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Stupid, weak Katydid from Lowtown, of no good family and no good name, falling for a god?
“I’ve offered this to a lot of people, and none of them have ever refused,” he says, and the smile is fading from his face, and thelight in his eyes, his pupils shrinking, like a shadow has crossed over his expression. “I don’t expect you to be any different. Once our business together concludes, I want to make sure that you’re left better than when I found you.”
How? How could that be? It feels like he’s pulling my ribs apart, opening them up to inspect my heart. Because how could I be better if the end game is him going down to rule over his realm and I’m left here behind?
Suddenly I’m not hungry. Grief eats at me instead, dining on my stupid feelings, my vain hope. Numbness comes over me, like a dark wave, and if he’s talking, I don’t hear it, because he’s just laying out his plan for how we’ll go our separate ways.
The last thing I want in the world.
And I’ve just realized it.
How did I let this happen?
“So whatever it is, however difficult you think it might be to accomplish, I’m offering it to you. I will not rest, not take my throne again, until I have given it to you,” he finishes. My dream. Whatever it is, he’s going to give it to me.
I can’t ask him for what I really want. That’d be ridiculous. He’d laugh at me, give me that look that tells me he’s so much better than me, a god to my mortal humanness.
I go still, a breeze from the cliff pulling at tendrils of my hair.
Fine. If he wants to grant me a wish, like some sort of genie, then I’ll ask for the one thing I can’t have and want other than him.
“I want…” What is it I want? What’s in my heart-of-hearts? I close my eyes, that deep well of grief that’s always lain inside ofme, but buried, stopped over with heavy stone and gravel. But it’s there, even now. I just have to uncover it.
“Katy…” Hadrion takes my hand, smoothing his thumb over my palm.
“I want to find my mother,” the words gush out of me, and I nearly gasp after I say them, because I haven’t thought that was possible.
But with Hadrion, Hades, everything is. The most fantastical opportunities in all the world are at my feet if I want them.
But all I want is to see her, even once.
His brows pull together, a look of confusion on his face, and he pauses, his hand still on mine.
“You want to… your mother?” He asks, and then, as if he doesn’t understand, his mouth opens and a single word reminds me of the gulf that separates us.
Woman and man.
Mortal and god.
“Why?” He asks, almost repulsed, and it feels like my heart has frozen over.
“She’s my mother,” I answer, the words flat and hard. “I don’t need a reason other than that, do I? She left when I was young, and I miss her. I want to see her again.”
“A mother,” he replies, and there’s an edge to his tone, “does not leave her child. She does not abandon them.” He glances away, the sharp lines of his profile tense. “But... if that’s what you want,” he says with a shake of his head. “I will make it happen.”
Good luck, I think, looking at him, waiting for him to glance back at me, and see what I really want on my face. It’s there, if he wants to look for it.
Because it’s him.
From the first moment, I realize, it’s always been just him I want.
21
Katy
It’s late, and the club is full and bustling, the lights and noise almost deafening, but there’s a strange, eerie silence inside of me.
I’m tired.
