Chapter 26

26

Aurora

Idon’t know how it happens. One moment, I’m watching myself drop a bomb on the careful happiness Malone and I have created. The next, I’m being ushered into the back of a car by Sara. It happened so fast.

I didn’t expect it to hurt this much.

I didn’t expect to care.

To…fall for Malone.

It was never supposed to be real. I press my hands to my chest as if that can hold in my tears. The wetness leaking out of my eyes almost makes me laugh. It took Malone beating me and fucking me into oblivion to allow me to grieve for my mother, but she breaks up with me and I’m in danger of sobbing like a lost child. Except you can’t break up with someone you never dated. The last two weeks wasn’t dating, wasn’t a relationship, it was an assignation.

Somehow we both forgot that.

Another blink and we’re idling at the curb outside the Underworld. I look out the window, and the horrible feeling in my chest gets worse when I see Allecto step through the doors. She stalks to the car and yanks open the door. “Are you okay?”

“She’s fine,” Sara says from the front seat. “Now get out of my car.” Gone are the easy grins and amusement. They sound like they want nothing more than to rip my head off my shoulders with their bare hands.

I can’t even blame them. I did something I thought impossible. I hurt Malone. As I take Allecto’s hand and let her haul me out of the car and hustle me into the building, all I see is the stricken look on Malone’s face before she turned and walked away from me. I hurt her.

I should be happy. It’s what I wanted, after all. If I couldn’t end her life, at least I dealt her a wound that will take time to recover from. I should be fucking elated.

All I feel is empty.

Allecto doesn’t speak until we’re in the elevator. “Tell me the truth.” Her voice is low and fierce. “I convinced Hades that there was nothing to worry about. Did she hurt you?”

Yes, of course she hurt me. A thousand delicate cuts over the course of eleven days. Pain and pleasure. Pleasure and pain. She delivered both in abundance, and I welcomed it with open arms. I stare at my reflection in the doors. I look as lost as I feel. “No.” I swallow hard. “I hurt her.”

Allecto inhales like she’s about to start demanding more details and then hesitates. “Ah. I see.”

“I told her the truth.” I sound like I’m reading the weather report. This is wrong, wrong, wrong.

The doors open, and Allecto steps out, but she grabs my arm before I can take another step. “Hades wants to see you, but if you go in there with that look on your face, he’s going to go tearing into Malone’s territory and start some shit that we can’t take back. So I’m going to need you to get your shit together.”

I close my eyes and focus on breathing. I can’t think, let alone dredge up a sunny smile to put him at ease. I don’t even know what the truth is anymore. How am I supposed to feel? Guilt and sorrow and grief and, yes, love, have created a tangled mess in my chest.

Gods, I love Malone.

“What’s wrong with me?” I give a broken laugh. “Why her?”

“Aurora.” She hesitates, but it’s too late. We’re standing in front of Hades’s office and there’s no more time. Allecto gives my shoulder a squeeze. “Do you need me to stall?”

“No. I’ve got this.” I don’t sound the least bit convincing, but she doesn’t call me on it. Allecto just gives me another squeeze. “Do you need the training room or a bottle of whiskey?”

“Both?”

The concern on her face deepens, but she nods. “Change after you’re done with him, and we’ll spar first. Then you can drink yourself goofy.”

“Thanks.” I try for a smile, but it feels more like a grimace. Then I push through the door into Hades’s office before I can think too hard about it. Better to just rip off the bandage and get this over with.

Hades pushes up from his desk and rounds it before I make it halfway across the room. He stops in front of me, and for a moment, I’m sure he’s going to take my shoulders, but he manages to restrain himself. He runs a critical eye over me. “You look terrible.”

“Thanks.”

He shakes his head slowly and points to the couch on the other side of the office. “Sit.”

There’s no disobeying that tone of voice, and I don’t particularly want to. I manage to make it to the couch before my legs decide they’re done carrying me. The horrible empty feeling in my chest doesn’t fade now that I’m back in familiar territory. If anything, it gets worse.

It hurt to lose my mother, to finally release the hope that she’d ever wake up. The grief still clings to my skin, mixing with guilt. But losing Malone feels like someone pressed a shotgun to my chest and pulled the trigger. I have a gaping hole where my heart used to be, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to keep walking around as if I’m a whole person. I’m not. I have the sneaking suspicion that I never will be again.

