Chapter 8 Elke
Elke
Hades carried me back through the tunnels. My skin was still cold from the air around the ice-cold lake, except for the places where his hot hands touched my skin. When we had traveled a while, I dared to ask, “Who was that?”
“The Vizeking. The King’s right hand.”
“You’re not the King’s right hand?”
“No,” Hades bit out.
“Aren’t you the Prince?”
“Yes.”
“What did he mean about drowning me in that lake?”
“I should think it would be pretty self-evident. Do you always ask this many questions?”
“Only when my life is at stake.”
“You might find it would be less at stake if you shut your mouth once in a while.”
“My mother encouraged an inquisitive mindset,” I retorted. This was true. As a child, every time I had asked her something, she had always asked back, What else? What else?
Hades didn’t answer. Then he said, “Must be nice.”
The bleakness in his voice was so thorough it pierced my heart. I almost asked him what he meant.
But no. Here he was, trying to make me feel for him again, like when he had laughed at my joke. I wouldn’t fall for it. I didn’t care what kind of fucked-up relationship he had with his parents.
So instead, I asked, “Why don’t you just let me go? That Vizeking guy said I’m not supposed to be here anyway. See, I told you you were supposed to take Josie.”
We had reached the bed-chamber. He opened the metal door and pushed me inside. “Who the hell is Josie? No, you know what, I don’t care. And I don’t care what the Vizeking says. I know what I’m doing.”
I stumbled into the room, tripped over the carpet. He pressed in behind me.
The room. The bedroom.
The Vizeking’s high voice echoed in my head: You want to fuck her first?
I forgot his sad dumb voice. All at once, my heart rate spiked.
The black bed loomed, soft and sleek, warmed by the fire.
I turned on Hades, who was frowning at me, and I backed up until the backs of my thighs hit the mattress.
“Go on, then,” I snarled at him. His gaze flickered, hurt, at my tone. “Get it over with.”
“Get what over with?”
“What the Vizeking said.” How would he do it? Throw me on the bed, open my knees, press his hard muscular body against mine? Maybe I could pretend he was Calix. “Just do it fast.” He had better do it fast. If he gave me an opening I’d tear his dick off.
Hades stared at me, his lips slightly parted, his gaze almost opaque. Goosebumps rose on my skin beneath that gaze. I wound my fists into the blanket.
Then he said, in the same voice with which he’d said Must be nice: “You really think I would do that?”
That hollow softness again! Like with the laugh! No, no, no! “You kidnapped me!”
Hades licked his lips. He still had not lifted his gaze from my face. It drifted to my neck, my mouth, and then wrenched back up to my eyes. The muscles in his face didn’t move almost at all, but something at the corners of his eyes was… sad.
Oh, come on.
All the fight went out of me.
“All right, all right,” I said, and sat down. “You don’t have to look so wounded at the thought of fucking me. Gods.”
“For Monarch’s sake, woman. It’s not the thought of fucking you, it’s that you thought I would rape you.”
“Well, how am I supposed to know?” I asked, disgruntled. “That beetle-godling said.”
“You can’t trust anything he says.”
“And you did kidnap me.”
Hades rubbed his hands over his face. “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. But I had no choice. Like you, with the water.”
Why did he have no choice? What was he going to do with me?
I want her for something else first, he’d said to the Vizeking.
It was really impossible to feel threatened with him looking like that. I crossed my legs and asked, “What do you mean, you had no choice?”
“I’ll explain soon. I need to figure out some, um, logistics first.” He sighed. “I really wish I could have talked to my father.”
“Why can’t you talk to your father?”
He shook his head. “You wouldn’t understand. It’s none of your concern, anyway.”
“I think everything is my concern, given the whole kidnapping thing,” I pointed out. Hades looked dubious. “Hey. If it’s any consolation, I can’t talk to my father, either.” I didn’t know why I was trying to make him feel better. He just looked so damned sad. “He’s dead.”
The Prince looked at me again. “It’s not,” he said. “But thank you. Wait here, okay?”
“Wait, no —"
Hades went out again. He shut the door and deadbolted it.
Motherfucker. “What’d you kidnap me for if you’re just going to ditch me in here?” I hollered, but obviously he was already gone.
I spread-eagled on the bed. (It was an amazingly soft.) Then I sat up, astounded. I almost couldn’t believe my eyes. I had just caught sight of my spear, still in the corner where Hades had thrown it.
