River of Shadows (Underworld Gods #1)

“Maybe if you give him a blow-job, we can actually get some sun for a day or two,” Bell chirps, drumming her tiny hands along the side of the tank. “Those sweetvines don’t taste as sweet without the rays.”

I sigh and straighten up off the window, walking over to Bell. I’m bored in the prison of my room. I haven’t seen Death, I haven’t seen Lovia. Raila comes in with my food, which I appreciate, and sometimes she bathes me, (which, I know, it’s weird, but I’m actually liking it) but she doesn’t stay long. It’s just been me and Bell, and while I like having Bell as company, we’re on totally different wavelengths. I don’t know if mermaids are born with this eternally sunny disposition, but despite the fact that she herself is also a prisoner of Death, who has been shrunken in size and put into a god damn fish tank, she thinks I should be having the time of my life.

Case in point: to her, blow jobs bring sunshine.

I mean, sometimes they do.

“Hard to give someone a blow job when they aren’t here,” I tell her, plopping down on the chaise lounge. “And anyway, that’s out of the question,” I say quickly, even as a certain image floods my brain. I obviously don’t know what Death looks like naked, and while he should look gruesome in theory, I’ve seen only his hand and my imagination is building everything based on that hand. It was strong, wide, capable, its tone honey-colored, like he spends most days under the sun. His fingers were long, quick and slender, hinting at dexterity, his knuckles big, suggesting he has the punch of a hammer. The silver lines of pulsing light etched on him just add more intrigue. Are they on his dick too?

Good lord, I need to clear my head. Apparently, this is what happens when you’re cooped up in your room for too long, you start waxing poetic about a hand.

“You need to get out of this place, Hanna,” Bell says. “I mean it. And unless you start playing the game—”

“He knows about the game, Bell,” I interject. “You heard him the other night. He knows I’ve been playing it and he especially knows it now since I couldn’t follow through.”

“You are allowed to change your mind,” she says quietly.

“I know that,” I tell her.

“He knows that too,” she says. I glance at her, and she widens her aquamarine Barbie-doll eyes. “What?”

“You are always sticking up for him. After all he’s done to you.”

Her little face falls and I immediately feel bad. Shit. She’s in love with him, isn’t she? The horny little mermaid is in love with Death.

“Hey,” I add softly. “I can’t pretend to know what it’s like to be you. You’re an entirely different species, in a whole other world. We both take imprisonment differently.”

She nods, worrying her lip between her teeth. “It’s not that I forgive him for what he’s done,” she says. “It’s just that I can’t hold a grudge. I just can’t. And I know that you’re going to free me when the full moon comes, so I’m already living in the future. This already feels like the past to me.”

Hell, with the way time is supposedly all chaotic out here, I wouldn’t be surprised if that were true.

“Just remember,” Bell says, “your future will come too. And you will want to let go of grudges, so you can truly be free. You’ll be with your father again and this will all seem like some very strange dream.”

My heart clenches at the mention of my father. I’ve been trying not to think about him, because when I do I obsess and drown in a spiral of worry. I don’t know if he’s in the Upper World like Surma had mentioned. I certainly hope so, but at the same time I worry about his memory of all this being gone, which means he might not know what Eero and Noora are really up to. My only hope is that Rasmus made it back home too and will help my father. I know I was just bait to him, collateral to trade, but as long as my father means that much to him, I pray he’ll keep him safe.

“And if you don’t get out of here,” Bell goes on, “it’s because Death would have yeeted you out of here. That’s the word, right? Yeeted? Even Lovia wasn’t sure.”

Fuck. What if that’s what all the snow is about? What if it’s not so much Death dealing with a form of rejection, which must not happen often with a God, but that he’s planning my demise? The snow doesn’t mean he’s upset, it could be a personification of the violence and death to come.

Suddenly there’s a heavy knock at the door. I exchange a harried look with Bell and leap to my feet as she swims to the back of the tank until she’s completely hidden.

I walk to the middle of the room and clasp my hands at my middle. “Come in?” I ask warily. No one has ever knocked before. They always unlock the door first and then barge in.

Now the door opens without unlocking—which means the door was unlocked this whole time—and in steps Death.

“Good morning, Hanna,” he says in his deep voice, his presence flooding the room, bringing with him an air of power and death. “Will you take a walk with me?”

Oh, fuck. I’m dead aren’t I? I’m getting yeeted by his hand.

I glance down at my dress. In my bouts of boredom over the last few days, I’ve tried on everything in the wardrobe. Not everything fits, but some things I rather like. Today I’ve put on a yellow dress with puff sleeves and an empire waist that looks straight out of the Regency era. Since I’ve been lounging, I eschew anything with a corset, which I think are unnecessary evils, a million times worse than a bra.

“You’re fine,” he says to me, nodding at my attire. “It’s a walk through the castle. I’m afraid I can’t do anything about the weather at the moment…” He lets it trail off, as if I’m able to do something about the weather. My god, what if Bell was right?

I stand there, frozen in place, staring at him. Today he’s back to wearing his flowing robe and his skull is more simple, a human one with jagged bones growing out of the top to form a crown, but I can’t feel his eyes the way I normally do. I can’t read anything off him at all except his usual aura of authority.

“You don’t have to come,” he says after a moment, his tone softening. “I only figured you’d been in here for days. Not locked in here, as I’m sure you just realized, but inside this room nonetheless.”

I lick my parched lips, finally finding my voice. “Why was the door unlocked?”

He folds his arms across his chest. “I wanted to see if you’d run. You didn’t even try to fly, little bird,” he adds in a whisper.

“It would be pointless, wouldn’t it?” I counter. “You’ve told me time and time again that there’s no way I can escape. That the walls and wards will keep me in, that the realm would probably kill me.”

“Yes. But probably isn’t definitely. And you’re someone who will grab hold of whatever hope there is.”

“You sound disappointed,” I say. “I guess I should get used to disappointing you.”

There. Now I feel him. I feel the change in his energy, and though his posture hasn’t changed at all, it’s like he slumps internally. The wind outside these walls wails in response. Death has walls just as any of us do, just as this castle does, and they aren’t always impenetrable.

That little bit of information gives me a lot. It gives me the hope he just said I’d hold on to.

“You don’t disappoint me,” he says gruffly, his demeanor changing again. He clears his throat. “Okay, perhaps you do a little. I thought there would be more fight in Hanna Heikkinen. This is the mortal who defeated my Goddess daughter, who stole her boat and wielded her sword, slaughtered the Swan of Tuonela. There will be poems and rune songs sung about you, like a legend. I want to see that girl. I want her to spar with me, to fight me, to show bravery and defiance.”

He walks across the room to me, his steps slow, his boots echoing. He stops right in front of me and peers down and I see his gray eyes peering at me brightly in the dark shadows, like a silver star.

“I do defy you,” I tell him, raising my chin. “But I don’t wish to die. And I don’t think either of us know what you want from me just yet.”

“I think I’ve made it clear,” he says brusquely.