Neon Gods (Dark Olympus #1)(42)
He’s got a strange look on his face. “I don’t know if we could make it to all of them before spring. But we can try.”
The strange warm feeling in my chest blossoms. “Thank you, Hades.”
“Let’s go in and get out of the cold.” He leans past me to open the door.
I don’t know what I expect to find inside, but it’s a small flower shop, with groupings arranged in cute tin buckets around the counters. A white man with a shaved head and truly impressive black mustache sees us and jerks away from the wall he was just leaning on. “Hades!”
“Matthew.” Hades nods. “Is the greenhouse open?”
“For you? Always.” He reaches under the counter and tosses over a set of keys. If I wasn’t looking closely, I might mistake his eagerness for fear, but it is eagerness. He’s delighted that Hades is here, and he’s barely concealing it.
Hades nods again. “Thanks.” Without another word, he tugs me through the room to a small door tucked in the back corner. It leads to a narrow hallway and up a set of steep stairs to another door. I make the climb in silence, fighting not to wince when each step sends a dull pain echoing up my legs.
The sight that greets us behind this final door makes the discomfort more than worth it. I press my hand to my mouth and stare. “Oh, Hades. It’s beautiful.” A greenhouse covers what I expect is the entirety of the roof of the building, housing row after row of flowers of every kind and color. There are hanging pots with vines and pink and white flowers cascading down. Roses and lilies and flowers I have no name for lined up carefully beneath cleverly concealed water lines. The air is warm and faintly humid and it heats me straight through.
He stands back and watches as I move down the aisle. I stop before a cluster of giant, purple ball-like flowers. Gods, they’re pretty. I find myself speaking without meaning to. “When I was a little girl, back before my mother was Demeter, we lived out in the country that surrounds Olympus. There was this field of wildflowers that my sisters and I would play in.” I move to the mass of white roses and lean over to inhale, enjoying their scent.
“We pretended we were fairies until we grew out of those types of games. This place reminds me of that.” For all that it’s cultivated instead of flowers left to grow wild, there’s an aura of magic about this place. Maybe it’s the little bit of springtime in the midst of a city cloaked in winter. The glass is faintly steamed, concealing the outside and giving the impression of us standing in the middle of another world.
Hades seems determined to take me through portal after portal. First the room behind the black door. Now this little slice of floral heaven. What other treasures does the lower city hold? I want to experience them all.
I feel Hades at my back, though he keeps a careful distance between us. “It’s easy to forget you’re in Olympus when you’re up here.”
An asset when someone carries the burdens Hades does. Even if he’s not a publicly active member of the Thirteen, it’s becoming clear that he holds plenty of responsibility behind the scenes. With the entire lower city resting on his shoulders, it’s no wonder he craves escape from time to time.
I turn and look at him. He’s so out of place here in his black suit and broody good looks, like a hellhound that wandered into a garden party. “Why here?”
“I like the flowers.” His lips curve a little. “And the view is outstanding.”
For a breathless second, I think he’s talking about me. It’s there in the way he looks at me as if the room ceases to exist around us. I can’t help holding my breath, waiting for what he’ll do next, but Hades just takes my hand again and tugs me down the aisle and through a set of glass doors I hadn’t noticed before. They lead into a second, smaller room that’s been set up almost like a sitting room. There are still flowers around the walls but the center of the room holds a number of chairs and a couch, all perched atop a thick rug. There’s a low coffee table with a stack of books, and the entire scene just invites a person to curl up and lose themselves for a few hours.
Hades bypasses the furniture and stops in front of the glass wall that edges up to the perimeter of the roof. “Look.”
“Oh,” I breathe.
He’s right. The view is outstanding. The greenhouse overlooks the River Styx’s curving journey, carving a swath between upper and lower city. This section of the river curves into a deep reversed C shape, creating a little peninsula on the upper-city side, bringing the water closer to us. The divide between the two parts of the city is barely noticeable from this position. We’re nowhere near the city center; the buildings on the upper-city side are older and more varied than I’m used to seeing. I wonder if they have the same type of columns that I’ve seen in the lower city, if the artist who created them crossed the river to leave their imprint.
“The shop is owned by an old family friend. At one point, I got into some trouble as a kid, and my punishment was tending the greenhouse for a few weeks.”
I manage to tear my gaze away from the view to shoot him a look. “What kind of trouble?”
He grimaces. “It doesn’t matter.”
Oh, now I have to know. I edge closer to him and grin. “Come on, Hades. Tell me. What kind of trouble could you possibly have gotten up to?”
He hesitates, and disappointment threatens to sour the mood, but finally he grudgingly grinds out, “I took the owner’s car for a joyride. I was fourteen. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”