Page 4 of Can you take it?

“Mendax killed me,” I stated. “I asked him to…well, sort

of.”

Walter’s eyes shot to me, as big as plates. “It was only a matter of time before he killed you, you knew that. Wait, you asked him to? Why would you do that? And how are you here? Seelie royals automatically go to the Elysian Fields with Ether.” I wasn’t sure what to say that wasn’t going to make me sound foolish. Even in the short amount of time since being here, I had begun to realize how stupid it was of me to volunteer to die just so I could save a person…I didn’t know. At what point was saving people stupid and not at all heroic? I shrugged, deciding it didn’t really matter now anyway. I was dead and I told him the truth. “My whole life has basically just been me trying to prove that I am helpful and needed. I suppose this time I went a little too far.” I let out a breath, feeling my chest tighten with the admission. It was the first time I’d ever said it aloud. “All I ever wanted was to be the hero they needed, my mom and Cal. I spent my whole life trying to help Cal because she was kind and sweet and good-hearted.” Walter stifled a snort at that. “And I thought she needed me.”

Walter stood to his full height, rubbing his leg. “Calypso never needed anybody.” His large arms crossed in front of his chest, reminding me of a fiercely protective older brother. He and Cal had been close.

A flare of jealousy flickered through me—that had always been my place with her. “See, you’re wrong about that. She does need someone and that someone was supposed to come here and rot for an eternity while he watched her. In all my years of being Cal’s best friend, she’s never been as happy as she is with Mendax. At the end of the day, she needed him more than she needed me.”

The wolf and rat shifter wiped at a small dent in the wall. “So, ever the hero, you fell on the sword so they could be together?”

I smirked even though I didn’t feel like it. “I guess you could say that, although it didn’t really matter. I never wanted to be the King of Seelie; that was my mother’s dream.” I pulled a random hangnail from the edge of my thumb free with my teeth. “I-I just wanted to be a good person and be useful and that’s what I got to do. I had no purpose anymore, so what did it matter? And this way I got to die a hero.” I wiped my hand over the textured wall, shielding my face from Walter’s view just in case I teared up. I typically wasn’t an emotional person, but ever since I’d woken up in Tartarus, I had been struggling not to fall apart. Walter had always been a good guy, but I still didn’t want him to see me falling apart. I needed him to think I was tough and could hack it down here. I had to make it—at least long enough to give Adrianna her powers back and find a way to the Elysian Fields.

“Yeah, well, you’re going to want to knock that hero shit off around Kaohs if you want to stay out of the tiers, and trust me when I say, you really want to stay out of the tiers.” His dark eyes widened with warning and that was all the nudging I needed to know that if the tiers spooked Walter, then they were definitely something I needed to avoid at all costs. Walter was an indomitable fae who was much tougher than me, though I wasn’t going to tell him that. Men just didn’t say things to another guy like that, especially when they didn’t know each other that well.

A sudden wave of impulsiveness struck me. I was dead. I could say whatever I wanted to say now, do whatever I wanted to do. What was going to happen to me? Nothing. For a split second, I felt invincible. “I think you’re a badass and you have good hair.” The compliments tumbled from my mouth. The giant shifter paused as if he was waiting for me to say more.

Walter’s surprised expression balanced between hysterical laughter and genuine gratitude. “Thanks, man.” His warm smile grew until it took up his whole face. “It’s hitting you now, isn’t it?”

I quirked my brow. “What’s hitting me? That I’m dead?” What an odd thought.

The smile on Walter’s face dialed down a little. “You’re feeling the itch of death.”

My eyes rounded and my lips puckered. “Beg pardon?”

His lupine eyes were practically spinning, they were filled with so much amusement. “The loss of inhibitions or feelings of what’s right and wrong. It usually only happens with the Seelie that end up here by accident. The ones that aren’t really supposed to be here. The usual crowd that arrives doesn’t have enough morals to be affected by it. We call it the itch of death.”

Lovely. “Sounds like a rash.”

“It’s sort of like a rash in that it only lasts a little bit. Half the time, the Seelie that come down with it scratch their itch of letting go and being bad, and by the time the itch of death leaves them and their perfect Seelie morals return, they are left with a big, bleeding splotch on their conscience that they can never seem to forget as they struggle with what they did.” He lifted himself out of the hole and took a few steps into the wall before he ran his finger over an errant white tile on the floor. It popped open and he shoved it to the side. He repeated this three more times until there was a hole in the floor large enough for a man to fit through. “I think you should embrace it though, have a little fun. You are too pure. And I’m not trying to kill you. It’s too late for that. I usually travel this route as a rat. We need to be the first ones to let Kaohs know about your arrival though, if you want to stay in Eromreven and out of the tiers. Eletha will be racing to tell Anna and Kaohs that a Seelie royal has arrived.”

