They are almost through, the fuckers, but one by one, they hear something that makes them stop. Or at least slow. They’re not coming through this way.
“He’s waiting.” I drop the pronouncement down to her and feel it work its way through her skin.
“For what?”
“For sunrise.” A finger against the glass, in front of her eyes. It gets brighter with every moment. Time ticks away.
I have already made one miscalculation, and drawing Persephone’s attention to the treeline is a sleight of hand. If she’s focused on that, she won’t know how bad things have already gotten. Conor nudges impatiently against my legs with a whine. The dog is the only one who knows, other than me. Maybe Oliver, if he’s been paying attention. My fatal error takes the shape of empty pill bottles. I’m not usually a man who miscounts, but I have fucking done it this time.
There is nothing left from Demeter to keep the scrape and crush of the light at bay. Nothing. So many last things happen in life when you’re not paying attention. The last time you curl a hand around your queen’s neck. The last time your father kicks you while you’re going down hard into ground that feels like fire, no escape from another endless glaring day.
The last pill, rattling in its bottle.
“Why?”
Behind us in the hall, the sound of soft footsteps multiply. Those will be the people from the mines and the extensive warren of living spaces off the work area. Some of them, Oliver told me, stayed behind to fight Zeus’s people. They won’t survive. He’s as willing as Persephone to take huge chunks of the mountain to rubble if it means a victory. This is his version of salting the fields. Stupid—if he lives through this and I don’t, he’ll need the diamonds sooner or later. At the very least he’ll need the people. I could be saving them from certain death now only to hand them over to a more dangerous devil later.
A lot, it turns out, is riding on whether I live or die. Best not to let anyone know that the odds are not favorable.
Understanding flickers into her eyes a moment later and she twists in my hands to look at me. “That’s not fair.”
It makes me laugh. “Of course it’s not fucking fair. But it would be stupid of him not to press his advantage.”
“We’re inside,” insists Persephone. “Daylight won’t be an advantage here.”
“You wanted charges in the train station, didn’t you? What do you think will happen when they all go off? The roof will cave in, and it will let in the sun.” It will let Zeus in, too. And Zeus, I’m realizing now, is too far gone to restrain himself. He’s never been very good at holding back. It’s not in his nature. Now that I’ve provoked him, well. I would do it again, to protect Persephone, but knowing it doesn’t change the outcome.
It’ll be a bloodbath.
I should tell that to Persephone now, so she’s prepared when it begins, but it’s already begun and somehow I still can’t say a damn thing.
She screws up her mouth, setting her jaw. “If the mountain’s going to collapse then I can’t be wearing a nightgown.”
It won’t matter, in the end, whether she’s wearing a nightgown or full-body armor. It won’t matter because each of us—me, Zeus, Demeter, and the others—we all lived a different hell in my father’s house. Zeus might care about Persephone in the way he cares about all of his business assets. She’s worth something to him in the context of his deal with Demeter. But he’s had years of practice destroying the things he cares about.
At first, it was for survival. Now it’s to prove a point.
Which means we’d be better spending our last minutes, our last hour, wrapped up in each other. Let him kill us both while I’m fucking her. That would be the way to go out.
But responsibility nags at me. It’s not just us in the mountain, and those people are filtering through the hall behind us right now. My men can only hold Zeus for so long. Slaughter wasn’t part of the contracts they signed, and as long as I’m alive, those agreements are still in force.
“Then go.” I release Persephone and step back, giving her the space she needs to get away from me.
“Come with me.”
If I do that, if I watch her raise the nightgown over her head and drop the shawl to the floor, neither of us is coming out until the battle arrives. “Hurry.” I lean down and kiss her, perhaps for the very last time. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
A last lie, too.
2
Hades
Persephone isn’t gone five minutes when Oliver appears in the doorway, face set and a rifle slung across his back. The sun is well above the horizon now, the sky turning a fatal summer blue. “The mines,” he says.
So many times in my life, I’ve wished for death. I’ve courted it. Made it a constant companion. Why wouldn’t I? The prospect of a long life has always been as painful as the brutal existence I lived as a child and teenager. Time doesn’t heal all wounds when the fucking sun keeps rising, day after day. But now, with Oliver dressed in black to hide the blood he expects to shed, I’m not interested. There are other things more worth my concentration, like Persephone’s soft skin or the way she cries when she’s come too many times.
We go out into the hall, breaking my last promise to Persephone just the way I thought I would. “They’re through?”
“They’re on the outer boundary. Explosives along the outside of the mountain.” Oliver matches my pace. Hallway. Rotunda. We take the factory floor. “They’re going to blow apart the outer entrance so they can all fit in at once.” He puts a brave hand on my arm, bringing us both to a stop. “I don’t think you should let them do it.”
The rest of my force—a security team I keep hidden in the walls and the floors under normal circumstances—are gathered at the line between the mines and the factory, all twelve of them. The massive space isn’t quite empty. Some of the workers are lurking at the outer edges, hoping they won’t be noticed. I don’t bother sending them out. They signed their contracts with me. If this is how they’d prefer to die, then I’ll take the extra manpower. Even if it reminds me of the way the rest of the people in my father’s house would come out to watch him beat the shit out of us. There’s something to be said for bearing witness.
One of the men—black uniforms, extra ammo on belts—hands me a pistol, the black grip toward me. They’re all waiting for me to say something. That’s what it means to own everyone in the room. They’re an extension of you.
“Oliver.” Loud enough for all of them to hear. “You don’t think we should force them to fight in the mines?”
“It’s close quarters, which will delay them. But it’ll cost us more in the end. You won’t be able to close off the entrance, and nobody can work in the mines if they’re all blown to shit.”
Nobody can return to work, and if I wait until Zeus has his chance to send his men through the mines then I will be completely fucked by the time they get here.
Running footsteps interrupt the meeting, and right on time, there’s Persephone. Looking as soft as she’s ever fucking looked. Soft shoes. Soft leggings. A shirt as flowy as pale pink petals. What the fuck was she thinking, putting that on? It won’t protect her from anything. It shreds something in the vicinity of my chest and aches, an open wound.