The Eternity Key

by Bree Despain

  First published by Egmont Publishing, 2015

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 806

  New York, NY 10016

  Copyright © Bree Despain, 2015

  All rights reserved

  www.egmontusa.com

  www.breedespain.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Despain, Bree, 1979- author.

  The eternity key / Bree Despain.

  Summary: Haden, Prince of the Underrealm, is determined to defy his fate to protect Daphne, even as they and their small group of friends continue the search for the lost Kronolithe, the key of Hades—but his undeclared love for a mortal girl is a terrible risk, and they must both decide what they are willing to sacrifice to protect one another.

  ISBN 978-1-60684-468-7 (ebook) — ISBN 978-1-60684-467-0 (hardcover) 1. Gods, Greek—Juvenile fiction. 2. Mythology, Greek—Juvenile fiction. 3. Princes—Juvenile fiction. 4. Fate and fatalism—Juvenile fiction. 5. Self-sacrifice—Juvenile fiction. 6. Love stories. [1. Gods—Fiction. 2. Mythology, Greek—Fiction. 3. Princes—Fiction. 4. Fate and fatalism—Fiction. 5. Love—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.D4518

  813.6—dc23

  [Fic]

  2014038491

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  v3.1

  To Michelle Sallay—

  Because everyone should have a friend like you.

  Love, Bree

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One: Haden

  Chapter Two: Daphne

  Chapter Three: Tobin

  Chapter Four: Haden

  Chapter Five: Daphne

  Chapter Six: Haden

  Chapter Seven: Daphne

  Chapter Eight: Haden

  Chapter Nine: Tobin

  Chapter Ten: Daphne

  Chapter Eleven: Tobin

  Chapter Twelve: Haden

  Chapter Thirteen: Daphne

  Chapter Fourteen: Tobin

  Chapter Fifteen: Daphne

  Chapter Sixteen: Haden

  Chapter Seventeen: Tobin

  Chapter Eighteen: Daphne

  Chapter Nineteen: Haden

  Chapter Twenty: Daphne

  Chapter Twenty-one: Haden

  Chapter Twenty-two: Daphne

  Chapter Twenty-three: Haden

  Chapter Twenty-four: Daphne

  Chapter Twenty-five: Haden

  Chapter Twenty-six: Daphne

  Chapter Twenty-seven: Tobin

  Chapter Twenty-eight: Haden

  Chapter Twenty-nine: Daphne

  Chapter Thirty: Haden

  Chapter Thirty-one: Tobin

  Chapter Thirty-two: Daphne

  Chapter Thirty-three: Haden

  Chapter Thirty-four: Daphne

  Chapter Thirty-five: Haden

  Chapter Thirty-six: Daphne

  Chapter Thirty-seven: Tobin

  Chapter Thirty-eight: Haden

  Chapter Thirty-nine: Tobin

  Chapter Forty: Daphne

  Chapter Forty-one: Haden

  Chapter Forty-two: Tobin

  Chapter Forty-three: Daphne

  Chapter Forty-four: Haden

  Chapter Forty-five: Daphne

  Chapter Forty-six: Haden

  Chapter Forty-seven: Tobin

  Chapter Forty-eight: Daphne

  Chapter Forty-nine: Haden

  Chapter Fifty: Daphne

  Chapter Fifty-one: Haden

  Chapter Fifty-two: Daphne

  Chapter Fifty-three: Haden

  Chapter Fifty-four: Daphne

  Chapter Fifty-five: Haden

  Chapter Fifty-six: Daphne

  Chapter Fifty-seven: Tobin

  Chapter Fifty-eight: Haden

  Chapter Fifty-nine: Daphne

  Chapter Sixty: Haden

  Chapter Sixty-one: Daphne

  Chapter Sixty-two: Haden

  Chapter Sixty-three: Daphne

  Chapter Sixty-four: Tobin

  Acknowledgments

  chapter one

  HADEN

  Lord Haden, prince of the Underrealm, has ceased to exist.

