Page 97 of The Catacomb King
Unbelievably, though, I eventually found my sobs slowing down. I found my breath coming back. I had reached the point where I just couldn’t cry anymore.
Hades didn’t let me go, though, even though I had to be hurting him. And I didn’t let him go, either.
I felt embarrassed, all of a sudden. Embarrassed and stupid and childish and small. I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry I yelled at you,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I’m sorry I said I wanted to lock you up and force-feed you pomegranate seeds.”
I actually chuckled. The noise felt foreign in my mouth. Then I quieted. “You never did, though.”
“Of course I didn’t.”
“They did it to all the other girls.”
“Ididn’t,” Hades protested. “I wasn’t even born yet. I never did it to anybody.”
I almost wished hehadforce-fed me. Then I wouldn’t have believed I could sacrifice myself to save my mother. The sacrifice already would have been made. “Why — why didn’t it work?”
“Why didn’t it work?”
“Me eating the seeds. Why didn’t the Monarch accept my eternal imprisonment in exchange for my mother’s resurrection?”
For a long moment, Hades was silent. Then almost too quiet to hear, he asked: “Are you sure it was a sacrifice?”
“What kind of a question is that?”
“I’m just saying. I’ve never been able to get you to do anything you didn’t want to do. You bullied me into submission even when you thought I was going to eat your bone marrow. Are you sure there’s not some part of you that…” He swallowed.
I had swallowed like that every morning of my mother’s waning life. It was what a person did when they did not dare to hope.
He finished, “…wants to stay?”
I sighed. “Of course I want to stay. Why on earth would I want to go back to Limer? There, I’m a cleaning lady in a one-room hut and I can’t afford beans. Here, I have gorgeous lace ballgowns and fresh meat and an army of spider-people who build entire infrastructures at my command. There, there’s been a drought on for eleven months. Here, I get to take a bath in a clawfoot tub. There, my best friend leaves me to run off to war-school, and he can’t even be bothered to write except to tell me how amazing his life is without me. Here, I have a hot prince calling megoddess—”
Hades kissed me.
My heart soared.
It was like the kiss in front of the waterfall — totally impulsive, like he didn’t even have time to think about it, like every cell in his body was sucked onto mine. He captured my mouth in his, swallowing the wordgoddess, swallowing my breath. His hands wrapped in my hair, his body pressing mine into the wall like he wanted to absorb it. Heat flared in my stomach — desire? Shock? My mouth was open against his tongue and teeth, the whole heat of him filling me, before I even had time to thinkwhat the fuck—
And then he broke away.
He ran his hands through his hair. “I’m sorry,” he panted. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I shouldn’t have done that. I couldn’t help myself. You’re just so —”
“Shut up.” Fuck this. I had wanted him, if I was being honest with myself, since he’d given me that earthenware bowl of water. Since before that, probably — since I’d seen him looking at that illustration in the library, with light and curiosity on his handsome face. Since he’d bundled his fists in my skirt on the grass.
I had nothing to lose anymore.
I clawed after him. I grabbed his belt and jerked him forward into my hips.
His mouth on mine was better than the pomegranate. The way he panted directly into my lungs was better than breathing. He worked his hands up under my negligée, his fingers digging into the meat of my thighs. He groaned deep in his throat, into my mouth. He broke away again, just an inch —
“Get back here,” I panted.
“If I don’t stop now,” he whispered, his gaze fixed on my lips, “I won’t be able to stop at all.”
I wrapped myself around him, pressing my mouth into his again while he gasped, almost clambering up his enormous muscled body. He hoisted me up and locked my thighs around his waist, stumbling backward. I barely knew what I was doing. I only sensed, vaguely, that seeing Calix and the Vizeking — oh, gods, I had to tell Hades, but not now, not while he was licking my teeth,nngh— had cracked something terrible open in me. Failing to resurrect my mother had cracked it open wider still. And now Hades’s kiss had split me open all the way. I was like the pomegranate, and my seeds were tumbling into Hades’s hands.
Hades knocked into the rim of the metal tub. He fell backward. We both splashed into the hot water, still dressed. But we couldn’t stop kissing. I still had my boots on.
