Daughter of the Earth and Sky (3 page)

Hades opened my trunk and tossed in a nondescript black bag along with the unicorn. “At least two days, maybe more.”

“Why drive? I can teleport there.”

“You can’t teleport with me. This isn’t my realm.”

“I can share.”

Hades gave me a knowing smile. “Try it.”

I narrowed my eyes at his smug look and grabbed his hand. “Hold on tight,” I cautioned, closing my eyes. I painted a picture of Cumberland Island in my mind, visualizing the live oaks, feeling the humidity, smelling the air, heavy with salt and flora.

The air whirled around me, then with a sudden yank that threatened to rip my arm out of my socket, I stumbled back into place. Hades’ arm weighed me down like an anchor.

He steadied me. “See? Not. My. Realm.”

“I teleported with Melissa.”

“She’s a native of this realm.”

I frowned. “Can I give you the ability to teleport here?”

“You don’t have the authority to give away teleportation rights.” Hades slammed the trunk. “Only your mom can do that. She rules this realm. So we require…transportation.” He looked at my car and the left corner of his lip quirked, but then seeing my expression, he rubbed at his chin, covering his mouth with his hand.

“What?” I snatched my keys out of his hand. I love my car. I’d worked in my mother’s flower shop for countless hours to buy the daisy-patterned rims, brake-light cut outs, and wildflower vanity plate.

“The Queen of the Underworld drives a bug,” Hades snickered. “Sorry, it’s just funny. Allow me to drive. I know the way.”

“Hell no!” I slid into the driver’s seat. Part of me wanted to ask why we didn’t just go back in the house and demand my mother give Hades teleportation rights, but the rest of me was excited at the prospect of taking a long drive with Hades. We didn’t get much time alone. Plus, as much as I’d love to assume he had the same motivation for
not
asking my mom, there was probably a long and boring explanation why he wouldn’t. Gods were weird. “This is my car, and besides, do you even have a license?”

He shot me a withering look.

“Didn’t think so,” I said triumphantly.

Hades rolled his eyes and slid in after me. I took a final look at my mother’s silhouette in the doorway and tightened my grip on the steering wheel.

Hades followed my gaze. “She was trying to protect you.”

“I know. That’s the worst part. I’m just tired of her deception. I mean, keeping the fact that I was a goddess from me my whole life was one thing, but to
still
keep something from me? That’s just…” I couldn’t put words to the feelings that were bothering me.

“You wanted her to be as honest as you’ve always perceived her to be.”

“Yes.”

“It could be worse.”

“How?”

“My father ate me.”

We couldn’t actually drive to Cumberland Island. Instead, we had to drive six hours to St. Mary’s Island and then take a ferry.

“You look like you’re going to be sick.” Hades studied me from the corner of his eye.

I focused on the dimly lit road. The deformed shadows of trees whipped by as we drove down Highway 316. “I don’t like the ocean.” I shuddered, remembering my class trip to Georgia’s islands. I’d been so excited to see the ocean. When I took my first hesitant steps onto the beach and looked into the cerulean waves, I’d felt a horrific certainty that something terrible was lurking beneath them. It was another world down there, and I didn’t belong in it.

“That’s natural.” Hades adjusted his seat, pushing it back so he’d have more leg room. “The sea is Poseidon’s realm. You wouldn’t want to enter without an invitation.”

I held up my hand and squinted against the brights of a car in the other lane. I hated driving at night. Everything was too dark to see or blindingly bright. “Didn’t my mom think a complete inability to enter the ocean was important to mention? What if the ferry had sunk or something? Or, I don’t know, I just wanted to swim?”

“Poseidon’s not unreasonable. Technically you
can
enter; you just have a strong desire not to. Just like me being here. It feels more comfortable with your mother’s permission, but I’m capable of entering her realm without it.”

I frowned. That didn’t work both ways. My mom
couldn’t
enter the Underworld with or without Hades’ permission. No gods could. Humans either, unless they were demigods, but demigods were just odd. But I guess it made sense. People crossed into Poseidon’s realm when they went swimming or Zeus’ realm skydiving, but there was no spelunking down to visit dead relatives. The Underworld was just different.

