CHAPTER FOUR: As night falls

CHAPTER FOUR: As night falls

No sooner had Nika entered through the gates than night descended.

“Hello, mother.”

Nyx, Goddess of Night, appeared before Nika in her traditional black robes, while the dark mist surrounding her settled as a crown on her head and wings at her back.

The angel of the night. That’s what Nika’s father, Erebus – his title that of literal darkness – called her mother. But there was a reason other creatures in the realm feared the things that happened at night. Her mother could be unforgiving.

That was one of Nika’s most vivid memories as a young spirit, her mother cursing at her older siblings for not doing their duties, for shirking them off, for not being a good reflection on her. Nika had more siblings than she knew what to do with. Luckily, most were off living their own lives, for their mother had tasked them all with something to do. To be a child of Nyx was to be born with an immediate responsibility. Your life was not your own, but to be given in service for the good of the realms.

Nika had always gotten the impression that to do something other than your chosen task was to spit on the gift of life their mother – primordial that she was – had given them.

She had been the last Arae Nyx had birthed herself.

After the disappointment Nika had become, the Eriynes – like her aunty, Tisiphone – had been tasked with birthing future curse children. Apparently, Nyx did not want that burden any more.

“My child, you return.” Nyx opened her arms wide, the shadows of the night parting to make way for Nika to step into her mother’s embrace.

Unnerved at the show of affection, Nika stepped tentatively forward, her arms remaining at her sides, as Nyx’s shadows enveloped her. Her mother kissed her temple and sniffed her hair, then pulled back, a pinched look on her face.

“You smell like fire.”

“Well, I did have to walk through Phlegethon to get here.”

“Come, let us return home together. You can bathe. I have some of Hecate’s tinctures that will take that foul-smelling river right out.”

That was how Nika came to find herself in her old bedroom, one plush charcoal towel wrapped around her body, the other wrapped around her hair like a turban. She sat on the edge of her old bed and stared at the stone walls that had been replastered over – the carvings of days Nika had left behind in her childhood smoothed away. She had scratched in a line every day she had to wait until Nyx had deemed her ‘old enough’ to wander around the Underworld unsupervised during the sunlight hours. It had caused Nika’s now long nails to turn to stubs, her fingers a bleeding mess, to carve in all those lines day in and day out … but it had kept her sane.

She’d escaped to Asphodel Meadows the first chance she got.

Sighing, Nika rolled back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. She had forgotten this familiar weight that sat on her chest, the heaviness of expectation and disappointment that she was not the dutiful daughter Nyx had wanted.

She was not enthusiastic.

She was not proactive.

She was not what she should be.

Never words her mother had said to her, of course. Not faults that Nika owned, in fact. For she was all of those things – it was just that she was all those things for a profession that was considered distasteful to her family.

Ironic, really, given that everyone had to eat.

Now, she felt that disappointment shroud her once again.

“Nika! Supper!” her mother called.

She wasn’t even hungry.

“Coming.”

Sighing, Nika rolled back up to a seated position on the bed.

“I said, supper! Now, young lady!” came the screeched reply.

“I said I’m coming!” she screamed back. Punctuality was important in this house. As if Nika could forget.

Quickly dressing and combing out her towel-dried hair, Nika walked down the turret that led to the main dining hall, in the palace that her father had built for her mother, as legend had it, when Tartarus was formed in the rock. She found both of them waiting for her at the long dining table. It was a piece of polished rock that looked like it erupted from the floor itself, another thing Erebus had done for Nyx as a sign of his devotion.

Even the way he looked at her now, like he would do anything for her, made something in Nika’s chest curl uncomfortably tight.

“Is no one else in the family joining us for supper?”

“The twins will be with us shortly,” Nyx said.

Nika raised an eyebrow. So she’d been screamed at to arrive to supper on time, but the boys were allowed to come and go as they pleased?

Her father shot her a warning look, his thick black eyebrows knitting together as he gave her an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

Sighing, Nika knew now was not the time to push the matter and took a seat opposite her father, and directly to the right of her mother.

Nyx clicked her fingers. In front of them, sparkling palladium plates were suddenly filled with all manner of foods. Blackened fish and roasted marrow dripping with melted cheeses, savoury curd sprinkled with mint and a dash of citrus juice, sheets of floppy laganon pasta topped with a tomato sauce and more grated mizithra cheese, spanakorizo rice and spinach, and – at the centre of it all – a small, roasted goat.

“Do you think we have enough food?” Nika asked.

“Why don’t you tell me? Apparently you work in an establishment that would know. One which we still haven’t been invited to,” Nyx admonished her.

Nika stiffened. She’d known this was coming, that someone would have reported back to her parents what she was doing. But she’d expected them to berate her about it, not show an interest or ask for an invitation.

“I didn’t think you’d want to go somewhere that was named after Zeus. Especially after you called him an upstart.”

Her mother sniffed. “Well, he is one.”

“Ergo, why there’s been no invite,” Nika said curtly, wanting to move away from the subject as quickly as possible.

“You will watch your tone, young lady.” The words spoken by her father were quiet, but when he spoke, Nika listened. So did Nyx. So did everyone in the family, for he was the only one who knew how to broker peace amongst them. Erebus, who the world knew as the help-meet to Nyx, was actually the glue that kept the family from tearing one another’s throats out.

