Promise of Shadows

by Ireland, Justina

  And I never would.

  I had nightmares about that haunted house for years. And every night when I would wake from sleep, my throat clogged with a scream, I would see my mother and the disappointment in her eyes.

  Now, in this place so like that haunted house of memory, I swear to myself that I will not show my fear. I hold tight to the thought and study my surroundings. Randomly placed fire bowls warm the space with their dark fire, and decorative columns that glow silver light the way. I hold my hand up to one and recognize a familiar tingle. Æther. Somehow Hades has brought æther down to the Underworld and sealed it away. I wonder why the King of the Dead would need æther. All of the lords of the Underworld use erebos, which is plentiful here. A dark power made of shadows, erebos is the opposite of æther, which derives its power from light. It seems like a wasted effort to bring that much æther across the Rift, the nothingness that divides the worlds, just to light up a room.

  Unless, of course, Hades keeps it to remind his visitors how powerful he is. All that trapped æther has certainly put me on my guard.

  I square my shoulders and march down the hallway. I won’t let Hades intimidate me. I’ve spent the past year in the Pits of Tartarus. There’s very little I haven’t seen or done to survive. I’m not telling the High Council how I killed Ramun Mar. Not even the King of the Dead. Especially not him.

  Because if I say I struck down an Æthereal with dark lightning, I’ll be dead before I finish the story.

  At the end of the hallway is a door that glows with a welcoming light. I figure that’s supposed to be my goal, so I head toward it. Halfway to my destination there’s a strange noise. Breathing, a heavy chuffing sound that makes me pause and turn around.

  I immediately wish I hadn’t.

  The breathing comes from a giant, three-headed hound. A cerberus, one of the watchdogs of the hells. This one’s a Rottweiler the size of an elephant, with glowing red eyes and slavering jaws. Right now he’s sniffing the ground with one of his heads, while the other two scent the air. I have no doubt it’s my scent that’s intrigued him.

  Aw, hells.

  I take a slow step backward toward the glowing door. Maybe it’s my breathing; maybe it’s my pounding heart. Whatever it is, all three of the heads snap in my direction, and growls issue from each of the beast’s throats.

  Fear freezes me for a split second before I turn around and run like my life depends on it.

  Behind me the demon dog takes off as well. The scrabbling of its nails echoes throughout the hall, and I look over my shoulder to see how close I am to becoming puppy chow. The thing crouches, preparing to leap. My feet tangle around each other and I go down just as the thing springs at me. I land on my belly with an oof, skidding forward a little on my face while the cerberus leaps over me. The marble is cool against my cheek, but there’s no time to enjoy the sensation. I push up and climb to my feet. A little ways away, the cerberus turns around within the small space between the columns that line the hall. I frown, because it looks like the thing’s gotten bigger.

  That can’t be good.

  The beast takes a slow step forward, growling in stereo. I want to say something inane like “Nice puppy,” but my throat is frozen in fear. I take a deep breath and try to push away the terror that makes me clumsy. I roll my head around, shake out my arms, and stomp my feet, hoping to get the adrenaline flowing. There’s no way I can just jump over the damn thing to get to the illuminated door, which is so close that the demon dog’s tail whaps the doorframe. But maybe I can go under it. There are a few inches between the beast’s belly and the ground, and marble is slippery.

  I take a deep breath. “It’s just like sliding into home,” I mutter to myself. This is probably not the time to think about how I always got picked last for sports.

  Before I let myself consider the many ways this could go wrong, I take a couple of steps backward then run forward as fast as I can. The ginormous dog lets loose a surprised bark and runs toward me. When I’m close enough to smell the thing’s sulfurous breath, I throw my arms up and kick my feet out like I’m about to score the winning run in the World Series.

  The demon dog gives a yelp, and I think maybe I’m going to make it, until the thing’s leftmost head snaps at me. I throw my arm across my eyes rather than have the thing chew my face off. Long teeth sink into my right arm, and I can’t swallow my cry of pain.

  Looks like the home team just won.

