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“I don’t know. I mean, the Underworld isn’t like Styx. There is no beginning or end, there just is. A fiery blaze, an inferno. It’s hell. And I only remember ever being there. But then I was sent to Styx, given a new body-- this body. And I met you, Tennyson. And the flames died and, in their place, something grew. Love.”
Tennyson looks at me with hatred, disgust.
“You’re twisted. Sick. You took advantage of me, Hawthorne.” She pushes me hard in the gut. Screaming at me. “You...” She pounds on my chest. “You played with my heart. And now, when you’re all about to go to fade, you tell me this? Is there supposed to be comfort in that?”
“No,” I agree, holding her by her wrists. “I know there isn’t comfort. But look at me, Ten. Look me in the eyes. I could be a thousand or I could be thirty. It doesn’t matter. I don’t remember feeling emotions, feelings, loyalty, until you. I knew nothing but destruction until you. You gave me hope. You gave me life. I was sent to kill you. Instead, I fell in love.”
“Love?” Tennyson cackles, her laugh bitter and dry. “This is not love. How could we understand love when we’ve spent our lives in this hazy in-between? We tell ourselves Styx is better than death, but it’s not. I remember being a child and seeing blue skies and green trees. Here it is only dark, every fucking day. Here it is moldy and dusty and frayed. We get scraps from the surface, morsels traded for what? Spirits and souls? This is not love, Hawthorne, or whoever you are. This is hell.”
I grip her wrists and hold tight to her until she stops shaking. “You’re wrong. Being with you, Tennyson, is fucking heaven. You’re my saving grace.”
Tears pour from her eyes and I break for her, this woman I know so damn well. This woman I lied to because I couldn’t bear to say the truth.
“You are more whole than you know,” I tell her. “And I know you hate me now, but I would do this all over again if it meant I had these years with you instead of the years below.”
She falls against my chest, her body trembling to its very core. “I don’t hate you,” she sobs. “I just hate that I’m losing all of you.”
“What?” South shouts. “You forgive him for lying to us? What the hell, Ten?”
She lifts her head from my chest. “Is that what you’d prefer? For our last moments together to be filled with hatred? Dammit, South, what does it matter? He loves me. And I love him, and you’re are all going to die anyway!” she screams.
“Why were we all protected for so long?” Lennox asks. “I understand Hawthorne and Ten, but why you and me, South?”
Eric clears his throat. “It’s love. It’s what has saved you.”
“Love?” I ask.
He nods. “It’s what saved my family.”
“Except you died.”
“That was Poseidon’s fault. Not love’s.”
“Fuck the bastard,” South hisses.
“Right?” Eric shakes his head. “That’s why I’m trying to get the hell home. So, are you guys gonna help or what?”
“My dad is really Hades?” Tennyson asks, looking at me with trepidation as if she doubts me. God, it kills me to have her look a time with such mistrust.
“He is, Ten. I don’t know why he wants you here, or why the binding only lasted as long as it did. I just know he found out you were here and wanted someone from his side to come after you.”
“Why did you do it?” she asks me.
“If I did as I was told before you turned twenty-one, I’d be granted freedom.”
“Freedom?” Ten asks. “What do you mean?”
“I’d be given this body to keep Earth-side.”
“You’re could have gone to the surface?” she asks, her eyes welling with tears.
I clear my throat. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”
12
Tennyson
Just then, as if a gust of wind has swept through the cottage, all three of them lose more color. I immediately reach for them, trying to pull my best friends close to me, but I’m not strong enough to do so.
“Oh God,” I whisper. “I’m not able to help... to keep you together.”
“There is one thing I don’t understand,” Lennox says. “Why did Hades lose his daughter to Styx in the first place?”
“Another unanswerable question,” South says, and from his voice, it’s clear that his patience is wearing thin. “We’re hardly even here at all. If we’re gonna try and escape, we have to hurry. Hawthorne, do you know the way?”
He shakes his head. “I wish.”
But Eric smiles, a smile that makes me understand why a woman is in love with him Earth-side. His face lights up as if relieved that we are finally interested in moving forward instead of fighting.
“We need to get to the boat and travel to Acheron,” he says. “Gaia said that is the way home.”
