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“One sec, I need an ally,” Katy says, and disappears quickly, vanishing my from my sight. But I can feel her. With that key around her neck, there’s a soft call in the back of my mind, reaching for me.
The only reason I haven’t gone mad, the only thing that has kept me sane, is knowing that she is alive, and healthy, and here, with me.
It’s been a lonely ten years. So many times I felt some kind of god-touch on a human, or the hand of fate, fooling me into thinking someone was carrying the key, or perhaps was the key themselves.
All of those had turned out to be failures. And now, the real key shows up around the neck of a perfectly lovely, sweet woman, and I can’t touch it.
Or her.
It’s enough to drive one mad.
Katy returns and is not alone. Shay is trailing behind her, looking mildly amused.
“Katy here has an idea,” she says, her eyes dancing. Shay’s lips are curved in a smile, and my old friend is sailing perilously close to the wind. But then, there was never any commanding Shay to feel a certain way, or behave like this or that. She’s a law in her own right, and if she wants to beard me my den, she’ll do it.
That sword at her side isn’t for show. I cast the battered, well-worn scabbard a disdainful look.
“So I heard.”
“So,” Katy continues, either ignoring or not noticing the tension between Shay and me. “I have an idea.” She comes to sit on one of the two leather wing-back chairs that sit in front of my desk, curling up on it like a kitten.
I don’t miss how comfortable she is in her surroundings, like she’s adopted this place as her own. Shay doesn’t miss it either, given how she wrinkles her nose in mirth at Katy’s barely contained excitement for whatever it is the mortal has come up with.
“About?” I can’t help it. I have to toy with her. Katy makes a disgusted noise in the back of her throat.
“What if someone went through it to open the door?” Katy looks tentatively, hopeful. “To let you back inside.” The immediate reaction in my stomach catches me by surprise, and I have to work to not stare at her.
My gut twists, my heart feels like the point of a knife is driving into it slowly.
No.
I know what she is thinking, it’s self-sacrificing, noble, ridiculous. Shay shoots me a worried look, and then crinkles her eyes, smiling at Katy, for all the world probably intending to mother on her.
For a woman dedicated to the barren months of the year, Shay can be oddly maternal when she takes a liking to a mortal. But then, the goddess of snow and wind has always carved her own path. Literally, figuratively, both of those fucking things.
“What are you thinking, Katy?” Shay asks, ignoring the way I glare at her. No. Katy can’t possibly mean... she could not—
“I could try. I mean, I have this—” Her fingers go to her neck, brushing the key, that taunting sheaf of wheat that has been haunting my dreams as of late…
To say nothing of the woman who wears it.
She’s slipped through my mind like smoke, and every time I close my eyes…
“I can’t allow that,” I say, trying to keep my tone neutral and not as harsh as I’d like to be. I want her to know, with no uncertainty, that to go to the Underworld is a one-way trip. And while every human ends up there, under my sheltering gaze, it is not her time.
I feel that painfully, squeezing my chest, that it is not her time. For so many reasons…
Unspeakable ones.
“Why not?”
“It is too dangerous. For one, no one has ever left the Underworld,” I begin, and Shay clears her throat. “I am an exception to the rule,” I snap at her, and her mouth twitches. She heads the warning in my voice, though, and does not speak up to argue, or encourage, this foolish idea.
“Why not?” Katy is stubborn and she is staring at me. Her hazel eyes are lit with determination.
“Because,” I lean forward in my seat, trying to impress upon her the importance of my words, “no one has ever left. As in never, not a single instance. Whoever you are, I’m sure, since you’re coming up with this mad plan, you’ve decided it’s your duty to do it, would not be coming back. You could open the gate, perhaps, if the Betrayer isn’t there to cut you down--“
And I don’t want to think of what would happen to a soul if it was shredded, to cease to be. No appeal to even the Old Gods, the sleeping ones, would restore it.
