Page 62 of The Catacomb King
My stomach plunged. Who cared whether I’d cried or not? I hadn’tdoneanything, hadn’t fixed anything. Mackr was still dead.
“You tried to save him. Everyone saw it. You went to rescue him yourself, even though you have no carapace, even though your body is so soft. Not even the Prince could stop you — and no one defies the Prince. But you did, for a chaosgötter who did not even like you.”
I couldn’t wrap my head around what she was saying. “Elke… it doesn’t matter. He died. I mean, he died because of me. I made him go in there. I practically killed him with my own hands.”
“It is okay,” Elke said. “It could be worse.”
My throat crumpled. “I wanted you to say it wasn’t my fault!”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I mean, it’s not your fault.”
I wanted to curl up in a ball on the floor.
“Persephone. Really. Death is not so bad to us chaosgötten. We live for such a long time. And at least he wasn’t resurrected.”
Resurrected? “He wasn’t what?”
Silence from Elke. “I forgot you are not supposed to know,” she said at last. “I always forget.”
“Forget what?” But Elke was already backing away from me, mouthing,Don’t tell His Lordship, practically running in her haste to avoid answering my question. “Elke!” I howled. But she was gone.
And then I heard another crack. Like the rockslide.
My heart froze. I whipped around to the pipe-shaft. I was so far away. There was nothing I could do.
The godlings were screaming again.
No. I couldn’t have this happen. I couldn’t have two deaths on my hands. I wanted to turn away but instead I started running. If only I weren’t so small, sosoft, as Elke had called me, if only I had spider-legs and could move faster, faster, faster —
Then I slowed.
The godlings weren’t screaming. They werecheering.
They were pouring out of the pipe like water. But they weren’t water, they were bodies, whooping and hugging each other.
Hades came tumbling out, riding the wave. He leapt down from someone’s shoulders and raced toward me and swept me up. He was laughing, beaming so hard he looked like a different person.
“Hades — I mean, Your Lordship, what —!”
“Just wait,” he said, happily, and plunged with me back into the shaft. He was gripping my thighs the way he had when he had stolen me from my mother, when he had borne me to his father’s throne room. But this was different.
My heart felt like a balloon.
He carried me up and up, past the rest of the crowd, past the spot where he had held back an avalanche while I had tried and failed to save Mackr. The rough unfinished texture of the green glasslike pipes, which had been laid into the shaft, paled as we rose. Even the color of the air was lightening, almost imperceptibly. And then —
We burst out together over the steep cliff-face.
I squealed. I almost fell. But Hades had me. I was clinging to him and he had me. He was still laughing. He hadn’t stopped.
We teetered at the edge of the opening of the pipe-shaft that the godlings had built. That I had designed. The cliff fell straight down beneath us into the Tourmaline Sea, and directly before us, not twenty feet away, the resplendent band of white runoff water crashed and roared off the Primordial Mountain. The mist from it sprayed into my mouth, my face, my eyelashes. I reached out a hand in wonder, as if I could catch it.
The pipe-shaft had been dug. The water was here. So close I could literally taste it.
High above, the sun blazed. The beautiful sun, hot and eternal. I had not seen it in two days.
Rainbows danced in the mist.
“You did it,” Hades was saying to me, over and over again. “You did it, goddess, you did it.”