  The cerberus yanks me backward and up into the air, my feet dangling above the ground. The massive head shakes me back and forth, tossing me around like a chew toy. I swing my legs away from the other heads, which snap at me. The agony in my arm is crippling, and it’s hard to think about anything else but the teeth grinding against my bones. Tears burn a hot path down my cheeks, and my cries of pain are almost as loud as the demon dog’s growls. Blackness threatens to overtake me. I shake my head, chasing it away. I didn’t spend the past year fighting off the dregs of vættir society just to let some overgrown mutt eat me for lunch.

  I will not die today.

  In desperation I extend my talons and try to claw out the beast’s eyes, but they’re too far away for me to reach. My razor-sharp nails skitter off the side of the massive head. The creature’s hide is too thick for my talons to penetrate, and all I succeed in doing is pissing off the beast a little more.

  Bummer.

  I swing left and then right, trying to work up enough momentum to wrap my legs around the thickly corded neck. I try this several times without success, all while the other two heads are snapping and snarling. Every time I try to lift my legs up, the head holding me gives another shake, and I don’t do anything but moan and kick the beast weakly in the side.

  My abs ache with the effort, and I realize it’s time for plan B. Or is it C? I think hard, trying to force my brain into gear. It’s not easy with the way my arm hurts, but I remember watching a dog-training show with Whisper, and the trainer mentioned the sensitivity of a dog’s nose. I’m not sure why I remember that, but I do.

  Figuring it’s worth a shot, I pull my fist back and punch the cerberus in the nose. It’s weak and awkward. Even months of toiling in the Pits hasn’t improved my left hook. The punch is somewhere between sad and pathetic.

  The cerberus gives me a playful shake in response.

  I cry out as a muscle tears in my upper back. There’s a popping sensation and my arm throbs. The fresh pain in my shoulder makes me think it’s dislocated. Thankfully, the adrenaline surging through my veins will keep the worst of the pain at bay for a little while longer. But I’m not sure I even have that much time left.

  I’m getting a little desperate. My talons are no use against the creature, and I have no other weapons. I can’t keep swinging my legs out of the way of the other heads. I’m too tired. And if one of the other maws locks onto my legs, I’ll be torn apart.

  I close my eyes and begin to summon my forbidden power. It’s dangerous, and using it in Hades’s hall is a stupid move. But I’m out of options.

  I’m just not ready to die.

  “Daisy, drop her right now.”

  The mouth locked on my arm releases, and I fall to the ground, rolling around in misery. When I try to move my arm, agony runs up the limb. Yep, definitely dislocated. The first time I dislocated the thing was back in the Aerie during one of our hand-to-hand combat lessons. My partner was a much better fighter than I was, and she wanted to make sure everyone knew it. I ended up with a dislocated shoulder and a few cracked ribs. She got ranked first for our class.

  “Are you well?” Persephone’s voice rolls over me, and I prop myself up with my good arm. Pain makes my vision swim. In the Mortal Realm I would’ve started healing by now, but the lack of æther in the Underworld means that I’m on my own. There’s no way I can fix this right now. Cass is going to have to pop it back into place when I get back to the Pits.

  The old training from back in the Aerie kicks in. I hurriedly dash away my tears and stand, ignoring
the screaming from my shoulder. My breath catches as I climb to my feet, and I force myself to exhale normally. Never let the enemy see you in pain. “Yeah, just peachy. Shouldn’t you have that thing on a leash?” My voice is just the right amount of sarcastic and bitchy. I’m pretty proud of myself, since nausea clutches at my stomach, and I just want to sit down and bawl.

  The cerberus sits next to Persephone, and she strokes him idly as she studies me. “I wanted to see if Tartarus taught you how to survive.”

  A bitter laugh bursts from my mouth before I can stop it. I have to fight back a moan. Even laughing makes my arm hurt. I hold my right arm close to my body with my left, trying to immobilize it. It’s better than nothing. “Well, it looks like I haven’t learned anything down here. Your puppy almost ate me alive.”