Hades comes and sits on the other side of the couch. That’s when I notice that he’s got two glasses and a bottle of his best whiskey. He sets the glasses on the table in front of us and pours a healthy splash into both. “Drink.”

“I’m supposed to spar with Allecto after this.”

“No, you aren’t.” He nudges the glass toward me. “You’re going to drink this. We’re going to talk about why you conveniently forgot to inform me that you chose to take your mother off life support right before accepting the assignation with Malone. After that, you’re going to sleep.”

I lift the glass, hating the way my hand shakes. “You’re being bossy right now.”

“Don’t do that.” His voice goes harsh. “You have been here nine years, Aurora. You know what I am, and you know where my lines are. So drink your fucking whiskey.”

Realization rolls over me in slow waves as I sip the whiskey. Hades isn’t angry. He’s…worried. For me. Worried to the point of being scared. I blink at him, trying to reconcile the unflappable man I’ve known a full third of my life with the one sitting a few feet away, looking like he’s about ready to start shredding his way through the office. “When did you find out?”

“A few days after you left. The facility called me to inform me that the payments would be cancelled going forward as they were no longer necessary.”

Ah. That explains it. “I’m surprised you didn’t send someone to collect me the moment you found out.”

“Believe me, I tried.” He glares at his whiskey. “Meg and Allecto refused to accept the order. Tisiphone supported them.”

Even Hades can’t ignore it when all three of his Furies unite to draw a line in the sand. I take another, larger, drink of whiskey. “Poor Hades. Sometimes it’s a pain in the ass to be king.”

“We’re not talking about me.” He searches my face, and I have no idea what I’m showing him. My shields lay in pieces at my feet. I can’t rebuild them. I simply don’t have the strength. His expression softens. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Against all reason, that is what has my throat closing and my eyes burning. I blink rapidly and drain the rest of my glass. I haven’t eaten today, and the whiskey warms my stomach and is already giving me a delicious, floaty feeling. Maybe that’s why I tell him something I’ve never told another soul. “I was starting to resent her. That’s horrible, isn’t it? I just wanted her to wake up, and the longer it went on, the more I started to hate the weight of carrying that hope.”

“It’s human.” He states it without a shred of pity. “Is that why you went to Malone? Because it’s easier to hate her than it is to hate yourself?”

I flinch. “She put my mother in a coma and took away any chance I ever had of knowing her.”

Hades takes my hand. “Do you want the comforting lie, or are you finally ready for the hard truth?”

I don’t want hard truths. I just want to wrap up in a blanket and close my eyes and wait for the world to stop spinning in the wrong direction, wait for the hole in my chest to scar over. To check out from reality in a way I’ve never allowed myself to before. I set down the empty whiskey glass.

What I want is not what I need.

I have been a coward long enough.

I take a deep breath. “I probably won’t thank you for the hard truth, but tell me anyway.”

“Your mother wouldn’t have lasted the year. If Malone didn’t do it, someone else would have, and they would have done it in a far crueler fashion.” He holds my gaze. “I understand your blaming her. I sympathize. But do you want to know what the territory was like under your mother’s rule?” He continues before I have a chance to respond. “Crime was at an all-time high, and everyone suffered because she wouldn’t make rules, let alone enforce them. Innocents were harmed because she was a weak leader.”

Impossible not to compare that with the reports I’ve all but memorized about the territory now. Stable. Everyone kept in tight check by Malone and her inner circle. She’s given everyone fucking benefits. The territory is flourishing under her rule, and even though I’ve tried to find fault with it, I can’t.

I clear my throat. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

“You weren’t ready to hear it.” He gives my hand a squeeze and sits back. “I’m not certain you’re ready to hear it now, but your mother finally passing isn’t what’s put that look on your face, is it?”

He’s being too gentle, too kind. This isn’t the normal Hades, and I’m powerless to keep my pain bottled up in the presence of this version of him. I press my fingers to my temples. “What kind of monster am I if I care about the woman who did that to my mother?”

“Ah.”

But I’m not finished. “She is a monster. She hurt my mother.”

“Your mother went into a coma twenty years ago.” He sounds almost idle. “And yet you didn’t find your way to me until three years later.”

I open my eyes, not sure when I closed them. “What’s your point? They were going to take her off life support, and I had to do something.”

“Do you know how long hospitals usually allow a patient to stay in a coma where there’s no brain activity?”

Something slithers through me, something I can barely recognize. I let my hands drop to my lap. “Not three years.”

“Not three years,” he confirms.

