I stop speaking when I remember the stinging sensation that pricked behind my eyes and the warm liquid that welled up in them and then escaped from the corners. At the time, I didn’t have a word for the water that made tracks down my face and tasted salty as it ran over my lips and down my chin. Tears, I found out later, when I heard the Heirs hiss the word to each other whenever I neared, like I’d done the vilest of things.
“Crying is forbidden past the age of two, and once an Underlord reaches the age of six, he is supposed to be a man. At seven years of age, crying like that is considered disgusting. My father told me to shut up and be still, but instead, I wailed terribly at him, the tears coming faster and harder. The servant who held me was shocked by my tantrum; he let me go; and I fell to my knees.
“I remember looking up at my father just in time to see the back of his ringed hand come sailing at the side of my face. He hit me so hard, I thought my teeth were going to shatter. ‘No son of Hades cries,’ he said to me.
“That was when I retaliated. I told my father that he wasn’t Hades, that he wasn’t my king, and that I didn’t want to be his son anymore. I was so angry, I could feel a burst of lightning forming in my chest. I’d only been in training for a few months and I didn’t know how to use it properly yet. But I stood in front of my father and demanded that he help my mother. I told him that if he didn’t, I would blast him.
“Speaking to the king like that, even if you are his child, is considered to be a sin akin to heresy. I had questioned his authority in front of the Court. Threatened to harm him. I expected him to hit me again—part of me wanted him to. But instead he laughed at me. Laughed at my tears. And that’s when I lost control. I attacked him. With a great, raging scream, I lunged at him and threw a lightning bolt at my father, the king of the Underrealm.”
“Whoa,” Daphne says under her breath.
“He deflected it easily, and sent his own bolt at my feet. It ripped the ground right out from under me and I went flying. I hit the floor and crumpled into a ball. When the ringing in my ears ceased, I realized that the room had fallen completely silent. The servants and the members of the Court who were there looked at me like I had just committed the most unforgivable act in our realm. And that’s when I realized I had. I’d dishonored my father, blasphemed against his title—the name of Hades—physically attacked the king, and brought shame upon myself.
“I tried wiping the tears from my face and begged for his forgiveness. I groveled and laid myself down in front of him in supplication, hoping he would show me mercy.
“But it was too late. I saw it in his eyes. His disdainful glare made me feel hollow all the way down to my bones. He said, ‘You are no son of mine.’
“And that was it. My life as I knew it was over. I was removed from the royal living quarters, dropped to the bottom of my rank, stripped of my honor, and forced to carry this shame for the rest of my life. The only reason I wasn’t thrown out of the Underlords and made a Lesser is because of the oath my father made to my mother when I was born. Rowan gladly stepped into the role of favorite son, and I’ve been trying to win it back—along with my honor—ever since. I didn’t think I’d really get the chance until the Oracle of Elysium chose me for this quest.”
“I’m sorry,” Daphne says after a few long, quiet minutes. “Sounds like you’ve got even worse daddy issues than I do.”
I can tell she’s trying to lighten the mood, but mine grows darker. I am the one who had encouraged her to open herself up to her father—only to be the one who is supposed to take her away from him again.
“They call me the boy who cried,” I say. “They equate my showing that kind of emotion to the ultimate sign of my weakness. They act like it’s the crying that was my undoing—but that is only because it would be dishonorable for them to speak of someone physically attacking the king.”
“Sounds like a great place to live. Can’t wait to get there!” Daphne says sarcastically.
“Well, when you put it that way …” I try to grin sheepishly, but it comes out more like a grimace. I am quiet for a few minutes, staring down the long stretch of highway in front of us. “I think I’d do things differently, if I were king. I’d bring music back to the Underrealm, for one thing. And I wouldn’t treat you like a prize. You’d be my queen. My real queen, not just a figurehead like my mother and the others who fill the role. I think that’s one way the Underlords have gone wrong—what’s missing from my world. I’ve heard that things were different when Persephone and Hades reigned together. Things changed after she left.…”
“She left? Like, for good? I thought she was bound to the Underworld.”
“She was bound to Hades. After he died, she left. She stayed for a while, but then she was so overcome with grief that she went through her gate to the mortal world one spring, and never came back. Or at least that’s how the old stories go.”
“How did Hades die?”
“The Sky God killed him.”
“You mean Zeus?”
“That’s what humans call him.”
“But weren’t they brothers?”
“They were. But they had been at war for nearly a thousand years.”