Page 74 of The Catacomb King
Then he took a deep breath — my only clue that I should take a deep breath, too — and pushed me underwater.
He held me down as I kicked. As the freezing water began to penetrate the pores of my skin. He kept his hand wrapped around my throat.
It was like being stabbed. Or like being eaten. Like my flesh was being punctured by giant, needle-like teeth.
But I couldn’t cry out without sucking water into my lungs. I clung to Hades’s wrists. I wanted to dig my nails in, but I couldn’t, because then he might let me go —
Somewhere distant — somewhere beyond the surface of the Lake, which at this point might as well have been a solid ceiling, so far away did the world beyond it seem, so incapable was I of lifting my head above it — I thought I heard an enormous bang.
Hades’s hands moved. They pulled away from me — orwerepulled.
I lunged upward and surfaced, gasping.
I had not breathed in the waters of the Lake. I had not drowned. I had not been given to the Monarch.
But I could feel the rivulets of Lake-water on my body grasping at me, trying to drag me down. Far out in the dark center of the Lake, the candles on their pillars guttered wildly. The cocoons swung.
And I still couldn’t swim.
I was thrashing. The muscles in my stomach were cramping, which only made me panic and thrash harder. Water splashed into my mouth. I tried to spit it out and only ended up with more.Please, I thought, I had lived three days in the underworld, I had been saved from sacrifice, I couldn’t get this far and die just because I couldn’t fuckingswim —
Someone was splashing out to greet me. His blue eyes shone in the darkness.
Hades?
A pair of slim, strong hands wrapped around my ribcage. My rescuer pressed me to his body and hauled me to shore.
I knew those hands. I knew the body that braced me as I coughed up water. I had imagined that body so vividly back in the village, lying on the wood floor night after night while my mother coughed up blood.
Those hands, this body, belonged to Calix.
He had come to rescue me.
Calix, Again
He carried me, spluttering, to land. I clutched him, sobbing, still too close to death to even be humiliated.
“Persephone,” Calix said urgently. He gripped my face, my shoulders, my neck, as though I were made of gold. “Persephone, please, we’ve got to get out of here.”
I had no idea what was going on. There was some commotion, but I was too blinded by the water and my own subsiding panic to make it out. I wanted to rush out of the cavern as quickly as possible before someone forced me back in the Lake. But I couldn’t stop coughing. I doubled over, freaking out.
When I got my bearings enough to straighten up, I realized that Calix wasn’t the only human here. There were a hundred others, almost all of them men. They carried knives and bayonets. They were all bedecked in the close-fitting, vivid green uniform of Iernia’s War Police. I had never even seen that uniform except in paintings.
And they were killing the chaosgötten.
Blood everywhere. Scarlet, onyx, emerald.
The chaosgötten were fighting back, but these chaosgötten — my workers — were civilians, not soldiers. Did the underworld even have a standing army?
Where was Hades?
As I searched the crowd wildly, I caught sight of the humanoid chaosgötter who’d tried to save me from the Lake. His face was twisted in terror. A soldier had caught him by the hair.
I watched as his throat was slit. His blood was green-black.
I screamed. I lunged to help but Calix caught me. I was sofucking sickof men holding me back! Calix wrestled me into the throne room. We were halfway across when I spotted the Vizeking, hustling the King into his secret back cave. “Let the King go!” I screamed at the Vizeking. I didn’t like the King, but he was big enough to crush these human soldiers like bugs.
Then I saw Hades.
