The Eternity Key

by Bree Despain

  “We’ll never make it!” Garrick says as the ethereal moaning grows closer. Between the sound of the encroaching shades and the rushing water, we have to shout everything we say just to be heard.

  “Maybe we can bring it to us.” Daphne runs out to the edge of the dock … and starts singing. For a moment, I think she may have lost her marbles, but then I watch as she raises her hands toward the capsized boat—and it bobs higher in the water than it had before. She increases her volume (really belting now), and the boat lifts up out of the water. Daphne twists her hands, and the boat responds by turning itself over so it’s right side up. She beckons the boat to come to her. The vessel, slightly bigger than the two-man sailboats that many of the lakeside residents of Olympus Hills own, skids and skips across the water until it thumps into the front of the dock. Daphne flattens herself on the dock, grabbing the nose of the boat before it can be swept away again.

  I stand, staring at Daphne in awe. She’d told us about this newfound power, but I hadn’t seen more than her floating-chair demonstration of it until now. “That. Was. Awesome.”

  “The shades are getting closer,” Garrick says. “And that boat has no sail.” He points to where the mast of the small boat has been broken off. “And there are no oars. It’s useless.”

  “Maybe we can just sit in it and float?” I yell.

  “Rivers run backward in the Underrealm,” Garrick says. “Look at the current: it runs in the opposite direction of where we need to go.”

  “I just lifted a boat across the water with my voice,” Daphne calls. “I think I can sail this thing. Now hurry and get Charon into the boat before my arms fall off.”

  I grab the unconscious man, grateful that he’s even smaller than I am, drag him to the end of the dock, and heft him into the boat. Then I grab the end of the dock and hold on while Daphne climbs in with the Key and settles herself against the broken stump of the mast.

  The moaning sound turns to wails, and I see a line of shadowy figures coming over the ridge. I don’t know if it’s just my imagination, but it appears they have no faces save their gaping mouths.

  “Come on!” I shout to Garrick.

  He flings his bolt of lightning at one of the shades that advances ahead of the others with terrifying swiftness. The bolt misses, and Garrick stumbles backward, almost falling.

  “Garrick!” Daphne shouts.

  He rights himself and runs for the boat, the shade barreling after him. Garrick leaps from the dock, and as his feet touch down in the boat, I let go of the dock. The faceless shade shrieks and tries to take a swipe at me. The boat, caught in the current, carries us away from it just in time.

  “I hope those things can’t swim!” Daphne shouts.

  I sigh with relief when it doesn’t follow, only to have it drowned out by Garrick’s shout: “We’re headed for the rocks again!” Sure enough, the boat is careening toward the cove where Daphne had found it.

  “I’m working on it!” Daphne shouts, before launching into song. Her voice warbles at first, but then gains strength as if she is fighting against the current. With the Key still clenched in one of her fists, she pushes her hands and arms out in front of her and then sweeps them back toward her chest in a fluid movement that almost reminds me of a mix between hula dancing and Tai Chi.

  I want to ask what she’s doing but realize that would break her concentration. Then I remember one of the lines from Joe’s play about how Orpheus’s voice was so powerful, he could even command rivers to change their courses. The boat lurches away from the incoming rocks, and I stare over the side of the boat, realizing that Daphne is pulling the water around the boat in a different direction from the rest. She’s changing the current.

  We’ve been sailing for what feels like an hour but could be longer, for all I can tell. There’s no sun here, even though the sky (or whatever it is above us) is lit up by some sort of ghastly, dim light. It had been evening when we left Olympus Hills, but the time of day seems indeterminate here. I can tell Daphne’s strength is waning. Her voice is beginning to sound hoarse, and the movement of her arms is much slower. The river is calmer here, wider, and without any rapids. I see what I assume is a tree branch drifting in the water and hope to hell—or, um, Hades—that it is as I reach for it over the side of the boat. I snatch it up and toss it to Garrick, and pick up another branch that I had collected earlier.

