six

Alexei

By the time they piled into the hackney, the boy was shivering so violently that his breath kept catching and stopping, as if he were about to expire. Alexei was about to murder him. Cerberus the cat was blissfully hacking up a furball.

"What were you about to say? Answer the question, damn you."

They boy stayed strangely mute.

Answer me, Alexei thought. Answer me this second.

Speak, say something, end this endless silence.

Speak, or I shall speak.

I will blurt out something ridiculous like ‘my father tried to drown me with a litter of kittens when I was a baby, and seeing you today made me relive that, you insufferable young pup! I haven't been able to draw a clear breath since.'

No no no, that would never do. Even admitting the unwanted thoughts to himself was pathetic.

The boy, insufferable though he was, must be kept talking at all costs, or Alexei's thoughts would drown him alive.

He tried to breathe and choked on pure air.

Excellent.

"Speak!" Alexei commanded again, in a voice that indicated that he was used to being obeyed.

And obeyed he was.

The boy, damn him, spoke, but not to answer his question.

"Do you do this often, Your Excellency?" he asked, completely changing the subject.

The boy appeared to have caught his breath in the relative heat of the closed carriage. Regrettable, that. But at least he had no excuse for not answering Alexei's questions.

Upon closer inspection, he looked much younger than Alexei had originally thought. Barely into his teens, really. No doubt very ill brought-up, not to mention hugely uneducated.

I shall have to have words with Wilder again, about who he lets into the Hell Club, Alexei thought. It is supposed to have the reputation of an exclusive club, for heaven's sake—even though we let in all the riffraff anyway. But this is beyond the pale. This is a child.

"Call me by my name, would you?" Alexei retorted irritably.

The thought of a mere boy entering the club and gambling away his meagre silver coins annoyed him to no end. Suddenly, he longed for the chilly air of the river; the coach seemed stifling. He could barely catch his breath.

"Do I do what often? Rescue bloody insufferable boys from the Thames? No. Rescue bloody insufferable cats? Yes. Every single one of my cats has been rescued from the streets."

"That is impressive, Your Lor—Lord Hades," the boy bit his tongue.

Right. This was much worse than calling him ‘excellency'.

"I said, my name," Alexei muttered. "I don't know why people insist on calling me Hades. It never really has made any sense to me."

"I think they mean harbinger of death," the boy explained.

"Well, I am nothing like that. Unless they mean death by means of too much pleasure."

"They mean something quite the opposite of that," his companion murmured.

"What?"

"Forgive me, Your Worship," the boy said, "I am distraught. I don't know what I'm saying. I shouldn't speak; the more I speak, the more I sin."

What a strange, not to mention completely nonsensical, thing to say.

Sin? What on earth…?

"All that's left is for you to call me ‘Your Majesty' now," Alexei murmured under his breath.

"I'm sorry, Your Honor," the boy said with nothing resembling contrition on his voice.

"Apparently, I was wrong."

Alexei sighed so deeply it felt as if he were sucking in the entirety of the air in the carriage. The boy had abandoned all pretense at staring out of the window, and was looking at him intently.

"Stop staring at me like that," Alexei said.

"I don't think I shall." The boy looked absolutely terrified by his own defiance.

"Am I that good-looking then?" Alexei lifted his eyebrow as high as it would go.

"God forbid, no."

Alexei chuckled. Which was surprising even to him, because he had genuinely thought he was moments away from strangling the boy.

"Good," he said.

"You are beautiful, absolutely beautiful," the boy said.

"What did you say to me?"

The boy shrugged. "Have you seen yourself, Your Worship? You look inseparable from the angels in your den of iniquity."

"They are statues of Greek gods and goddesses," he replied, looking at the young man, perfectly still. "They all represent different vices."

"Of course they do. Anyway, you are as devastatingly beautiful as they, and you know it—no doubt you use it to your advantage nightly. I am observing you for a different reason: you are sad," the boy continued, his eyes unnervingly focused and unblinking on Alexei's face, both terrified and fascinated at once. Alexei had never seen such a combination.

What is wrong with you?

