twenty-one

Poppy

Instead of spending the rest of the night crying, Poppy ended up spending it with Rania, two of her dancer friends, and Dante, doing the one thing she had been denied her whole life: just being a girl.

Pure, easy, silly friendship was more of a medicine for her aching soul than anything else could have been right then. After years and years of loneliness, this was heaven.

Had Hades known this was exactly what she needed?

Was it possible that he had removed himself from the room for that purpose? So that he could give her room to grieve? To heal?

Well, whether it was by accident or by design, he had saved her once more.

But she could not think about him now. She, Dante and Rania collapsed on Hades' bed sometime in the afternoon, stomachs full of food, mouths full of laughter, hearts full of contentment, and slept deeply until the early afternoon.

Poppy woke up completely disoriented at some undecipherable time to the sounds of Dante's soft snoring. She sat up in bed, the goose-feather covers swallowing her, just in time to see the retreating back of Rania's dress as she left the room, softly closing the door behind her. The sound must have been what woke Poppy.

She wondered idly what time it was, and how one could possibly tell in here, with the complete lack of windows and natural light. It seemed like everyone down here lived in a separate world of their own, awake all night, resting all day, as if the rules of society did not apply, and everyone could do whatever they wanted. Her brother—she herself—would think that that was too much freedom, leading to all kinds of sin, but she could not think like that any longer. She had gotten what she needed down here, and what she needed was affection and care.

Unable to sleep a moment longer, Poppy climbed out of her bed as quietly as she could, drawing a shawl close about her shoulders. She had changed into a nightgown at some point, even though it was day, and now that she was out of the warm bed, she felt the chill penetrate her bones. Had it stopped snowing? She was fumbling around in the semi-darkness for her dress, when she heard a low thump coming from outside.

She froze, listening.

The sound came again and again, in some sort of building rhythm. It wasn't too loud, but it was powerful, the ground almost quaking with it.

Poppy walked to the door, stumbling in the dark, and opened it.

The thumping grew louder and she followed it. Out in the hall, there were candelabras lit all times of the day, lining the long corridor with warm yellow light and the carpet was thick underneath her bare feet.

She followed the sound further down the hall and it quickly became apparent that the thuds were the sound of someone hitting something. Or being hit. Poppy picked up her pace, almost running now, until she found the source of the sound. She opened the door, and a scream died in her throat.

Hades was on his knees on the floor, a growing pool of blood around him.

His hair was a wet mess, his chest bare, his muscles glistening with sweat. And he was being beaten to a pulp by three of his guards.

"What are you doing? Stop!" Poppy shouted, but no one heard her over the sounds of fists meeting flesh. "You're killing him, stop it!"

One of the men's knuckles met Hade's jawbone, sending him sprawling on the floor. Hades' back was blooming with bruises as well, and Poppy felt sick at the sight of blood dripping from a split above his eyebrow and another on his lip. His eyes were unfocused, bleary, and at once, in a split second, Poppy recognized that look. It was the same one she had seen in DeVere's eyes, a few hours before he almost killed himself: a look of desperation coupled with mad courage and a dash of self-loathing. A deadly combination.

"Stop it!" she cried again, even louder, but the men were bent at the waist, beating Hades' fallen body, and he did not lift a hand to defeat himself. "For God's sake, stop!"

Nothing happened.

The blows kept falling over Hades' prone form, tossing him this way and that, as if he were a rag doll.

Poppy knew from her brother's failed pugilistic efforts a couple of years ago, that Hades was dressed for the boxing. He wore loose pantaloons, his feet were bare, and he had ribbons woven through his fingers. But these were now bloody, as if he had tried and failed to defend himself. And how could he possibly succeed? There were three men, all bigger, older, and probably better trained than him, circling him with the coordination of a macabre dance.

And beating the living daylights out of him.

And Hades didn't do a thing to defend himself.

Was it because he couldn't? Or because he didn't want to?

The answer to either of these questions terrified Poppy, but not as much as it terrified her to keep watching him being beaten to death and not do a thing about it.

So she did something about it.

Alexei

He was hearing her voice in his head.

She was screaming at his attackers to stop hitting him. Alexei tried to smile, but his lips were torn to shreds by Wilder's fists, and there was blood in his mouth. He spit it out, feeling a sharp pain on his jaw, and received another blow. This one wasn't Wilder; he recognized the lack of skill.

Still, it did its job.

The pain consumed him, stole his breath.

The pain was good.

The pain was what he deserved.

