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Let’s run away.
Let’s disappear.
I’ll go with you.
That’s what I want for her to say.
“I’ve been homesick,” is what she says instead.
Which…hurts. Which has no reason to hurt.
We get to the street. The houses. The gates. The SUV drives through. It’s taken us to Zeus’s house, not Hades’s, probably because the bastard has told everyone in his family that Daisy’s coming home and he has the most room. All three houses use the same glass with the same filters, so they can all be as dark as necessary, but we’re here, at what’s never going to be my house.
“Oh, Jesus,” Daisy breathes.
“Zeus threw you a party. What the fuck.”
I saideveryonein the event that Zeus actually told every member of what he considers to be his family, and he did. Zeus and Brigit are there with Calliope, Artemis’s younger sister. Poseidon and Ashley are there with Orion, who stands as close as he can to Calliope, and their twins, Castor and Pollux, who’d look identical if they weren’t always wearing opposite expressions. Castor looks impatient. Bored. Pollux looks affable. I’m not sure either one is true. Ares and Apollo have wedged themselves in next to Artemis.
They all stand slightly behind Hades and Persephone, who has her arm on his elbow as if she could ever hold him back from anything.
Daisy’s chin wobbles. She covers her eyes with her hand, dropping it only when the SUV comes to a complete stop.
Then she throws the door open without waiting for the driver and hops out of the car. It’s been a long night, and her knees aren’t quite steady, but she does her damndest to jog.
She’s already reached her parents by the time I have my feet on the ground and my bag over my shoulder. Hades gets down on one knee, like she’s still little. I guess, all things considered, she is. Persephone puts her arm around Daisy’s shoulders and hugs her tight while Hades’s hands go to Daisy’s face.
Which is when she brushes the hood of the sweatshirt back.
Everything stops.
Zeus freezes, halfway between the welcoming party and me, Brigit at his side. Daisy and her parents are statues.
I don’t know why they’ve stopped, or whether I’m hallucinating it, until Hades moves his hand to touch the side of her neck.
It’s my sweatshirt, so it’s too big. Taking the hood off has exposed the curve of her shoulder.
And the teeth marks there.
And the bruise.
I can see from here that Daisy’s forgotten about it. She looks down at her dad, tired, confused, and then she’s looking up and up and up, because he’s risen to his full height.
His eyes meet mine.
They’re her eyes, only they’re cold and sharp and violent. He wears all black, like his eyes, and it cuts him out from the house behind him, from all the scenery. He’d be an obvious threat even if his clothes weren’t a contrast. He’s always been an obvious threat. The first day I met Daisy, he held me by the collar with zero effort until the cops took me away. Nobody else has ever been able to do that.
Well.
This is it, I guess. This is when we find out if I can die.
My chest hurts so much already that I don’t care.
“Hades,” Poseidon calls.
That seems to remind Hades that he hasn’t yet started killing me. He runs the pad of his thumb over Daisy’s cheekbone without looking at her and moves.
He doesn’t run. He doesn’t bluster. The absolute calm reminds me of a sniper picking off shots made into a person. He doesn’t have to run, because he knows he’ll catch me, and he knows he’ll kill me. It reminds me of the gates in Daisy’s dream. Inexorable. Unavoidable.
