Chapter 7 Eleven Months Late
Eleven Months Late
The Prince moved faster than I would have believed possible. He lunged and caught me around the waist. I teetered on my heels, gasping. How could I have been so stupid as to get so close to the lake? I couldn’t swim!
The Prince’s face was full of rage. His lips curled backward. “Don’t you dare touch that water,” he hissed. “Not yet.”
“I wasn’t going to,” I protested, even though I had been. “What is it?”
“HADES!” howled a crackling voice behind the Prince. It was the beetle-godling. He had swept after the Prince and was standing at the threshold to the lake-cavern, his whole round body — oh, gods, he definitely had extra arms — trembling with anger. “Watch your pet!”
The Prince yanked me roughly upright. “She’s not my pet,” he growled. “Watch your mouth.”
“I shall say what I like,” the beetle-godling shrilled. “You have no authority, and your revolting little human freak certainly —”
“I said,” Hades roared, “WATCH YOUR MOUTH!”
The beetle-godling shut up, quivering.
They glared at each other. Hades’s grip tightened on my waist. I was reminded, glimmeringly, of Calix wrapping his arms around my stomach as he tried to stop me from crossing the border. Oh, how I should have listened.
“You had no authority,” the beetle-godling repeated at last to Hades.
“Out of my way,” Hades ordered him.
Then something in the beetle-godling’s face changed. Like he had figured something out. “Why do you not simply drown her?”
“I’m going to.” My thighs quivered with fear. Then Hades added, “Later. I want her for something else first. That’s what I want to explain to my father. Summon him now or back off.”
The beetle-godling did neither. “We should drown her now,” he crooned. “We need a tribute, Your Lordship. You’ve said so yourself. And look how eager she is to enter the Lake. Practically salivating for it.”
“Don’t touch her.”
The beetle-godling shifted his red gaze to me. My skin crawled. “Do you know what you’re getting into, little girl?”
“I didn’t get into anything,” I spat. “This motherfucker kidnapped me.”
“Mm. And yet you approached the Lake of your own volition.”
“She doesn’t know what the Lake is,” Hades said tightly. “I will tell her when it’s time.”
“It is time now,” the beetle-godling said. He began to scuttle toward us. “In fact, we are eleven months late. As you have, many times, so astutely pointed out.”
Hades thrust me behind him. “No. Not yet.”
“What?” the beetle-godling sneered. “You want to fuck her first?”
My stomach shrank. I looked everywhere for an escape route. Nothing.
Hades’s back against my cheek was like stone. “It’s none of your business what I want to do with her.”
“You have three days, Your Lordship,” the beetle-godling said. “Three days for whatever depravity you have planned. Why you would want to fuck a human, I can’t imagine, but I suppose I should expect no better from you.” Hades’s rock-hard body vibrated. “And then I send the armies after her.”
“You have no authority.”
“I have your father’s authority.”
“No.” Hades whispered softly. “I have my father’s authority.”
The beetle-godling said nothing. Then he said, “Three days.”
Silence from Hades. Then: “Fine. You are correct. She must be sacrificed, and sooner rather than later. Three days.”
The beetle-godling smiled. He inclined his head. He stepped aside.
Hades threw me over his shoulder like a wet towel and began to stride away from the lake. We entered, then crossed, the throne room. I sensed the beetle-godling entering the throne room behind us, lingering at the throne. Watching us.
When we were almost gone, the beetle-godling called, “Oh, and, Your Lordship.”
Hades did not turn, but he slowed.
“I suggest you edify her,” said the beetle-godling. “Considering that you, as she so concisely put it, ‘kidnapped her.’ It seems to me that at the very least, she deserves to know what to expect when she is drowned.”
“Supercilious motherfucker,” Hades muttered. He kept walking.
The beetle-godling called louder, “Three days.”
It was a parting shot.
This time, Hades did turn.
But the beetle-godling was already vanishing into the black cave-mouth behind the stalagmite throne.