  “Take a break,” I call to Daphne. “Garrick and I can row for a while.”

  Garrick, who has been doing nothing while I manned the rudder through the rough patches, grumbles at this, so I throw him a cross look. Daphne drops her arms and sinks to the floorboards beside me, leaning her head against the mast, and sets the Key down beside her.

  I let her rest while I dip my branch into the water like an oar. I hear a small sniffle, and I watch as she tries to blink away tears from her eyes before anyone sees. I may not share her ability to discern others’ emotions through tones and all that, but it’s obvious she’s overwhelmed, exhausted, and worried about Haden. I kick myself for trying to tell her about Joe, but an even heavier weight pulls on me.

  I need to confess.

  “Daphne,” I say softly. “I need to tell you something.…”

  She opens her eyes, gives a small sigh, but doesn’t look at me. Just watches the river straight ahead.

  “Terresa did come to me. She wanted me to help her get the Key in exchange for help finding my sister. She wanted to use it to exterminate the Underlords. I’m not going to lie; I thought about helping her, briefly. I was tempted.… But I couldn’t do it. Not when I thought about other people’s sisters and daughters being down here. I couldn’t let Terresa hurt them.”

  “What about the notes?” she asks, still not looking at me.

  “There were no notes. Only one …”

  She rocks her head so she’s staring in the opposite direction from me now.

  “I told Terresa that I was going to help her but then gave her a note with the wrong information. I told her the Key was hidden at Old Sutton Mill—the place where I used to play with Abbie. I said we were going to go for it after the play when we were supposed to be at a cast party. I swear, everything I told her was a lie. I was trying to draw her away from the grove, not lead her to it.”

  Daphne is quiet for a few moments.

  “If that was really the case, then why didn’t you just tell us beforehand?”

  “Because you would have tried to stop me.… I was going to take her to the mill myself just to make sure she was as far away from the grove as possible.”

  “But, Tobin,” she says. “Terresa might have killed you when she found out you were tricking her.”

  “I know,” I say under my breath. In my head, I had convinced myself that I would be able to talk myself out of danger. That I could convince Terresa that we had merely been too late to steal the Key before the others went through the gate, or that I could run away while she was distracted by searching the mill, but I had also known that there was a possibility I would fail. It might seem crazy, but that possibility had seemed worth it to make sure all the other girls like Abbie in the Underrealm would be safe from Terresa’s wrath.

  Even if I didn’t go to the mill with her, she still would have tried to hurt me. As evidenced by the throbbing burn from the electrified knife she’d held to my throat.

  I paddle the boat, propelling us around a bend in the river. Daphne turns toward me now. “But how did Terresa know, then, before anyone else? It was like she was hiding in the grove, just waiting for me to unlock Orpheus’s tree.”

  “Maybe someone else tipped her off as to our true plan. She was gone before things even went wrong with curtain call … like she already knew.”

  “Dax?” she asks. “He wasn’t in the grove like he was supposed to be. Do you think he …?” She lets the thought drop off as if it’s too hard for her to contemplate.

  “I don’t know.…”

  “Kopros!” Garrick shouts. He stands up so suddenly th
at it rocks the boat in his direction. He almost falls out, but Daphne grabs his ankle, pulling him back down. “Look!”

  As we come fully around the bend, I see it in front of us: a whirlpool. The current grabs the boat, and we start to spin. Daphne tries to stand, in order to command the water, but we’re turning too fast and she has to cling to the broken mast. I try rowing against the current with my branch, but it’s swept right out of my hands. I can barely hear Daphne’s singing over the raging water, but she’s trying her best to propel us away from danger.

  “Do something!” Garrick shouts as the boat goes careening toward an outcropping of rocks. He thrusts his branch against one of the rocks, but the push sends us back into the spin. The whirlpool has us now, water sloshing into the boat like a giant wet hand, trying to pull us under. I didn’t even know rivers could have whirlpools (apparently they can in the underworld), but this one seems almost as if it were alive.