They’d really left me with a weapon? How had no one bothered to confiscate it while I was gone?
I looked again at the messy weave of the carpet, the poor construction of the furniture. They really did not have their act together down here. Hell, even their kidnapping had been late.
Maybe that was why they had taken me instead of Josie. Because they were so late they were panicking.
Late for what, though? And what had the Vizeking meant when he’d suggested, snidely, that Hades should edify me?
Well, no one had eaten me yet. No one had hurt me at all, actually. I’d practically dared Hades to and he hadn’t even bothered. It was getting hard to maintain the appropriate level of blind fear. And speaking of eating…
My stomach grumbled.
As if on cue, the door creaked open. Hades?
I didn’t have time to reach my spear. I put my fists up warily, my fingers loosely curled so I could be prepared to scratch.
But it was only the bug-lady, Elke, and now that I was getting used to the shock of seeing her enormous spider body, I could see clearly from the expression on her round human face that she was way more scared of me than I was of her.
I had to admit I kind of enjoyed that.
“Well, come on in,” I said to her. “My spear’s over there. I couldn’t get to it in time to stab you even if I wanted to.”
She blanched. But she entered. In her front two legs — she didn’t have opposable thumbs, but she had a masterful trick of balancing items — she held a metal platter. Atop the platter was some kind of whole roasted fish.
The fish had too many eyeballs. But its light, meaty scent drifted over to me. My mouth watered. I smelled the char from the fire, the sharp tang of some strange spice.
Through the haze of hunger, I tried to calculate. How long had I been down here? Surely no more than a few hours. Surely I was nowhere near starving to death, no matter how hungry I felt.
I put my nose in the air like I’d seen the rich girls do in the village and I said, “You’ll have to try harder than that.”
Then my stomach rumbled like an earthquake.
I winced.
Elke blinked at the sound and held the platter out. “The Prince has ordered me to feed you,” she said uncertainly.
“I suppose you’re going to tell me to be grateful he’s not forcing it down my throat.”
“Oh, no,” she said, shocked. “He would never.”
It was pretty clear that he would never, but I wasn’t about to tell Elke that. I scoffed. “He keeps throwing me around like I’m a sack of apples from the market.”
Weakly, Elke said, “I’m sure he only ever throws you on something soft.”
That was true, actually. I crossed my arms. “Well, he’s going to have to force-feed me if he wants me to eat your underworld food. Tell him that, why don’t you.”
Elke cowered. “I will tell him,” she squeaked.
I almost laughed. “Elke, you don’t have to be afraid of me. Look at me. Look at you. Look how sharp your legs are! You have a carapace, for gods’ sake.” She did, a spider’s carapace, like armor. “I’m so soft and squishy.”
“I am not trained in fighting.”
“So what? You think I am?”
“The Prince takes you seriously.”
The Prince. Hades. His flashing eyes, his floating hair. Not that I had any reason to doubt it, except for the fact that he somehow couldn’t get an audience with the King, but… “He’s really the Prince of this whole place? The underworld is so… vast.”
“The Prince of the Primordium,” Elke said. There was something automatic about her response that made my skin turn cold. “He of the bloodline of the Monarch of the Void. Ruler of the Gestorbunlund. Yes.”
“Gestorbunlund? What does that mean?”
“It is our name for our homeland. The place you call the underworld. It means…” Elke thought hard, rolling the syllables in her mouth. Her human mouth. Gods, it was so weird. I couldn’t believe I was having a civil conversation with one of these things. “It means ‘catacomb land’.”
A shiver went down my spine.
“I think because of all the tunnels,” Elke added, as an afterthought.
I seriously doubted that was why. “If Hades is your Prince, then how come he doesn’t look like you guys? How come he looks like me?”
Elke looked shocked. “You cannot call him by his name!”
I rolled my eyes and repeated my question. She hesitated. She glanced behind her at the open door, then warily at my spear on the floor. She crept all the way into the room and closed the door behind her. “His Lordship is… very human.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Elke gestured to the books on the shelf to the side of the room. “Our ancestor… one of our ancestors… is the Monarch. Do you know about the Monarch?”
She said this as though it was impossible for anyone not to know about the Monarch. My pride surged. I couldn’t bear to tell her I had no idea what she was talking about. “In the human world, we say that your people — the godlings —”
“Chaosgotten,” said Elke. “That is what we call ourselves.”