"Why are you so sad?" the boy asked.

Alexei's jaw worked as he swallowed one or two violently inappropriate replies. The boy was fishing for a slap upside the face.

"Kindly mind your business," Alexei clipped, but the boy was not to be deterred.

"Tell me," he said in a surprisingly deep and mature voice.

Alexei turned to the window, presenting the urchin with what he hoped was a view of his hair and neck. What an annoying reversal of roles. He was supposed to be the one asking the questions.

"Mayhap it's because someone will not stop talking," he said finally, but he could hear the brokenness in his own voice. He hated himself for showing weakness, but he hated the boy more for driving it to the surface with his stupid questions.

"Your Highness asked me a question," the boy somehow managed to look wounded and indignant at the same time. "Forgive me for attempting to answer it."

Alexei massaged his temples. It was rare that he ever got a headache, but he could feel a massive one coming on now.

"Fine," he said. "Will you tell me why you are spying on me?

"I am not sp—"

"You are no gambler," Alexei continued, "too poor for that. Your wagers are too safe. You are too uneducated and, forgive me, possibly too much of a little fool, judging by the way you speak, to have expectations of one day inheriting a title. You cannot decide which accent to speak in, which means that you are concealing your true one, and you simply cannot decide how to address me. Although you might be giving me all these random titles on purpose. Mayhap you mean to mock me, and use them as a set-down, now that I think of it."

The boy was strangely silent, confirming his suspicions.

Dammit.

Even stray urchins are making fun of me now. That is precisely why I dislike leaving the club.

"You are too skinny," he continued, counting on his fingers, hoping to hurt the lad's feelings the way his own had been wounded. Calling him too thin was the worst insult he could think of, under the circumstances. "Much too thin for a real gentleman. Therefore, you are spying on me."

"Would you like me to be fatter?"

"I would like you to explain yourself."

"I will, Your Highness, but not here." The boy began fidgeting again. "Let me down, please, Your Honor, I don't want ye to see where I live."

"What makes you think, my poor fool, that I am proposing to take you to your house? We are going back to the club. Where you shall be made to fully explain yourself."

"T-the club? And then what?" The boy was trying hard to appear uncaring, but he was deeply scared.

Alexei could feel his little breaths fluttering in the semi-darkness, and the rapid rise and fall of his chest. Good. It was about time he took this seriously.

"Then, little cat thief, you shall be made to pay for what you have done," he said.

"I didn't steal no—"

"A good idea," Alexei said, dropping his voice and leaning towards the boy in a wolfish manner, "would be to stop talking now, actually. You wouldn't want to annoy me further, would you? I might take it into my head, for instance, to introduce you to the ways of the world. To make a man out of you."

As he had expected, the boy's face went white with terror. A smattering of freckles stood out on his nose as the moonbeams hit the carriage's window before the clouds bathed it in shadows once more.

"Are you going to try to ruin me, Your Honor?" the boy asked, inhaling sharply.

"You are already ruined, mon pauvre," Alexei replied. "And stop that, you've run out of titles to give me."

"I'm sorry, Your Excellency."

"Wrong again." Alexei looked outside the window. "We are almost there," he said. "Brace yourself for carnal pleasure, young one."

"Y-your lordship wouldn't dare," the boy breathed.

Alexei thought that he should ask for the boy's name.

Oh, but who cared?

"Wouldn't I," he said simply, and sat back to watch the lad squirm.

The boy shrugged and his face pinched, as if he were trying not to cry. His thin shoulders started shaking soundlessly, and Alexei discovered, with a pang, that his heart would be torn in shreds if the boy started crying there and then.

"Oh wait, it seems that you may have provoked someone's wrath before you met me," the insufferable boy said. Just as Alexei's heart was beginning to soften a bit. "You are bleeding at the temple."

Alexei rarely flinched, but he made an exception as a pair of grubby little fingers reached for his cheek. He ducked, barely avoiding the boy's touch, and almost breathed a sigh of relief, before he swallowed it quickly. It wasn't that he was disgusted by the prospect of being touched by the boy; he just couldn't abide it. By anyone.

