Page 52 of The Catacomb King
“What’swrongwith it? What’srightwith it? It’s a dead animal.”
“So what? You humans love eating dead animals. Look, I’m sorry it’s so scrawny, but it’s not exactly easy pickings up there. Once again, you could say thank you.”
But my brain had snagged on the wordeating. “This is… for me to eat?”
“Unless you’d rather have the pomegranate,” he snapped. Pomegranate. That had to be the name of the fat red fruit.
But my chest, despite myself, was warming. My cheeks, too. “No, I don’t want your fucking pomegranate. Hades…”
“Your Lordship,” he corrected me.
Ugh. “Your Lordship. Are you saying you sent someone aboveground to hunt me a rabbit?”
“Absolutely not. Monarch forbid anyone find out about this.Iwent aboveground to hunt you a rabbit.”
“Wh… why?”
For a moment he didn’t say anything.
Then he flopped back to the carpet. “You can’t work if you’re hungry. I need you to work. So.”
There had to be a catch. As he’d said, prey was impossibly rare, and I seriously doubted his royal ass knew how to lay a snare. It had to have taken him hours to hunt this rabbit. Then I realized: He’d said it was from aboveground, but not from across the border. “I get it. You’re tricking me. The rabbit isn’t from the Lümerlund side, is it? It’s from the underworld side. It’s underworld food. You’re trapping me here.”
“Itisfrom the Lümerlund! Monarch’s balls, woman. I keep telling you, I’m not lying to you.”
I didn’t believe him. I scrambled out of bed and went over and prodded him with my toe. “How do I know I can trust you? Look at me. Hades. Hades. Hades.”
He sat up furiously. “I’m never doing anything nice for you again.”
But I had already gasped. There was a four-inch gash across his forehead, covered in crusted blood.
He realized I’d seen it. He winced and tried to cover it with his hand. Too late. The sight the angry wound made something bubble in me. It was only selfishness, I told myself. Fear for my own life. Hades and his desperation for his reservoir were the only things standing between me and the Lake. If anything happened to him…
In a black voice, I said, “What happened?”
“Nothing happened,” he said. “It’s fine.”
“What stupid thing did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything! It was your friend.”
My friend. My heart fluttered. “Calix?”
Hades scowled. He tried to hide his face in the carpet again. I pressed my bare foot against his cheek. He stilled.
“Tell me,” I ordered him.
For a heartbeat he was still. His flesh was hot against the bare muscle of my foot.
I pressed him a millimeter harder into the carpet.
“It was nothing,” he said, sounding a little choked. “I’m serious. I was trying to take the herbs in the basket to your house. You said you wanted your mom to have them.”
My heart flip-flopped.
“But as soon as I got to your village, someone saw me and ran off and fetched your little blond friend.”
“Who? Who saw you?”