Breeding children to be duty-bound deities and spirits tended to make for a lot of headstrong, independent, righteous personalities.

Nika was about to apologise for her brusque response when footsteps sounded.

“Well, well, well, who do we have here? Why, is that our little, long-lost sister?” a voice boomed into the depths of the dining hall as one broad-shouldered male walked into the room, followed by another who looked identical to him. Both strode over to Nika, and before she so much as had a chance to stand to avoid them, they came to either side of her, lifted her from her chair, and squeezed her between them.

“Put me down!”

“Oh, but sister, how we’ve missed you.”

“Look! Your hair is back to its lovely colour. Whatever happened to that bubblegum blue we last saw you with?”

“Oh yes! Right before she left, when she was trying to prove a point.”

“What point was that again?” one of them asked the other.

Nika wriggled. “I said, Put. Me. Down!”

At once Nika’s two brothers released her from their arms. She dropped into her chair like a ragdoll, bruising her tailbone with the force at which she collapsed.

“Ow!”

“Missed us?” Thanatos grinned at Nika, as he placed a peck on their mother’s cheek and took a seat beside their father.

“Not even slightly.” Nika scowled, as Hypnos, too, placed a kiss on their mother’s cheek, ruffled Nika’s hair, and took the seat beside her.

Both brothers immediately helped themselves to large portions of each dish in front of them, piling up their plates until there was a small mountain of food on each of them.

“See? There is only just enough food,” Nyx smartly reprimanded Nika.

“That’s because these two are monstrous,” Nika pointed at both her brothers, whose muscular frames were three times the size of any muscle-bound Soul that turned up in the Underworld.

“Hey! It’s not our fault you’re stick-thin.”

“Don’t body-shame me,” Nika bit back.

“How is it body-shaming when you’re tiny?”

“It works both ways, pea brain.”

“If you were just going to come back and insult us, why bother coming back at all, Nikita?”

The use of her nickname had Nika grinding her teeth. She hadn’t realised when she was younger that Nikita and Nika did not mean the same thing. She’d been perfectly happy being called Nikita, until her mother had pointed out that the former meant ‘unconquered’ and her actual birth name meant ‘victory’.

Which, in her family’s world, meant her brother had just called her a would-be loser.

But, if she were to rise to the jib, she would only encourage them further.

“Yes, why are you back here, Nika?” her mother asked, taking small, dainty bites from her food.

Meanwhile, her brothers were shovelling it in like they were starving. It was hard to imagine such a tiny goddess giving birth to two of largest presences down here in Tartarus.

Nika shoved a large forkful of rice in her mouth to buy herself time from answering. She didn’t want to tell her family that the place she forsook them for was in trouble. She didn’t want to look like a failure who had come home with her tail between her legs. In particular, she didn’t want her failure to suggest that she wished for a job back here because she didn’t, and she most certainly did not want to have that conversation with her mother. It’s why she’d run away in the first place.

Coward, the little voice in her head whispered at her.

Shut. Up.

“I’m looking for someone,” she eventually said.

“Who?” her mother demanded.

“Just someone, it doesn’t matter who.”

“Well, if you tell us, perhaps we can help you find them,” her mother pointed out.

“Go on – tell us,” her brother, Hypnos, added. “Perhaps I could whisper something in their ear for you as I send them off to sleep tonight and get them to come to you. It would save you having to run around this place trying to find them.”

That uncomfortable feeling was coiling itself around Nika’s throat again. Even if she logically knew that accepting help didn’t make her weak, she was wholly adverse to the idea of letting her family help her. Because she knew that help now meant something called in as a favour later. There were no actions without consequences, just like there was no day without night.

But she could see no way of getting around the question without causing an argument. Given that her family appeared to be making an effort to cultivate a tentative peace now that she was home, it would be impudent if Nika did not try to do the same.

“Fine, if you must know, Orpheus.”

A hush fluttered between those at the table.

“And why,” Nyx muttered, “are you looking for the famous Orpheus?”

“We want him to play at our restaurant.” Nika kept her eyes on her plate, now pushing around a piece of fish, in case her mother saw the lie in her eyes. In case she realised there was no ‘we’ to speak of.

“And why are you seeking out a recluse musician for your place of work? I thought you were a waitress,” her mother asked.

“I am. I’m the maître d’, in fact.” Nika swallowed the lump in her throat, not allowing herself to think about how Garth had told her to leave, not allowing herself to think about if that meant she’d been officially fired or not.

“Then why are you given this task?” Nyx pressed on.

“Because it was my idea, and Garth – the owner – respects my ideas. He lets me take the lead where I wish. Seeing as I had ties to Tartarus, we thought it best that I come and do the visit.”

Nyx let out a little sound of approval.

But, surprisingly, her father wasn’t buying it. “Is everything alright where you work, Nika?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Well, you could have any number of talented musicians. To seek out one who gave up his gift a long time ago seems like a punt … and to punt, to gamble like this, usually means someone, or something, is in trouble.”

“I’m not in trouble, Father,” Nika lied smoothly, using her napkin to wipe at her mouth. “We’re the best restaurant in the Underworld, and we want the best to play for us. That’s all.”