Garrick orders the guards to take me back to the wagon. The first few times we had gone through this routine, I had dragged my feet to make it more difficult on the guards, but I don’t resist anymore. Not after one of the guards wrenched my arm so hard it dislocated my shoulder.
“Where to next?” one of the guards asks Garrick.
“To the docks,” Garrick says. “We’ll deliver the message there next. Daphne was injured when the chariot crashed. She can’t have made it far on foot. She’ll hear us eventually.” He glares at me and then says, “For both our sakes, you had better pray she listens.”
chapter twenty-four
haden
The Skyrealm really is a floating mountain in the sky. A mountain sitting in the middle of a floating island, that is. Grecian-style buildings surround the base of the mountain. I assume this is where the general population lives. Other, grander buildings look as though they have been carved into the side of the mountain. The higher the building, the more grand it appears. A great, shimmering palace sits in the basin of the mountain’s tallest peak. The building is so reflective in the sun, it looks almost like a pillar of light, burning on top of the mountain. I have to shield my eyes from it.
I could not see any of this until we passed through the pearlescent gate, hidden inside a cumulous cloud, that guards this realm. I expected the gate to be locked, but Terresa explained that since the gate can only be accessed via cloudwalking, a lock would be redundant. “We are free to come and go as we please,” she says. “Though I do not know why any Skylord would leave our paradise of his own free will.” She gives Ethan a sidelong glance, and he follows behind us through the gate with Jonathan. When Jessica joins us with my unconscious father, we continue our journey. I am grateful to find that the Skyrealm has solid ground and I can walk on with my own two feet. Though Terresa still insists on clinging to my arm.
There’s a small hut just beyond the gate.
“I left you a surprise here,” Jessica says, leading the way into the building. “Disguises.”
“Great work,” Ethan says when he sees the pile of bronze armor inside the building. From the look of admiration he gives his lieutenant, I sense that he wishes he could say more. I wonder how committed Ethan is to his betrothal to the daughter of a Skylord general, who happened to be Tobin’s missing half-sister, Daphne’s runaway best friend from Ellis Fields, and Dax’s long-lost girlfriend, Abbie Winters. I’d gotten the impression that Ethan still intended to marry her, despite her affection for Dax. Perhaps his affinity for Jessica was a new development—or one he had not yet acknowledged to himself. I remember Dax once saying something along the lines of, “Often the only ones who can’t see the procession coming are the ones who are in it.”
My heart aches at the memory of Dax. Once I free Daphne, my next priority will be to find him. How hard could it be to find one missing former Underlord in all of the five realms?
We all begin to change from our street clothing into the white tunics and bronze armor. Jonathan loans his considerable bulk to block me from Terresa’s prying eyes (and hands) as I change. Jonathan removes his arm brace and squeezes himself into a tunic, straining its stitching in all directions. He’s able to wedge on the bronze wrist cuffs and breastplate, but leaves the helmet and shin guards behind.
Jessica picks up her own helmet.
“You should stay here with our . . . friend,” Ethan says to her, indicating Ren.
She starts to protest but he interrupts. “Your cover as a loyal Skylord is still intact. You’re more useful to my cause if there isn’t any suspicion on your head.” Ethan gives her a look that makes it clear that he is more concerned for her safety than her cover.
“King Ren is supposed to be my prize,” Terresa says.
“And you’ll get him after you take us to the Black Hole,” Ethan says. “But first we must visit the palace.”
“I’ll get both my prizes,” she says, looking at me. Her expression is both hopeful and menacing at the same time. She looks particularly fierce in her whole Sky Army regalia.
I nod, confident I’ll be able to elude her when the time comes. “Now take us to the palace.”
Terresa escorts us through marbled streets of the Skyrealm until we come to the base of the mountain. We march like a small brigade of soldiers on our rounds. Jonathan only gets a few sidelong glances. From there, Terresa rockets me to the top of the mountain, and Ethan follows with Jonathan. I am glad we do not make the ascent on foot—I do not want to waste the time.
