“Don’t.” I don’t know who I’m pleading with.
“Let him,” Zeus says. “He’ll kill me now, or the rest of his people will die.” A low, bubbling laugh. “I’ll cut off the supply chains to the mountains. I’ll blow up the trains. You’ll starve to death, every last one of you. Oh, wait. I guess they’ll die either way.” He pouts a little. “Poor Hades. Couldn’t save them after all.”
Hades straightens up, and all at once I become aware of the people in the valley. There are more than when we started. Far more. Workers from the mines. They outnumber the rest of Zeus's people by a lot, and they’re crowding in at the boundaries. Tension stiffens the air. Zeus takes it in. He has the luxury of counting all of them.
He sticks his hands back into his pockets.
Hades wipes at his face, and when his hands come down I’m looking at a king. A battered, broken king. A king nonetheless. Shivers trace down my spine. “Zeus.”
“Yes?”
“Get the fuck off my mountain.”
4
Hades
I can’t let them see.
The shadow that has become Zeus shrugs and strides away, like it was his decision to leave all along. If he weren’t leaving then Oliver would warn me. And if he did warn me then I would accept that, because this is it. This is all. There’s nothing left in my head except a searing, hot pressure that’s too great to withstand. My mind is buckling underneath the force of it. No fighting back. Something warm and strong slams into the side of my legs and I drop a hand down to make sure it’s Conor. It is, and he’s frantic, but it all seems to happen on some distant horizon, beyond the crushing, obliterating pain.
My vision has been mostly gone since I got Zeus's head to crack on that rock. Stubborn bastard. He should have died, but he didn’t. I should have died, but I didn’t. Both of us should be buried on that goddamn farm, alongside Rosie—but we aren’t. The valley is too full of shadows now and simultaneously too bright. I’d laugh if it didn’t hurt so much. So much. So shocking. A lifetime of this and it still surprises me.
Time to die, that nagging voice whispers. Time to be done with all this.
But no, no. Someone—there’s someone here I need. And more than that I need to get away before they all see. Witnesses to this would be the first shingle falling. All of them tumble down, no more house of cards. “They’re going,” someone says, close by. Oliver. “They’re leaving.”
For now, they’re leaving, but if I know Zeus, this isn’t over. And I know him. Fuck that guy and fuck knowing him. I never wanted to know him in the first place.
Definitely never wanted to call him brother.
It makes no difference now. It’s over for me. If I live through this my mind will helpfully wipe this from my memory later, unless it gets burned in by the sun.
Get out of the sun.
“Don’t let her,” I tell him. What am I saying? It sounds so cool, so practiced, but I’m on fire, I’m burning alive. Knives in my eyes and a throbbing pain along one cheekbone. Broken? The world narrows. Oliver’s face swims in and out of view. “The people upstairs. Someone should be with them. Send Persephone.” Get her away from this, so she doesn’t see.
Where is she now?
“She went to make sure Zeus is out of the halls,” he says. “But I can’t stop her from coming back.”
“Well, do it.”
Good. This is the optimal outcome. Zeus is gone and I have not yet fallen down. Eleanor’s cottage is a hundred miles away but there’s some old bullshit saying about a single step. I take one toward it. Fuck, it hurts. Something happened to one of my knees. Conor pushes me again, another step. I hook my fingers through his collar and let him lead.
Every time my feet make contact with the ground, another piece of bone crumbles. Soon I’ll be nothing but shards of calcium scattered through the grass, bloody scraps of clothing. And a heart that beats in a rhythm that sounds like Persephone’s name. It’s almost a melody, or maybe a hallucination. My hand scrapes against the infinitely soft petals of a flower—I didn’t know I was so close to the ground.
Who is making that noise?
Not on my fucking mountain. It’s killing me.
A doorframe sprouts up underneath my hand and I fall through an open door. Eleanor’s house. It’s the same as it was, only more plants. They smell green and fresh. An explosion blooms and dulls behind my eye sockets. Another one.
God, I loved her. Persephone. Bring her to me. What was I thinking?
Someone’s singing, far off. A lullaby. An old song about a train car. My stomach turns itself inside out and I’m sick on the ground, but what ground? What floor? I don’t know. What’s it matter? Hands on the back of my neck, on my forehead, the hem of a skirt down by my knuckles. “It’s all right,” she says.
“Eleanor, it hurts,” someone else answers, the words garbled. Me, I think. I could be six, I could be sixteen, but my own body is too huge for all that, too unwieldy, too difficult to move. Not young then. Someone tell me the year. “My brother.”
“Gone,” she says simply. “Not here anymore.”
I grab at a table and my fingers meet dirt—her plants. The whole thing turns over but there’s enough leverage to get off the ground. Rosie won’t back off. Always so insistent and pushing. Wouldn’t want me to get a sunburn, God no, that would be the worst thing to happen, wouldn’t it? A shout from the house. Father’s home. Oh, he won’t be happy about this, that I’ve beaten Zeus to shit, his favorite son. Too late now. Take me off to juvie if I can only lay down where nobody can see.
My shins hit first, something flimsy but hard, and it comes up to meet me. A bed. Conor’s snout nuzzles my palm. Thanks to the pain in my head for tearing me down the middle so I can clearly feel the pain in my side. Cracked rib? Maybe. I put a hand to it and that makes it worse. Get up. No good. It doesn’t work. Something cool and damp covers my eyes. Oh, finally, I’ve taken them out. That’s why it’s so dark in here, so black. Can’t see anything this way. Fine, fine.
Quick footsteps, each one cracking off the ceiling like a gunshot and putting spikes down into my brain. A strangled gasp. Words run together like paint spilled across a canvas. IshegoingtodieEleanortellmerightnowishegoingtodie? More hands, touching. Everywhere they touch the pain is less but not gone. Not nearly gone enough. Say goodnight. Shut it down for repair, do it quick before you lose anything else.
A raindrop makes contact with raw skin on my cheek. “Eleanor,” Persephone pleads. Desperate. Don’t be, this has happened so many times before. Don’t look. You don’t want to see. One small hand slips into mine, soothing busted-up knuckles. “Answer me.”
“I don’t know,” Eleanor answers, and there’s the sound of a rag in a bucket. It echoes so many times it loses its form. Can’t stay. “I don’t know.”
5
Persephone
Eventually Eleanor makes me go back to the mountain. To my closet. To the bathroom, with its pristine shower. To hot water and shampoo in my hair. She won’t take no for an answer. She promises to send someone for me if he wakes up. When he wakes up. It’s been two days, or three, and nobody else has attacked the mountain. I keep waiting for my mother to jump out from behind one of the planters in Eleanor’s house and try to drag me back home, but she doesn’t. I take myself inside and strip off my clothes and let the water run through my hair. Still nobody.