The Shadow Prince

chapter twenty-one HADEN

I wake in the middle of the night, knowing there’s an intruder in my room. A sudden thunk, like something hitting the ground, awakens me, and before I have a chance to sit up, an unexpected weight lands on my chest. Two bright eyes stare into mine. In my confusion, electricity surges into my hands and I am about to strike—until the thing on my chest licks my face.

I blink. “Brimstone?”

The cat meows plaintively in response. She stands with her front paws on my collarbone.

“How did you get here?” I lift her up and get out of bed. I see the bag I’d brought with me from the Underrealm toppled over on the table in the corner. “Have you been hiding in there this whole time?”

She puts her paw on my face.

“Naughty girl,” I say.

She hisses.

“Sorry.” I stroke her head, trying to soothe her before she gets really angry. “But do you know how much trouble I can get into for bringing a hellcat into the mortal world? Intentional or not?”

She purrs.

“I missed you, too, Brim.”

She climbs up my chest, sinking her little claws into my skin as she goes, and then settles on my shoulder.

“You must be hungry.”

My thought is to get Brim some food and then figure out how to hide her in my room from the others, but when I enter the kitchen, I find it already occupied.

Dax sits at the kitchen table. A paper sack giving off an unfamiliar smell sits in front of him, and he’s holding a tablet of a sort that resembles a larger version of my iPhone. The light coming off the screen illuminates his face in the dark room. A look of worry is etched into his features. I am about to turn around and leave when he looks up from the tablet. He sees me and turns the device off.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asks, his voice sounding strained.

I stand there awkwardly for a few seconds. I am not sure I have forgiven him yet, and I am even less sure if he’s forgiven me.

Brim meows.

Dax’s eyebrows arch when he realizes Brim is on my shoulder.

“A little stowaway,” I say.

“Naughty—”

“Don’t make her mad. She’s feeling a little touchy on the subject.”

“If Simon sees her …”

“I know. But I need to get her some breakfast before she decides to eat one of us.”

Brim hops off my shoulder onto the counter. She waits expectantly as I inspect the fridge for something to feed her. Either Simon or Dax has stocked the fridge, mostly with foods that I don’t recognize. I move aside Simon’s bottle of beet juice and find a package of something called cold cuts. I smell it and then hold it out to Brim for her inspection. She sniffs it and bites the corner of the package. I take that as approval and tear it open. She anxiously snatches bits of the meatlike substance from my hand, nipping my fingers in her overexcitement.

Dax pulls something from the paper bag that sits on the table. It looks like meat and cheese wrapped in a really thin, round piece of flatbread. He takes a bite and sighs. “You know I volunteered to be your guide because we’re friends, but honestly, I would have done it just for the late-night taco runs. Man, I missed Mexican food.”

Dax finishes his so-called taco and then turns his tablet back on. He swipes at the screen a couple of times, and then grunts with displeasure.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to catch up on things since I was here last.” He points at the tablet. “I’ve been researching local news, that sort of thing. They’ve already got a write-up on what happened to that girl they found near the grove. It says that doctors concluded that she had a massive heart attack, passed out, tumbled down the slope, and fell into the lake. If she hadn’t been found by some fellow students, she probably would have died of hypothermia or drowned. They say she’s in a coma.”

“Massive heart attack? That means her heart seized up, yes?”

“Yes.”

“How old is she?”

“Seventeen.”

“Is that normal?”

“No.”

“Were there any wounds? Was there blood?”

“It doesn’t say.”

Brim licks my fingers, greedily searching for more meat. I pull another slice from the package and give it to her whole, distracted by a suspicion that edges into my thoughts.

“What are you thinking?” Dax asks. “You’ve got that look.”

I pick up Brim, who is trying to chew her way into the package of cold cuts. “I noticed a weird smell at the lake. Like death lingering in the air.”

“But the girl didn’t die.”

“Exactly.” I look at Dax. My suspicion is going to sound crazy—even to him. “What if Brim wasn’t the only stowaway who passed with us through the gate?”

Dax laughs. “You’re kidding, right? That’s impossible.” He looks at me and his laughter dies. “How could it get out?”

“I don’t know.” I suddenly feel stupid for suggesting it. But if my suspicions are right …

“I’ll look into it,” he says. “Meanwhile, you rest up. You’re going to need your strength.”

I give him an inquisitive look.

“You’re starting school on Monday.”

“School?”

“Simon’s call. I was hoping you’d get to avoid it, but he thinks it’s best if you and Garrick enroll in school. He thinks, with everything that happened today with Daphne and this other girl, it’s important that we all act as much like normal humans as possible. He also says the added benefit is that you’ll have the chance to interact with your Boon on more common grounds.”

I nod. “That doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.”

Dax makes a scoffing noise. “You might be from Hades and all, but you haven’t experienced torment quite like high school before.” He swipes at his tablet. “But at least it means no more lurking in the shadows, trying to grab hapless females, and almost getting yourself fried.” There’s an edge to his voice that tells me I haven’t been forgiven completely for my mistake, after all.

