He grew serious. Or maybe it was a trick of the light on his face, making him seem as though he were never more honest than in that moment. “I will keep you safe, Sera.”
Before she could answer—before she could slow the instant, panicked beating of her heart—he was gone, heading down the steps into the darkness. She came to the edge of the railing, watching as his light circled down the narrow steps. “How far down does it go?”
“Don’t worry, Angel, I shan’t lead you into hell.”
“All the same, I prefer not to follow,” she called.
“Think of yourself as Persephone.”
“It’s summer,” she retorted as a brazier came to life, revealing the bottom of the staircase. “Persephone is aboveground in September.”
He looked up, his beautiful eyes turned black in the darkness, a wide grin on his face. “You’ll follow.”
She huffed a little laugh. “I have no idea why you would think such a thing.”
“Because this is what we do,” he said. “We follow each other into darkness.” And then he passed through a dark doorway and out of view.
And damned if he wasn’t right.
She followed, lifting her skirts and inching her way down the winding staircase, grumbling about bad decisions and irritating dukes the whole way. At the bottom, she looked up, the circular opening at the top of the stairs a great distance away, the stone and stained glass windows seeming, suddenly, as though they were a frieze painted on the ceiling rather than an entire room above.
It was beautiful artistry—a mastery of perspective like none she’d ever seen.
Air teased at her skirts, a cool and welcome respite from the cloying heat above. It comforted Sera for a moment, before she realized the reason for the comfortable temperature. She was underground.
The thought had her looking to the teardrop-shaped doorway where Haven had disappeared, and where he stood, not a foot away, torch in hand, grin upon his handsome face. “I told you that you would come.”
She scowled. “I can go just as easily.”
He shook his head. “Not if you want to see it.” He waved his light deeper into the space, revealing what appeared to be a narrow, teardrop-shaped tunnel, painted on all sides in the same motif as the windows above, dark sky and a starscape that gave competition to the night sky beyond.
Her eyes went wide. “How far does it go?”
“Not far,” he said. “Take my hand.”
She shouldn’t. “No.”
He looked as though he might argue with her, but instead he nodded and went ahead, lighting another brazier, and then another, each revealing a few more yards of the tunnel.
“We are under the lake?”
Another brazier. “We are technically inside the lake, but yes.”
“Why?”
And another. “Do you know the story of the Pleiades?”
There were moments when she could forget that Haven was a duke, and moments when his past, being raised in a constant state of aristocratic whim, showed without pause. Invariably, those moments were the ones like this, when he ignored questions and changed subjects without apology.
She did not hide her irritation. “I know they were sisters. I know they were daughters to Atlas.”
Another light flared to life. “And once Atlas was punished, forced to hold up the heavens, they were left alone, with no one to protect them from gods or men. Seven sisters. With only each other.”
She did not like the thread of awareness that went through her at the words. The familiarity of the story—her father, made aristocrat without warning, she and her sisters thrust into the world of the London aristocracy without aid. Never accepted for their low beginnings, never admired for the way they rose.
She affected a false bravado. “Dangerous daughters must stay together.”
“One more than the rest.” A flare of orange, casting his serious face in angles and shadows. He continued, his voice low and dark like the endless teardrop hallway. “The oldest six Pleiades were beautiful, and each tempted a god. Each married into the heavens. But the youngest, Merope—the most beautiful, most graceful, most valued—she caught the eye of a dangerous suitor—one who was earthborn.”
“Isn’t that always the way? Your sisters get their hearts’ desire, and you get a mere mortal.” Another brazier. This tunnel was endless. “Are we crossing the entire lake underwater?”
It was as though she had not spoken. “No mere mortal. Orion was the greatest hunter the world had ever known, and he pursued Merope relentlessly. And she was tempted.”
“Of course she was. I’m certain he was handsome as the devil.”
“He was, as a matter of fact.” Ah. So he was listening. “She did everything she could to hide from him, knowing there was no hope for them.”
She, too, was listening, the words no hope settling like an ache in her chest.
“She turned to her sisters, who banded together, working as only sisters can do to protect their youngest from the mortal hunter who would never be good enough. They began by blinding him—”
“And you thought my sisters were bad.” He lit a final flame, revealing another dark doorway, the hint of something beyond.
One side of his mouth tilted up, even as he stood framed in darkness, watching her. He looked like a god of sorts—a modern one. Tall and beautiful, with a face chiseled from marble, rendered even more godlike in the flickering light from the torch he held, as though he could summon flame at will. “His blindness was no deterrent. He was a master hunter, made so by the gods themselves. And so he pursued Merope, ever more desperate for what they might have together. For the possibility of their future.”
“You’d think he’d have given up on her, what with her clear disinterest.”
His words were more growl than speech. “Ah, but it wasn’t disinterest. It was fear. Fear of what might have been. And, as he was a mortal, fear of what she would most certainly lose if she succumbed.”
Her heart. Him.
Sera remained silent, and he continued, his words soft and liquid in this private, untraveled space. They were as secret as the place itself. “Orion did not fear blindness. He only feared never finding her. Never having the chance to convince her that they were for each other. That mortal or no, he could give her everything. Sun, moon, stars.”
“Except he couldn’t,” she whispered.
He hesitated at the words, and she noticed his fist clench around the handle of the torch, the way the light trembled there, in the dimly lit corridor, as though her words could manipulate it.
“The sisters went to Artemis, the goddess of hunters, thinking that if she called Orion off his search, he would listen. They pledged her their fealty. And she went to him.”
“He refused,” she said, suddenly knowing the story without ever having heard it. She drew closer to him, desperate for the ending. Knowing it would be tragic.
Wanting it to be happy.
“Of course he refused,” Malcolm said, meeting her at a distance. “And that was his mistake.”