Raw meat dangled in front of a starving lion.
I have to get away.
I take a step back.
“Orfeo.” Her chair makes a horrible scraping sound as she jumps to her feet. “Wait, I have to?—”
I turn on my heels and cross the room, but when I reach the doors, I can’t bring myself to push them open.
“Orfeo, wait.” Her voice strains under the weight of unsaid words. “Please.”
What if I turn around?
I hesitate longer than I should, cursing my own inability to be the monster I am meant to be. Iwouldfall to my knees at her feet for the promise of another night in her company. But the pain of knowing I can never have her the way I wish will only hurt me more deeply, and that is to say nothing of the danger I would be putting her in if I brought her back into my world with Alfo still around.
I shove the doors open and let the cold air carry me to Hades House, a dead man on his way to the hanging gallows. But it’s not the demons and half-demons that hold the blade over my neck—it is the woman who says my name like a prayer.
Diantha
By the timeFriday rolls around, I have seven new gray hairs and a burgeoning addiction to Almond Joys, which I’ve taken to stress-eating late at night while poring over my mom’s tomes.
Despite my best efforts to cool it, I’ve had more sex dreams in the last week than I’ve ever had in my entire life. And, of course, they all star the one person Ishouldn’tbe fantasizing about.
Orfeo.
I must be ovulating; I don’t even bother checking. There’s no other explanation for howrealmy dreams have felt.
I’ve completely abandoned my thesis on rituals and artifacts and given myself over to trying to understand what Asteria’s followers practice, how realm travel works, and anything I can dig up on the code of Hades.
The little information I’ve found was trapped between pages steeled together by dust and neglect, written in an inscrutable and faux-ancient English. Passages of text that say shit like: A VVOMAN SCORN’D BRINGEY MORE DANGER THAN VVET TO VVOOD.
Hades could have summoned her for a handful of bone-chilling reasons—but then why didn’t she call upon Hecate and Asteria for help? My mother was devout in her offerings—candles and flowers and altars—if all the passages and notes she left in the margins of her tomes are to be believed.
I can’t locate any more pictures or interviews from after my mother’s disappearance. Whatever information she’d given officials is locked up in some filing cabinet, sealed in a case file labeled “Weird But Ultimately Whatever.”
I’ve tried to find my way back to the Dream Place, but my mind and body have been too exhausted, and the few hours I manage to sleep are deep and impenetrable.
Tuesday night, after a double shift at the café and a particularly dry Bowen lecture, I dig through the box of childhood odds and ends until I find my own birth certificate.
It’s all there, exactly as I remember it. Father line, empty. Birth date, as I’ve always celebrated it—December 24th. Christmas Eve.
Which has only begun to feel more random in the grand scheme of things. Was my mother already pregnant when she disappeared? Was I really born a month and some change before my mother was found that frigid night?
Did Hades hurt my mother? Did Asteria abandon her? My anger with the gods keeps me going, but the deeper I dig, the more questions I have.
One thing is for absolute certain: I was brought to Echidna, by fate or the stars or Asteria herself, to lift this curse.
And if I can kill Alfo in the process—well, that would be one less shithead walking this planet.
St. Haeverth Cathedral is deep in the rolling hills of Echidna’s campus, a solid fifteen-minute walk from the main educational and administrative buildings that abut town. Here, it feels likeI’ve fallen through a time-space fissure and landed somewhere far more remote than Eastern PA.
Our class meets in the courtyard between the cathedral and the rectory, a quiet rose garden meant for meditative prayer. Here, moonlight soaks a statue of Mary and a semi-circle of stone benches in perfect white light while the humid evening air makes every surface, even my skin, ice-cold to the touch. I tighten my scarf around my neck and try not to seem like I’m ten seconds from combusting.
Janet seems to have dressed for the evening in a long flowing black cloak and a particularly geometric pair of off-white glasses. Thien and Laila ignore me, which I appreciate deeply, and Ray flashes me a toothless smile and a little two-finger salute.
Orfeo is nowhere in sight.
Wednesday, he came into the library, appearing before me like a fallen fucking angel. Hollow cheeks and golden eyes sunken; his curls disheveled and frizzy. But of course all of this just added to his rugged, ancient beauty. He looked like a warrior returning from the Trojan front.