"For God's sake, stop it!" he imagined Poppy saying, his little furious knight in shining armor. In his head, her voice sounded so real, almost as if she were in the boxing room right now, shouting.

My little seed, he thought. Defending me. Saving me. Again.

A fist landed on his chest, sending a sharp pain all the way into his lung.

Stop it. She is not ‘your' anything. And you have no right to conjure her voice in your head, not after the pain you caused her.

"Stop it!" Poppy's voice screamed, sounding terrified.

I must be close to passing out, he thought. I am hallucinating. I must tell them to stop soon.

And then, within the space of one shuddering breath, everything went to hell.

Poppy was leaping out of his imagination and somehow appearing in front of him, very real.

She was there in the flesh, standing in his bloody boxing rooms, and he watched her as if in slow motion as she rushed between him and his opponents, her thin body crushed by two huge men. Then Alexei was leaping to his feet, his pain forgotten, and throwing his body over her, running between her and the guards, screaming at them to stop.

She was barefoot and limping, and he got blood all over her nightgown, but he hadn't been fast enough.

He heard the blow before he saw it.

The second guard's fist, which was going straight for Alexei's teeth, landed on Poppy's back with a sickening crack instead. The force of it sent her to her knees. She fell, choking and gasping for breath. Alexei grabbed for her, but he wasn't fast enough; he heard the whimper of pain leave her lips as she went down, and his breath hitched.

"No!" he roared. "Wilder, get them under control! Stop hitting, right now, halt!"

They stopped.

Everything was still, including the fallen girl.

Including his bloody heart. It had stopped.

"Are you hurt?" he shouted, but got no response.

He looked down at Poppy, her nightgown soaked with his blood, her brown-red hair spilling all the way down to the floor in loose, sleep-formed curls.

"Dear God," he stuttered, "what have I done?"

He picked her up in his arms and laid her carefully on the carpet, a few feet from the ring, where he could try to assess how much she had been hurt.

Wilder approached from behind, attempting to kneel as well, and reached out a hand to touch her, but Alexei screamed bloody murder at him and all three guards scattered, scared out of their minds.

He placed a hand on either side of Poppy's face and turned it slowly to face him.

"Poppy," he said urgently, "Poppy, answer me, dammit, where are you hurt?"

She moaned and shut her eyes tighter.

He thought he would go mad. "Christ, talk to me, Poppy!"

‘I don't scream,' he had said once.

To hell with that. He would never stop screaming if she didn't reply to him this instant.

"What do you think you're doing?" he screamed. "What if you—? What on earth possessed you to run in here, in the middle of hell itself…?"

"There is no hell here," Poppy interrupted him, fury in her eyes. She was screaming almost as loudly as he. "I see no hell except that of your own making. It's right here."

She brought up her hand to his chest, and placed it on his bare skin, where his heart beat.

Immediately as soon as he felt her touch, he bent over, almost throwing up. She snatched back her hand, as if his skin had burned her. Dammit, dammit, dammit, he thought over and over and struggled not to be sick, fighting through the saliva gathering in his mouth and the nausea twisting in his stomach.

"I'm sorry," Poppy was saying. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to touch you without warning you first. But I couldn't stand to see you suffer like that. I didn't want you to keep hurting without knowing that I…that you…I wanted to make sure you knew that you have so many friends who care about you." He stopped heaving and stood absolutely still. Listening. "You have me."

He turned around, still out of breath, and, still kneeling on the floor, he grabbed both her hands, brought them behind her back and kissed her once, roughly, on the mouth.

She began to respond at once, her body arching beneath his, her lips warm, inviting. It took all his strength and then some to pull his lips from hers, but this was not the time or the place for a kiss. His heart was still stuttering in fear, and she was still hurt, possibly seriously.

He opened his mouth to ask her once again, but she spoke before him.

"What the hell did you think you were doing?" she said, not too calmly.

He fell back on his haunches, hands dropping to his sides. That was not the response he had expected. She sounded positively incensed.

"Don't swear," he murmured.

"I shall swear as much as I like."

"All right."

Poppy tried to sit up and winced in pain. Immediately his hands were on her, cupping her neck.

"Hey, don't move," he said. "Where are you hurt?"

"I got hit on the back slightly," Poppy replied, wincing again as she sat up. She looked furious, her green eyes flashing, her mouth pink and trembling. "But that is the least of the pain I suffered here today. What the hell are you doing to yourself? Why would—what was happening here?"

Alexei stood up, reaching a hand to pull her to her feet.

