked about it earlier, she would’ve never had to kiss him in the f irst place. I wheezed a sigh of relief. “It would’ve been nice to know that three months ago.”
A ghost of a smile graced his features. “Yes, I suppose it would have been, and I am sorry for how I have acted.
I will do better in the future.” He pressed his lips to my forehead. “Please do not go.”
In that moment, the last thing I wanted to do was leave him, and I looped my arms around him. “You know I have to. I can’t stand by and do nothing, and without Rhea, you could all die. It’s worth the risk. You know it is.” Henry sighed. “You are too stubborn for your own good.”
“I hear it runs in the family.” A moment passed, and I said softly, “When I come back…would it be all right with you if I stayed?”
He furrowed his brow. “Why would it not? I would do anything to make you not go, but that does not mean I will not welcome you back when you return.”
“No, I mean—” I hesitated. “Our deal. Do I have to leave every spring, or can I stay down here with you?” He stilled, at last understanding. I held my breath as I waited for his answer, and he pulled away enough to look at me, his eyes searching mine. He wouldn’t f ind the lie he was looking for though. “You want to stay here all year?
With me?”
“With you. As your wife.”
“As my wife,” he echoed, his gaze growing distant. I bit my lip.
“Is that all right? Staying here all year wouldn’t be breaking any rules or anything, would it?”
“I am the one who makes the rules. If you wish to stay, then you may.” He cupped my neck, his palm warm against my bare skin. “I would be very grateful if you did, but I do not want you to unless you are certain it is what you want. You would have the opportunity to visit the surface whenever you wished, but it is dreary down here.” He hesitated, as if he didn’t know if he should bring it up or not. “Persephone used to say that once you have seen the sun, it is impossible to truly be happy without it.”
“I’ll probably go up for a few days every once in a while,” I said, brushing off the twinge of jealousy inside of me at his mention of Persephone. He simply didn’t want to put me in the same situation. I could understand that, and if we were going to have any chance at making this work, I had to. Persephone had been a huge part of his life, and in some ways, she still was. I could either f ight it or accept it, and right then, I would’ve done anything to stop feeling so damn miserable all the time. Including swallow my pride and forgive my sister for what she’d done to Henry, and forgive Henry for still loving her. “But while
the surface has the sun, I would much rather be down here with you.” He rested his forehead against mine. “I would be honored.”
We stood like that for a long moment. I noticed the silver scar from Cronus’s f irst attack peeking out from underneath Henry’s collar, and I traced it. He would be safe in the Underworld, and I wouldn’t have to worry about his safety anymore. Everyone else’s, yes, but not Henry’s.
“In the council meeting…” He paused and brushed his thumb against my bottom lip. “You said I have not given you a kiss good-night since you arrived. I know it is not yet noon, but would now be an acceptable time to remedy that?”
I grinned so hard that the muscles in my cheeks strained.
It had been a long time since I’d smiled like that. I’d missed it. “Now would be perfect.”
When his lips touched mine, desire f looded through me, intertwining with delicious triumph. Calliope hadn’t won.
No matter what she did to me or how many Titans she sent to kill me, she would never take Henry away from me.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and let my body mold to the contours of his. There was no substitute for the warmth that f illed me, no amount of holding me at night to make up for the lack of this between us. It was perfect.
Henry, with all of his imperfections, and me with mine—
together, we were just right.
He eased me onto the mattress and brushed my piles of clothing aside to make room for both of us. At the foot of the bed, Pogo let out an annoyed squeak and jumped onto the f loor. I would give him a nice, long belly rub later, because right now, short of Cronus appearing in the bedroom, nothing was going to pull me away from Henry.
When he toyed with the hem of my sweater, I tugged it off and tossed it amidst the other clothing. He splayed his hand over my bare stomach and broke away from me, watching me with a baff led look in his eyes.
“What is it?” I said, catching my breath. “Is everything all right?”
It took him a moment to respond. “Are you sure you wish to do this?”
Every doubt I’d had came rushing back, but after a moment of dizzying panic, I remembered what Persephone had told me about her and Henry’s wedding night. This would be the f irst time we’d done this without the inf luence of an aphrodisiac, and if he thought there was a chance I could react like Persephone had, then his hesitation made perfect sense. I forced myself to breathe steadily. “I’m positive.” Henry seemed to accept this, but when he leaned in to kiss me again, another awful possibility popped into my mind, and I turned my head at the last moment so he caught my cheek instead. “Why? Do you not want to? We don’t have to if you’d rather not, it’s all right. I can wait. I want to wait if you do.”
“I promise you that I want to do this more than anything else in the world,” he said, pressing his lips to the corner of my mouth. “I have wanted to since you f irst returned, but I thought giving you time would be prudent.”
“And here I was, thinking you would’ve rather slept in a pool of lava than with me,” I joked, but it wasn’t entirely false. I gave him a quick kiss in return. “We need to work on this whole talking to each other thing. We’d get a lot more done if we did.”
“Yes, we would,” he said before capturing my lips once more. I deftly unbuttoned his shirt, and when it fell open, I pulled away again.
“You’re not going to get angry again and throw things when it’s over, will you?” I said, and Henry gave me a look that sent a jolt of electricity down my spine. The look Persephone had mentioned. The look I knew I could never forget now that I’d seen it.