It feels like the ground is opening up beneath me, but I’m helpless to do anything but stand here and let it swallow me whole. I simultaneously don’t want to ask and desperately need to know. “Why was she on life support for so long?”

His expression goes sympathetic. “Because Malone paid for it.”

I wait for the words to make sense. Wait for them to be anything but a lock I can’t find the key to. “But why?”

“Do you know how many of the current territory leaders killed the person who came before them?”

This is a trap, but he’s not going to let me avoid it. “More than one.”

“Jasmine, though technically Jafar is the one who removed her father. Hook, though again, Tink killed Peter. Ursa. Malone. Me.” He leans forward. “This is the world we move in, Aurora. The world you move in. It always has been.”

I want to turn away from this knowledge, but I can’t quite make myself. “It’s different. They were monsters.”

“You don’t think those monsters had people who loved them?” He arches an eyebrow.

I want to scream that it’s different, that she was my mother and that means something. I already know what he’ll say. Everyone has loved ones, everyone has someone who will mourn them when they’re gone. It suddenly strikes me that he’s lumping my mother in with the monsters. “Was she really that bad?”

He doesn’t pretend to misunderstand. “She loved you. She wouldn’t have sent you away if she didn’t. But she wasn’t a good leader, and people were harmed while the territory was under her care.”

I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse. I had built up this picture in my head of the woman my mother must have been, driven by the hole her absence left in my life. But even Grandmother had criticisms of my mother. I draw in a shaky breath. “I don’t know if that changes anything.”

He nods. “That’s for you to figure out. Take your time.”

“She won’t wait for me.” The words burst from my lips despite my having no intention of saying them.

He gives me a slow smile. “You might be surprised what Malone will do if given half a chance.” He glances at the door. “The moment you walk out there, you’re going to be set upon by Meg and Allecto. They’ve likely called in Tink as well.”

My chest warms, but even knowing that my friends are closing ranks around me in my time of need isn’t enough to do more than highlight the gaping hole where my heart should be. The feeling of missing something vital, something I need to go on. There’s been too much new information today, too many revelations. I don’t know what to think, can barely see the path in front of me.

But the thought of letting Malone go forever?

Can I do that?

I rub my chest and stare hard at the empty whiskey glass. “I’ve never felt the way I do when I’m with her. Not with anyone else. It’s not comfortable.”

“Love rarely is.” Hades pushes to his feet and gathers the glasses and bottle. “It has a habit of showing up when you least expect it, with the people you least expect it from.”

He’s talking about Hercules. The son of his old enemy. The man he seduced out of a desire for revenge and ended up falling in love with.

I look up at him. “If we both fell for our enemies, what does that make us? Really smart? Or really foolish?”

“Ah, Aurora.” Hades smiles. It’s warm and soft and changes his entire face. “It makes us very, very lucky.”

As he turns to walk to his desk, I pull out my phone. I stare at it a long time, my thumb hovering over the call button. In the end, I’m not quite as brave as I’d like to be, because I text her instead.

Me: I need time to think.

She doesn’t make me wait long for a response. I watch the three dots appear and disappear for several long minutes before her reply appears.

Malone: I would think you made your feelings perfectly clear.

Me: Did you mean it? When you said you cared about me?

Again, those three dots. I stare hard at them, my entire body tight with a heady combination of fear and something like euphoria. It feels like a free fall, but I don’t entirely hate it.

Malone: I meant it.

I exhale a shaky breath.

Me: Will you give me a chance to figure some things out?

Malone: I detest having these conversations on text. Come to me when you want to talk.

Me: Wait for me?

This reply takes longer, but when the message lights up, some of the weight I hadn’t realized I’ve been carrying slips from my shoulders.

Malone: I will.

I know myself well enough to know that I have to sit with this knowledge for a while. To let go of my fantasy about how things were and reconcile msyelf with the truth. It hurts to think of my mother as a monster but… Am I really that surprised? Didn’t part of me know all along? One doesn’t claw their way to power in Carver City with kindness. They don’t keep that power without strength.

I don’t know what it says about me that, even after all this, the person I want to go to so I can talk and get my thoughts in order is Malone. I want to fall into her arms and pour out all the poison I’ve been carrying for so long. I want her to comfort me in the way only she’s capable of, with pain and pleasure intertwined in an exquisite dance. I want to hold her while she whispers her fears to me in the darkness that puts us on equal footing.

I want Malone.

I suppose that makes me a monster, too, but I’m strangely okay with that.