"Where?" he asked abruptly, hating the harshness in his own voice.

Was it his impression or did the boy withdraw imperceptibly, his large, green eyes wide as twin lakes? No, nobody could be that easily frightened, especially not an annoying little yelp of a boy who abducted people's cats and saved them from drowning.

"Right here, on your forehead," the boy said. "Blood."

Speaking of which, the boy's face had drained of blood almost entirely. The coach swayed merrily on its way, but it could never go fast enough to suit Alexei.

"Oh that," he said. "I think I killed two men tonight. In my defense, they killed me too."

"I see," the boy mused, looking barely surprised. "Two more corpses strewn about the streets. Just what London needs."

"I did not leave them out in the street!" Alexei hissed, affronted. "I am not a complete barbarian."

"You could fool me."

"What is wrong with you?" Hades asked. And not in a good way.

Poppy

Oh, sarcasm.

She did not know that she still had it in her; but some distant memory surfaced, a memory of her sparring with words with her father, competing with him idiotically as to who would make the other laugh in the cleverest way.

They would battle for who would come up with the most underhanded insult, and then they'd roll on the carpet in front of the fire with laughter as they ate cheese and bacon for dinner. Surely that was the feverish dream of a Bedlamite, and not a real memory.

Could she have lived such a life once?

And if she had, how could she have so utterly forgotten it?

Then again, maybe her brother had been right: her father had been a depraved wretch.

Jesus loves depraved wretches, a voice said in her head, unbidden. It was clearly spoken in her father's quiet baritone, she was sure of that—that she still remembered, the sound of his voice.

The words were another memory. She licked her lips.

"What if I was a deeply wealthy person," she told the Slavic angel, "disguising myself as a poor imp?"

"Did you say ‘imp'?"

"I did."

"Well, you are certainly in disguise, playing the simpleton, if nothing else. Do not flatter yourself for a moment that I did not notice—but I do not care enough to wonder what exactly you are disguising. You are not half as interesting as you pretend to be. I do not care to uncover your disguise; other than ascertaining that your limp is real. I'm sorry, by the way."

Poppy thought of that for a moment. "Wait a minute. Are you saying that I must be poor because I have a limp?"

"In a word, yes."

"I beg your pardon!"

Hades sighed. "Don't get your feathers all in a ruffle now, all right? Of course many rich people have limps and all sorts of traits. It's just that they are more cowardly than most, as a rule, and take care to hide any differences from the common people very well."

"Well, at least you didn't call my limp a ‘flaw', even though you called me common," Poppy said. "You wouldn't have lived long if you had."

"You little—"

Hades swallowed his words before they had a chance to come out of his mouth. Three minutes passed in silence. Her heart was beating like a drum. She feared Hades would hear, and ask her why she was so anxious.

"I don't know who is shaking worse: you or the kitten," Hades said, sounding disgusted. Ah, too late. "I shall ask the cook to fix something for you once we get back to Hell."

But at least he refused to feel pity for her, which was a small blessing.

"I'm sorry, was Your Excellency talking ter me or the cat?"

"Both. And I'm not your excellency. Do not pretend to be a fool, I can't stand them."

"I weren't, Yer Worship."

"Stop that, right now. How conveniently your accent comes and goes! You know my title well enough, and you know how to speak properly. Stop playing the fool."

"Some say yer highness is a prince," Poppy said, just to rile him up. But she was curious as well.

"Well, I'm not. Not in England. Now kindly call me Mikailoff or Lord Perlin, or, preferably, nothing."

"Yes, Yer Highness."

"I have a headache."

"Mayhap yer honor should eat as well."

"How dare you," he spat. God, indignation made him look even more devastatingly beautiful. "No, don't say anything. If you don't talk, you won't lie. What's happened to you? Who hurt you? Why are your knuckles covered in blood?"

"Why are yours?"

Hades looked her up and down.

"What on earth is wrong with you?" he repeated in a hollow, choked voice.

She lifted her eyes to his, and, for once, she didn't care that he was watching her as closely as she was watching him.

"Honestly, my lord, I don't know."