“Thank you,” I said as my voice trembled. It wasn’t enough, but he needed time, and I would give it to him. The ceremony was now though. What happened if he decided he could never love me as more than a friend after all?
You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, you know.
I shook James’s voice out of my head. Not now. Not when I was about to do the single most important thing I’d ever done in my life.
And not when we were stepping into the most jaw-dropping room I’d ever seen.
It put the ballroom in Eden Manor to shame. Pillars of chiseled stone held up the high ceiling, which was made of the same quartz that ran through the cavern outside, and it lit up every inch of the great hall. Windows with heavy black-and-gold curtains rose high above my head, and a magnificent chandelier hung in the middle of it all. At least now I knew why the palace was so big. It had to be in order to house a room like this.
The click of my heels echoed with each step I took across the shimmering marble floor. Row after row of pews faced the front, as if Henry often expected a crowd, and at the end of the lone aisle of pillars were two thrones. One was made of black diamond and the other white.
This was the throne room of the Underworld.
The other members of the council sat in the front row of benches, and thankfully everyone except James wore clothing as extravagant as the dress Henry had picked out for me. At least I wouldn’t have to bear the embarrassment of overdressing on top of everything else.
“Remember to exhale,” said Henry, his breath warm against my ear, and I shivered. He was right though; somewhere between entering the throne room and reaching the end of the aisle, I’d forgotten to breathe.
Henry turned us around so we faced the council, and he nodded once in greeting. I did the same and tried to focus straight ahead, sure that if I caught anyone’s eye, my nerves would get the best of me, but eventually I had to look.
My mother sat in the center, her back ramrod-straight and her eyes shining as she watched. James sat on the very end, and from the way he slouched in his chair, I knew he didn’t want to be there. I didn’t blame him.
Everyone else seemed at least moderately interested, but before I could take it in, Henry faced me and held out his hands palms-up. I hesitated, but he gave me an encouraging nod, and I shakily set my hands over his.
“Kate.” He spoke in a normal voice, but it reverberated through the room, amplified by Henry’s power or the structure of the hall or both. “As my wife, you have consented to take up the responsibilities of the Queen of the Underworld. You shall rule fairly and without bias over the souls of those who have departed the world above, and from autumnal equinox to spring of every year hence, you shall devote yourself to the task of guiding those who are lost and protecting all from harm beyond their eternal lives.”
I couldn’t even convince Henry not to go off on suicide missions. How was I supposed to help protect every single soul in this place?
Henry’s hands grew strangely warm. A warm yellow light glowed between ours, and I bit the inside of my cheek, barely able to stop myself from pulling away. It would take me more than a few hours to get used to that sort of casual show of power.
“Do you accept the role of Queen of the Underworld, and do you agree to uphold the responsibilities and expectations of such?” said Henry.
I hesitated. This wasn’t for a year or five or even ten; this was forever. I hadn’t even decided what I wanted to major in during college, let alone what I’d wanted to do with the rest of my life, but here Henry was, giving me a choice. And for a fraction of a second, his gaze met mine, and I saw my Henry underneath the distant god in front of me. His moonlight eyes sparkled, the corners of his lips twitched upward into the faintest of smiles and he seemed to glow with warmth from the inside out. He was looking at me like he had back in Eden, like I was the only person in the world, and in that moment, I would’ve torn apart heaven and hell to make sure I never lost him.
But then he disappeared back into himself, behind the mask he wore to protect the side of him that Persephone had ripped to shreds, and reality crashed down around me. It wasn’t a real choice, was it? Everything I’d done since moving to Eden had been leading up to this moment. Henry hadn’t married me out of love, and I’d known that from the beginning. He’d married me because I had passed the tests no one else had passed, and because the council had granted me immortality. I was the only girl who had lived long enough to become his queen. What if he stayed like this for the rest of eternity? What if all I ever was to him was a friend and a partner? The way he’d been in Eden, how he’d talked to me until the small hours of the morning, how he’d seen me in a way no one else had, how he’d risked his own existence to save mine—what if I never saw that side of him again?
Then again, what if this was the proof he needed that I wasn’t going to leave him? What if this was the final push to show him that it was safe to fall in love with me completely?
I swallowed. I’d already made my decision the moment I’d married him. I loved him, and walking away and letting him fade wasn’t an option, no matter what it cost me.
I could do this. I had to do this. For Henry’s sake—for my mother’s sake. For my sake. Because in the end, without Henry, I didn’t know who I was anymore, and every night during my summer in Greece, I’d gone to sleep dreaming about what it would be like to spend the rest of my existence loving him and being loved in return. As long as I gave him a chance, this could be everything I hoped it would be. Henry was worth the risk.
As I opened my mouth to say yes, a crash shattered the silence, and the tall windows exploded, sending shards of glass hurtling straight toward us.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE TITANS
As glass flew through the air, I covered my head instinctively, but the jagged edges glanced off my skin as if I were made of Kevlar.
Right. Immortal. I kept forgetting that part.
“What the—” I twisted around to survey the damage, but before I could get a good look, Henry pushed me behind him. I fell to the ground amidst the shards of glass, and while I scrambled to my feet, Henry and his brothers advanced toward the broken windows.
Ava appeared beside me and took my elbow. “Come on,” she said in a trembling voice as her face turned ashen. “We have to get out of here.”
“Why?” I said, but a sick sense of dread filled me as I stumbled along beside her. The others parted to let us through, each poised as if ready to strike. No matter how reluctant they were to talk about her, I knew this had to do with Calliope and the fresh scar running down Henry’s chest.
Ava didn’t answer me. She all but dragged me along the aisle, my heels skidding against the floor as I tried to regain my balance, but it wasn’t working.
I fell a second time, pulling Ava down with me. We landed in a heap, but she wasted no time hauling me to my feet again. As we scrambled forward, another crash echoed through the hall, and a shimmering fog seeped into the palace. The same fog from my vision.
In the past few hours, it seemed to have grown stronger. It crackled with strange tendrils of light, and for a moment, the fog hovered in front of Henry, as if recognizing him. Henry held up his hands again, exactly as he’d done in my vision, and the other members of the council formed a semicircle behind him and his brothers.
My heart hammered against my rib cage, and beside me, Ava froze. This was the thing that had nearly killed Henry, and now it was attacking all of us. The instinct to protect rose up inside of me as it drew closer to Henry and my mother and everyone I loved, but what could I possibly do to help stop it?
Without warning, it sliced through the air faster than the members of the council