Page 114 of The Catacomb King
There was no evidence of the border.
“How far does the underworld go, now?” Calix breathed. “To Limer? Or —”
“Can’t bring yourself to sayTo Corcagia, can you?” I snapped. “Can’t bring yourself to admit how badly you’ve fucked up?”
Calix flinched.
The ground beneath us rumbled. We all froze. We had to get away from here.
But neither Hades nor I could bear to leave his people in distress like this. I turned to the chaosgötten who’d come to beg us for help. “Listen,” I said. “You’ve got to get everyone away from the Mountain. Do you understand? It’s not safe here anymore.” I hesitated. “Bring them… bring them to my village. To Limer. It’s a human village. I’ll tell my people to take care of you.”
“Persephone,” Calix hissed.
“Shut up, Calix!” I could not forget how the chaosgötten had tried to save me from being sacrificed after they’d constructed my reservoir pipe. The godlings might be freaks, but they weremyfreaks.
I watched as the chaosgötten scrambled back to the panicked, crying masses. They began to move in disorganized circles and not tell anyone anything, as per usual. I sighed.
“Well,” Hades said grimly, “you did your best.”
The pain in his voice was unbearable.
I was painfully aware of Calix’s eyes on me. But I cupped Hades’s face in my hands. I pulled him so close that no one could hear me but him. I blocked out my broken hips, the war zone, the thundering rain on my skin and hair. “Don’t worry,” I whispered. “We’ll come back for them. Look: You saved them once, from the drought. You built your reservoir; you brought back the rain. And you’ll save them from this, too.”
“If you say so,” Hades said. Still, I felt something in his neck relax.
“It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe it,” I said. “It’s still true. I’ll make sure of it.”
After a moment, he nodded.
He stood up. He gathered me in his arms.
And the Prince of Darkness carried me away from the underworld, just as he had once carried me into it.
Nemesis
We walked for an hour with Calix and Elke before we finally reached the border to the Lümerlund. All that way, the ground beneath us kept shifting. Tunnels kept bursting forth, dumping crying chaosgötten into the rain.
When we crossed the border, leaving emerald grass behind and placing our feet on rocky earth, even Hades and Elke breathed a sigh of relief.
But the rain overhead didn’t stop.
I shivered. In Limer, everyone was probably laughing, dancing in the square, opening their mouths to the sky. My mother’s empty grave was filling up with mud.
Calix said at last, “The underworld is going to keep spreading, isn’t it?”
“I think so,” I admitted. I explained what I had figured out in the Lake chamber: the Vizeking’s yearlong ritual, the King’s increasing strangeness as his body was filled with the Monarch, the Monarch’s own expanding influence. And now that the Monarch was truly on earth, His influence was stronger and vaster than ever.
Then something awful occurred to me. I said, “If the edge of the underworld reaches Limer or Corcagia… and the people there eat the food that’s been touched by Him… they won’t be able to escape His influence. They’ll be pulled to the underworld even if the underworld shrinks again.”
And then I thought of something else.
Hades and I looked at each other in horror.
Ihad eaten the food.
“But I feel fine,” I said uncertainly. “I mean… look. I’m on this side of the border.”
“Doyou feel fine?” Hades demanded.
