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I forced the thought aside. I was panicking over nothing. Henry would show up soon, and he couldn’t avoid me all winter. Even if he did have some apprehension about this whole thing, we’d be able to talk about it. It wasn’t like I wasn’t nervous, too.
“This is your home too now, and you should do what makes you comfortable,” said James. “If Henry really loves you, he’ll understand.”
“How could you say something like that?” said Ava, appalled. “Of course he loves her. I should know.”
“Yes,” he said curtly. “You should. If you’ll all excuse me, I have things to do before the ceremony.”
He kissed me on the cheek before breezing past Ava and my mother, and the three of us watched him go. I tried not to let it get under my skin, but the thought of going six months without seeing James after spending all summer with him was hard to swallow. No matter what his feelings for me may or may not have been, he was still my friend.
“I’ll go see what’s the matter with him,” said my mother once James was out of sight.
“Thanks,” I said. “He wasn’t like this while we were in Greece.”
She sighed. “No, I’d imagine he wasn’t.” Giving me a hug, she added, “I’ll check in on you before the ceremony. Ava, stay with her until Henry returns.”
“Planned on it,” said Ava, and once my mother had hurried after James, Ava turned toward me with a sly grin. “So, want to see where the magic happens?”
The look on my face sent her into a fit of laughter, and it was only when I threatened to follow my mother that she sobered up.
“I’m sorry, it’s just—you’re such a prude.”
I didn’t dignify that with an answer. The only time I’d slept with Henry had been after being dosed with an aphrodisiac, thanks to Calliope. While the thought of me failing a test had enraged Henry, part of me held out hope that he’d enjoyed it as much as I had. We hadn’t slept together since, but now that we were married, it might be something he was expecting.
I wasn’t sure which was worse: the thought of Henry expecting me to sleep with him, or the thought of Henry not wanting to sleep with me at all.
Ava finally pushed the door open, revealing a large bedroom suite on the other side. The carpet was soft and the color of cream, and the walls were painted the same rich red as the entrance hall. In the center stood a massive bed on a raised platform, and the sheets were gold. It was perfect, and I hated myself for liking it so much.
“Please tell me someone’s changed the sheets since Persephone lived here,” I muttered, and Ava laughed.
“Of course. I even talked Henry into letting me redecorate for you. I didn’t think the door would bother you, else I’d have changed that, too.”
The knot in my stomach unraveled. “Next time, open with that,” I said, wandering around the room to inspect it. Furniture was scattered throughout, including two love seats, a desk and a vanity, and a great bay window overlooking the courtyard and the garden of jewels. I pulled the gold curtains shut.
A high-pitched yip caught my attention, and I whirled around in time to see Pogo, the puppy Henry had given me last winter, come barreling toward me. His little legs could hardly keep him steady, and his tail wagged so enthusiastically I was afraid he would break it against something.
“Pogo,” I cooed, scooping him up and cradling him to my chest. “You haven’t grown a bit, have you? Where’s Cerberus?” He licked my cheek, and I grinned. Finally something was going right.
“Cerberus has his own job down here,” said Ava from across the room. “I took care of Pogo for you—taught him a few new tricks and everything.”
My grin faded. “I thought Henry was going to take care of him.” He’d gotten Pogo for me because he wanted to show me that he intended for our relationship to last, and instead of taking care of him like he’d promised, he’d handed him off to Ava for the summer? I hugged Pogo tighter.
“He gets busy sometimes,” said Ava, and I crossed the room to join her. “Now, this is your closet. I even talked Henry into letting me choose your outfits for you this time instead of Ella.”
Ella, who along with Calliope had attended to me throughout my stay in Eden, had spent the first few months dressing me in the most painful fashions of the past thousand years solely to make me squirm. I would’ve rather spent the next six months wrapped in a sheet than wear the hoopskirts and corsets Ella would have undoubtedly provided for me.
Ava opened a door, and my eyes widened. It was the biggest closet I’d ever seen, complete with rows of jeans, stacks of blouses and sweaters, and an entire wall covered with shoes. There was also a row of fancy dresses, but Ava had mercifully kept those to a minimum.
“I figured you wouldn’t want them, so I stole most of them for myself,” she said as I ran my hand over a shimmering silver gown that I almost would’ve considered wearing if I had somewhere to go. “Don’t tell Henry.”
“I won’t.” I sat down next to the wall of shoes and inspected the nearest pair. Size seven, like me. “If I tell you something, do you promise not to tell anyone else?”
She was by my side in an instant, and the hunger in her eyes for gossip almost made me reconsider. But I had no one else to talk to other than my mother and James, and I was too embarrassed to go to my mother about this, and James—well, he was sort of the problem.
“Of course,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper. “You know you can tell me anything, and I won’t tell a soul.”
I wanted to believe her, but I still remembered the girl in Eden who had tricked me into breaking onto Henry’s property, only to have her try to abandon me there. Her stunt had backfired, leading to Ava dying and Henry offering to heal her if I stayed with him for six months a year. Since then, however, she’d become one of my best friends, and I couldn’t ignore that.