We land only a short climb’s distance to the front gate to the royal grounds. “This is as far as I go,” Terresa says.
“You’re not coming with us?” Ethan asks. His voice is edged with suspicion.
“I agreed to take you to the Black Hole, but I will not be party to stealing from the king. Not even for love. I’ll wait here. Come back and find me once you’ve secured what you’re looking for.”
Ethan looks at me. “Should we trust her?”
“I don’t see the problem,” I say. “We can always leave her with a babysitter. You’ll keep an eye on her, right, Brim?”
Brim, who is nestled between my tunic and my breastplate, meows in response. She climbs out over my shoulder and jumps down to the ground. She paces back and forth in front of Terresa, already on guard.
“Whatever you do, my love,” I say to Terresa, “don’t do anything that might make Brimstone mad.”
Ethan leads us through the gate. He pulls his helmet over his face and barks something authoritative to the guards as we pass. I wonder if the green plume on his helmet signifies a high rank. I should have taken that one for myself.
Once inside the palace, Ethan leaves Jonathan and me to wait behind a wall of tapestries while he goes to scope out the situation in the throne room. I hate waiting. It makes me feel as if I want to scratch my way out of my own skin. Ethan returns from running recon and crouches beside me and Jonathan. “It looks as though my grandfather is gone for the day, but at least six of his guards remain in his chambers.”
“Six?” Jonathan asks. “That feels a bit like overkill.”
“My grandfather is paranoid, as you might recall. The other half-dozen of his personal guards must have gone with him.”
“So how should we proceed? Any plans for drawing them out?” Jonathan asks. “How do we get past six guards? I’m not exactly built for stealth these days.”
“Easy,” I say, wondering why no one else has seen the obvious answer. “We should just ask.”
I hear both Ethan and Jonathan protesting but that doesn’t stop me from flinging open the door. I march into the king’s private living quarters, my fists on my hips. Bronze, eerily lifelike statues of men and women in various poses of supplication line the outer walls of the room. Six guards stand at attention in front of what looks like a collection of artifacts. The king’s trophies, no doubt. One guard startles when he sees me.
“Who goes there?” he asks, raising his spear and alerting the others to my presence.
“Oh good, I have your attention already,” I say. “My name is Lord Haden, prince—well, former prince—of the Underrealm, and I am here to collect Cupid’s bow. I do not plan on leaving without it, so how about you go ahead and hand it over?”
“Haden, stop!” Ethan hisses from behind the half-open door.
I glance back at him. “Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.”
“Do you?” he snaps.
When I look back at the guards, three of them have raised their staffs, crackling with electricity, two have swords at the ready, and the last has drawn a bronze bow, with a rather sharp-looking, electrified arrow pointed at my chest.
“Kill him,” says one of the men with a sword.
“What?” I say, holding my arms up in an exaggerated shrug. “Did I forget to say ‘please’?”
chapter twenty-five
daphne
Shady shakes his hand. I’d bit him, hard, in order to get him to let me go. I can
only hope he doesn’t get the inclination to bite me back. But that isn’t my biggest concern at the moment.
Tobin is out there, alive—but not for long, according to the message he had shouted in front of the cliffs. Do they know I am here, or had Tobin been forced to deliver that message multiple times throughout the Underrealm?
I consider shouting back, alerting Garrick and his men to my presence right away, but without the Key, what good would turning myself over do?
I need the Key before I can do anything.
“You have to help me,” I say, pacing in front of Shady. “I need to save my friend. I need to find the Key, and I need your help in order to do it.”
“You said your friend is in the mortal world,” Shady says. “You said he was looking for Kore. How is he here now?”
“This is a different friend. Haden is my friend who is headed to the Skyrealm. Tobin is my friend who is being held for ransom by the king.”
