‘No, I didn’t mean it like that,’ he hurries to clarify. ‘I’m just … amused at how chaotic this is getting.’
I shake my head. The world just became even more terrifying. ‘I’m never leaving here.’
‘Very well,’ Hades says and I’d roll my eyes if it weren’t beyond that level of ridiculous. Just yesterday he was trying to trick me into leaving and now he’s swearing oaths on the Styx. It’s a ploy. It must be. He must have left a loophole in the oath that I can’t spot. He must be getting me to lower my guard so that he can hurt me.
‘And Apollo, I’m assuming?’ I have to know what I’m up against.
‘He’s offered his prized lyre,’ Hades says.
‘The one Hermes gave him?’
Hades nods.
‘The bastard thinks he can regift something for my hand in marriage?’
Hades laughs properly and, after a moment, I smile too. This whole thing is sort of ridiculous. It’s just far more horrifying than it is amusing. Besides, I’m seconds away from bursting into tears. I’d jump into the Phlegethon, the river of fire, before letting Hades see that.
That must be what he’s doing, showing me all this so that he can evaluate my response. It’s what I would do.
I force a smile. If this is some strategy of his then I’m not going to let him think it’s working. ‘Apollo, Ares, Hermes and Hephaestus? Tell me, is anyone who isn’t my half-brother trying to marry me?’
‘You know the gods don’t see it that way,’ Hades says.
‘The nymphs do,’ I say, almost too quietly for him to hear. But it’s true. I was raised with so many that, no matter how many loopholes the gods concoct, I’m revolted.
‘Zeus was in different forms each time. Genetically, you are all different.’
‘It’s still disgusting.’
‘I agree,’ he says, then he hesitates with such a meaningful look I’m sure this is the real reason he brought me down here. ‘May I ask – and I mean no offence – why you do not just refuse to get married? Your parents could not force you.’
I stare at him, trying to work out if he’s joking or not. Has he not heard a single story of what happens on the surface? My father is the king of the gods. If he told me to jump off a cliff I’d run straight off it. The alternatives are too horrific to consider. He’d chain me to a rock for a sea monster. He’d turn me into an animal or shoot me with an arrow for my hubris,maybe make me fall in love with a beast. Gods have done all these things before.
Horrible things happen to girls who say no to my father.
Hades continues to watch me, eyes all innocent like he just wants to understand.
Either he’s a manipulator who can drown himself in the River Styx for all I care, or he really doesn’t know and I’m not going to be the one to tell him how the world works.
‘You’ve never even spoken to a single human down here, have you?’ I say. If he had, if he’d experienced even an ounce of the misery in that field, he’d understand.
‘No,’ he says, voice distant.
Well, I’m not explaining it then. ‘I need a nap,’ I say instead.
His face falls but after a moment he bites his lip and nods. ‘Very well.’
I wonder what’s really happened to him – and, more importantly, what he’s going to do next.
ICOLLAPSE INTO SLEEP THE MOMENTI reach my bed, dropping like a stone to the bottom of the ocean.
I dream of my mother.
It is a memory, actually. I am young, maybe just a year or two past my amphidromia. Mother is bandaging my arm, wrapping linen round it so tightly that I am scared to breathe in case the movement breaks her concentration and angers her.
‘You have got to be more careful. I’ve never known anything like this,’ she tuts. ‘You’re a goddess – how uncoordinated do you have to be to break a bone?’
‘It was an accident,’ I protest but my eyes burn, tears threatening to leak not only from pain but also indignation at being scolded when I am hurt and confusion at clearly having done something wrong without knowing what. I do so many things to make Mother happy. How have I failed without even noticing?