“It’s about James,” I said, staring down at the heel I held. It would go perfectly with the silver gown. “He said I had a choice. That I didn’t have to come down here if I didn’t want to.” I stopped before I mentioned the part where he’d offered to leave with me. “I think he’s jealous of Henry.”
Instead of laughing in my face, Ava settled on the floor beside me. “It’s a possibility. None of us were happy about the idea of Henry fading, but at least James would’ve gotten something out of it.”
I shook my head. “I don’t mean jealous of him ruling the Underworld. I mean—jealous that he has me.”
“Oh.” Ava’s eyes widened. “Oh. You think James …?”
I shrugged. “It sort of seems like it, doesn’t it? We spent the entire summer together. He was so happy and relaxed and—James while we were in Greece, but now that we’re back here, he’s gotten all moody and proper and doesn’t want to be around me anymore. And I think it’s because of Henry.”
“Because Henry has you and he doesn’t.” Ava tapped her finger against her porcelain cheek. “You know who I am, don’t you?”
I eyed her. Was this a trick question? “Yeah. You’re Ava.”
“And what am I the goddess of?” she said, flipping her blond hair over her shoulder.
No one had ever told me, but out of the fourteen members of the council, Ava was by far the easiest to match with her Olympian counterpart. Next to Henry, of course. “Goddess of love.”
She beamed. “Very good, although you forgot beauty and sex.”
Yes, she was definitely Aphrodite. “What’s your point?” Most of the time I managed to forget how stunning Ava was, but when I remembered, it was hard to feel like anything but an unattractive lump next to her.
“My point is that I have certain gifts, and I can tell James loves you. But we all love you, Kate. You’re part of the family now.”
“What kind of love is it? For James, I mean.”
She sighed dramatically and gave me a pat on the knee. “Telling you would be a terrible invasion of James’s privacy, and I do have to put up with him for the foreseeable future.”
I rolled my eyes. “Since when have you cared about privacy?”
“Since Henry showed up ten seconds ago.”
I scrambled to my feet. Butterflies invaded my stomach as I dashed out of the closet, but I stopped short when I saw Henry sitting on the edge of the bed, his hands folded together and his face stony. He looked pale and exhausted, and I thought I saw a slight tremble in his hands, but that wasn’t what held my attention.
A deep gash ran down his neck and disappeared under his shirt, but more noticeable was the smear of crimson on his skin.
He was bleeding.
CHAPTER THREE
CORONATION
I didn’t know much about being a god, but I did know gods weren’t supposed to bleed.
They could fall sick or become injured when they adopted mortal bodies for short periods of time, like Ava had done when I’d first met her in Eden and like my mother had done for the first eighteen years of my life. But one of the major perks of being immortal was not worrying about pesky things like blood and death.
“Henry!” I flew to his side, my fingers hovering above the gash in his skin. He badly needed stitches, but how was anyone supposed to heal a god? “What happened?”
He flinched as I gently rolled down his collar to expose the rest of the wound. His black shirt was wet from the blood, and without asking I began to unbutton it.
“I’ll—I’ll go get Theo,” said Ava, and she dashed out of the room, Pogo at her heels, leaving me to tend to Henry on my own.
“It is nothing,” said Henry, but the tension in his jaw said otherwise. Once I’d unbuttoned his shirt, I peeled the fabric away, exposing a cut that ran down his chest and halfway to his navel.
“That doesn’t look like nothing,” I said. “Lie down.”
Henry started to protest, but I gave him a stern look, and he caved. Once he was on his back, I hovered over him, trying to figure out something I could do to help, but he wasn’t bleeding so badly that I needed to apply pressure, and I didn’t want to hurt him more than he already was.
“How did this happen? I thought gods weren’t supposed to get injured like this.”
“Normally we are not.” The corners of his lips turned upward into a faint smile. “You look well, Kate. How was your summer?”
He was bleeding all over the bed, and he wanted to know how my summer had gone. “Compared to how my autumn’s going so far? Fantastic. Can’t I do something? You’re getting blood all over the sheets.”
The bed was the last of my worries, but it was enough to distract Henry from asking any more questions. “My apologies. I will make sure to clean it up before tonight. Theo will be here shortly, and—ah, there you are.”
I whirled around in time to see Theo enter. Most of the council had acted as staff at Eden Manor, and Theo had taken up the position of Master of the Guard. Security, I thought, but as I saw him walk through the door, towering over Ava as she snuck in behind him, I realized his role might have extended beyond that. Henry was able to heal me, he’d proven that, but apparently he couldn’t heal himself. Then again, he wasn’t supposed to be capable of getting injured in the first place.
“Where are the others?” said Theo. As I stepped out of his way, I opened my mouth to ask who the others were, but then quickly shut it. Walter and Phillip, Henry’s brothers. The same people I’d seen in my vision.
“They are coming,” said Henry. Theo set his hands over the wound, and Henry’s pained expression relaxed. “They insisted I go on ahead.”
“Are they injured?” said Theo, and Henry shook his head.
