The Shadow Prince (9 page)

When Garrick had been reassigned to the Pits after he was
accused of stealing, I’d been glad to see him go. Relieved to be rid of the walking reminder of my shame. But I can’t help wondering what his life has been like in that terrible place.
And if he knows what part I played in what happened to him …

At least he hadn’t been attacked by Rowan again, like he feared. Not yet anyway.

“Just keep walking,” Dax says. I didn’t realize that I’d stopped moving.

The ground trembles, and a faint green light begins to pulsate in the archway at the end of the ravine. The gate is beginning to activate. The old myths say that the gate was built for Persephone, the first Boon to be brought to the Underrealm by the original Hades. Persephone’s mother, the harvest goddess, created the gate to ensure that her daughter could return to the Overrealm for six months out of every year—as was decreed by Hades’s brother, the Sky God, in order to appease the keepers of both realms. But that was back when the Sky God cared about making peace. Back before the war between the gods. Before the dark day when Hades was slain by the Sky God and the Key to the Underrealm was lost. This made it so Persephone’s Gate is now the only entrance or exit that exists between our world and the Overrealm that a living soul can pass through.

Unfortunately, the gate is active only for two twenty-four-hour periods a year. Once in the fall and once in the spring. Those times have been reserved for the entering and exiting of the Champions, sent on their quests to the Overrealm.

The gate’s green light grows richer until it reaches a shade similar to emeralds. The ground shakes again, the tremor knocking an elderly Lesser off balance as I pass by with Dax. I step around the man and hear a familiar, derisive laugh. I look up toward the
Court, which surrounds the gateway, and find Rowan standing with Lex and Killian.

I stop in front of the pulsing gate. Dax stands behind me. I look away from Lex, Killian, and Rowan, waiting for one of them to make an accusation against me pertaining to the fight after the ceremony. But no one speaks.

Sweat beads on my brow as I realize there is one person who is missing from this scene. My father is not present.

Dax leans close. “I’m sure he’s just attending to some pressing matter,” he says, as if he can read my mind.

Master Crue, one of my teachers, steps to the front. I wonder what I will be tested on now, and try to remember everything I ran through during the night. But Master Crue merely gestures at the light that has filled the archway and says, “Godspeed, Champion Haden. May you be crowned with victory upon your return in six months’ time.”

Dax nudges me and I take a step forward—then come to a halt. Dax almost slams into my back.

“Wait,” I say loudly enough that the Court can hear me.

“Gods, no,” Dax whispers.

I look at Master Crue and then to Lord Killian. “I’m allowed an entourage, yes?”

Master Crue nods, indicating Dax behind me.

“But I can take more than one other with me?”

“Yes,” Killian says hesitantly.

“Then I want to choose one more.” I look at Rowan. “I choose my brother.…” I pause just long enough to watch my words dawn on Rowan. He starts to step forward, just like he had when he thought he was being Chosen by the Oracle. “My half brother, that is.” I turn back and look at the frail boy in the crowd. “Garrick.”

A collective gasp ripples through the ravine. Garrick stumbles forward, looking as though someone pushed him. He seems bewildered and a little panicked as he falls in line with me and Dax. I don’t give Lord Killian or anyone else time to protest and I step up to the gate with my entourage.

“Take these,” Dax says, pressing something into my hand as the three of us enter the pulsing green light. I look down to see that he’s given me a pair of dark-lensed spectacles, and almost drop them as I suddenly lurch forward. It feels as though I’m being yanked by an invisible cable attached to my shoulders, but when I look at my feet, I realize I am still standing in one spot. Wind lashes at my face. I close my eyes, feeling as though I might lose the contents of my stomach. The yanking sensation stops abruptly and I fall to my knees. The dim green glow behind my eyelids has shifted to yellow. I open my eyes only to be blinded by an engulfing yellow light, so intense I feel as though my eyes might melt.

“Put them on,” I hear Dax say.

I realize he means the spectacles and I shove them onto my face. The dark lenses mute the yellow glow, but only barely. After a few aching moments, my vision clears enough that I can discern the shapes of trees and rocks, and a great yellow orb on the horizon, peeking between what looks like two mountaintops. Garrick is huddled on the ground next to me, his hands clasped over his face.

“What the Tartarus is that?” I say, pointing at the orb without actually looking at it.

“Sunrise.” Dax pushes up to his feet. He’s wearing his own pair of dark lenses.

I hear a foreign noise from somewhere in the near distance. I blink several times and make out what seems to be the outline of
a person emerging from the trees in front of us. The silhouette steps forward. “Welcome to Olympus Hills, my lords. I’m certain you will love it here,” a voice says in a tone so … perky … it hurts my ears.

I close my eyes but the light still burns behind my lids.

And humans call the place where I’m from hell
?

chapter eight

This place is heaven
, I admit to myself as I pull open the drapes in the main family room, revealing the incredible view of the lake. Seeing it in the daylight, I know why the real estate around here is so coveted. Jogging trails, trees, bushes, and flowers of almost every kind surround the lake, and I just can’t get over how
lush
everything is. I knew that Ellis was in the middle of the desert, but I never realized exactly what that meant before. Or exactly what I’d been missing.

Mom would love it here
, I think with a pang of guilt. Although she probably wouldn’t be able to get over the fact that the long lake is man-made—according to Marta’s brochure. I can’t really tell, except for the odd figure-eight shape, that it isn’t naturally occurring. I snap a picture of the lake through the window with my new phone—one of the things Marta left, along with a map and a daily itinerary, outside my door this morning.

