Page 85 of The Catacomb King
And I didn’t know what, but I had the sense that since I had left, something in the underworld had gone horribly wrong.
I banged on the door a while longer, but it was only so I could feel like I’d made an effort. I could feel the fight leaving me, like air. The last few days had been too much. The pipeline, the drowning, the betrayal, the rescue, the funeral. I had almost nothing left in me.
I had not even cried.
Well, I wasn’t going to crynow. (I avoided looking at my mother’s corpse, though I couldn’t evade the thick, choking scent of formaldehyde and rot.) I tried to console myself with the Vizeking’s last words:I am not quite sure what to do with you right now. I will leave you here while I figure it out.That implied that he would come back. And when he did…
Unfortunately, someone had removed the shards of Hades’s glass chair. There was nothing left to make a weapon with, unless I sharpened my own fingernails.
I considered it, frankly.
But I just didn’t have the energy.
I made the bed instead. Re-shelved the books. Rolled my mother’s body in the carpet and propped it up next to the fireplace, so that if I caught sight of her out of the corner of myeye, it looked like she was just sleeping, bundled up against the chill.
The clothes that Elke had brought me were rolled in a ball in the corner. I shook them out. My palms glided over the sleek white negligée. I looked down at my violet dress. It was hanging off me from the long, sweaty walk with my burden. Filthier than ever after rooting around in my mother’s grave.
I thought with longing of Hades’s long-ago offer of a bath.
At that moment, as if on cue, the door creaked open. I dropped the clothes and whirled, prepared to argue with the Vizeking. But this time — my heart soared! — itwasElke!
She looked stricken. “Persephone,” she gasped. “I overheard the Vizeking speaking of you, but I couldn’t believe… what are you doing here?” Hope swelled visibly in her face. “Have you returned to rescue His Lordship?”
Rescue? Where was he? “After what he did to me? No fucking way.”
“You don’t understand. He wouldn’t —”
“Maybe he wouldn’t, but he did.” And yet, the wordrescuetugged at my traitorous heart. Begrudgingly, I asked, “What’s happening?”
Elke wrung her little spider-legs. It looked strangely comical. “The Vizeking has imprisoned him.”
“Where?”
“In the baths chamber. It has a more robust lock and door than this room. For privacy,” Elke explained. “The Vizeking could not very well put the Prince into prison, I suppose… but the baths chamber is typically used by none but the Royal Family, so it’s a safe place for the Vizeking to jail His Lordship and still save face.”
“Why doesn’t anybody besides the Royal Family use the baths chamber? Because of the drought?” But I had fixed the drought. “What about the reservoir? Oh, no, Elke, don’t tell methe pipe we built isn’t working. I will truly burn this whole place down.”
“It is working! The reservoir is half-full.” Thank the gods. “Everyone is flocking to it. I… I would have expected the Vizeking to be angry about it. But he does not seem to mind.”
That was strange. Monarch knew he’d been angry enough about the pipeline before. “What happened after I left? Hades ran after the Vizeking and the King. Did he catch them?”
“I don’t know,” Elke whispered. “The Lake… it was awful. So much killing. We do not mind death, you know that, but thekilling…. After you escaped, the Vizeking’s attendants finally arrived —”
“The red-robed ones? The lackeys?”
“Yes. They drove out the humans. Then the Vizeking jailed His Lordship.”
“Did he think Hades had something to do with the attack?”
“No. He jailed him for helping you. The Vizeking found out about the rabbit. I don’t know how. I didn’t tell, I promise.”
“I know you didn’t tell.” I was pacing. I hated myself for being worried about Hades. He didn’t deserve my mercy. “But I hope you don’t think that the thing with the rabbit excuses what he did to me later. He was going to feed me to the Monarch.”
“I really don’t think he was,” she argued. “I just don’t. In twenty-six years, I have never known him to do anything like that.”
“You might feel differently if you’d been the one he’d carried into the Lake.”
Elke frowned. Then the frown shifted into a confused expression. “If you have not returned for His Lordship, then what are you doing here?”
