The Shadow Prince (43 page)

She nods. “So then Hades, having botched it the first time, still decided to try again?”

“He was more careful this time. He created the Underlords after his own image, out of mud from the river Styx, fire from the heart of the Underrealm, and shadows from the shades of the dead. Persephone herself breathed life into the first two. Twin sons named Life and Death. They were gifted with the Helm of Hades—the ability to be nearly invisible in the dark—and the fire that burns in their eyes. The twins were the light of their lives.”

Daphne shakes her shoulders like something has made her feel cold. “It’s that nearly invisible in the dark thing that really creeps me out. You shouldn’t have followed me backstage at my audition like that. You freaked me out so much, I almost couldn’t sing.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask her. “What auditions? I never followed you backstage anywhere.”

“After we met in the grove, didn’t you follow me to the school? There was some sort of invisible presence with me backstage. Wasn’t that you?”

I shake my head. “I didn’t follow you to the school.”

Her eyes widen as she looks at me to make sure I’m not lying. “I did hear a weird hissing sound, like before the Keres attacked. Maybe that’s what followed me—but wouldn’t it have been attacking Pear at that time?” Her shoulders convulse again. “And I could have sworn I saw your eyes flashing in the shadows of the auditorium. Someone was watching me.”

“I swear to you, Daphne, I went straight back to Simon’s place after the grove. If someone was watching you, it wasn’t me.”

But the question that haunts me is: who was it?

As far as I knew, Dax had been with Simon at that time, and Garrick had been sick and locked in his room at Simon’s mansion.

Could there be another Underlord in Olympus Hills that I don’t know about?

“Where does the lightning come from?” Daphne asks like she’s eager to get off the disturbing topic of invisible people following her. “I thought that was a Zeus thing?”

“It is. The Underlords were gifted with the ability to throw lightning bolts from the Sky God himself. But that’s where the story takes a darker turn. You see, Hades was already in trouble with Zeus for creating the Keres by accident, and the Sky God fancied himself the only god who was allowed to create new life out of the elements. So he stole the twins and claimed them as his own creations—his own children—and even gave them his lightning bolts as supposed proof of his paternity.”

“I can imagine Hades and Persephone were not too happy about that.”

“To say the least. Hades opened the gates to the underworld and unleashed a couple of the reaper Keres to bring back his children from the Skyrealm. They kidnapped Death and brought him home, but Life wasn’t so lucky. He’d fallen and scraped his knee earlier in the day, and the Keres, unable to restrain themselves, tore the poor child apart.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Not as terrible as the war that followed. It went on for hundreds of years, trashing everything in between the Skyrealm and the Underrealm—namely, the mortal world. Hades caused volcanoes to erupt, sending ash and fire into the sky, and then Zeus would retaliate. Did you know that almost every culture in your world has a legend of a great flood that almost destroyed the earth? That’s what happened when the Sky God opened the heavens in an effort to drown out the Underrealm. He failed, luckily, because Hades was smart enough to lock the gates. Nothing living can get through them when they’re locked.”

“Rain is living? Well, it has a song, so I guess that would probably mean it’s alive.”

“A song?” It’s my turn to sound surprised.

“Everything has an inner song. Everything living, that is. I can hear it. You probably think that sounds crazy. Most people do.”

“I’d say it sounds far less addled than ‘hello, I’m an underworld prince and I’m here to take you to live with me in the land of the dead’ and all.”

A smile on my behalf cracks her lips for the first time since she learned the truth about me. It’s fleeting and small, but I see it out of the corner of my eye before it goes away.

“How did the war end?” she asks. “I mean, the world is still here, so I imagine it stopped.”

“It’s more of a stalemate, really. The war has been at a standstill since Hades was murdered.”

“How did that happen?” Daphne asks. Her voice sounds almost void of the hostility she’s shown me all day—it’s been edged away by curiosity. “You said a god has to lose his … totem?”

“That’s the closest word in your language for it. We call it a Kronolithe. It’s his symbol, object of power. It’s what gives him his immortality. It means ‘Kronos’s stone.’ ”

“Kronos? That name sounds familiar. Wasn’t he one of the first gods, in Greek mythology?”

