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ONE
PEN
I have to admit, I never thought I’d be so happy to see another volcanic hellscape in my life.
But after slogging through the frozen wasteland that was the Goddess Morevna’s realm, the fourth layer of the Underworld, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be warm again. Not that the fire and the smoke and the choking ash can’t kill you just as easily as the snow and ice, it’s just that there’s something so hopeless about the cold. The way it saps your strength, how it numbs you right down to the core, until you can’t even remember why you wanted to keep going in the first place.
After that trek, I’d take the sweat and soot any day. Though, given another hour, I’d probably change my mind.
Now I stand at the edge of the fourth Gate, lingering in the golden, sparking tunnel that connects the layers of the Underworld, and try to think.
It’s hard not to panic. I mean, I was working under a pretty serious time crunch as it was. I only have thirty days to get to the fifth level of the Underworld in order to recover my sister’s soul and get back out. Unfortunately, time doesn’t move in the Underworld the way it does everywhere else, and a few days to me is almost a month in the world above. That means, I only have a few scant days left to find Janie and then get us both out again. If I have to go through Ares, the God of War, to do it, then so be it.
Of course, I’m not sure exactlyhowI’m going to do it, but that isn’t going to stop me. I’ve come too far already.
Janie never should have been caught up in all of this. Ares had only killed her because he’d thought she was me, and then he’d dragged her soul down to the Underworld as part of his grudge against my mother, Aphrodite. Joke was on him though, because Janie and Mother don’t share blood, and Aphrodite wouldn’t be inclined to get up off her velvet seat cushion for anyone, but especially not her daughter’s entirely mortal half-sister.
So, that just leaves me.
Technically, Janie isn’t my sister. She’s the many times descendant of my mortal father, who’d gotten married after his relationship with Aphrodite fizzled out. And Mother never liked it when other women touched her toys, even after she’d thrown them away, so there was a bit of bitterness there too that meant she’d never go out of her way to help Janie.
Mother had never liked how involved I was with my human relatives, anyway. She wanted me home, on Olympus, like another flower in her garden. Her only daughter. And when I’d run back to the mortal world as often as I could, she’d cursed me, to try to show me the error of my ways. With Mother’s curse, no one would ever see me as anything more than a pretty face, and a beautiful body. I’d never make a deeper connection with anyone human.
Luckily enough, my mortal family were the only people who seemed to be immune to the curse, and we became even closer as a result. I’d be smugger about it, but being treated like a blow-up doll for centuries before people even knew what a blow-up doll was, still grates on me.
I hate thinking of Janie as anything as distant as a ‘descendant’ though. I’d been in her life since she was born. I’d watched her grow up, been there for every milestone, and witnessed her transformation into a brilliant, kind, determined young woman, one who I was sure was going to change the world.
Until her life had been snuffed out because of a gods’ feud she wasn’t even involved in.
That always seems to be the way with the gods. Nothing matters more than their pride, and they never notice or care if anyone else gets hurt in the midst of their squabbles.
Though, if I’m being completely honest, from what Morevna told me after I helped free her realms from the upstart fallen that had taken it over, Ares has a pretty good reason to be pissed with Mother. Like, a really good reason. She kinda sorta tricked him and trapped him in the Underworld, away from his worshippers and Olympus, all because he wouldn’t sleep with her.
Yeah.
And guess who just happens to be the spitting image of Aphrodite? This sorry son of a bitch, right here.
I’m so close, though. I’d already fought through four levels of the Underworld, I’d defeated the fallen who had taken over, restoring the gods to their proper places. I’d collected their relics as I went, allowing me to pass through the gates. Now I just need to grab Janie and get back before my time runs out. I’ve come this far. I can’t screw it up now.
But I also can’t stop myself from glancing back over my shoulder. Morevna’s realm is long gone from view. The gate is more of a wonky tunnel at the moment, all golden light pulsing in glittering waves. I wonder if it’s different for the dead. Technically, I’m trespassing. The living aren’t supposed to muck around down below, after all. Part of me really, really wants to go back. To race back to that glorious Snow Queen throne room, for one more look.
But I can’t. I’m running out of time. It’s just… for the first time since I set foot in the Underworld, I’m alone.
I give myself a shake. I’m not eleven. I don’t need someone to hold my hand. But Adonis has been by my side ever since I managed to free him from Azhrea, the fallen who’d been squatting in the first level. Tall, blond, and heart-breakingly gorgeous, Azhrea had kept him like a pet, altering his memories and manipulating him with magic in a desperate attempt to make him love her.
Ick.
He’s free from all that, now. And since we passed through the library of the Third Garden, he even managed to gain back some of the memories of the man he was before Azhrea managed to get her skeezy claws on him.
Adonis the Scythian. Adonis the King. Adonis, the descendent of dragons.
He’d been my companion through the Underworld, my protector, and maybe more. But he was wounded by the Fallen Chaena, and Morevna warned us that without time to unpick the frozen curse he was hit with, the fifth level might just kill him.
I wasn’t willing to risk it. Even if it sort of felt like I was leaving my right arm behind. Or maybe my heart.
Of course, the other thing keeping me loitering in the crazy kaleidoscope tunnel is the fact that the second I set foot in through the Fifth Gate, Ares, as the lord of the realm, is going to feel it.
He knows I’m coming. I mean, that was the whole plan behind keeping hold of Janie’s soul. He realized his screw up might still work in his favor. He hadn’t managed to nab me, but I was willing to walk into Hell under my own power to get my sister back, so it ended up kind of working out for him. I’d walk right into his hands, and when he killed me, Aphrodite would have no choice but to declare war as she is my family, and then she and the gods would have to come and face Ares in the underworld.
