Page 63 of The Catacomb King
We still had to lay the half-pipe. Secure it to the cliff-face.
But he was right.
I had done it.
It took me a moment to recognize the feeling expanding in my chest as triumph.
I had never felt this way in my life.
“You did it,” Hades was still saying, still laughing, “you did it,” and he swung me around and clutched my waist and kissed me on the mouth.
My breath caught in my chest like a fluttering bird.
My arms had fallen around his neck. His tongue was in my mouth. His stomach was flat and warm against mine, as it had been under the avalanche.
I whispered into his mouth, “What are you doing, Your Lordship?”
I felt his breath stutter. He pulled back a bare inch, his breath still ghosting over my lips. He stared at me with blue eyes that matched the open sky.
I swallowed. I didn’t know what was going on. The words that came out of my mouth were, “It’s stupid your eyes are that color.”
“Sorry,” he rasped.
“Sorry for your blue eyes, or sorry for kissing me?”
“Do you want me to be sorry for kissing you?”
What a stupid question. But: “Yes,” I lied. “You kidnapped me. You’re a monster.”
Hades’s mouth broadened into a smile. He was so happy, he couldn’t even be mad. I couldn’t believe that the open, joyful expression on this powerful, handsome godling’s face was because of me. The thrill almost matched my thrill of triumph.
In a flash I remembered the moment when I’d told him my process for mapping the underworld. He’d been carrying me then, too, I remembered the light, open, smooth look of curiosity on his face, and my own traitorous desire to do whatever I could to make it so that expression could stay. To keep him happy and thoughtful and open and light, instead of angry and hurt and furrowed and worried. And look. I had given him that. I had really done it.
“In that case,” Hades said, “I’m a monster who got what he wanted. Look.” He gestured to the waterfall.
I did look. Because I had gotten what I wanted, too.
We had less than half a day left to lay the pipe. We could do it. And then Hades would free me from the underworld, and together, we would build a new pipeline to a new reservoir in Limer. My mother would live. And I would live, too. Safe from the jaws of the Monarch.
Neither of us could get enough of the sight of the waterfall. But eventually we turned and slid back to the reservoir. Hades kept bubbling with laughter. It was contagious; I was laughing, too.
I even thought he might kiss me again.
Or at least stop moving long enough for me to kisshim.
But the laid pipes were smooth as grease. We slid down them as fast as water ourselves.
And when we got to the bottom of the shaft, the Vizeking was waiting for us.
Liar
All the godlings whose faces I had come to know over the past two days were clustered against the back wall of the reservoir. They were as far away from the Vizeking as they could get. Elke hovered at the front of the pack, her little spider-legs over her mouth.
The Vizeking was flanked by lackeys in red robes that matched his. The lackeys made my skin crawl.
Something was wrong with them. Something was wrong with everyone down here, of course, but the Vizeking’s lackeys were somehow more chaotic-looking than even godlings like Mackr or Elke. Mackr and Elke were half-human, half-spider, in a horrifying but also somehow obvious way. Their legs went where legs went; their heads went where heads went. But these godlings with the Vizeking, they had their spider-bits in the wrong places.
And so did the Vizeking, I realized. I hadn’t noticed it when I’d met him, because I hadn’t met anyone but Hades and Elke yet. But the Vizeking’s beard and hair were made up of innumerable spider-legs. His eight ruby eyes blinked with human eyelids on a human face.