Then again, I never actually apologized. It’s against my Underlord nature.

“I didn’t get very far with her, if that makes you feel better.”

“Did she scream or something?”

“No. She hit me.”

“She hit you?” Dax suppresses a smile—not very well. “Where?”

“In the face. Hard.”

He laughs. “Well, I’ll be harpied. I haven’t met her and I already like this Boon.”

“That’s the thing, Dax. This Daphne girl isn’t like any Boon I’ve ever met.…”

“Forget those other Boons. There’s a difference between the girls who go easily into the Underrealm and the majority of mortal women. You see, most Champions get the chance to choose their Boons—they’re usually not preselected for them as with you and me—which means most Champions go after easy prey. Girls who seem like they’re already standing halfway in the dark to start with. Maybe that’s why they don’t last very long. Their spirits were weak from the beginning. But it sounds to me this Daphne girl has got fire.”

“True. And a really mean right hook.”

Dax chuckles. “She reminds me of someone else I met here …,” he says, more to himself than to me.

“Your Boon?”

He doesn’t answer my question.

“What happened to her? Why did you come back alone?”

Dax shakes his head. He rarely talks about his time in the mortal world, and he never mentions the girl he was supposed to bring back. All I knew was that he’d returned alone.

“It’s not something I can talk about.”

“Why?”

“Some things just can’t be said.” Dax returns his attention to his tablet, his jaw clenched as he swipes at it with a forcefulness that seems unnecessary. He’s grown so quiet that I know no amount of pressing will get him to speak of her now.

But there’s a more important question I need answered, so I let the topic of his Boon remain where it stands for now. I sit on the counter next to Brim, and give her another slice of meat so she’ll stop trying to eat my fingers, and then bring up the subject I’ve been wanting to discuss since we were in the owl roost in the Underrealm. It is hard to believe that it has been fewer than twenty-four hours since then.

“When I told you earlier that the Oracle had said my Boon—Daphne, that is—could restore something that had been taken from the Underlords, and I mentioned the word Cypher, you acted as though you knew something. You said something about rumors.…”

Dax stands up abruptly, leaving his tablet on the table, and exits the kitchen.

I jump off the counter. “You said you would tell me what you know,” I call after him.

“Shhhh!” I hear his command to be quiet coming from somewhere near the entrance to the garage. I hear a door open and close. The light from Dax’s tablet catches my eye. I glance down at the screen and see that he has entered the words abecie caelum into a search engine. The second word is Latin for sky, the first word is one I don’t recognize. I scan the rest of the page and see the words: 0 results found. Did you mean: abecu caelum?

Whatever Dax had been searching for, he wasn’t having much luck.

I hear him coming back and I look away from the tablet.

“Sorry,” he says, entering the kitchen. “I needed to be certain that Simon was still out. He has ears like a hawk—I had thought he was well out of range, and yet he still must have overheard us speaking in your room this afternoon. Trust me, Lord Haden. I did not tell him that you had gone to the grove.”

“I know,” I say. “But he obviously has sources beyond good hearing if he knew about me trying to grab Daphne. I told no one about that.”

I remember hearing someone entering the grove just before I left. Perhaps he had someone following me, or he himself had doubled back to the house and had seen me leave and he’d followed. One thing I should have been more careful about was not underestimating Simon, as Dax had instructed.

“What is he?” I ask Dax. “Simon isn’t an Underlord, but he’s most certainly not human.”

“I don’t know what Simon is, but he doesn’t look a day older than when I first met him six years ago. He could be three hundred years old, for all we know. My best guess is that he’s a satyr cloaked in the form of a human. That would explain his heightened senses and slow aging. Not to mention his love for vegetables. But it doesn’t account for his certain powers of persuasion, if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” I say.

No mere mortal—nor mere satyr, for that matter—could bring a lord of the Underrealm to the point of invoking elios like that. And the way I couldn’t move just because he told me I couldn’t—it was as if he were controlling my body with his words. If he could do that to me, I imagine most mortals don’t stand a chance against his persuasiveness. I look around at Simon’s opulent home, and think of the garage full of cars and how easily he had procured new identities for us, and realize just how useful that kind of power would be.

I can’t help wondering why he’s living in a house with three young Underlords and not off ruling a country somewhere. Then I remember what he had said—that all of us “have things riding” on my quest. Does even he know more about my true purpose than I do? And why hadn’t Ren or the Court bothered to fill me, of all the people involved, in on the details?

“What is a Cypher?” I ask Dax. “And why does the Court want it?”

Dax sits at the table, turns off his tablet, and sticks it inside his knapsack, which sits on one of the chairs. He gestures for me to take a seat across from him. Instead, I sit on Simon’s polished countertop and let Brim climb back onto my shoulders. She purrs contentedly next to my ear.

“What do you know about the Key of Hades?” Dax asks.