I’d been so excited to go on that trip. I remembered planning, packing, and talking about it for weeks. And my mother had just watched, knowing I would be disappointed. I’d been lonely watching my classmates play in the waves. What else would I learn about my divinity? How much had I shrugged off as normal? How deep had the deception gone?

Hades broke the silence. “What did you use your mom’s credit card for?”

I glanced over at him then back to the road. “Come again?”

“You used your mom’s card, for a thing?” He fiddled with the vents, adjusting the air.

I gave him an incredulous look. “Nosy much?”

Headlights illuminated his electric blue eyes as he glowered at me. “Considerate, actually. I could tell you wanted to talk about something else.”

“That’s a half-truth if I’ve ever heard one.” I laughed. “You’re curious. Maybe I used it for something personal.”

“Fine. Don’t tell me.” Hades turned to look out the window.

I sighed. “It was an application for early enrollment at the University of Georgia.”

Hades gave me a look full of pity. “You still plan on going to college?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“You know you’re going to be coming into your powers in the next couple of years.” Hades reached for the dial on the radio.

“Don’t even,” I warned him. Hades’ eyes sparkled in challenge, and he started thumbing through the songs on my playlist. “Besides, I know how to handle my powers now, thanks to you. Don’t worry; I’ll still visit the Underworld when I don’t need you anymore.” I smiled to show I was teasing.

Hades had to channel away all my extra power every night thanks to Orpheus going public with his adventures in the Underworld. The rock star demigod thought that was doing me a favor. Most gods
want
worship, or people simply thinking about them, which constitutes as worship today. But since I hadn’t come into my powers, the extra powers that came with “worship,” or in this case people speculating whether or not Orpheus had gone nuts, were dangerous.

I wasn’t complaining. More time with Hades was always good in my book, and it meant that however much my mom wanted to, she couldn’t forbid me from seeing him. He was my lifeline.

“Just be careful.” Hades pulled at his seat belt and adjusted it over his shoulder. “I think you’ll find once school starts, you’re being too ambitious with your schedule between attending court in the Underworld, lessons with your mom, working at the flower shop, and school. College is going to be a lot more demanding…And unnecessary.”

I frowned and turned on my blinker. Mom said the same thing. I was probably the only teenager on the planet being dissuaded from attending college. I passed a silver car and moved back into the right lane. “How is college any more unnecessary than high school? No one’s suggested I drop out of high school.”

“Because you need to blend in,” Hades explained. “The socialization you learn in school alone is valuable. People get suspicious when they can’t find a diploma in your records. It’s another mark on the paper trail. You came from somewhere, no reason to suspect you of being anything but human.”

I paused, considering. “What about in a hundred years? I’ll still be around then, and somehow I doubt my diploma—”

“So you go again. No doubt the customs have changed, so there will be more to learn. Unlike the rest of us, you’ll probably look young enough to pull it off without a glamour.”

I scowled. I was not repeating high school. Once was bad enough. I also didn’t like the reminder that I was probably going to look seventeen for all eternity. I was supposed to grow into my early twenties and
then
stop aging. But dealing with all the power from Orpheus was probably going to make me come into my powers earlier than usual, which was good, and make me stop aging sooner, which was bad.

I know I shouldn’t whine about things like immortality, and I know it’s shallow, but I’m really short. I was hoping to grow a few more inches so I could do little things, like reach the cups in the top cabinet without having to use a step-stool. “I still don’t see why college is a bad idea. It’s normal to go to college. Melissa and I are going to move into the apartment above Mom’s flower shop. We’re going to take all our classes together. It’s going to be so much fun.” I grinned at Hades. “I might even go Greek. Join a sorority.”

He hesitated.
Don’t say it
, I urged him silently.
Don’t tell me I’m not normal. I know.

I liked being a goddess and all the perks that came with it. But that didn’t mean I was willing to scrap all the plans I’d made for my life before I’d discovered what I was. That was the plus to being immortal. I could live the life I’d envisioned for myself and then do whatever else I was supposed to do as a goddess…later.

