Page 105 of The Catacomb King
I searched the water frantically. Hades was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Calix.
There was nothing for it.
I ran forward and dove into the Lake.
Time to Feed
The freezing water penetrated my flesh like knives. The water was no longer mirror-still; the King’s charge through it had churned it into stormy waves. The candles flickered wildly. The cocoons above swung frantically, as though the women inside were thrashing.
A wave crashed over my head. I spluttered. My heart slammed into overdrive. I couldn’t get air into my lungs. My feet scrabbled for purchase on the slick stone floor and lost it; there was some kind of undertow. I didn’t remember that from before, but now the undertow sucked me under. The water closed over my head.
I screamed. Water flooded my mouth and I barely had the presence of mind to snap my mouth shut before I breathed it in. I tried to clap my hands over my mouth to stop myself from screaming again, but my body would not obey me. I was thrashing, shaking.
The undertow hurled me into something narrow and steel-hard. My teeth rang. I scrabbled to grab whatever I’d slammed into. A stalagmite? No, the object was too skinny and slick.But I scuttled up it anyway, climbing hand over fist against the current.
When my head broke the surface, I wrapped my limbs around the strange rod and clung to it like a piece of wet laundry and shook.
I had run into one of the candlesticks in the center of the Lake. The reverse waterfall that surged into the sky was ten feet away.
At the waterfall’s base, my mother bobbed and wove.
And to my overwhelming relief, so did Calix.
He was clinging to her bloated body like it was a life-raft, which for him I supposed it was. She would be glad to be helping him, at least. My mother had always liked Calix.
“Calix!” I cried.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Calix yelled back. “You can’t swim!”
“The undertow saved me!”
“Undertows don’t save people, Persephone! They drown them!”
Shivering on the candlestick, I knew he was right. The way those waters had closed over my head… but the undertow had hauled me straight to safety. Relative safety, at least.
Which meant that now I could worry about Hades. “Where’s the Prince?” I screamed at Calix.
“Forget him! What aboutthatfucking thing!”
The King was lumbering toward us. He was too huge to be sucked down by the undertow. The only saving grace was that he was so massive the water slowed him down. Calix and I spluttered and bobbed in his path. I wanted to reach out a hand to Calix, but he was too far away, and I was too scared. And I couldn’t find Hades.
Then the water — that strange undertow again? — surfaced something nearby. Something black, something sharp.
My heart sparked. Hades’s hair? His clothes?
No.
The King’s crown.
With Hades’s hand attached to it.
I couldn’t help it. Even through my fear, I had to get to him. I let go of the candlestick just long enough to push forward and seize him. The water immediately slammed me spine-first back into the candlestick, but I had a grip on Hades.
And the crown.
“Cut that shit out!” Calix yelled at to me. I barely heard him. The crown’s pointed edges had cut my hand like a razorblade. I hissed and shook the blood off in the water. I looked anxiously up at the looming shadow of the King.
He was so close. His shadow fell over my face. Calix’s, too. It was like we were standing at the edge of the underworld again in the shadow of the Primordial Mountain, like nothing had changed. The only difference was the raging fear in my heart.
