My Life From Hell (The Blooming Goddess #3)

Enough With The Stabbing (Part 2)

But I wouldn't and couldn't voice all this. Instead, I shoved past him, and stomped ahead on my own, all the way to Tartarus.

Oizys had drilled me well on how to get there, so I didn't have to concentrate too much on directions. Which was good because I was so mad, so fully consumed with righteous indignation, that I barely had the energy to focus on anything else. My palms burned. My skin glowed with my green light.

To make matters worse, I felt Persephone's dark desires working on me again, straining to unleash. I was so set on limiting my actions to walking and fuming, that I didn't even realize we had arrived until the bronze fence loomed up before us. But the cries of the damned didn't work their usual soul-deflating mojo on me right now.

Seething worked like a protective shield. Good to know.

I motioned toward the door in the fence. "Who wants to blast it open?"

Kai muttered something, veered left, and started walking.

"Where are you going?" I demanded, scrambling after him.

"The son of Hades does not break into Tartarus through a back way."

He had a point but he didn't have to sound so imperious about it.

The ground here was rocky and the moonlight dim, so I worked on not breaking an ankle.

About ten minutes later, we arrived at two enormous gates. The official way in. There were no guards, just a lot more bronze and despondency.

The land around the gates was desolate. Windswept and barren. The ground sloped steeply down toward the River Styx, foaming and sizzling with corrosive orangey black water. I recognized a dock battened to the shore. I'd passed it on Charon's raft when I'd snuck in with Theo to retrieve my pendent.

Kai placed a hand on the left gate. All the bronze seemed to leech into his palm, as if his skin were a sponge. It left the fence oddly colorless. I don't know if it was verifying his identity, but the bronze suddenly flowed back into the gate and it swung open.

A number of dead people rushed us, misery spewing from their mouths in howls. They stopped, frozen in their tracks as Kai strode toward them. With a single imperious look from him, they bowed low, scampering backward, eyes on the ground.

Kai didn't even check to see if Festos and I followed. He pushed forward, the gate closing behind him as he moved deeper into Tartarus.

"He's in fine form," Festos said, as we jogged after him.

If I hadn't been so worked up, I might found it mildly entertaining to sweep along in the Princeling' royal wake.

No one dared approach him. Or us by association. Even the inhabitants seemed to mute their cries of despair in deference to his majesty.

Kai stopped beside a smaller yet still fine-means-of-containing-people gate. Without speaking a word, he pushed that one open as well.

We stepped through and I found myself back on the bottom of the crater, under the violent sky. It was crazy because there had been no sense of the storm outside the gate. But in here, it was absolute and everywhere.

Prometheus was still bound to the rock, still unconscious, the chain still flaming.

Festos ran for him, brutally shoving Kai out of the way. We followed close behind.

Prometheus looked worse than the last time I'd seen him. His clothes were little more than ragged threads, exposing the burns on his skin as the flames danced across his torso. He was pale and waxy.

Constant contact with the elements hadn't helped matters either. The air swirled against my skin so hard, I felt like I sandblasted by dirt and tiny rocks and chaos. How much worse must it have been for him?

I held my whipping hair out of my face, eyes slitted against the debris.

Kai didn't say anything, a muscle in his jaw twitching at the sight of Prometheus.

"Yeah, you should feel bad," I said, yelling over the winds. That earned me a hard look.

As Festos went to work on freeing his real-world boyfriend, the ground beneath our feet shook. The three Hekatonkeires were lumbering toward us.

Lightning arced across the sky. As long as it wasn't trying to hit me, I didn't care. Besides, between the winds knocking me sideways and quaking at my feet, I was too busy trying to stay upright.

The Hekatonkheires reached us and the ground went still. All of their shaggy, bristly, hideous heads snapped to attention when they saw Kai.

"My Prince." The closest one saluted him in a voice so loud, it made the wind sound like a lullaby. To be clear, the head farthest from us, on the closest giant, saluted him.

I didn't pay too much attention to the other one-hundred forty-nine heads, because they were too wide a swath of ugly. The head that spoke, despite a festering boil on the side of his lip, was the heartthrob of the group.

Speaker Head looked at Festos, then back to Kai, waiting for clarification.

Kai looked to the sky. The giant flicked a hand at it and the storm stopped. It would have been impressive, but the stillness in its wake made me feel like we were in limbo. The sky froze in a savage swirl. The silence was so absolute that it was kind of freaky.

I didn't trust it. This sudden stoppage so we could have a little chat. My eyes darted left and right, waiting for the destruction to return.

"I am moving the prisoner, Gyes." Kai sounded indifferent.

"But my Prince, we have prepared—"

"Enough." Kai's voice was cold and commanding.

It shut up the giant.

Thing is, now I was curious. "Prepared what, matia mou?" I asked in my sweetest voice.

Kai turned to me, matching my syrupy ugh. "Nothing you need trouble your pretty head with, kardia mou."

"Bite me," I said through a smile, in a voice low enough that only he could hear. "What did you have planned for Prometheus?"