  Just as the boat seems to be yanked out from under us, I hear Daphne’s voice ring out with the force of a banshee’s: “Let us go!”

  The water pulling us under suddenly snaps down and then up, tossing the boat, and us, at the shore. I try to cling to the edge of the boat, but I topple out, hitting the water. I claw desperately around me, bobbing up and down, swallowing water, as I hear the boat crack against the shore. My hands find purchase on a plank of wood, and I cling to it as the current sweeps me away from the broken boat on the beach.

  chapter fifty-eight

  HADEN

  I awaken on the deck of a large ship and know from the smell of the river that I am in the Underrealm. My head throbs, and the darkness still pulls at me, but I refuse to let it take me again. Every muscle in my body aches. A searing pain radiates down my arm from my tricep. I try to sit up but find that I have been bound. My legs are tied together, my costume toga has been stripped off my shoulders, and my arms are crossed over my chest like a corpse, with my hands bound flat against my bare skin—the standard procedure for keeping a captive Underlord subdued. I cannot use my lightning power without blasting myself in the chest.

  I roll on my side toward the sound of footsteps. My vision is blurry, but I recognize the leather sandals that belong to the men who surround me—they are the garb of the Court’s personal guard. There is some sort of ruckus, and another man is being pushed toward me. I had assumed Rowan was my captor and these guards his aides, until the guards thrust the man down at my feet. His legs are free, but his arms have been bound in a similar manner as mine. I cannot make out his face with my unfocused eyes, but I recognize his voice when he snarls at the guards: “This is treason!”

  Rowan? Rowan is being treated as a captive?

  “Rebind his legs,” one of the men commands. “Lord Lex will not pay if either of them escapes.”

  A soldier stoops over Rowan with a leather cord, ready to follow the order.

  “I am the son of the king,” Rowan says. “Unhand me now, or my father will have your heads!”

  “Whether your father is still the king is yet to be determined,” the guard says, and he wraps the leather cord around Rowan’s ankles while two other guards hold him.

  “What do you mean? Where’s my father? Where are you taking us?” he shouts as he thrashes against their hold.

  “Don’t worry, we’re taking you to your father,” the voice of their commander says. “Both you and your brother will stand in the judgment of the Court alongside him.”

  “Lex?” Rowan asks. “He’s done it? He’s staged his coup? And you treasonous harpies went along with it?”

  “We serve at the pleasure of the Court,” the commander says.

  The man binding Rowan’s legs laughs. “And the payment.”

  Rowan spits in the man’s face and receives a swift cuff to the cheek as retribution. Rowan’s head snaps back, and he crumples to the boat deck next to me. My eyes gain some focus, and I see that his lip is cracked and he bears the marks of a beating. He must have tried to get away at some point.

  “It’s your failure that brought this upon your heads,” says the commander. “Our orders were clear: if you returned through the gate without the Cypher or the Key, your father’s claim to the throne no longer stands. The Court will dole out the proper punishment.”

  I start to gather what has happened now. Rowan must have dragged me through the gate when I was unconscious, but without the aid of a communication talisman, he’d gone in blind to the coup. This troop of Lex’s personal cronies must have been waiting to ambush him. I realize now the fallacy in my original plan, not accounting for the entire battalion of soldiers waiting on the other side, rather than only a handful of guards. We would have walked right into their hands.

  “So you’re taking us to trial?” Rowan asks the commander.

  “We’re taking you to your execution.”

  A guffaw of laughter ripples through the throng of soldiers as they turn away to their other duties. Rowan catches me staring at him. “This isn’t over,” he snarls at me. “Your failures will not be put on me.”

  I glare at him, rather than respond. I wish only that my hands were free so I could wrap them around his throat. Any restraint I’d felt in the grove is gone. I want to kill him. If I get my hands on him, I won’t be doling out mercy.

  I will kill him if it’s the last thing I do.