Of course, some plans would change. I probably wouldn’t be buying that house with the white picket fence on the corner of West Lake Drive and Lumpkin Street. I certainly wasn’t going to marry Orpheus and have identical twin girls named Harmony and Melody. I was already married, and I had a castle in the Underworld. But I still wanted to enjoy the steps between.

“So…” Hades shifted in his seat to face me. “Your mom said you thought Zeus may just want to…get to know you?”

Oh gods!
I didn’t know what was worse, Mom hating Hades or actually
talking
to him. “I’m not stupid,” I snapped. “He sent a serial rapist after me. He couldn’t have thought that would end well. It’s just…” I sighed. “Part of me, a stupid part of me, I’ll admit, kind of hopes the whole thing was just a big misunderstanding.”

Hades considered that for a moment. “It’s not stupid to want that,” he spoke with the slow precision of someone choosing each word with careful consideration. “And honestly, if it weren’t so dangerous, I’d let you hold on to that…fantasy. But you have to understand something about Zeus. There is
nothing
good in him. He’s—”

I whipped my head around so fast my neck popped in protest. “How can you say that? He’s a part of me!”

Hades held up his hands in surrender. “That isn’t what I me—”

“He’s just as much a part of me as she is. Everything I am came from them, no matter how much you try to ignore it or how much I wish I could forget it, he’s my
father
.”

“Okay, pull over.”

“What?”

“You’re upset and what I’m about to tell you is important, so pull over.”

I scowled but pulled off to the side of the road, flipping my hazards on. “What?”

Hades waited until he was sure I had his full attention. “You are not the sum of your parents.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, okay. But that doesn’t change the fact that—”

“I’m not trying to give you some sort of feel-good speech here.” Hades’ voice rose in frustration. “I’m serious. You aren’t them. They aren’t any part of you. They gave you powers and a physical appearance and that’s
it.
You are
nothing
like them, and you won’t grow up to be like them either.”

I ducked my head. “Maybe not the sum of both of them, Hades, but I am something from both of them. If there’s nothing good in him then—”

Hades brushed a strand of hair off my face and tilted my chin up till I was looking at him. “That has no bearing on you. Look, do you think I’m evil?”

My mind flashed back to Pirithous, a demigod who’d been working with Boreas, screaming in agony as Hades turned him into stone. “Dark? Yes. Evil? No.”

“Well, my parents were. They make Zeus look like a saint. We are not destined to become our parents.”

“I killed Boreas, Hades. Without so much as a second thought.”

“He deserved it.”

And I’m keeping something from you. Something terrible.
I opened my mouth and tried to tell him for the thousandth time. My stomach twisted and my pulse raced. I closed my eyes against the dizziness and let it go. The feeling went away instantly.

“Persephone?” Headlights glittered in his eyes.

“If he pulls the long-lost father card, I won’t go off to the dark side,” I promised him.

Hades let out a deep breath, and his entire body seemed to relax. I blinked. He’d really been worried. He returned his attention to the playlist while I eased the car back on the road. His fingers flipped deftly over the screen. “Orpheus…Dusk…Orpheus…Dusk…do you have anything on here that doesn’t make people want to jump off a cliff?”

I made an offended noise but was glad to have the conversation return to normal. “I’m driving. When you learn to drive something more modern than a horse and buggy, we can listen to your music.”

“I can drive!”

“Did they even have cars the last time you came to the surface?” I teased.

“Yes.”

“Not counting the minute and a half you spent rescuing me last year?”

Hades fell silent, and I laughed. “I didn’t think so.”

Despite my teasing, when I’d been driving three hours, I pulled over and let him drive. He would know how to control anything humans made. All the gods who’d been created did. Gods who’d actually been born, like me, had to learn everything the hard way.

I fell asleep to Hades’ running commentary on my playlist. When I opened my eyes, the sun was peeking through the clouds.

“We’re here,” Hades announced.

I yawned. There was a black leather jacket draped across me that hadn’t been there before. It took me a minute to place it before I remembered Hades had been wearing it. He walked around and opened my door. A Greek revival plantation home stood before us, a sign proclaiming it to be the Riverview Hotel.

“I already checked us in,” Hades said.