Page 90 of The Catacomb King
“Aw, come on.” He soaked the strip of bandage and wrung it out. He began to clean the blood from his legs.
I couldn’t stand it. I had to close my eyes. I tried to remember what we’d been talking about. “Tell me about your father.”
“There’s very little to say. As I told you, before he came into the reservoir with the Vizeking two days ago, I had not seen him in six years. So maybe I’m misremembering. But I don’t remember him being so… large. I don’t remember his arms and legs being… human, but wrong, like that. I spoke to Elke, too, who’s served the Royal Family for hundreds of years. She remembered him as I did: large and spiderlike, but not enormous, and not… like that.
“I’ve suspected for a long time that something was wrong with my father, or at least strange. He and I have never understood each other, but I did use to at leastseehim. Now nobody sees him besides the Vizeking. And then a year ago, we missed the tribute ritual. As you know, wenevermiss a tribute ritual. It’s the most important job the King has.
“So I thought that if I got a sacrifice for the ritual, I could lure my father out.”
There was a faint noise. I opened my eyes. Hades was bundling the soaked, bloody rags he’d used to clean himself next to the brazier. He reached for a towel. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought his hands were trembling.
He went on, “I want to be clear. I didnotthink my father would try to eat you. Chaosgötten don’t eat humans, Persephone. I swear it. My people have been sacrificing human women for a thousand years, feeding them to the Monarch, and that’s fucked up and I get it, but we do not eat them ourselves. That’s insane. It was insane, that he did that. I would never have put you in his path if I had known that he was like that.”
“I believe you,” I said begrudgingly. None of the other chaosgötten had ever tried to eat me, after all, even back when they’d hated my guts.
Hades exhaled. I was still mad, but the sound made my heart ache. I realized it meant a great deal to him, to hear that I believed him. “I thought, stupidly, that if I could just find a way to see my father, I could figure out what was going on with him. I could reason with him. Get him to come out of his cave more often. Get him to help our people, who’ve been dying. And… get him to see what you and I and the people had done, with the reservoir. I thought” — his voice cracked — “I thought he might even be impressed. Um, with me.”
I didn’t know what to say. I had never had to bargain for my mother’s love like this.
“I had thought it was the Vizeking who was keeping me from my father. But now I wonder if the Vizeking has been protecting him. Now that he’s become so… monstrous.”
“Howdidhe get like that?”
Hades shook his head. “I don’t know. And when I ran after him while the humans were rescuing you, he tried to kill me. He was rampaging, trying to return to the Lake to eat you, or maybe to eat everyone.” Hades’s voice wavered. He paused. Icould tell he was repeating that phrase to himself,eat everyone. Everything in the underworld was strange to me, but this was strange to even Hades. Strange and horrible and frightening. And it was hisfather.
He went on, “When I found him in the back cavern, the Vizeking was holding him back. The sound of the carnage from the Lake cavern was unbelievable. I shouted at them both. I thought surely my dad would talk to me now.
“Instead, he picked me up. He didn’t even seem to notice that I was talking to him. That I was even a person, let alone his son. He tried to pull my arms and legs off. Crushed me in his fist. The Vizeking ordered him to put me down, and my father threw me against the wall like a child with a toy.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. I felt so inadequate. “What happened next?”
“I blacked out. When I woke up, I was locked in here. Elke told me no one’s seen the King since the incident at the Lake, so the Vizeking must have soothed him and gotten him back into his cavern.” Bitterness and relief warred in Hades’s voice. “Then, while I was unconscious, the Vizeking found out about the rabbit somehow, and he imprisoned me. He could have put me somewhere worse, though.” He gave an ugly little laugh. “Look how comfortable this is.”
“I wouldn’t be so quick to defend the Vizeking. He’s holding you captive.”
“He has to. I broke the rules.”
“Sure, because you peopleloveyour rules.”
“We love the ones that please the Monarch,” Hades said sharply. “The Monarch would be extremely displeased that I fed you Lümerlund food.”
“Then why did you?”
“I told you. I want you alive.”
Hades hung his towel above the brazier and opened the ointment Elke had left for him. The heady scent of something tangy like menthol or pine mixed with the thick aroma of camphor. I wondered dimly where the camphor smell came from. If they had trees down here where they grew camphor wood and pomegranates. I pictured a forest growing upside-down in the dark. I thought of the book Hades and I shared, the one with the razed forest and the moving mountain.
There seemed to be nothing else to say. I didn’t know how to grapple with what he’d told me. He had never been going to drown me. Everything he’d said lined up. And all he had ever done — by kidnapping me, by luring out his father — was try to save his people.
The camphor soap was slick on my skin and hair, like oil. I felt supple, soaked, melted.
And safe. For the first time in… maybe ever.
I got out of the tub and stepped over to Hades. He stilled. I reached over him and took the pot of ointment.
I couldn’t bring myself to sayI accept your apology, or worse,I’m sorry, too. I hoped he would know what I meant by what I was about to do next.
He rasped, “What are you doing?”