  I have ceased to exist.

  Since I was a nursling, I’d been taught that life is nothing but a thin golden string. It’s spun and entwined in a grand tapestry of the gods’ design, then pulled and severed at a predetermined length. Nothing can be done to change this, nothing can be said, and no bargain can be made. Once your thread has been measured—that’s it. No choice. It’s the will of the Fates.

  I’d believed this myth every second of my existence, and yet, as I’d learned all too recently, if you clawed at the design hard enough, the tapestry would unravel just enough that you could grab on to another string. Follow another path.

  Since that realization, I have burned the connection between myself and my realm, ruined what little standing I had reclaimed as a Champion chosen by the Oracle of Elysium, and destroyed all hope of becoming my father’s heir. I brought this upon myself with a single decision.

  And I would do it all over again.

  Because this is a fate of my own choosing.

  I am rewriting my destiny.

  Something I didn’t even know was an option until I met her.

  Daphne Raines—the girl who was supposed to grant me the chance to win back my honor. I had been Chosen for a quest to the mortal realm to convince her to come back with me to the underworld. It quickly became clear that there was something special about her. She wasn’t a mere Boon to fill the harem of the Court.

  Daphne is the fated Cypher—the only one who can find and retrieve the lost Kronolithe of my long-dead god: the Key of Hades.

  I knew it was up to me to ensure that the Kronolithe was found, and use it to stop the Court of the Underrealm from breaking through the walls of the Pits and freeing the Keres. There would be terrible consequences if they were to take this action: all hell would break loose on the mortal world, spilling out from the schism created between the realms, and war with the Skylords would inevitably follow, not to mention the death toll and havoc the Keres would leave in their wake.

  With the fate of the five realms hanging in the balance, I’d chosen to leave the safe haven we’d found in Ellis Fields in order to return to Olympus Hills to search for the Key.

  Much to my surprise—and admittedly distress—Daphne and the others had chosen to go with me. “Even if you find it,” she’d said, “you can’t get the Kronolithe without me, so suck it.” I’d known she was right, even though I had wanted her to be wrong. Because of our choices, our new destinies were now irrevocably entwined. If the realms can be saved, salvation will happen only if we do it united.

  And so we’d escaped into the dark, together.…

  Rain pounds on the hood of my car now as I sit outside Daphne’s home in Olympus Hills. I realize I am gripping my steering wheel tight, as if I were once again silently maneuvering the Tesla Model X down an unlit canyon road in a torrential rainstorm without headlights. It had been a slow, tense, and quiet escape during the darkness of midnight. No one said a word for almost an hour, as if even a whisper might alert the Skylords of our presence or break my concentration on the wet, black road in front of us.

  In our favor, Underlords see far better in the dark than Skylords do, and the Tesla, with its silent electric motor, had provided us the stealth we needed to make our exit. The Skylords, who can control rain as well as lightning and thunder, had intended the storm to prevent us fro
m escaping, but instead it had provided the cover we needed to pass through the unlit canyon unseen. However, the mere memory of that storm is enough to raise the hairs on the back of my neck. I had never been so terrified in all my life—not even when facing the imminent destruction of my soul at my father’s hands. Because, this time, the lives of Daphne, Joe, Tobin, Lexie, Garrick, and Dax—the only people left in all the realms who still believed in me—were in my hands as we crept along the cliffside road.

  It may have been two weeks since that harrowing experience, but sitting in the rain now not only served as an unwelcome reminder of that long drive, but it also felt like a warning as to what is still to come.

  I will one of my hands to release its death grip on the steering wheel and use it to take a swig from the coffee cup that’s been my only company tonight. I gag, almost choking on the cold swill. I don’t know how Simon could have loved this stuff. I take another sip, not because I want to taste it again, but because I need to stay awake. I’ve barely slept a scant few hours in the days since our return from Ellis. I may require less sleep than a human, but even I have my limits.

  As if Dax can read my thoughts—which I am not entirely sure he can’t sometimes—my phone lights up with a text from him.