“The attack was mostly focused on me.”
I watched Theo anxiously, looking for any signs that whatever he was doing was working. At first I saw nothing, but then, after several seconds, a strange glow formed between his hands and Henry’s skin. As he passed his palms over the wound, it closed, leaving behind a faint silver line. That was all the evidence I needed to know that this wasn’t an everyday occurrence. Henry had no other scars.
“There,” said Theo once he’d finished. He fished a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his hands. “I would recommend taking it easy this afternoon in case there’s any damage I didn’t catch.”
“There isn’t,” said Henry as he sat up. He started to pull his shirt back on, but he must have felt how damp it was, because he set it aside. “Thank you, Theo. Ava.”
Theo wasted no time leaving, and Ava lingered behind him, her brow furrowed with concern. She jerked her head toward Henry, and I shook my head. As much as I wanted her around, now that Henry was here, there was no reason for her to stay.
I sat on the edge of the bed and ran my fingers through Pogo’s fur as Henry folded his ruined shirt. A dozen questions ran through my mind, but I didn’t know where to start, so I left it up to him. Eventually he would have to talk to me, even if he didn’t want to tell me what had really happened.
Nearly a minute passed before he spoke, and by that time I’d shoved my hands between my knees, too nervous to try to pretend not to be. “Are you looking forward to the ceremony this evening?” he said, and I gaped at him.
“We haven’t seen each other in six months, you’re covered in blood, and that’s what you want to talk about?”
He shrugged. “It is as good a topic as any.”
“No,” I said, digging my nails into my jeans. “It’s really not. Why don’t we start off with how you managed to get hurt so badly when you’re supposed to be immortal?”
He stood and headed toward a door next to my closet. When he opened it, I saw that he had a wardrobe of his own, only smaller and more monochromatic. He pulled out a black shirt that was identical to the one he’d discarded, but before putting it on, he headed over to another door. The washroom.
“I’ll help you,” I said, hopping off the bed and hurrying after him. He didn’t object, and I followed him into a large bathroom decorated in black and gold. Spotting a washcloth, I grabbed it and turned on the faucet. “I didn’t expect the Underworld to have plumbing.”
That at least got a faint smile out of him. “Ava can be very convincing at times.”
I wiped away the blood that stained his skin, taking care to avoid the thin scar that now ran down his chest. Henry stood motionless, and when I glanced up at him, I saw him staring down at me with an oddly tender look.
“What?” I said, blushing. “Do I have something on my face?”
“No,” he said, and as quickly as I’d noticed it, the look was gone. “You asked how I got this. There was a problem I had to take care of, and while there are few things that can injure my family, they are out there.”
“Like what?” I said, rinsing the washcloth out. The water turned pink as it swirled down the drain.
“Nothing you ought to be concerned about.”
Terrific. Apparently while I’d been getting a tan in Greece, he’d reverted back to the same Henry I’d met a year ago instead of the one I’d married. I glared at him. “Really? That’s all you’re going to tell me? You promised you’d never lie to me.”
“I am not lying—”
“You said you wouldn’t keep secrets from me anymore,” I countered. “So which is it? Are you going to treat me like a fragile little girl you need to protect at all costs, or are you going to treat me like your partner? Because in a few hours, I’m going to be queen of this place, and I’m never going to be able to help you rule properly if you always hold everything in. I have a right to know.”
Silence. I sighed.
“Does this have anything to do with Calliope?”
Henry tensed. “How much did your mother tell you?”
My mother knew about this? “Nothing,” I said, and when I realized I’d have to tell him about what had happened sooner or later, I grimaced. “I had a vision, I guess. I don’t know what else to call it. When James brought me down here, I suddenly saw you and Walter and Phillip fighting—something. I don’t know what it was, but you were in front of this gate, and Calliope showed up behind you and told you that it was pointless, because he was already awake.”
The silence seemed to stretch on forever. It wasn’t until I picked up the washcloth again that he replied, and when he did, he spoke with an eerie calm.
“So that is your gift, then. I had wondered.”
“Gift?” My mother had mentioned the same thing, but she’d never gotten around to explaining it.
“Along with immortality comes certain talents,” said Henry. “It varies from individual to individual, and oftentimes it coincides with what we represent. For instance, healing is not Theo’s only talent. As the god of music and poetry, he also has perfect pitch.”
He was trying to make me laugh. That had to be a good sign. I managed a small smile as some of the anxiety drained from my body. “I’m sure that comes in handy all the time.”
“It does make the entertainment during family get-togethers more bearable.”
Another moment passed in silence. That must have been what James meant by never getting lost. My mother’s ability to coax life from even the most neglected patch of land, Henry’s ability to travel great distances in the blink of an eye—how else could he have traveled through the Underworld?
“Why can I see things that are happening in other places?” I said. “What’s the use in that? Is that supposed to make me better at deciding people’s fates?”
“Yes, and it will have other uses, as well. Once you are crowned, you will begin to develop other powers,” said Henry. “I will help you as much as I am able, and over time you will learn to control them.”
