Page 5

ELI

Walter and I emerged from the room into a dimly lit hallway and quickly passed several similar rooms, each with a different color of fabric hanging in a similar fashion. I was so busy gawking at the bright colors, I lost Walter as he kept moving.

“Hey! Watch where you’re going, man!”

Startled and off balance, I caught myself just before my head smashed into the smooth slate floor, having tripped over a group of people huddled along the edge. “Oh, I beg your pardon.”

The largest of the three, a man with thick, swollen features, looked down at something he held between his forefingers. They were so large, it was hard to see what he was gaping at, but it looked like a small glass…saltshaker?

“He spilled the last of it!” “What? No! I needed that!”

“I’m out of memento! I can’t get any more dust!”

They all rose up from the ground to hover over me in their filthy, stiff-looking clothes.

A chill ran through me. They looked ragged and confused, and I had no doubt I could take them in a fight, but for the first time in my life, I realized I didn’t have my powers to back me up if things got out of hand.

If they still had their powers—whatever they might be—then I was in trouble.

I scrambled up from the floor as quickly as possible but was stopped by a kick to the ribs. “Fuck!” Yep. I could definitely still feel pain.

“You’ve cost us our last hit!”

I tensed, preparing for another kick when a firm grip tightened around my bicep and pulled me to my feet.

“Let him be, you maggots.” The stranger patted my back as the three goons slinked down the hall passed us.

I knew from the voice it wasn’t Walter who had helped me, but I was even more startled when I looked at the kind stranger.

“You’re Seelie,” I blurted. “Thanks for helping me. I don’t have my—I don’t have any weapons on me.” I stumbled over my words, thinking better of sharing my lack of power. It wasn’t a good idea to advertise that I was powerless without knowing anything about this place or the people.

The man chuckled politely. “Don’t worry about it. Always glad to help a fellow Seelie when I can. We have to stick together down here, ya know? Where ya headed?”

I felt the tension in my shoulders release a bit. Maybe this man could help me find Adrianna?

I glanced around as we stepped into a sprawling, busy space at the end of the hall. No Walter, though it was impossible to see every face in the dimly lit area, which overflowed with people. “Just looking for my friend. What were those guys doing back there? The ones I bumped into?”

Once again, a friendly laugh poured from the blond man. “So you’re new here. I thought I could tell by all the memento newness radiating from you. The filthy beggars were wasting their last bit of life on the dust.”

Memento? Dust?

As we walked farther into the room, I realized that it wasn’t so much a room as it was a huge foyer-type area with exits surrounding it, forming a circular room.

Sunlight caught my attention, and I strained my neck to see what the cause of the phenomenon was.

They couldn’t have sunlight down here, could they?

With a few strategic steps, I was able to get a better look and see three extra-large windowpanes with black trellises covering them, each allowing a small amount of sunlight to peek through.

“Dust?” I turned from the window to face the man.

Something about the way he was looking at me caused a stir of adrenaline in my gut.

“Fairy dust. Ya know, to fly?”

“The saltshaker?” I asked, taking a step back. The way he was looking at me also made me want more distance between us.

He snorted. “Yeah, the saltshaker, except it’s not a salt-shaker.

It holds fairy dust. It’s a drug. You sprinkle it on your skin and get the sensation that you are really happy.

If you left loved ones, you get to see their faces again, see what they are doing—ya know, spy on them for a few minutes.

They can’t see you, but it doesn’t matter.

The dusters call it flying because you feel so high from seeing everything you left, you might as well be flying.

That’s a nice necklace you’ve got there. Is it rare? From the royal jewels?”

“Something like that.” I tucked the pendant back under my shirt.

We were standing in the middle of some sort of party.

Low, melodic music flowed through the space as more and more strangers bumbled into me even though we stood off to the side.

Where had Walter gone? Should I be worried that he’d disappeared?

The stranger abruptly moved too close to my side.

“Ya know, memento. As soon as you arrive in Tartarus, you have a full tank of memento. It’s all your memories, just here it’s used like currency.

What you’ve got is gonna get you in some big trouble down here.

