Page 76 of The Catacomb King
“You’re a first-year student!” But I was already halfway up the shaft. Either he couldn’t hear me anymore, or he was pretending not to.
At the top, I unhooked myself from the harness and fell onto the grass. I felt like I should kiss the grass or something. But honestly it seemed a lot less special, since Hades had just brought me here a few hours prior.
But my body was calming down. Up here, there seemed no chance that anyone could get me back in the Lake.
I looked around. The rope-and-pulley system was connected to a winch. On the ground next to the winch was an enormous rotary drill. Calix and his War Police must have used that to tunnel into the underworld. Sure enough, when I inspected the shaft wall, I saw grooves from the drill bit.
With a drill as big as this, they had probably managed to dig the shaft in under an hour. They had probably not even started until almost the moment that the King had boiled into the reservoir. They had come just in time.
The rope trembled as Calix hauled himself up in his own harness. When he landed and unhooked himself, something tumbled out of his pocket. He collected it hastily, but I had already identified it.
It was an enormous sapphire. From the cave walls.
All at once I felt very tired. So much for Calix’s insistence that he’d done all this to save me.
I looked at him.
He shifted, embarrassed. “Don’t look at me like that. The Body wants gemstones as payment for letting me commission the War Police.”
So that was how Calix had gotten the Body involved. Still. “Don’t pretend you’re not keeping any of them for yourself.”
“I’m not. I only came here for you.”
I waited for my heart to skip a beat.
I didn’t feel anything.
Valiantly, I tried to have any emotions about it at all. Nothing happened. Maybe I was just too shell-shocked. I asked, “You really did all this for me?”
Calix smiled. His gorgeous eyes, his perfect white teeth. Although his eyes were really not as blue as Hades’s.
I looked around. Saw the spot, far away, where Hades said he’d left my basket. “Oh. What about the edenica herbs? Did you get them to my mother?”
His smile dimmed. “I’m sorry?”
“My basket full of herbs. Hades said he’d left them there for you.”
“Hades? Is that the name of the monster who took you? Did he make you wear that dress?”
The violet ballgown. I flushed. “He didn’tmakeme do anything. I needed something to wear. He lent it to me.”
“How generous. To kidnap an innocent woman and then lend her something to wear.”
It wasn’t like that, I wanted to say, but it had been exactly like that, actually. I smoothed the dress over my thighs. Its brilliant sheen had faded; it was stiff and wrinkled from my ride through the reservoir shaft and stained all over with mud. I remembered, with a quiet stab of shame, how much I’d liked it when I’d first put it on in Hades’s bedroom. Now I just felt stupid in it.
“Tell me about the monsters,” Calix said suddenly. “What’s it like down there? How does their society work? What did they do to you?”
I blinked, trying to catch up. “Uh. I mean, they kidnapped me. They threatened to kill me. They locked me up.” I could tell, though, that this wasn’t what Calix was looking for. He wanted detail. I wracked my brain, but… “Honestly, no one did anything much to me. Look at me. I’m fine.”
“They tried to drown you.”
“Except for that.”
“Persephone, this is important.Think.”
“Someone was an asshole,” I offered, thinking of Mackr. “But he got, um, nicer. Right before he died.”
Calix gave me a look that made it evident that this was unhelpful.
