‘You wound me,’ he says, hand to his heart like he’s been shot.
‘Good.’ I grin.
Hades nods at my smile. ‘That’s unnerving.’
I grin even wider because there it is again, me unnerving him. ‘Did they kick you all the way down here because you’re a sarcastic phallus?’
‘Interesting. Is this what your mother meant when she told your suitors you have a beautiful command of language?’ he asks.
I snort. ‘Oh, I’m sure that’s code for me knowing a few poems and, more importantly, knowing when to keep my mouth shut.’
‘Keeping your mouth shut? Really?’ He feigns surprise.
I snatch one of the grapes from the table and throw it at him. ‘Arse,’ I say decidedly.
‘Appalling aim.’ He laughs as it bounces off the table. ‘Let’s hope your mother isn’t off bragging about your skill in grape throwing. You’ll have the suitors even more devastated when they discover you’ve taken yourself off the market.’
‘I think only Dionysus will be upset that I can’t bolster his god of wine status,’ I say with a calm smile that betrays none of my panic. Throwing grapes, insulting Hades, chatting with Styx – I’ve become too comfortable in the Underworld.
I’ve had longer than I thought – too long. I’m relaxing when I should be all the more terrified. The only thing that could delay them like this is a deluge of offers for my hand – potentially the sort of offer that might sway my father beyond my mother’s reach. And even if every god of Olympus wants to marry me, they can’t be bartering much longer. My parents will find out I’m missing any moment now.
And it’s going to ruin everything.
TEMPEST APPEARS IN MY ROOMtwo days later while I’m mid-plait.
‘Hades wants to see you,’ she says.
‘I’ll just be a moment,’ I say, finishing the final twists of my hair.
‘No, now – he said it was an emergency.’
‘Tempest?’ Hades’ voice rings down the hallway. He does sound quite panicked. ‘For the sake of the Styx, I said I needed to talk to her, not go get her!’
I’m not sure whetherheris better thanKorebut to be fair I haven’t given him any alternatives.
Maybe I’ll name myself after a flower. The idea has a lovely cyclical feeling to it, given I named the flowers in the first place. I’m still considering my options.
‘What’s the difference?’ Tempest mutters.
‘The difference is that I am capable of using my own legs and don’t need to summon people all the time,’ he says from outside the room.
‘You have the hearing of a bat,’ I call.
‘Are you decent?’ he asks. ‘May I come in?’
I smile at the innocence of such a question, especially considering all that I was scared of when I first came here. But then I catch myself in the mirror and see I look ridiculous, like a nymph swooning at the very thought of a man.
Which I’m obviously not doing.
There’s just something about the respectfulness of the question. Even within his castle I am entitled to my own space. Mother would just march straight in.
‘You may,’ I confirm, turning in my chair to face him and giving up on the plait. It’s a lot harder than Cyane made it look and, given I had ink smeared across my face for most of yesterday, I doubt Hades will care that my hair isn’t styled.
He looks so out of place in my room, his black robes stark against all the pale fabrics and gleaming white surfaces. This palace is so cold, everything simple and clinical, the gold floor of the megaron the closest thing to colour I’ve seen. For the first time, I’m hit by a pang of longing for the messy warmth of my cottage with Mother.
Then I catch sight of Hades’ face and the tight lines of anger I have seen only once before – when he watched Hermes vie for my hand.
‘They know,’ Hades says, but I already knew that’s what he would say and my heart dived even before he spoke. ‘Your mother knows you’re missing.’
