The Mad King (The Dark Kings #1)(26)

Had time moved?

His answer had been simply... yes.

For days since visiting Time, I’d pondered all that that could mean. Was Aphrodite lying? I no longer thought so.

And though I could not fathom a world in which I’d ever known love or true joy, I grew more and more curious by it. And so I watched Calypso.

Studied her lithe movements, her violent tempers, and bit by bit, little by little, I found myself at times fidgeting and restless. But Calypso was an elemental. A primordial form of us, not as evolved or as intelligent.

Everyone knew primordials were primitive and far too ancient to ever change. They simply weren’t as developed as the rest of us.

And then one day I’d heard her song carried upon the currents of my own waters. The song was haunting, melodic, and full of angst. It’d touched me deeply. And though it’d only lasted a few moments, I could not seem to forget it.

Calypso had no form. She was simply water. But in that song, I’d heard a reflection of my own soul. I couldn’t understand it and couldn’t hope to make sense of it, but I had to know more.

Feeling irrational but determined, I set out to find and study this mysterious little human that Aphrodite seemed to care so much about. If unlocking Alice Hu’s past was the key to learning my own, then there was no other choice.

*

Alice

I felt his eyes on me. The Lord of the Underworld watching me, his mood pensive. I knew he was rethinking his decision to bring me here. Or at least it’s what I’d suspected. For many days now he’d visited me, always keeping to the periphery of my vision, but not trying to hide either. Letting me know he was there, though keeping enough space to put me at ease.

Hades was as tortured as I was. It wasn’t hard to figure that out. I felt it to the very marrow of my being.

The depths of his depression and loneliness. How swirls and torrents of ice and snow always seemed to follow in his wake, even if he walked through the fields of Elysium, which were supposed to be eternally green and verdant.

Flowers withered and died beneath his feet.

The ground shuddered.

The skies turned gray.

A lot like what happened with me. We were two sides of the same coin, and in that at least, I felt a strange kinship to him.

For some time now, I’d heard the chatter among the dead. Something was terribly wrong with their Lord of the Underworld. The dead were not happy. They spoke of a time when Persephone had first arrived here, when for a period, things had been better. Livelier. But it had been some time since Spring had made her presence known, and things were just different.

Sitting on the banks of the river Lethe, I ran my fingers through the water, watching in a numbed haze as the waters of forgetfulness dripped from between my slender fingers. It’d been days since I’d spoken with Amara, and though I’d not yet drunk of the water (that I recall), I was starting to forget things.

Maybe it was because I played in the water so long. I wasn’t sure. All I knew was I was starting to feel better. I could no longer remember what it was that’d brought me to these waters; the only thing I remembered with any sort of clarity was the memory of that pain. So deep, so all-consuming that there’d been no peace even in death.

It must have been awful, whatever it’d been that brought me here. I still remembered parts of my past. My living. Though it was hazy and there were holes in my memories, images that simply felt smudged out and blurred around the edges so that I couldn’t really recall much of anything.

Emptiness coursed through my veins. I’d come to forget. And now I had. But suddenly I worried that I’d made a terrible decision, because whatever it was I’d forgotten felt like it’d once been vital, necessary. There was a hole inside me, a yawning emptiness that stretched like fingers toward infinity.

I shivered and then sniffed, wiping at the near-constant, fat tears coursing down both cheeks.

“Why do you cry, little human?” The voice was deep, melodious, and made me tremble from the raw power trapped behind the words.

Looking up, I stared into the dark eyes of Hades himself. Trapped within the depth of his gaze licked bright curls of fire. He was nothing like the Disney version I’d grown up on. He didn’t have the head of blue flame or the angular, sharp features that nearly always connoted a villain in disguise. Hades was a beautiful man.

Dark, shaggy hair that made my heart clench with the echoing memories of that which had been lost to me. Dark eyes and swarthy features.

A devil...

I frowned, wondering where that thought had come from.

Moving slowly, seeming not to want to startle me, he knelt beside me. The circle of grass around his booted feet began to slowly curl inward, turning from a deep jeweled green to a light jade, to yellow, brown, before turning to particles of ash and blowing away on the chilly breeze.

Snow drifted lazily around his shoulders.

“Why does she fight for you, little Alice Hu?” he asked, voice grown thoughtful.

I blinked, realizing he still waited on me to speak. I swallowed hard. Grabbing hold of my stomach, I forced myself to speak, though my vocal chords were woefully out of practice and no part of me wanted to.

It felt so much easier to breathe when I was numb.

“No one... wants me,” I croaked haltingly, voice rough from disuse.

His strong jaw clenched and his shaggy brows lowered into a tight vee. “You’re wrong there, spirit.”