I text the picture to Jonathan and CeCe with the note:

Arrived just fine. This place is gorgeous! (Please show my mom.)

Mom doesn’t have a cell phone. She says she doesn’t see the point since everyone she knows lives within walking distance. But maybe if I can get Jonathan and CeCe to show her enough pics,
she might change her mind about coming to visit when she sees how beautiful this place is.

“Daphne, is that you, love?” I hear Joe’s groggy voice from behind me.

I step away from the view. The light from the window hits Joe’s face where he’s splayed out on the family room couch. He cracks open one eye, then the other. He blinks a couple of times and then squeezes his eyes shut. “Be a good girl and go away.”

I sigh and shake his booted foot, which dangles over the side of the couch. “Get up, Joe. Marta’s itinerary says that you have an interview today. And I’m headed out. So if you don’t wake up now, nobody will be here to act as your walking snooze button.”

Joe lifts his arm and squints at his wrist, but his watch isn’t there.

I check Marta’s notes: “If Joe can’t find his watch, it’s probably in the fish tank. Again. He likes to test the water-resistance warranty.” I’d thought that was a joke when I’d first read it, but sure enough, I see a couple of clown fish pecking at the platinum watchband at the bottom of the aquarium, which takes up most of the north wall in the family room.

“Bloody hell, is it morning already?” Joe asks, his British accent almost as heavy as his hangover.

“No, Joe. It’s one in the
afternoon
already. And we’ve already had this conversation. Back when I woke you up at noon.”

“Well, then, why did you wake me up again?”

“I told you, some reporter is coming over. Marta had to go somewhere for the day, so she charged me with making sure you wake up.” Along with a laundry list of other tasks. I’d been here for fewer than sixteen hours, and it was already feeling like Marta was trying to shove most of her “babysitting” duties on to me:

Oh boy
. “I think you might want to clean up a bit.” I hitch my thumb at the row of framed platinum records, hanging at precarious angles above the couch. A pizza box had been made into a tepee on the end table, and there are so many half-empty glasses and bowls residing on various chairs and tables in the family room and bits of ground chips living in the white carpet, you’d think he’d thrown a party after we got back last night. Yet from what I could tell from my room in the east wing, it had just been Joe and his greatest hits on Guitar Hero in here.

“A reporter? Why does a reporter want to come here?” Joe sits up. His rings clack against the glass-top coffee table as he searches for his glasses.

“I don’t know. Why
doesn’t
a reporter want to come here?” According to Marta, Olympus Hills is where the rich and famous come to live when they get sick of LA. If a reporter is being allowed inside Joe “the God of Rock” Vince’s mansion, it is probably quite the scoop. “All I know is that Marta said to make sure you’re up
before the reporter arrives.” I check my list. “Also, to make sure you’re wearing pants.” Thankfully, he is. Very tight leather ones, but pants they are. “Marta said you want to make some sort of announcement to the press.”

I can only hope that announcement doesn’t involve outing the secret of his long-lost backwater daughter to the world. Mom always said it was a miracle that the paparazzi had never found us in Ellis. It’s almost like we were invisible to the rest of the world there.

“Oh, right, that.” Joe finds his glasses: thick-framed, nerdy, hipster specs that clash with his leather pants, skull rings, and long, rocker hair.

Three things I know for sure about Joe so far. The longer portions of his hair are extensions, he never wears his glasses in public, and even though he tries to pull off an übercool, leather-clad, Top Forty rocker persona for the press, when I listen real closely, I can hear that he has more of this geeky, Indie singer-songwriter vibe. It’s always baffled me, the few times we’ve met.

He presses the thick frames onto his face and makes a strangled noise as he surveys the mess around him. He turns a wide, toothy grin on me. “Fancy helping a poor bloke clean up a bit?”

“Not on your life.”

“Come on, Daph, no love for your poor old dad?” He wiggles his eyebrows above the rims of his glasses, that cheeky smile on his face. “Quality daddy-daughter time,” he croons.

“You are not my dad.” He isn’t going to let me forget that I called him that back at Paradise Plants, is he? “And cleaning up after your drunken binge doesn’t make for quality lushy-louse–daughter time.”

My anger shows in my voice too much, but at the moment I don’t care. Joe didn’t say a word to me on the entire trip from
Ellis to here, and he’d disappeared the second I arrived at my new house, and the only reason that he’s even paying attention to me now is because he doesn’t want to clean up his own mess. I have no idea why he wanted custody of me if he’s just going to ignore me as much here as he did when I lived a thousand miles away.

Joe places his hand against his chest and gives me an expression that almost looks genuinely crestfallen. But from the smell of stale whiskey and pizza that wafts off him, he is probably just trying to stifle a burp.

“I’m leaving to go find someplace to rehearse. My audition for the music program is today. That’s the whole reason you wanted to bring me here, isn’t it?” I pick up my guitar off the postmodern lounge chair, which clashes with the ancient Greece–inspired architecture of Joe’s mansion. I use my fingernail to press down the peeling edges of a sticker of the Parthenon on my guitar case. The whole thing is covered in stickers of places I plan to visit someday. The Colosseum, Taj Mahal, Eiffel Tower, the pyramids of Giza.

Joe’s eyes look huge and bloodshot as he blinks at me from behind his thick lenses. He doesn’t answer my question, just looks at his wrist again as if trying to read his missing watch. “What day is it?” he asks. “The twentieth?”

“It’s the twenty-first.”

“Already?” Joe jumps up from the couch, and then catches himself against the armrest, like he’s dizzy from standing up too fast. He’s probably trying not to puke.