“Yes, he was the father of Zeus and Hades and many others. He was a greedy, prideful ruler and he feared that his children would overthrow him someday—so he ate them as soon as they were born. All except for Zeus. His mother wrapped a rock in a blanket and fed that to Kronos instead. Zeus then killed his father and cut his siblings free from his father’s stomach. Once Kronos was overthrown, they decided to draw lots and divvy up control over the five realms. Each new ruler was given a piece of the stone Kronos had eaten. I am not sure how it works, but those pieces of Kronos’s stone are what make them gods. Zeus became the Sky God, and he fashioned his Kronolithe into an iron thunderbolt. Poseidon, who was chosen as the god of the Oceanrealm, made his into a trident. Hades drew the lot of overseeing the realm of the dead, and he made his Kronolithe into a golden bident—kind of like a two-pronged staff. That’s where Christians get their stories about their devil carrying a pitchfork. But it was also a Key.”

“The Key of Hades? I read something in my mythology book about that. It was what he used to lock and unlock the gates to the
underworld. So the Key and the bident were one and the same? But how did he lose it? The book said he never let the Key out of his sight.”

I smile at Daphne. Her enthusiasm for the subject surprises me for someone who claims to want nothing to do with my world.

She gives me a look that I can’t read.

“What?”

“You look different when you smile,” she says. “You should do it more often.”

“I’ll try,” I say, but my expression defaults to my practiced mask. Why does smiling in front of her make me feel so … vulnerable? “As for the answer to your question, I don’t really know. There are lots of versions of the story, and I have no idea what’s myth and what’s real, but according to the version Master Crue taught us—”

“In what, like, Underlord primary school?” It would be impossible not to catch the sarcasm in her voice.

“Something like that, I guess. According to that version, it was a traitor who stole it. A man who begged for one thing but took something else instead.”

“Who was he?”

“Orpheus.” There’s a bite to my voice when I say his name. We’ve been taught from the age we were nurslings to despise him.

“The musician?”

I nod. “He used his music to confound Hades—manipulate his emotions. He begged for his wife to be returned to him, and the goddess and god of the Underrealm were so moved by his songs that they agreed to let him take her back to the mortal world. It wasn’t until he was almost gone that they realized that Orpheus had taken something else while they were distracted. The Key.
Hades sent an army of Keres to stop him. They grabbed Eurydice, but Orpheus escaped. Hades went after him in his chariot, but he never returned. He was ambushed without his Kronolithe, and the Sky God struck him down. Some say Orpheus was working for the Sky God; others say it was Orpheus’s father, Apollo, who orchestrated the theft, and that Hades’s death was unintentional. Others say Orpheus knew nothing of what he was doing and acted purely out of fear—he’d stolen the bident so he could lock the main gates, thinking nobody would be able to take his wife from him again. Whatever the case, the treacherous deed was done. Hades was slain and the gates of the underworld have been locked tight ever since, and the war has been at a virtual standstill.”

“This may seem like an obvious question, but if Hades was the ruler of the land of the dead, and he, you know,
is
dead, then why isn’t he still in charge? And what about your mother? Why wouldn’t she still be with you there?”

“It doesn’t work that way. There are many different lands within the Underrealm, and three different places souls go when they die. Tartarus is the land where people go if they have outright wronged the Gods. It’s a place of eternal torment, like what Christians and other religions believe to be their version of Hell. People who die with glory and honor—like victorious Champions, war heroes, and the like—go to the land of Elysium. It is what you would think of as heaven. But everyone else becomes a nameless, faceless shade in the Wastelands. They’re kind of what you would think of as zombies. Hungry, insatiable, mindless souls.

“Normally, someone like Hades would have gone to Elysium, but as the stories go, fearing reprisal, the Sky God refused to give his brother a proper burial, and dishonored him by scattering his
body throughout the Overrealm. As a result, Hades became just another shade, forced to wander the Wastelands. Most people believe Tartarus is the worst possible fate that could befall a soul, but I think it’s the Wastelands. Because even though you’re in torment, you’re still yourself.”