“How can you save them both?” Shady asks. “If youuu trade Key for the one called Tobin, how will youuu use it to return to the one called Haden? Youuu said he will die if you are not reunited. Youuu said we need him to bring Kore back and dessstroy the Keres.”
I stop pacing. For a faceless zombie, Shady is awfully logical, and I can’t ignore what he is saying. I need the Key to save Haden. I need the Key to kill the Keres. But I also need to give away the Key to save Tobin.
My best friend versus the boy I love.
“What will this king do if he gets the Key?” Shady asks. “You said you need to find it before he or the Court find it. What will they do with it?”
I think of Garrick and his two shadows. His manipulations to get the crown. “Release the Keres,” I say, speculating. Garrick must be working with the Keres. And what would they want more than to be freed from their prison?
And what will they do once they’re free? I already know the answer: destroy everything.
I’m not just looking at the question of saving Tobin versus saving Haden—I’m looking at the question of Tobin versus the greater good.
But Tobin is here because of me. He traveled to the Underrealm—risked everything—to help me. How can I just walk away from him? How can I leave him to die?
“I can save both of them,” I say, pacing again. “There has to be a way to save both. Garrick said I have until first light to save Tobin. Haden told me he has about forty-eight hours left. What if I can use the Key to get close enough to free Tobin, and then the two of us get out of there before Garrick actually gets his hands on it? Then we can use the Key to save Haden and stop the Keres.”
“Annnd get Kore back?” Shady says, his moaning voice hopeful and leading.
I stop pacing and stand in front of Shady. “Yes,” I say. “I promise you this, if you help me find the Key and save my friends, I will help you find Persephone.”
Shady drops to one knee, his hand pressed against the ground. “Then I ammm your humble servant, Daphne of the morrrtal realm. I will help youuu save both your friends.”
“Thank you,” I say, fighting back a wave of emotion.
After a moment, I turn away and gaze out over the cliff. “Now all we need to do is find Charon, hope beyond hope he has the Key and is willing to hand it over, and then make it back to the palace before first light tomorrow. Easy peasy.” My stomach clenches. There is nothing easy about any of this—let alone the fact that the dock near the gate, where I had first encountered Charon, was at least a day’s journey from the palace. And we don’t even know if that’s where Charon will be. “How on earth are we going to find Charon and get back in time?” I mutter to myself.
“Use your Kronolithe to send ussss there,” Shady says.
“Send us?”
“Kore’s pomegranate gave her ability to move through Underrealm with ease. She would think of where she wanted to go, and her Kronolithe would send her there.”
“You mean like teleportation?” I ask, clasping my hand over the necklace.
“I do not know word, ‘teleportation,’ but I do know it can take youuu from one place to another in this realm in blink of an eye.”
“So you’re telling me I could have blinked myself right out of your cave anytime I wanted?”
“Yesss,” he says. If it were possible for a faceless man to look sheepish, Shady was pulling it off. “That is whyyy I did not tell you.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” I ask. “Show me how to teleport ourselves off this rock.”
“It is not as simple as youuu make it sound,” Shady says, approaching my side.
“Nothing ever is,” I say.
chapter twenty-six
haden
The electrified arrow sails toward my chest. I deflect it with a burst of lightning from my hand. Huh, I didn’t know I could do that. The arrow flies off to the left and embeds in the doorframe just as Ethan and Jonathan come charging into the room behind me.
“A present for you,” I say to Jonathan, nodding to the arrow.
He grabs it and knocks it into the maple-wood bow we bought at a sporting goods store on our way to the campground. This arrow looks far superior to the graphite arrows that also came from the shop. “Drop your weapon,” he orders the guard, whom he has trained in his sights.
“I would do it,” Ethan says. “Eros never misses his mark.”
“Eros?” the guard lowers his sword slightly.
“It’s the fugitive prince,” the other sword-bearing soldier says, pointing at Ethan. “There’s a price on his head. Kill the others but capture Prince Ethan. We’ll eat like the king tonight.”
