12. Chapter 12
Chapter twelve
Corre
C orre didn’t let herself process the gravity of inviting Hades into her home—and of what her mother would say if she found out—as she threw clothes out of one of the old trunks gathering dust in the back of Berenice’s closet. Why am I doing this?
She ignored the thought and pulled out a large cloak with a hood. It was an old one of Phineas’s he’d given her one day, after he was gifted a new one by his parents. “You said you were cold remember?” he’d said. She had to rack her brain at the time, but she finally did remember she’d recently told him she got cold when training in the garden in the evenings.
She never wore it, and hopefully Phineas wouldn’t recognize it if he attended the coronation. Luckily he hates these things as much as I do. Corre wasn’t sure if she would have even gone if she hadn’t heard the pain in Theron’s voice. A haunted look usually accompanied his conniving stare, but when he looked at her in shock after her invitation, it was like he’d turned into someone else—someone with childlike delight behind the pain in his eyes. The melancholy feeling that squeezed her stomach at the sight was what got in the way of her better judgment.
“This should do it.” She held up the cloak.
“That’s a little short,” he said, inspecting the ragged material. ‘A little’ was an understatement. Theron was a good six inches taller than Phineas.
“I didn’t say it was perfect. I said it would do.” She threw it at him. “Try it on.”
He rolled his eyes. “Why do I have to put this on anyway? It’s not like my face won’t be recognized.”
“Your face isn’t what people recognize. It’s how you move and what you wear.” She paused. “And your hair.”
“My hair?” He glanced in the long, floor-length mirror in Berenice’s bedroom.
“Yes. I haven’t seen anyone else with hair like that.” When pink crept up her cheeks, she quickly closed the trunk and said, “Get dressed. We may have to figure something out for your clothes beneath the cloak, but that should be good enough until we get there. Or maybe just pin it shut. And I’ll help you with your hair.” She didn’t look at him before closing the door. “Hurry, though! If we’re late, it will only draw attention to us.”
Wait . “Actually, people will be suspicious of me being with someone they don’t recognize. So…just…follow me a few paces behind…” She rambled a little more before he called out through the thick oak door.
“I can’t hear a word you’re saying!”
She growled. “You really are insufferable,” she shouted back. He either didn’t hear her or didn’t want to respond. The only sound Corre was met with was the shuffling of clothes behind the door before it creaked open.
“I don’t know why I had to change in there. It’s only a cloak.” He came out looking exactly the same but with the cloak fastened around his neck.
“You were supposed to take your shirt off.”
“I was?”
She groaned. “Yes!”
“Okay, okay!” He groaned back, making a point for her to hear it, and unpinned the cloak, lifting his shirt over his head. All she saw was a flash of muscle before she averted her eyes. Heat shot up her face.
“You should have gone back in!”
Metal clinked as he pinned the cloak again. When the sound stopped, she turned around. The light brown fabric shrouded his bare skin and went just below his knees. Good enough for a disguise. The fact that it was old and worn helped. Hopefully he wouldn’t stand out as much.
“Good enough,” she said.
“What about my hair?”
Right . She focused on the inky waves that traveled down the nape of his neck. Even at the bustling markets of Olympus, or when she met Zeus, she’d never seen someone with hair like his. Everyone else’s was precisely combed and clipped in a way deemed most suitable. His was thick and untamed, the black waves accentuating the dark brown of his eyes.
She tried not to think about it. This had to be purely platonic. It was a favor. The heat growing beneath her skin had to have nothing to do with it. “Let’s go to the washing room. I’ll try a few things.”
She opened the door next to Berenice’s room. It led into a small, cabinet-sized washing room with a fountain for baths and hand washing, as well as a flat surface in the floor with a hole cut in the middle of polished slabs of wood. “Is this really your washing room?” he asked incredulously.
“I don’t have to help you,” she reminded him, turning the spigot until fresh, cool water ran between her fingers. “I didn’t even want you here in the first place.”
“You’re the one who invited me.”
She twisted the spigot to allow for more water flow. “I could tell you wanted to go.”
She was surprised when he didn’t contest her. “It beats what I would do in Tartarus.”
“Which is?” The water was a good temperature, but Corre needed to wait until the debris cleared out so she could wet his hair without having to clear out any dirt.
“That’s confidential information.”
“Whatever you say,” she muttered. The debris had finally waned, so she stood up and pointed to the small fountain. “Kneel.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?”
“You have to kneel and wet your hair.”
He narrowed his eyes, seemingly calculating a comeback, but wordlessly he did as he was told and knelt in front of the small fountain and dunked his head beneath its mouth.
