‘My sister, Alea. She’s dead.’
He sighed. ‘Please, sit. You must eat.’
Her skull felt tight, the pressure in her temples mounting. ‘She died three years ago. I need to see her ghost.’
Hades reached for an apple and sliced the fruit precisely in two. Then again and again, arranging the pieces until twelve perfect segments sat side by side on his plate.
‘Let me rephrase my previous question.’ He crunched a segment between his teeth, staring at Danae as he chewed. ‘How did you gain access to the tree with golden apples?’
‘It just appeared.’
‘You’re going to have to do better than that.’
Danae swallowed. ‘If I tell you, will you promise to let me see my sister?’
Hades smiled. ‘A truth for a truth. All right.’
Every instinct cried out for her not to reveal how she had gained her powers. But what choice did she have?
‘My sister drowned herself. I dragged her body from the ocean, then her chest split open, and a tree with golden apples grew from her heart. I … I was compelled to eat one.’
Hades stared at her, so still he could have been cast from white marble. When he did not speak, she continued, ‘Is Alea in the Asphodel Meadows? Is her soul here, in the Underworld, with the other virtuous dead?’
‘Gold that grows bears no fruit …’ he murmured, as though he had not heard her. ‘Yet here you are.’
‘Is there an afterlife in the Underworld?’ Danae pressed.
Hades blinked, then sighed once more and popped another slice of apple into his mouth.
Danae could contain herself no longer. She slammed her fists onto the table and screamed, ‘Tell me!’
Hades stretched out a hand. Danae gasped as her fingers took on a life of their own and clenched tight around the knife, lifting it to her neck. A sickening realization crashed over her: he was using his life-threads to control her.
‘Remember to whom you speak, little Titan.’ He released her hand, and the knife clattered to the ground. ‘I was led to believe you spoke with Prometheus, yet you seem as ignorant as every other mortal.’ His voice was laced with irritation.
Little Titan.
‘He was a liar,’ Danae rasped.
Hades surveyed her and for a while neither of them spoke. Then he lifted a hand into the air. Danae flinched, but this time it was not his own power he used. She was grabbed by several pairs of rough hands. The air around her shimmered, and four pairs of crimson eyes loomed out of the darkness.
She lashed out, but they were ready for her, leathery hands pinning her arms to her sides.
‘Take her to the ferryman. Instruct Charon to show her my kingdom of Erebus.’ Hades met her gaze. ‘You will find the answers you seek. I hope you may be of use to me when you return.’ He snapped his fingers and as the shades dragged her past the table he added, ‘A word of advice. Stay close to the ferryman, however inquisitive you may feel. The creatures of the Underworld know not to harm Charon, but you are something new …’ He turned back to his plate.
‘Will Charon take me to my sister?’ Danae called as the shades hauled her towards a doorway beyond the root table.
The Lord of the Underworld did not answer, continuing to eat his apple as though she had already left the room.
9. Erebus
The shades marched Danae through a wide hall punctuated by obsidian pillars and emerged onto a large stone platform. She glanced back and saw that her assumption had been correct. Apart from the rectangular crevice harbouring the columns they’d just walked through, Hades’ palace was completely hidden within the rock. She shivered. It felt as though she were standing on the lip of an eyeless giant.
A winding staircase snaked down the rock face from the platform to the ground below, illuminated by those strange lights glowing in the ever-dark sky. The shades pushed her down the steps, and when she finally reached the bottom, her bare feet sank into cold earth.
Danae blinked. Ahead of her stood a grove of trees. How they grew without the light of the sun, she could not fathom. Their bark shone white in the pale glow from the imitation stars, like bones protruding from the soil. As the shades walked her between the neat rows of trunks, she noticed their leaves were almost translucent, the veins visible, like jellyfish whose insides could be seen through their skin. They reminded her of how she saw the world when consuming another being’s life-threads.
The emptiness inside her groaned.