  My arm throbs with searing pain, and a thought engulfs me with rage: everything has been taken from me … and I have nothing left to lose.

  “She’s coming,” Rowan whispers to me.

  “What?” I ask, my voice sounding slurred.

  “Daphne will bring the Key to the throne room before the equinox is over. I told her to do so in order to spare your life.”

  “You did what?”

  “I told you I’d find a way to trick her into getting the Key for me. She’ll bring it right to the throne room for me. Father and I will get out of this. We’ll prove to the Court that his rule still stands.” I have never loved my brother, but, in this moment, I have never hated him more. Like it’s the only emotion I’m capable of feeling anymore.

  I won’t just kill him; I will make him suffer first. He will not win.

  Beyond the reedy scent of the river, I catch the floral aroma of pomegranate trees in bloom on the breeze. We are nearing the palace grounds. We will be face-to-face with our fates soon. I can feel the golden thread of my new destiny, the one I’d chosen for myself, slipping through my fingers.

  “She’ll come,” Rowan says again, as if trying to reassure himself. This assertion seems completely irrational to me.

  “How do you know that she will come for me?”

  My arm throbs as if fire is ripping through it. Under the binding, I notice strange black markings radiating from a cut in my arm, as if black ink were spreading through my veins.

  Rowan smirks like he knows something that I don’t. “Because I saw the way she looked at you during the play. She loves you, Haden.”

  I have no reaction to his words. I feel as though I should, but I don’t. I try to think back on the play, try to remember Daphne’s face when we were onstage together. There had been one moment when I had been singing that she had seemed to look at me as if she was really seeing me for the first time.

  Could that have been a look of love?

  And if it was, why doesn’t it seem to matter?

  Why don’t I care?

  chapter fifty-nine

  DAPHNE

  “Happy birthday, Daphne!” My mother’s voice rings out from behind me. The darkness blocking my sight disappears as she pulls her hands away from my eyes. “We love you, little sprout.”

  A cake, with teal green frosting, pink rosettes, and sixteen candles, sits in front of me at our kitchen table.

  “I decorated it myself,” Jonathan says, scooting next to me in his chair. “What do you think?”

  “I love it,” I say. “It’s my favorite color.”

  “It’s vanilla with buttercream frosting,” Jonathan says.
“I used that recipe from the Food Network I’ve been dying to try. It is completely divine.”

  “Yes, it’s delicious,” Mom says, beaming at me. “You must try it.”

  She offers me a plate with a large slice of cake on it, even though I don’t remember anyone cutting into it yet.

  “But I didn’t blow out the candles,” I say, and when I look at the table, the rest of the cake isn’t there. Just the slice that sits on my plate.

  “Here, drink this with it,” someone says, offering me a glass of milk.

  “CeCe?” I say. I didn’t know she was in the room until that moment.

  “Uh, who else would I be?” she says, with a smile. Her hair springs out from her head like red coils, and she’s wearing her favorite BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S shirt. “Try the milk.”

  I look at the glass she’s set in front of me. The liquid in it resembles milky water more than it does actual milk. I don’t want to drink it.

  “Try the cake,” Jonathan says.

  Unlike the odd milk, the cake looks delicious. I pick up my fork, ready to dig in, but something stops me.

  “Go ahead,” the others urge. “Eat it.”

  Eat. Eating. Something about not eating. Something nags at the back of my mind, and the thought that I shouldn’t eat the cake sticks with me.

  I put down my fork. “Can I open my presents first?” I ask.

  Mom and Jonathan exchange a look. Like something worries them. “Okay,” Mom finally says. “You only turn sixteen once, and the birthday girl gets what she wants.”

  I remember the cake again—those sixteen candles.

  “Strange, I could have sworn I was seventeen,” I say out loud.

  Another worried look passes between all three of them.

  “Here, open mine first!” CeCe says, and I realize I am holding a small wrapped package. How did that get there?

  “Open, open, open,” the three of them chant when I hesitate.