"It's none of your business," he said sullenly. The blood was drying on his chin and he felt as if his lip had swollen to ten times its size. "Poppy? I need to see where you're hurt, sweetheart." He peered at her face.

She looked genuinely afraid. His heart stuttered.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't…I didn't think you would see me like this."

"Like what? Being beaten to a pulp?"

He hung his head. Wet locks swung down to his chest.

"Did you ask these men to beat you up, Hades?" Poppy asked. He didn't speak. "Answer me! Did they have your permission to hit you?"

He did not say a word. What could he say?

"Answer me, Alexei!"

My name. She said my name.

Don't you say my name for something like this. Don't you—

"Yes."

She didn't speak for a moment or two. Or three. He watched the color ebb and flow from her face, watched her bring a trembling hand to her mouth. He watched her eyes water.

"How did you know?" he asked simply. "How did you know that I did this to myself?"

No one had, except for Dante, and Alexei had told him himself. Wilder knew, of course, as did the other two guards that had been ordered to do the beating-up, but other than them, no one suspected that the lord of the Underworld punished himself weekly by purposefully being beaten up.

"When you left last night," Poppy said, "you had the same look on your face as DeVere. As the men who had lost everything at the gaming tables. As if you were about to do something desperate."

"Look, I—"

"But I didn't know you would do something so bloody idiotic instead!"

"Don't swe—" he stopped himself. "Get it all out, swear as much as you like," he said instead. "It's good for venting your feelings sometimes."

"Isn't it just."

She was so incandescently angry she would have been the most fearsome, beautiful sight on earth. But she was furious on his behalf. For him. And that was not beautiful at all. It was a bloody waste.

"Why—why are you so worried about me?" the words came out all choked up.

"Why are you not worried about you? Why do you hate yourself so?"

He shrugged. "Everyone else does. It seemed bad form to disagree."

She made an abrupt movement in frustration, and doubled over from the pain. He was beside her at once, holding her up.

"Where does it hurt? Show me."

"M-my ribs."

He lifted her shift gently and saw the mark on her skin, the bruise forming already. He cursed under his breath, seeing red.

"What were you thinking, running in the middle of four fighting men like that?" he burst out. "My heart stopped!"

"You looked like you were dead, lying there with all that blood dripping out of you…I thought you had surely died."

Hades regretted shouting immediately. "I tried my best," he murmured. And then regretted that. He shut his eyes tightly. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

"You shouldn't have thought it, Hades."

"Call me Alexei, like you did before."

She licked her lips, shifting her weight. "Dante says you have many friends, from your days back in school. He says they are your brothers, closer than a family."

He looked away, waved a hand dismissively. "They were," he corrected her. "I don't…I don't talk to them anymore."

"Well, do."

Alexei sighed, frustrated. What was happening to Poppy? Where was the little mousy, subdued puppy-like girl he had found? This woman in front of him was a force of nature, resembling that girl in almost no way at all. All that had stayed the same were the delicate curves of her body that drove him crazy and her beautiful cloud of hair. Everything else was transformed, from her beautiful, fierce green eyes to the empowered way she spoke.

She was all command and no fear.

The little seed had become a forest.

"It's not that simple," Alexei bit his lip, but inwardly he was thinking:

Why haven't I spoken to them before now?

What could possibly be so bad or important that has kept me from them?

"I am not worthy of them," he said out loud.

"You are literally dying here," Poppy said, and finally, Alexei understood why she was speaking so forcefully. It was the same reason he could not stop himself from screaming every five minutes since he had brought her here: She was scared out of her mind. "You are drowning in your own pain. Someone needs to help you. And you…you are not alone in the world. You have these people, your brothers, and you ignore them? How can you be so ungrateful?"

Alexei turned around to grab something to cover himself with, suddenly realizing how very naked his upper half was. Poppy's eyes followed his every move and his fingers shook, fumbling with the fabric of his loose lawn shirt, suddenly self-conscious.

"You don't understand," he said, "they…"

"What? What could be so bad about them?"

Oh, she was curious about Peter and Valentine, was she? Well, he would tell her all about them.

"They are idiots, to start with," he said and he thought he saw the ghost of a smile pass across her lovely face.

"They would have to be, to be your friends," she retorted.

