Page 66 of The Catacomb King
“Why, because it’d suffocate me? What difference?”
“Because it would only serve to highlight your breasts even further, and if you looked any hotter, I don’t think I could handle it.”
“Oh, fuck off! Looking hot isn’t going to save me from getting eaten and drowned!”
His jaw tightened. “Persephone. Goddess.”
“Don’tgoddessme! You think I didn’t hear you talking to the Vizeking? Two days ago you said that if I built the pipe system, you’d let me go! Youliedto me!” I was so angry. At him, for lying to me — but even more at myself, for believing him when he’d said he wasn’t. How could I have ever trusted a godling?
“Once again,” Hades said, “I have never lied to you. Not once did I tell you I was going to let you go.”
“You son of a bitch. Yes, you did. You said,What if I told you…”
“That’s right. I asked you a question. I asked,What if I told you I would set you free in exchange for building the reservoir?It was a hypothetical. Not a promise.”
That was semantics. How dare me makemefeel likeIwas the one who’d done something wrong. “You made me believe it.”
“You believed it yourself,” Hades said. “You wanted to. I had nothing to do with it.”
“That’s bullshit. Why’d you bring me up here right now, then, if you’re just going to kill me no matter what?” I could only think of one reason, and that was to give me a chance to escape.
Surely not.
But I couldn’t help thinking about how hehadhelped me before. With the rabbit, the water, the clothes. He’d bargained to keep me out of the Lake for three extra days. I was being stupid to dream, so stupid, but maybe, just maybe, he’d been lying to the Vizeking just now, instead of me…
My heart lifted.
Then Hades said, “I thought that you would like to see your land one more time. That you would rather see this, before it happens, than the darkness.”
My heart dropped again. Crushed once more by the Prince, and by my own traitorous hope.
“Oh, wow,” I said sarcastically. “Thank you.”
“This,” Hades said unhappily, “is the one time I wouldnotsay you should thank me.” He released my arm, lay down on the permanently dewy grass, and grasped my ankle to pin me in place. He stared at the blue sky and sighed. “You don’t understand. I don’t know how to make you understand.”
“Sure I understand. You want your father to love you more than you want me to live.”
Silence.
And with that, all the fight went out of me.
I wanted to hate him. Ididhate him. But I had done the same thing. I had loved my mother so much that I had sacrificed myself. I could hardly blame Hades for loving his father so much that he would sacrifice me, too.
And with that realization came another: Even with Hades’s lie and my impending death, nothing had changed.
Three days ago, when I had agreed to stay here, I had not been trying to save my own life. My life had been gone the instant Hades laid his hands on me. Any moments when I had dared to believe otherwise were moments I had been lying to myself.
I had not stayed in the underworld to save my life. I had stayed to build the reservoir.
I had stayed because Hades had promised — he’dpromised— that if I did this thing for him, he would figure out a way to run water to Limer. To my mother.
And according to him, he had never lied to me.
“You didn’t mean what you said about letting me go,” I said. “But did you mean what you said about running pipes to the village?”
His voice was so quiet, it was almost silent. “Yes.”
I lay down next to him. His fingers uncurled from my ankle. They bunched in the silky violet fabric of my dress. He clung to me with one hand like I could save him from drowning. I stared at the sky. I was never going to see it again.