His shoulders were so broad they almost filled the entirety of the room. It reminded Corre of a time she’d seen a fox cub try following a squirrel into the knot of a tree. Only its nose managed to poke through the small opening. At least Theron could fit well enough in the washing room to wet his hair.
The room felt even smaller as he lifted his thick arms to run his fingers through his soaking hair. Her next breath snagged in her throat. She snapped her head away and stared at the tiles on the wall, but she could still feel his elbow brush against her slight bicep. After about a minute, he whipped up his head, spraying water all over her. “Now what?” he said.
Her mouth gaped open, her eyes just as wide. “Are you serious? You got water all over me.”
“So? I have water all over me .” His casual tone was maddening. Corre decided this would be her good deed for the foreseeable future.
“You know that’s different.” She shook water out of her hair and grabbed a cloth to wipe down her arms. “You have terrible social skills.”
“Sorry, Your Greatness, I didn’t have the opportunity to learn etiquette while I was being trained to rule the Underworld.”
“Is that supposed to impress me?” she quipped. “Whatever. Just come here.” She guided him to a chair in the kitchen. He stalked behind her, his footsteps accompanied by the faint drips of water plunking against the wooden floorboards. “May I?” she asked, though it was more of a jeer than a request. He plopped in the seat in front of her, and the chair’s poor legs squeaked in agony. I sure hope that doesn’t break. What would I tell Mother?
“May you what?”
“Do your hair,” she said. She was losing patience. Luckily, he nodded, though there was a reluctance in his eyes that threw her off.
“Okay. I’m going to brush it back and pin it. Wear the cloak as much as you can while we’re out, but there may be times when taking it off is inevitable. Like when it gets dark.”
“That won’t be a problem. I won’t stay longer than an hour.”
“The coronation starts in about an hour,” Corre said, her hands hovering above his head. She bit her bottom lip. How could she run her fingers through his hair when she was rendered immobile from the brush of his hand against her skin?
“I guess we’ll have to be on time then,” he said, but she didn’t retort. Her fingers grazed the slick waves of black draping down his face, but the contact made something buzz in her veins that didn’t sit well with her. It felt . . . forbidden.
Her hands fell. “You can do this part yourself,” she said, trying to sound stern.
“What? Why?”
“I’m not your slave!”
He rolled his eyes. “Fine, just tell me what to do.”
She led him back into the bathroom and showed him how to stroke his hands through his hair in a way that would make it easy for her to pin it back. There was a mirror above the basin next to the fountain. Corre had forgotten all about it—the surface was so old and murky it was practically useless. There was even a big crack split across the middle. But that was the one Theron used as he stroked his fingers through his hair.
As if in a trance, she couldn’t look away. His dark eyes shone starkly against the smudged glass, somehow parting the clouds of dust and grime. She took pins from her room and placed them carefully on the back of his head. Her fingers began trembling again the moment they touched him. She ignored the spark in her chest as she combed her fingers through his hair. Neither one of them spoke a word.
Carefully, she slid each thin, metal bar in a neat row across the crown of his head. Then in a slanted line down the sides of his hair, leading down to the back of his neck—a hidden staircase in a field of black.
When she was done, he looked back into the glass, and his eyes widened. She looked between him and his murky reflection, ignoring the pounding in her chest. “What?”
He continued staring. “My face.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “What about it?”
“It’s so long. And pale.”
She laughed. “It is.” She resisted the urge to tell him what other words came to mind when she looked at his face—especially now that she could see it better. “Do you like what I did with your hair?” His eyes didn’t leave his reflection. When he still didn’t respond, she said, “You should look in the bigger mirror. That one’s useless.” The words didn’t reach him for a few seconds; when they finally did, he silently left the room and walked over to the floor-length mirror he’d inspected the cloak in.
“Whoa.” He turned to his side and leaned forward to inspect himself. Then, to Corre’s great astonishment, he smiled—not a smirk or wicked grin. He smiled, and he looked like any other god ready to attend a gathering on Olympus. The strangest part was how normal he looked. Second only to how much it made her cheeks warm.
“I should get ready now, too, and you should go somewhere else until the coronation starts.” She tried not to look at him idly running his fingers across the rim of a fruit bowl next to a precarious stack of books.
“Why?” He turned to look at her, and her heart skipped a beat. Even without the dark waves framing his face, he was strikingly handsome. It made it easier to see his eyes and all the power behind them.
“Because we’re not supposed to go together, and I don’t want you in my house.”
He gave her a flat look. “Yes, princess.” Their normal rap returned, which offered Corre some relief. A guarded, arms-length relationship was wiser and more comfortable. And much more preferable to the alternative.
She watched him leave, but it took her the greater part of the hour to stop thinking about him and get ready for the coronation, hoping to the Titans nothing would go awry.