The Skylord archer goes for a second arrow from his quiver, but I am faster than he is. I hit him with a blast of lightning, knocking the bow from his hands. As he scrambles for it, I blast him again. He falls to the ground and I turn in time to block a blow from another guard’s spear. In a matter of seconds, I have gained control of his weapon and incapacitated him.
“Good work,” Ethan says as I toss him the spear. He lunges into combat with another spear bearer, while Jonathan holds off the swordsman with his raised bow. The man drops his weapon and holds up his hands, no doubt wanting to avoid an arrow slung by Eros himself. It’s a good thing he cannot see the wince of pain Jonathan is fighting to hide, from the strain of holding the position with his injured shoulder.
The other swordsman, who must be their commanding officer, barks at the last standing spearman, and the two lunge for me. I have always been a gifted fighter, but today I feel as though I am under some sort of charm. I use my mimic powers to study their movements. In a matter of seconds, I am blocking blows before they barely start to fly and dodging out of the way with ease. I catch the spearman by the back of his cape, and in a twisting move, wrap it around him like a cocoon. I kick him away from me and he collides into the guard who had Ethan locked in combat up until this moment.
“I could have handled that myself,” Ethan says, kicking one of the men so he stays down, but he smiles at me and I know he’s impressed. “I had my doubts, but this might be my favorite version of you.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the commander charge at me with his sword. I shove my hand out and grab him by the wrist. With a hard twist of his arm, and an elbow to his diaphragm, I get him to surrender his weapon.
I wrench his arm behind his back and hold the sword to his throat. “I told you I wasn’t going to leave without Cupid’s Bow, so how about you please hand it over now?”
“It’s not—”
But before the commander can finish, his words are cut off by the shrill shriek of a female voice. I look up as a woman standing in the open doorway drops the bundle of linens she was holding. Her face is ashen, and I see another scream forming on her lips. If she calls for more guards . . .
I contemplate letting go of the commander and making a move to grab her, but Ethan is faster. He stands between me and the woman, outstretching his hand toward her in a gentle beckoning. “It’s okay,” he says, removing his bro
nze helmet. “It’s me, Ethan.”
“Ethan?” she says, her voice giving away that she hasn’t seen him in years. “I’d heard you’d returned to your grandfather’s ranks a few months ago, but then I heard rumors. Rumors that you had gone rogue . . .” She takes a step forward, and I am not sure if she is going to strike him or embrace him.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” Ethan says, closing the distance between them. “I should have told you my plans.”
“Mother?” Jonathan’s voice is filled with awe. He lowers his bow and turns toward the two. “Psyche? Is it really you?”
“I’m sorry,” she says, squinting at him. “Do I know you?” She looks at Ethan. “Who is this man? What are you doing, my son?”
“Mother, this is—“
But another cry interrupts him. This one from Jonathan. He lunges sideways and then falls to the ground—a crackling, electrified sword protrudes from his chest. In the moment of our distraction, the man he was holding at bay must have grabbed his weapon and struck. Ethan is faster than me once again. He lays the man flat with a lightning bolt and then runs to Jonathan.
“Father?” he says. “Father? Can you hear me?”
“Father?” Psyche, Ethan’s mother, says, backing away from the two. “No . . .”
A pool of blood creeps out from under Jonathan’s prostrate body. Ethan leans down close to him. “Father, hang on. It’s going to be all right.”
Jonathan sputters, his lips trying to form a word. “My bow,” he finally chokes out.
“Find his bow!” Ethan shouts at me.
I still have the commander in my grasp. I wrench him with me as I scan the various artifacts. Some are in glass cases, and others are mounted on plaques, like they belong in some sort of museum. I see all manner of weapons, even a crown, and what looks like a Gorgon’s head that has been wrapped in golden cloth, but I don’t see anything that resembles a bow. “Where is it?” I demand, shoving the sword against the commander’s throat. The smell of blood and fear stings my nostrils. “Where is Cupid’s Bow?”