I watched with a scowl plastered to my face as his body disappeared feet-first into the hole. “I am not too pure.” Any other time in my life, I’m embarrassed to say that would have been the highest compliment I could receive. But not here. I was in Tartarus. Everyone here was tough and gritty and…evil. Well, okay, Walter wasn’t evil, and to be honest I didn’t think that woman, the ward, seemed evil. The wench who shouted at me to flash her my cock was most definitely evil.

My mind was far more tired than my body and I simply followed after Walter without much awareness or thought as to where we were going. I didn’t bother trying to remember the dark and winding corridors. I had so many questions about Tartarus and what my new life was about to be like, but that curiosity was also cloaked with indifference that didn’t feel quite normal for me. Perhaps it was the Tartarus scabies or rash, whatever venereal-sounding ailment Walter had called it. The little voice in the back of my head, the one that would have been figuring the fastest way to help Cal’s sister and then get us both out of here, seemed muted and replaced with a tingle of mischievousness that was definitely not there before.

“You hungry?” Walter shouted over his shoulder as he continued to dodge stray walls. It was fascinating watching the man maneuver through the maze of hidden doors and holes.

“Are you a rat aesthetically or morally?” I blurted, surprising myself. “Can you still eat when you’re dead? What can I do now that I’m dead with no powers?” A small tickle of a menacing air touched the back of my neck. No powers. Did they all come here with no powers, or was I the only one? That felt like something I really needed to find out for my own protection.

The shifter snorted. “To answer the first question, I suppose I’m a rat in all aspects. The problem remains in you assuming rats are morally inept or lacking good character simply because they are rats.” His deep brown eyes held me in my place. “To answer your second question, you are dead, but sometimes that only opens the doors you were too afraid to open yourself.” My sigh must have been audible because he smiled. “Yes, you have the Tartarus itch and bad. You’re thinking about hitting me right now, aren’t you? Oh, this is gonna be fun.” Amusement danced in his eyes.

He was right. I had felt like hitting him just then. Fuck, that wasn’t really like me. “That’s it then? I’ve changed to a monster already? I’ve been here a half hour and already I’m one of you? No offense.”

He slapped my arm and leaned back against a smooth white wall, clearly enjoying this. “Nah, I keep telling you. The itch is strongest when you first get here. Do a couple things that you wouldn’t normally do and it will fade…unless it doesn’t, but then that was really you the whole time. You just hid it. Move the box behind you and pull the lever.”

I did as he requested, only pausing for a moment to wonder why there were so many random doors and secret hallways within this place. It was the Underworld after all. Should I really be surprised by a plethora of oddly hidden passageways? It was probably how they let the monsters out when they needed to feed. “Who normally takes these routes?”

“I do.” He flashed a grin my way before opening another flap of the wall and crawling through. The width of his shoulders stopped him, and with a distant chuckle from the other side of the wall, he angled them, one at time until they escaped through the doorway. “To be honest, this is the first time I’ve gone through as a man and not a wolf or rat.” Sensing my hesitation from the other room and my lack of following, he thoughtfully added. “You’ll fit. You’re smaller than me.”

My mouth fell open. Who was he kidding? “Smaller than you?” I was as tall or taller than his hole-in-the-wall crawling ass.

“You know what I mean, less muscle,” he said, brushing off my objections. “Two more turns and we’ll be there.”

I made a point (with a small flare of dramatics, possibly) of making sure he witnessed the resistance that my very wide and not at all small shoulders struggled against the edges of the opening. I heaved in a breath of the stale, dusty air and pushed my shoulders back as I cleared the distance between the two of us. We were in some sort of a chamber. The scent of burnt clove and cassia coiled around my nose. I couldn’t focus on a single object as my gaze bounced around the small but busily decorated room. Vibrant red, violet, and navy silks were draped all around the ceiling and walls in an exotic fashion. Soft, glowing lights were scattered behind various parts of the fabric, illuminating the room with the seductive tints of the draperies’ colors. A simple bed sat in the modest space, made up neatly with matching blankets and pillows. To the side of the room sat a tidy-looking set of shelves with so many candlesticks shoved into it, I doubt you could have fit one more. It reminded me of the candles I used to seal letters to Cal with—at least until we got the book and communicated through that while she was in the human realm.

A pang of sadness stabbed into my chest. I reached for my head and felt around—my skin held no remnants of the wound that killed me. The heaviness pulled harder at my spirit and I realized grief was settling in—everything had changed. My eyes clenched shut. Now I had nothing to help me remember our time together, not even a scar to remind me that our friendship was real, that I didn’t belong here. The thought that I’d never get to see her again felt incomprehensible. When she had been in the human realm, I had missed her, but at least then I was able to talk to her and feel her presence. It helped knowing that one day the writing and the distance would be gone and we would be able to lean on each other in person. You can’t grow up depending on a friendship in the way we did and simply move past it. I knew I would grieve our friendship forever.

She and Mendax were a perfect storm of thunder and lightning, and though you could have one without the other, when they were together, the whole atmosphere changed, each exposing a beauty and strength they couldn’t have had without the other.