  A slight smile curves her lips. In the dim light of the hall I can’t see the color of her eyes, just the Æthereal shine of them. “You learned how to not give up, to keep trying even in the face of overwhelming odds. That is something many never learn, vættir and Æthereal alike.”

  Standing here in Hades’s hall, it’s easy to remember the last time I saw her. Persephone was one of the Exalteds on the High Council during my trial. It was her vote, the tiebreaker, that sent me to Tartarus rather than to my death and oblivion. Then I was grateful to her. Now? Not so much.

  “Exalted, thank you for your help. But the King of the Dead is expecting me.” I take an experimental step toward the door. The motion makes my stomach heave. How am I supposed to present myself to Hades when I can barely stand? I lean against one of the nearby pillars of æther. By touching the pillar of untapped power I should be able to draw enough out to chase away the pain a little. But I feel no different. My shoulder throbs and doesn’t heal any. I want to cry.

  Persephone sighs and walks over. She digs her fingers into my injured shoulder, and I can’t bite back my scream. I fall to my knees. “Harpies do not show fear. But you do. So if you are not a Harpy, then what are you, Zephyr Mourning?” I can’t ask her what she’s talking about. All I can do is make little whimpering sounds as her fingers knead my injured shoulder.

  Without warning she grabs my arm and lifts it up, popping the shoulder back into place. My scream echoes down the hallway, and the cerberus lies down with a whine. Then she plunges one of her hands into the pillar, the other still on my shoulder. The pain is replaced by a gentle warmth. The warmth changes, going from soothing to a deep burn. I gasp and Persephone’s eyes go wide. She pulls her hand away and takes a hurried step back. I moan, my stomach churning and my head pounding. For a little bit I think I’m going to puke all over Hades’s hall. But then the sensation passes, and I’m able to climb to my feet.

  Persephone watches me, the amusement gone. I suddenly feel like an ant under a magnifying glass. “What are you?” she asks me again, her copper eyes intense.

  “Nothing. I’m just a vættir.” I stand as straight as I can, my hand still resting against the pillar.

  “Yes, of course.” She considers me a moment longer and then steps aside. “You are a strange bird, Zephyr Mourning.”

  I don’t say anything, just nod in acknowledgment. As I walk past her, the black leaves in her blond hair stretch toward me with a rustle. The movement creeps me out, and I walk a little faster.

  I hate Æthereals.

  “Zephyr Mourning?”

  I stop and turn around at Persephone’s call. “Yes?”

  “What was that power you were reaching for before I arrived?”

  Fear stabs my heart with a sharp sliver of panic. I swallow and can’t help but remember the first time I used my forbidden power.

  I was ten and practicing for my casting final. I couldn’t seem to get the mage light to dance the way it was supposed to. It was a simple spell, a calling of æther into an orb, one of the most basic magic spells ever. It was easy for everyone else in my class, but not for me. I could barely summon the æther. Every time I managed to manipulate it into a ball, it would promptly explode. Not only that but summoning the power hurt, like inadvertently biting my tongue while eating. Not a huge pain, but enough that I didn’t really like my magic sessions.

  The teacher clucked and told me to practice at home. “You’re doing everything correctly. As far as I can tell you’re just not putting forth enough effort,” she said with her gray eyebrows drawn together. After class she called me over to her desk and handed me a sheet of homework. “Here are some exercises to practice at home. A proper Harpy can summon at least enough æther to light her way during dark nights. If you can’t manage that, I’m going to have to fail you.”

  Her words left me cold. A failing mark in a basic magic class was suicide. My mother was a Harpy of the Enigma line, the most skilled fighters our Aerie had. Fail a class? I might as well tell my mother I was a pacifist.

  At home I followed the exercises to the letter, but I felt like I was doing something wrong. Pulling the power to me felt unnatural, like writing with my foot. So I closed my eyes and tried it again, this time feeling the power rather than pulling it as I had been. It felt much more natural, and when I opened my eyes, the orb before me glowed silver and black, but mostly black. I stared at it with wonder until Whisper came into the room and batted the thing away with a birdlike screech.