I’m just looking out for my new friend. Why don’t I hold on to some of it for you and keep it safe?

You can trust a fellow Seelie. The pendant too? We’re friends, right?”

Son of a bitch. Of course he wasn’t just a kind Seelie stranger; he was a piece-of-shit Seelie that had been horrible enough to earn a place in this shitland.

I glared at him and had the sudden urge to bash his head into the wall just for talking about taking Cal’s pendant.

“Nah, I’m good. Listen, I’ll catch you later, man.

I’m going to find my friend.” I slapped his arm, imagining it was his face and turned to walk into the crowd.

Something sharp suddenly pressed into my back, halting my steps.

“No. I saved you back there. You think I don’t recognize you?

Prince?” He pressed the blade’s tip harder into my back.

“I don’t know how you got here, but by the way you tucked that necklace in, I’d say it must be quite valuable.

Hand it over and while you’re at it, give me all of your memento.

You won’t be needing it after this anyway.

Poor fucker, you wouldn’t last a day here. …and you won’t. Give me what I want.”

Maybe it was the Tartarus scabies, or maybe it was something else, but when I snatched the knife from him and held it to his lying throat, it felt good.

He hadn’t even realized what I’d done until it was too late and the sharp bite of steel threatened to slice under his jaw.

The color drained from his face, and he held his arms up wide.

“It was just a welcome joke, come on. A little razzing.”

“That was really stupid—what’s your name?” Suns, I wanted to smash his face in.

“Ja-Jarrod,” he stuttered.

“That was really stupid, Jarrod. You do something like this again and I’m going to?—”

“Prince Aurelius.”

The entire crowd stopped what they were doing to turn to see where the deep voice called from.

Even the music stopped. My head snapped in the direction of the voice to see the creator of the powerful call backlit ominously as he stood in front of the sunlit windows.

And there was Walter. He looked like a little boy standing next to the large man.

Not just because he was at least a full foot shorter than him—but because the man exuded an aura of power unlike any I had seen.

It was stifling and intriguing. You wanted to hide but you also wanted to get closer to it—to him.

The man was Kaohs, the god of Tartarus. There was no one else it could have been.

I shoved stupid Jarrod away from me, keeping my eyes on Kaohs the entire time. His dark eyes glinted with humor as he watched me tuck the blade into the back of my belt, as if he found it adorable to hold a knife. Walter moved his head and beckoned me to join them.

As I walked through the still crowd, no one moved a muscle until I made my way over to Walter and Kaohs. They turned and walked out the door, and it wasn’t until I stepped out myself that I heard the music and crowd return to their loud state behind us.

I shut the door and felt the heat of the sun on my face, but disappointment pulled at my spirit.

Having been a SunTamer, I had a closer relationship with the sun than almost anyone.

I worked with the sun and held the gift of wielding small fractions of it—or at least I had before I gave up my powers to come here.

This sun, however, was not real. It, like so many things in this place, was nothing more than a liar.

Though it wasn’t real, it made me realize how much I missed the feel of the afternoon sun heating my skin or the touch of liquid heat in my palm when I called to the sun and managed to create a bright and fiery ball of power in my hands.

I would miss that feeling forever. I hoped Cal loved it as much as I had.

I turned around to the scent of sweat mingling with fresh jasmine and the sound of angry hooves slapping at the ground.

A barren field of crumbling dirt was fenced in with tall wrought-iron posts.

Men clad in heavy black armor, each atop a muscular onyx stallion, scrambled aggressively through the fenced-in area.

Was that smoke or steam coming from the horses’ nostrils?

Holy suns, they were intense. Each time I thought my eyes had landed on the biggest horse and rider, I was proven wrong as a more muscular, agile rider would cross their path and knock them from their horse.

The air was filled with angry desperation.

I stole a quick look at the false sun, attempting to look away when a particularly aggressive rider rushed another man and proceeded to slam something into the small hole cut out in the armor of the man’s helmet, just above his eyes.

Sharp cracks sounded when the man’s head violently exploded, sending pieces of his armor and flesh into the fence with a splatter of gold. He was—had been—Seelie.