Neon Gods (Dark Olympus 1)

I just have to figure out how to ensure that I don’t get everyone I am responsible for killed in the process.

Chapter 16

Persephone

I’m still chewing over the new information as Hades carries me out of the room. I protest being hauled around like this, but a small, secret part of me really likes it. I like a lot of things about Hades, truth be told. He’s prickly and overbearing, but even after only a few days, I can see the truth of him.

“Hades.” I lay my head against his shoulder and let the steady beat of his heart soothe me. “I know your secret.”

He heads up the stairs. “What’s that?”

“You snarl and snap and growl, but you’ve got an ooey-gooey center beneath the crusty exterior.” I circle his top button with my forefinger. “You care. I think you actually care more than any of the other Thirteen, which is ironic considering the role you’ve been shoehorned into in Olympus.”

“What makes you say that?” He’s still not looking at me, but that’s okay. It’s actually easer to talk to him this way, without feeling like he can read my mind with a single intense look.

“You want Zeus to pay, but not at the expense of your people. And they are your people. I’ve watched how you are with Georgie, and again with Juliette and Matthew. It’s like that with everyone, isn’t it? They would all walk through fire for you, and you protect them with your big, broody presence.”

“I don’t brood.”

“You are the very definition of brooding.”

He snorts. “Surely I don’t care more than your mother. She’s the one who ensures the entire city is fed and supplied with necessities.”

“Yes, she is.” Impossible to keep the bitterness out of my tone. “She’s very good at her job, but she isn’t doing it out of the charity of her soul. She’s chasing power and prestige. The feeling of enough is always over the next horizon. She was going to sell me to Zeus. She won’t see it that way, but it’s what that engagement was—a transaction. She loves me, but it’s secondary to everything else.”

Hades doesn’t immediately respond, and I look up to find him with a strange expression on his face. He looks almost…conflicted. I tense. “What do you know that I don’t?”

“A number of things.”

I refuse to be distracted by that half-assed joke. “Hades, please. We’re in this together, one way or another, for the rest of the winter. Tell me.”

The longer he hesitates, the more anxiety starts to creep in around the edges. He waits until we reach his bedroom and the door is closed between us and the rest of the house to finally answer. “Your mother passed along an ultimatum of sorts.”

I don’t know why I’m surprised. Of course she did. She’s no more happy with me fleeing than Zeus is. All her careful plans wasted because of a disobedient daughter. She wouldn’t be able to let that stand, not if she knows where I am. I wiggle until Hades carefully sets me on my feet. It doesn’t leave me any steadier. “Tell me,” I repeat.

“If I don’t return you, she’ll cut off supplies to the lower city.”

I blink, waiting for the words to rearrange themselves into an order that makes sense. “But that’s… There are thousands and thousands of people in the lower city. People who have nothing to do with you or me or the Thirteen.”

“Yes,” he says simply.

“She’s threatening to starve them.”

“Yes.” He doesn’t look away, doesn’t do anything but give me the honesty I demand.

I wait, but he doesn’t continue. Surely this is the end of it. Surely we can’t move forward with this plan when so many people will be harmed. The barrier keeping Olympus separate from the rest of the world is too strong for people to leave for supplies, not to mention that part of Demeter’s role is to negotiate favorable prices to ensure everyone has access to resources for well-balanced nutrition, regardless of their income. Without those supplies coming in, people will go hungry.

I can’t believe she’d do this, but my mother doesn’t bluff.

I take a slow breath. “I have to go back.”

“Do you want to go back?”

I give a helpless little laugh. “The irony, if it can be called that, is that the one thing my mother and I have in common is the eye-on-the-horizon thing. All I want is to be free of this place and figure out who I am if I’m not Demeter’s middle daughter. If I don’t have to play a particular role to survive, what kind of person might I turn into?”

“Persephone—”

But I’m not listening. “I guess that makes me as selfish as her, doesn’t it? We both want what we want, and we don’t care who else has to bear the cost.” I shake my head. “No. I won’t do it. I won’t let your people be hurt for my freedom.”