  “You can’t ever do that again. Do you understand me?” she said, shaking me to emphasize each word. The fear in her face scared me more than the panic lacing her voice, and I nodded.

  “They’ll kill you for using erebos,” she whispered, as though she was afraid someone might overhear us.

  “But I can’t summon the orb any other way. I’m going to fail basic magic,” I wailed, on the verge of tears. I could already imagine my mother’s rage.

  Whisper watched me for a long moment before going to her chest and digging around in the bottom. She was much older than me, only a year away from the Trials we all take in our seventeenth year. I felt like she knew things that I didn’t, mysterious things that made her seem so much more adult than me.

  She pressed a small, bright stone into my hand. “Here. This will give you a boost.”

  “What is it?”

  “Æther stone. Just pull the magic from there instead of yourself. Wear it in your boot the day of your test and you should be fine.”

  I passed my magic exam, and that was only because the æther stone helped me through the thing. I made sure to never enroll in another spell-casting course. All of my instructors thought that I was just terrible at using magic, the same way I was bad at everything else. But magic was less important than my lack of skill with a sword, or my hesitation when it came to killing. As far as the Aerie was concerned, I was a huge disappointment, and my lack of magical ability was just one more reason I sucked.

  I never used that dark power again until the night I killed Ramun Mar. It was only after he was dead, his body a smoking ruin, that I realized why Whisper was so afraid that day she found me. Erebos was unnatural.

  If I was the kind of creature that could use it, what did that make me?

  That’s the reason the vættir can’t wield erebos. How can we be trusted with a power so destructive it can destroy gods?

  So instead of telling Persephone the truth, I tilt my head and blink. “Power? What power? There’s no magic in the underworld, Exalted.” It’s a terrible lie, but mostly because I’m such a bad liar. Harpies don’t lie. We can smell the truth in each other’s emotions. So what’s the point?

  “There is magic in the underworld. There is erebos.” Persephone’s eyes seem to burn a hole right through me, and it takes everything I have not to squirm like a kid caught stealing the last cookie from the cookie jar.

  I force a laugh, the sound hollow and flat. “Only the Lords of the Underworld can use erebos.”

  “Yes. And the shadow vættir.”

  I shrug. “The shadow vættir are extinct.”

  “That is true.” Her tone is curt, and I know I struck a nerve. It gives me an odd sense of pleasure
, pissing her off. Persephone spends most of her time down here, but she is still a bright, like most Æthereals. She’s just as powerless as Hermes down here. That probably got old after the first couple millennium.

  I consider the columns of æther around us. Hades must’ve brought all this raw power down here for his wife, so she wouldn’t feel so helpless. It makes the King of the Dead a touch less scary.

  Persephone sighs and hugs herself. “That is all, Zephyr Mourning. Thank you.” She hesitates, and then shrugs. “It really was for the best.”

  “What was?”

  She opens her arms to take in the space around us. “Sending you here to the Underworld. Tartarus was the safest place for you after you killed one of Hera’s generals. You would not have been able to run from Ramun Mar’s brother forever, you know.”

  “I’m not afraid of Ramun Sol, and I’m not afraid of Hera,” I say before walking toward the lit doorway at the end of the hall. But it’s a lie.

  I am utterly terrified of them.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I WALK THROUGH THE DOOR, nervousness once again putting me on edge. The first thing I register is the dark god standing at the far end of the room, his back to me. It would be impossible to miss Hades. Erebos swirls around him, shrouding him in a mantle of hypnotically shifting shadows.

  I tear my eyes away from Hades and take in the room. I imagined the chamber of the King of the Dead would be dark and brooding, like something taken out of a Tim Burton movie. Shrunken heads and deep shadows, with the skeletons of past foes hanging from the rafters. Edward Scissorhands meets The Nightmare Before Christmas, with a dash of Beetlejuice thrown in for kicks. But the chamber is round and bright, with columns and walls made of white marble. Light pours in from giant squares of æther nestled in between decorative columns. The darkest thing in the room is Hades himself. His back is still to me when he speaks.