“Would you please hush and let me kiss you?” Laughing, I pulled him back toward me. “I’m all yours.” He shrugged his shirt off and ran his hands down my sides, and everything else seemed to melt away. He was the only thing I could see, the only thing I could feel, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. For the f irst time since I’d arrived in the Underworld, I was home.
Henry and I spent the rest of the day and night in bed together, talking and laughing and knocking boots, as Ava had so delicately called it. In between we slept curled together, with my head on his chest and his arm around me, the same position we’d slept in during my time in Eden Manor. It was familiar and comforting, and with so much uncertainty lying ahead of us, I needed that badly.
In the middle of the night, I woke up to feel him hovering over me, watching me. Caught between sleeping and consciousness, I ran my hand down his chest, dipping my f inger into his navel. “Is everything all right?”
“Perfect.” A glowing ball of light appeared near the top of the canopy bed. “I was simply thinking about the future.”
“What about it?” I said. “If you’re going to try to talk me into not going after Rhea, you can forget it—”
“Always jumping to conclusions.” He chuckled and kissed me, and I obediently shut up. “I meant what it would be like to have you here all year. I have never had anyone spend that much time in the Underworld with me before.”
“I want to,” I whispered. “You’re my family now.” I expected him to kiss me again, but instead he pulled away. In the low light, I thought I saw him studying me, but my vision was bleary from sleep, and I couldn’t be sure.
“Do you still want to be my queen?”
“Of course,” I said, confused. “I thought that was implied with the whole being your wife thing.”
“You do not have to take on the duties of the Queen of the Underworld now if you feel you are not ready,” said Henry. “You are my wife no matter what role you play in the work I do.”
I didn’t answer right away. I couldn’t control the one power I had so far; whatever other ones came along with ruling the Underworld, there was no guarantee I would be able to control those, either. “Do you think I can do it?”
“Yes,” said Henry unequivocally. “You may not understand everything right away, but in time, I have no doubt you will be the best partner I could ask for. You have a rare gift—”
“Falling all over myself and screwing up every choice I make?” I said wryly, and he pressed his f inger to my lips.
“Not every choice,” he teased, and his expression grew somber. “I wish you could see yourself the way I see you.
You have the extraordinary ability to bring people together when they want nothing more than to walk away and never come back. You see the simplest solutions when we often see only the complications, and you have hope in the most impossible of situations. But most of all, you understand people. When you see someone, you do not see their ac-tions. Despite how you may feel about them, you see their motivations and have the compassion to understand them.
That is how I know you will be a great queen. Not even I have that self-control.”
I wasn’t so sure he was right about all of that, but the sincerity in his voice stopped my objections cold. It didn’t matter whether or not his vision of me was biased; what mattered was that he believed in me.
I traced an invisible pattern on the hollow of his collar-bone. The smartest thing to do would have been to wait.
Wait until the end of the war, until I could close my eyes and see anyplace or anyone I wanted, wait until I fully understood what it was like to live, let alone die; but as Henry watched me with those eyes the color of moonlight, shining in the dim light f loating above us, I knew my answer. I’d put my life on hold while waiting for my mother to die; I wasn’t going to wait anymore. I couldn’t dash Henry’s hopes just because I wasn’t one-hundred-percent sure I could do this. Henry was, and that meant more to me than I could ever express.
“Yes,” I said without a hint of uncertainty. “I want to be your queen, whenever you’re able to do the ceremony. As soon as I return, if you’d like.”
Henry took my hands in his, and a glowing yellow light appeared between them, ethereal and warm against my skin. “I do not see a reason to wait.”
My eyes widened, but I didn’t give myself the chance to second-guess it. This was what
I wanted. I’d prepared for this since the moment Henry had found me at the river beside Ava’s dead body, and Henry was right. There was no reason to wait. “Neither do I.”
He smiled, and that was all I needed to know I was making the right choice. “As my wife, you have consented to take up the responsibilities of Queen of the Underworld,” he said, the same words he’d said exactly three months earlier. “You shall rule fairly and without bias over the souls of those who have departed the world above, and from autumnal equinox to spring of every year hence, you shall devote yourself to the task of guiding those who are lost and protecting all from harm beyond their eternal lives.” I held my breath, knowing what came next. “Do you, Kate Winters, accept the role of Queen of the Underworld, and do you agree to uphold the responsibilities and expectations of such?”
This time I didn’t hesitate. “Yes,” I whispered. “One-hundred-percent yes.”
The light between our hands disappeared, and for a moment we were pitched into darkness. Before I could so much as blink, however, every light in the room swelled to blinding brightness—between our hands, f loating above our bed, even the candles f lamed—and a great chime echoed through the bedroom. Through the palace. Through the entire Underworld, as far as I knew.
“My queen,” said Henry, kissing my knuckles. “I am honored.”
I blushed. “Is that it, then?” I said. “I’m—I’m queen?”
“I am certain the council will require a more formal ceremony, but you are my queen.” He cupped my chin and pressed his lips to mine, chastely at f irst, but as the seconds passed, the promise of more formed between us. “Now that you are awake, I must say that it would be a shame to waste this beautiful night simply by talking.”
“Are you suggesting we celebrate?” I said, and my eyebrows rose playfully. I thought being queen would feel different somehow, like something inside of me would have fundamentally changed, but I felt the same. I was still me, and with Henry beside me, that was all I needed to be.
“I am suggesting that this will be our last night together for a while,” he murmured, “and I would like to make the most of it.”