"Indeed," he agreed. "I spoke to Peter a few months ago, he needed my help with something. Peter was always the craziest one of the bunch; he fancied himself the leader of our little group. I am alive because of him and him alone. When I was a child…I could not deal with things well. I couldn't even speak." Poppy looked at him, her heart in her eyes. Great, now she feels sorry for me. "I owe everything I am to him, mad bastard that he is. So, I couldn't refuse, could I? He ended up dragging me all the way to Greece, so that we could risk our necks on the high seas; as if doing that in London all our lives was not enough for him. But he had this notion of defeating an evil overlord who bought children and sold them as slaves and soldiers in Turkey…"

Poppy inhaled sharply.

"Forgive me," Alexei said quickly, "I'll spare you the details. But Peter, he…He always wanted to save everybody, but this time it was he who showed up here and begged me for help. As if he had to beg. All he had to do was snap his fingers and I would be by his side. He said, ‘help me, for God's sake.' I helped him for his own sake."

"Did you die in the process?" Poppy asked, which was a strange question, but it revealed how well she knew him already: he was wont to risk his neck for the silliest of reasons.

Peter's mission to save Wendy and the children had not been silly at all, of course, but they had both risked their lives, nearly lost them too. And Poppy had guessed it at once. He did not think anyone would ever know him that well, apart from Peter, Valentine and Dante.

"Almost," Hades replied. "But I survived. Just. So did Peter. And then, a mere few weeks ago, Valentine showed up here at the club. Valentine is my other friend. Brother, really. He…If Peter is mad, Valentine is demented. Always with the big dreams that one; he was an orphan, abandoned in the streets to die like an animal. He had this drive to make something of himself in the world."

"And did he?"

Alexei nodded. "Yes. He became a pirate."

Poppy laughed, then took one look at his face. "Oh, you're serious."

"Deadly," Alexei said. "Then he met this girl. Zella. She…God, the things Valentine went through, I can't begin to tell you. It turns my stomach just to think of it."

Alexei stopped, closing his eyes. Disturbing images flashed in front of him and he could not bring himself to remember. But he had to. His friend had gone through it and he had so much more at stake.

"He was a wreck, Valentine was," Alexei said, "until he met his Zella. Outwardly, he appeared to be the merriest, most insufferable man you would ever meet, but those of us who are close to him knew the pain that wrecked him inside. Then he met her, and he was absolutely shattered by the encounter."

"I am going to guess that you rescued him too," Poppy said, and Alexei winced.

"Hardly," he replied. "I am not this person you are trying to make me into, Wyatt. I am someone who is so deeply disturbed that I need to feel pain in order to distract myself from all the horrible things I have done. To you, as well." She shook her head, and he spoke quickly, before she had time to deny it. "Anyway, his girl is fragile. Her heart is weak due to…some things she suffered through the years. But he…You would imagine he would be broken, shattered. But he looks different, calm, happy, ever since he's been with her. He is a different person."

"Love does that, I hear," Poppy said.

Alexei lost the ability to speak for a second. He nearly stumbled, even though he was standing still.

Break my heart, will you?

"Exactly," he said instead, when he finally got his breath back. "I am so much better without a Zella, without a girl of my own, I mean."

"But?"

He ducked his head, as if she had directed a bullet at him.

"But nothing," he said out loud.

But deep down inside, I have a secret longing that cuts my breath off. A longing for something like what I saw in Valentine's eyes, that completeness, that inner happiness, that elusive feeling of being alive, safe and happy. Just as simple as that, but none of us had it growing up.

"As I said, I am better off the way that I am," he added. "And so is every single woman in England, for that matter. Better off without a man like me."

"I am equal parts terrified and charmed," Poppy said.

He went perfectly still. "You should be nothing but terrified," he breathed.

"I should? Why, are you?"

"No. I am…" He couldn't breathe.

I don't need a Zella. I don't need a Wendy. I'm better off without a woman; and every single woman is better off without me.

Poppy had stood and walked up to him sometime as he was speaking about his friends. She was now two steps away, but she made no further attempt to approach him. The distance between them pressed on his chest like water, cutting off his air, choking him. The physical need to be near her, to touch her, to breathe her in, was causing him pain so great his physical injuries were quite forgotten.

He needed her like air. More than air.

He needed her like he needed blood in his veins, life in his lungs. He needed her to survive.

"I am seduced," he said, and then he was closing the space between them, grabbing her wrists in one hand and bending his head over her lips. "What have you done to me, Wyatt?"

She made a slight movement towards him, so imperceptible he might have missed it if his entire attention was not on her. But it was, and he saw how she lifted her face to his, opening her lips, inviting him.

He lost it.

He lowered his lips to hers and let the water pull him under.