  Dax: You’re there again, aren’t you? Come home.

  I stare at the screen, not sure I am going to reply, when another message comes through.

  Dax: You’ve barely slept in weeks. You can’t keep up this pace of looking for the Key all day and guarding Daphne’s house all night.

  I pry my other hand from the steering wheel to answer.

  Me: I’m not at Daphne’s. I am merely getting a bite to eat.

  Typing it feels easier than saying it to his face. I’ve never been good at lying to Dax. I drop my phone in an empty compartment in the dash, hoping that will be the last of the conversation, and pinch my nose between my eyes. Sleep pulls at me, but I won’t let my eyelids shut.

  I grip my coffee cup with both hands, sending a small pulse of electric heat from my palms into it, hoping to warm it up enough to make it palatable again. An abrupt knock sounds against the passenger-side window. I jump in my seat, and a surge of electricity escapes my hands, nearly incinerating the cardboard cup before I drop it in my lap. I hold my hand out, blue light crackling between my fingers, toward the car door as it swings open.

  A tiny gray cat jumps through the dark opening, landing on the passenger seat. She yowls at me.

  “Hello to you, too, Brim,” I say, knowing I’ve been caught.

  I extinguish the lightning in my hand and pick up the cup from my coffee-stained lap, wishing I hadn’t warmed the contents quite so much. Brim jumps over the center console onto my shoulder as Dax follows her into the car. He settles himself into the passenger seat and pulls the door shut. His hair is damp, and rain has soaked the shoulders of his jacket.

  “Liar,” he says, not looking at me as he digs into a paper sack that he’s brought with him.

  “You used Brim to track me?” I ask, not realizing that is still a sore spot until I say it. Brim and I share a special bond, and because of it, she can find me anywhere. Simon exploited that fact to follow Daphne and me to the Oracle in Las Vegas, and that unfortunate choice had resulted in both Simon’s and the Oracle’s deaths. Brim might look like a harmless puff of fur, but Simon had made the mistake of ignoring one of the most steadfast rules of the Underrealm: never get a hellcat angry.

  I scratch Brim under her chin to let her know there are no hard feelings about her being used to find me once again. Brim purrs next to my ear.

  “I used my common sense to find you,” Dax says. “Brim came along for the ride. We brought you something.” He fishes in the paper sack.

  “If that’s another taco, Hades help me …” Since Simon is gone, Dax has taken over most of our meals, which means I’ve had more Mexican takeout in the last two weeks than I’d ever care to have in a lifetime.

  “It’s chamomile tea,” he says, handing me a capped cup, and pulls out a second for himself. It smells sweeter than the coffee I’ve been nursing all evening, like flowers and honey. I’m about to take a tentative sip when he says, “It’ll help you sleep.”

  I put the tea in a cup holder. “I don’t need help sleeping.”

  “Those dark circles under your eyes tell a different story.”

  “What I mean is that I’m not going to sleep. Not when it’s raining.”

  “You need sleep. Go home.”

  Brim meows as if agreeing with Dax. Furry little traitor.

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me: it’s raining. I can’t leave.”

  “Yeah, Haden, I can see that,” he says, gesturing out the windshield. “And it’s just rain. There’s no lightning. No thunder. Rain doesn’t always mean Skylords are about to swoop down on us. Relax. We’re safe.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “It’s been two weeks.”

  I don’t like being reminded how much time has passed since we returned to Olympus Hills. I don’t know why I really expected anything different, but part of me had thought we would have found the Key by now. Despite all our searching, we haven’t made any progress. It’s like I can feel every second that ticks by without the Key.

  It’s not just the rain that keeps me up at night. It’s the nightmares. The visions of Keres ripping through the realms, devouring everything—and everyone …

  I know if I tell Dax about my dreams, he will say that they were just that, dreams, but part of me worries they’re a premonition of what is to come if we don’t find the Key. Just like the rain feels like an omen now.