“I agree,” she says. “So do you ever get to visit your mother in Elysium?”

“My mother wasn’t a Champion or a hero. Only the honored go to Elysium. She is just another shade now.”

“But there is more than one way to be honorable,” she says. “Doesn’t being a good person count for anything?”

I don’t know how to respond to that. I’ve never thought of honor in any other way than I have been taught to consider it. I’ve never imagined my mother being anywhere other than lost to me forever in the Wastelands. “I don’t know,” I finally say.

“So what happened to the Key?” she asks.

“Nobody knows. But Dax has a theory that we need the Cypher to find it.”

“And that’s supposed to be me?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll see about that,” she says. “Hey, wait a second. So how did you get here? If the gate is locked and all?”

“Through Persephone’s Gate. It’s kind of like a back door to the underworld. Demeter built it to ensure that Persephone would always be able to return to the mortal world without Hades’s consent. I guess she was afraid he might try to stop her, depending on his mood. But I know what you’re thinking. Why don’t we just use that door to come and go from the Underrealm as we please? Use it to launch another attack on the Skyrealm? It’s because the gate only opens once every six months and it was originally built
to transport only a single person. We can maybe get a handful of Underlords through it at once. It’s reserved now for the transport of Champions and their Boons.”

“And what’s up with that? Why do you need Boons? Are they your mates?” A pink blush brightens her cheeks. “Erm … I mean, are Underlord girls just really ugly or something?”

“There are no Underlord women. I don’t know if it’s a remnant of Demeter’s curse or just the will of the Fates, but no female child has ever been born in the Underrealm.”

“Oh,” she says. “So that’s what’s with all the girl snatching.”

“Nobody is snatched. The Boons must give their consent to come.”

“But do they really know what they’re getting themselves into? Consent isn’t really consent if she doesn’t know what she’s saying yes to.”

I am silent for a long while. I can’t deny that there is truth to Daphne’s words. I never knew why my own mother had agreed to follow Ren into the Underrealm—what he promised her to get her to come—but I doubt she knew that it would lead to her eventual death. A pang of guilt hits me. Daphne doesn’t know that saying yes means that she very well could be agreeing to a much shorter life span.
But that is if she is only a Boon
, I try to tell myself.
If she is the Cypher, could that mean she would survive longer than an ordinary girl? Perhaps finding the Key to the Underrealm will grant her immortality, too, when it is restored to the Underlords
.

But how exactly will the Court use her to find the Key? What will be the cost?

“The Boons live very comfortable lives of luxury,” I say at last. “I imagine that appeals to many girls.”

“Some,” she says. “But I don’t fancy giving up my free will for comfort.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

“And I don’t fancy finding this Key for you people, either. You think I want you restarting this war and trampling my world again in the process?”

“It’s not just for opening the gates. The Key is also needed to stop the locks on Pandora’s Pithos from failing. Imagine what would happen to your world if more of the Keres got out. They would multiply and do far more damage than any fight between the Lords.”

“Oh,” she says, quietly. “Could that really happen?”

“I don’t know for sure. There are rumors.…”

“So you don’t know anything, really.”

I start to say something, but she stops me.

“I don’t want to hear any more. I’m not going to be your Cypher, so stop trying to use scare tactics on me.”

We are both wordless for a long time after that. Daphne fiddles with the touch screen, trying to find a radio station, but we’re too remote to get anything clear. There’s only one car in front of us and one car behind.

“All my music was on my phone,” she says, turning off my radio.

“I have half a dozen MP3 players.… But I left them all in my other car.”

Daphne starts to hum to herself. It’s a song that sounds vaguely familiar to me, but I can’t say that it’s one of the ones I downloaded from the music store. I listen to her, melting into the melody, until a sudden pain pricks behind my eyes. I rub at them and realize I’ve got tears welling in the corners. I wipe them away
quickly, but not fast enough for Daphne not to notice.

“What is it?”

“That song. I think I’ve heard it before. I think my mom used to whisper it to me when no one was around. It made me feel … safe. Protected. Maybe even happy.”