Page 69 of The Catacomb King
“You’re right, I don’t,” I snapped. “Do you know what we humans would give to be immortal? I could have my father back. Everyone could haveeveryoneback.”
“No! The resurrection — the immortality — it’s part of a horrible trade with the Monarch. Anything that powerful requires a sacrifice. In exchange for eternal life, the Monarch eats your soul. And the thing that’s left in your body, powering it… it isn’t you. It looks like you, maybe evenfeelslike you, but it’s something far, far worse. You’re gone, Persephone. Only the life in your body remains.”
I raised my eyebrows skeptically. It still didn’t sound so bad. Better than death, at any rate. “Does the sacrificehaveto be the tribute’s soul? Could someone give up something else?”
“Ye-es,” he said reluctantly. “Once, someone resurrected his daughter by cutting off his own hands. But he was executed afterward, he and his daughter both.”
“How did they execute the daughter if she was immortal?”
“They burned her alive. And even after the burning was complete, the ashes continued to twitch.”
Dear gods.
“Persephone, feeding a person’s soul to the Monarch is the worst thing you can do to them. Resurrection used to be a capital punishment until my father abolished it for being too cruel. Do you understand?My father, a person who has not bothered with his own son in six years, thoughtthiswas beyond the pale.”
I still didn’t get it, but Hades’s intensity was chilling. “Why are you telling me this? Why not just let me believe I was going to get drowned like normal?”
“Because for the tributes, there’s something else.”
“Oh, great!”
“No, it’s a good thing. It is a gift. A true gift, this time, not a trade. It’s a gift from the Monarch’s human wife. The tributes are eaten and resurrected, but then, instead of having to be awake, they are put to sleep. In the cocoons.”
Thatmade a void open up in my chest. “Asleep? For how long?”
“Forever. The oldest of them has been asleep for a thousand years.”
My blood iced over.
Hades closed his eyes. His face, which just a moment ago had been so hot and close to me, now seemed as far and remote as a frozen wasteland. “This is why I am telling you. After you are drowned in the Lake, and put to sleep… you should never be conscious again. You should not know what has befallen you. This will be a mercy. But if you ever do wake up, I want you to know: I will visit you at the Lake every day.
“You will not be able to perceive me. You will float in the darkness, unable to speak to me, or touch me, or hear me, or see me. But I will be there with you. I swear it on my life and on the life of the King. If any part of you is ever awake in there — and I hope to the Monarch it’s not — then I want you to know that you will never be alone. I’ll make sure of it.”
Pooling and Puddling
After that, there seemed no point in kissing. There seemed no point to anything.
Hades stood. He would not meet my eyes. He helped me stand up. He knelt at my feet and straightened out my skirt.
Then there was nothing left to do but return underground. Besides, we were wasting time.
He took my hand — unable to run the risk that I’d run away, even though I knew I wouldn’t — and we walked into the mouth of the underworld together, side-by-side.
I cast one final look back at the border. At the rocky horizon beyond which my mother lived.
And I noticed one more thing.
The basket of edenica herbs that Hades had put at the border was gone.
When we had reached the reservoir, he said, “You know, no human woman has ever walked into the depths of the underworld of her own free will like that.”
“You call this free will?”
“I’m just saying. I thought I would have to carry you again.”
“Try to carry me anywhere and I’ll rip your teeth out.”
The sunlit grass far above our heads, his breath in my mouth, had been forgotten. We both stalked toward the flurry of activity at the far end of the reservoir, where the workers were doing their best to lay the pipe. With a tight ball of dread in my stomach, I climbed into the pipe-shaft to see how it was going.