  As if something else were coming …

  “If the Skylords were coming for us, they would have come by now,” Dax says, and I know my thoughts are painted on my face. All my life, I’ve practiced hiding myself behind an expressionless mask—a necessary skill for someone from a place where emotion and affection are considered weaknesses—but I seem to have lost my knack for it of late. Ever since I let Daphne see the real me …

  “Deal with it, fearless leader; we got away,” Dax says, and lifts his tea as if proposing a toast in my honor.

  A sick feeling washes over me, and I know it’s not from my steady diet of fast-food tacos and coffee. I hit the lever for the windshield wipers, wiping away a thick coat of rainwater. In the distance, I watch one of the lights go out in Daphne’s house. It isn’t her window that goes dark, but I wonder if she was the one who turned out the light. Can she see me out here now?

  Her bedroom is in the back of Joe’s mansion. I’d contemplated climbing the fence and camping out under her window, but I’d barely gotten past the point in which Daphne was referring to me as a creep and a stalker, so I didn’t want to push my luck. Instead, I sit in my car like a sentinel. Making sure there’s no sign of trouble.

  Making sure she’s safe.

  “You should tell her.” Dax’s voice is so quiet when he says it, I almost wonder if he said anything at all. “No, wait, scratch that,” he says, bolder now. “You need to tell her.”

  I raise an eyebrow with a noncommittal “Huh?”

  “That you’re in love with her, you idiot.”

  Panic rises up my throat, burning like vomit. Admitting to myself that I am in love with Daphne had been hard enough—and it had taken the imminent threat of my death to get me to do it.

  “I can’t,” I say.

  Affection is weakness, I hear my father’s voice echoing in my head. My jaw aches as I remember his ringed hand slamming into my face when I was a small child. I’d been punished, disowned, stripped of my honor because I’d shown affection for my mother when she died. My love for her had caused me to take a stand against my father, and I’d lost just about everything because of it.

  Dax shifts in his seat. “Despite what your father and Master Crue and all the other Heirs may have taught you, loving someone isn’t a sin. It isn’t a crime, either.”

  Love gave you strength. That’s what Dap
hne had told me when I related the story of my mother’s death to her. Deep down, I’d known she was right. And I know that my love for Daphne was what gave me the strength to stand up to Ren once more—to try to weave my own destiny. But the idea of telling her terrifies me more than the threat of the Skylords and the wrath of the Court combined—because I turned my back on the Underrealm, my father, my chance to be his heir, gave up being a prince, and possibly endangered all the realms, because of my love for Daphne.

  That love is all I have left.

  It’s the only thing that gives me hope.

  And if I confess to her and learn that she does not reciprocate my feelings—then I will have truly lost everything.

  My fingers shake as I reach for what remains of my coffee cup instead of the chamomile tea. “I can’t,” I say again. Even if I wanted to tell Daphne, I wouldn’t be able to find the words.

  Against my will, my thoughts flit to Rowan—my twin brother, the one my father and the Court would have chosen as the Champion to collect Daphne if the Oracle of Elysium had not intervened. Rowan was the one who had a gift for words. He was the smart one. The cunning one.

  A small smile plays on my lips because I like to think that even Rowan, with all his manipulative skills, wouldn’t have been able to trick Daphne into falling in love with him enough to return with him to the Underrealm. She’d have seen right through his lies. As far as I know, my brother is incapable of loving anyone other than himself. All he cares about are power and pride.

  Then again, only four months ago, before I was sent to the mortal world, before I met Daphne, before I refused to hand her over to my father, all anyone would have said I cared about was getting my honor back.

  But I proved I wouldn’t sacrifice her to do it. Rowan would have handed Daphne over without blinking, if he were in my place. He would have done anything necessary to succeed where I had failed.

  Dax clears his throat, pulling my thoughts away from Rowan.

  “So are you hoping that, by sitting outside her house every night, she’ll figure it out on her own?”

  “I don’t sit out here every night. Only when it’s raining.”

  “It’s January in California. It’s rained every night.”

  “It didn’t rain yesterday.”