“I know that the Key was more than the instrument that locked and unlocked the main gates of the Underrealm. I know that it was Hades’s Kronolithe—the thing that granted him his immortality—and without it, the Sky God was able to kill him. I know that the Key was stolen by the Great Traitor, and because of its loss, we Underlords have been locked inside the Underrealm, godless, for centuries. And this brought an end to the Thousand-Year War between our ancestors and the Skylords.”

“All true,” Dax says. “Except the war isn’t over; it’s just at a stalemate, as far as many in the Court are concerned. Why do you think they train us to be warriors? It’s because they hope to restart the war someday. Someday soon, if there’s any credence to the rumors I’ve heard.”

“But how is that even possible? Only a few of us can pass through Persephone’s Gate at a time. And only once every six months. How can the Court wage a war without an army?”

“What if they could open the main gates again?”

“But they would need the Key for that.”

“Exactly,” Dax says. “And to find the Key, they need the Cypher.”

“Daphne? But she’s just some mortal girl. How could she help the Court get a Key that has been lost for millennia?”

“That is not a piece of the puzzle I have been privy to.”

I can feel my heart racing and energy pulsing through my veins. The Oracle had said that the fate of the Underrealm rests on my shoulders, but part of me had tried to dismiss her words as hyperbole. Had I truly been Chosen for such an important assignment? Could I really have the means to help restore the Key of Hades to the Underrealm? I can only imagine the kind of glory and honor that would accompany such a victory, if Dax’s speculations about the Cypher are correct. Had I truly been Chosen by the Fates to accomplish the greatest task that any Champion had ever been entrusted with?

But that is the thing; I hadn’t been entrusted with anything. The Court hadn’t told me any of this vital information. As far as I am concerned, I have been sent to the Overrealm blind—thinking I am merely to bring back another Boon for the harem. I had to find out this information from a servant. Is that because they have so little trust in me that they think I will fail if I have any clue of what an important task is before me?

“How do you even know all this?” I ask Dax.

“There are benefits to being treated with as little regard as furniture,” he says. “Many in the Court have a tendency to say too much when servants are around, because they do not care that we exist. What I have told you is what I have pieced together from snippets of conversations and the rumors that circulate among the servants. I can tell you that in the last three years or so, your father has made many journeys to consult the Oracle of Elysium, but it was only now that the Oracle agreed the time is right for obtaining the Cypher.”

“What will they do with Daphne? How will they use her to get the Key?”

“I don’t know that much. But I heard what the Oracle said in the ceremony—that you are the one who can bring her back to the Court.”

Can—that being the word that sticks with me. She didn’t say I will—there is no guarantee that I will succeed. As it stands at this moment, I am just as likely to fail as I am to succeed.

And with the mistakes I made today, the scales seem tipped too much in failure’s favor.…

No. That is the way Rowan would want me to think. He would want me to let my fears get in the way. I was the one who was Chosen, not Rowan. I am the one who is here, not him.

The only thing standing in the way of my restoring the full power of the Underrealm is Daphne herself. Part of me worries I’m not prepared for taking on this Cypher, but at the same time, I am glad for the challenge of a worthy opponent. It will make my victory all the more satisfying.

“What is the best way to defeat her?” I ask Dax. “How do I take her down?”

“Take her down?” he repeats, as if I’ve just said something distasteful.

“You said it yourself. Daphne isn’t like other Boons. She’s a more formidable opponent than—”

“Whoa,” Dax says. “You’re looking at this all wrong. First of all, you can’t think of her as an opponent. That’s you thinking like an Underlord warrior. You’re going to have to take a more human approach. You’re not here to defeat her; you’re here to get her to trust you. You need her to like you. Actually, more than that,” he says with a weird smile. “You’re going to have to get her to fall in love with you.”

I stare at Dax, dumbfounded. He might as well have told me I needed to sprout wings and fly into the sun. “How am I supposed to get her to fall in love with me when I don’t know the first thing about … it? Love, I mean.”

Dax sighs like he has no idea of how to explain it to me.

And I thought he was supposed to be my guide.

Brim bristles on my shoulder. Her purr turns into a growl. I follow her glare toward the hallway that leads to the garage.

“Simon,” Dax says. “She must hear him pulling in.”

“Time to hide you,” I tell Brim, catching her in my hands before she can go running toward the garage.

“I’ll distract Simon with questions about your school arrangements,” Dax says as he ushers us toward the stairs. “Hmmm. Maybe he does have the right idea with sending you to school. You need to get to know Daphne on a personal level. Just try to act as human as possible. And no more of your little excursions. I mean it, Haden. Especially with Simon on the warpath.”

I nod my acceptance and head up the stairs with my cat contraband. I think I hear Garrick’s door click shut as I walk down the long hallway, and I wonder how much he overheard.

When I get back to my room, I make a nest of blankets for Brim under my bed and pull out my iPhone. Brim snubs her nest, and instead curls up at my feet. I hit one of the phone’s icons and pull up a search engine. I am not sure which question to research first:

“What does it mean to be human?” or “How do I get a girl to like me?”

Because when it comes to both of those queries, I haven’t got a clue.