seven

Alexei

Dawn was breaking pinkly on the horizon when they got back to the club.

Alexei strode through the card rooms and took the stairs two at a time until he reached the servants' hall, two levels beneath the ground. The maids were beginning to heat up milk and water for breakfast. The boy and the cat followed closely at his heels, acting as similar as if they both belonged to the same species.

Either the cat was human, or the boy was a pet.

He didn't know which was truer.

Which was worse.

Alexei had one of the kitchen maids pour milk in a saucer, and then fell to watching the boy lick his lips as he watched the cat thirstily lap at it. Alexei waited and waited, and the boy salivated, but still he did not make a sound to ask for anything.

"Would you not ask for food for yourself?" Alexei said in the end, goaded beyond endurance. "You are about to keel over."

"Ask? I…It never occurred to me." The boy shrugged, and stayed where he had been placed by Alexei, looking absolutely docile.

What is wrong with you? Alexei thought for the hundredth time. Who wouldn't think to ask for food when they were about to faint from hunger?

What sort of creature are you?

His stomach turned.

He glanced at the maid, who was trained to obey his every movement, without the need for words. She bobbed a curtsy and quickly put together a plate with bread, cheese and cold mutton for the boy, and the latter at once fell on the food, stuffing everything inside his mouth with the elegance of a starving crocodile.

Alexei watched, half amused and half disturbed.

"Why do I get the feeling that you haven't eaten in years?" he said.

"I don't know, Your Honor," the boy said with his mouth full, and it sounded like ‘Ba bo bob mer moror'. "I have no idea why you would think that. Maybe you should tend to your club instead of being down here."

Telling me what to do now?

Whatever happened to ‘the more I speak the more I sin?'

"Or maybe you should eat with less enthusiasm," Alexei retorted.

He received no answer to that one. Clearly, it was impossible.

"Right, come on," he said at length. "Enough gobbling. It'll take the servants a good week to replenish all the cupboards anyway."

The boy, having consumed everything in sight in what felt like a matter of seconds, looked entirely changed. He was absolutely silent and subdued, his eyes wide as if in fear. Or guilt. Yes, it was guilt. Alexei knew that look well enough, having witnessed it several times over every single night in the club.

Why on earth would anyone feel guilt over having eaten a few slices of bread?

What the hell is wrong with this person?

"Come on," he repeated, and the boy snapped to attention, much like a dog or a cat would—if it was feeling amiable that day. Seeing the same behavior from a young man was disturbing beyond words. Alexei's voice grew softer in spite of himself. "I'll show you the rest of Hell."

"Don't need to see it," the boy replied, but he was already standing up and following Alexei's movements, head down, steps dragging on the floor.

"Oh but you do," Alexei replied. God, his head was killing him. He hoped Wilder was back and safe. "It might scare you into confessing. Unless you tell me why you are spying on me, I can't let you leave. And then we both will have to suffer."

"Won't everyone be asleep by now?"

"This place never sleeps, my boy. In fact, it is right about at this time, the first hours of daylight, that my best customers arrive. The repressed ones, those who have spent all night fighting the urge to give themselves over to pleasure."

The boy mumbled something unintelligible behind him. They were on the stairs now.

"It's stupid, really," Alexei continued.

He had never talked so much in his life, if he were being honest. Why was he doing it now? Maybe he wanted to fill the silence; the boy not talking and walking behind him like this, with his head down, was more unnerving than two assassins coming at him simultaneously in the thick London fog.

"Is it?" it sounded like the boy murmured.

"Why not give in to pleasure?" Alexei replied. "Give me one good reason one should deny themselves indulgence, when life is so short. Not to mention, so hard."

"It's a sin."

Alexei's boots froze on the last step.

"Pardon?" he said, his voice icy cold.

"One good reason is that it is a sin," the boy enunciated, as if he were talking to a simpleton. "Another is that places like this ruin lives, and…"

Alexei, having had quite enough, threw open the door to the first private room he found in front of him. This one happened to be one of the most secluded gaming hells in the entire club.

He was hoping that the mere sight of how crowded it was would shut the boy up. So he flung the door open and stood there, at the door's narrow opening, unnoticed by any one of the gamblers, and took it all in.

The foggy atmosphere, the fear, the shame. The hiding. The hope, the pain, the disgust, the relief. The despair. He knew that all sorts of horrible, unmentionable things went on in these rooms, and that was why he rarely visited them himself. Walking through the upper card rooms, surveying his kingdom, was one thing. But down here, one could taste the poverty and the desperation.

It made for a depressing view, and he kept away from it. Suddenly, he wasn't all too sure that he wanted the boy exposed to this view. He turned around, only to come almost chest-to-nose with the short lad, who was peering curiously around his shoulder.

The boy made as if to reach for the door.

Oh no no no.

The boy was supposed to just look. Not go in. No way in hell was he going in.

"If you think I'm letting you back in there," Alexei said viciously, "you…Hey!"

Suddenly, everything changed. The boy, his body rigid and hard, appeared to be shoving—shoving—him aside, and stepping around him, bursting into the room forcefully enough for him to get an eyeful of—

Poppy

She didn't remember ever eating as much as she wanted to or as much as she needed before now. She did not remember ever feeling as satisfied.

It was disorienting.

Her stomach was full and comfortable for the first time in years, and she didn't know how to handle the feeling. She was close to tears; wasn't that the single most pathetic thing in the whole world?

But a certain clarity came with not being hungry, too.

Her head felt clear and her body vibrant as it hadn't felt since her father was alive.

Everything made sense.

Memories were returning, along with a sense of her lost self.

But Hades was already moving on ahead, and she had to follow.

Wait, why do I have to follow? Why on earth am I doing whatever he tells me to do? What has happened to me?

But before she could contemplate the answers to these questions, her body, accustomed to years of submission, was already following him up the stairs, and then, suddenly there was a closed door in front of them. He opened it.

Hades stepped aside.

And Poppy saw what was inside the door and, just like the Scriptures said, the world ended in an instant.

Her world, at least.