Midnight Kingdom Read online

  It makes me laugh. “Of course it’s not fucking fair. But it would be stupid of him not to press his advantage.”

  “We’re inside,” insists Persephone. “Daylight won’t be an advantage here.”

  “You wanted charges in the train station, didn’t you? What do you think will happen when they all go off? The roof will cave in, and it will let in the sun.” It will let Zeus in, too. And Zeus, I’m realizing now, is too far gone to restrain himself. He’s never been very good at holding back. It’s not in his nature. Now that I’ve provoked him, well. I would do it again, to protect Persephone, but knowing it doesn’t change the outcome.

  It’ll be a bloodbath.

  I should tell that to Persephone now, so she’s prepared when it begins, but it’s already begun and somehow I still can’t say a damn thing.

  She screws up her mouth, setting her jaw. “If the mountain’s going to collapse then I can’t be wearing a nightgown.”

  It won’t matter, in the end, whether she’s wearing a nightgown or full-body armor. It won’t matter because each of us—me, Zeus, Demeter, and the others—we all lived a different hell in my father’s house. Zeus might care about Persephone in the way he cares about all of his business assets. She’s worth something to him in the context of his deal with Demeter. But he’s had years of practice destroying the things he cares about.

  At first, it was for survival. Now it’s to prove a point.

  Which means we’d be better spending our last minutes, our last hour, wrapped up in each other. Let him kill us both while I’m fucking her. That would be the way to go out.

  But responsibility nags at me. It’s not just us in the mountain, and those people are filtering through the hall behind us right now. My men can only hold Zeus for so long. Slaughter wasn’t part of the contracts they signed, and as long as I’m alive, those agreements are still in force.

  “Then go.” I release Persephone and step back, giving her the space she needs to get away from me.

  “Come with me.”

  If I do that, if I watch her raise the nightgown over her head and drop the shawl to the floor, neither of us is coming out until the battle arrives. “Hurry.” I lean down and kiss her, perhaps for the very last time. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

  A last lie, too.

  2

  Hades

  Persephone isn’t gone five minutes when Oliver appears in the doorway, face set and a rifle slung across his back. The sun is well above the horizon now, the sky turning a fatal summer blue. “The mines,” he says.

  So many times in my life, I’ve wished for death. I’ve courted it. Made it a constant companion. Why wouldn’t I? The prospect of a long life has always been as painful as the brutal existence I lived as a child and teenager. Time doesn’t heal all wounds when the fucking sun keeps rising, day after day. But now, with Oliver dressed in black to hide the blood he expects to shed, I’m not interested. There are other things more worth my concentration, like Persephone’s soft skin or the way she cries when she’s come too many times.

  We go out into the hall, breaking my last promise to Persephone just the way I thought I would. “They’re through?”

  “They’re on the outer boundary. Explosives along the outside of the mountain.” Oliver matches my pace. Hallway. Rotunda. We take the factory floor. “They’re going to blow apart the outer entrance so they can all fit in at once.” He puts a brave hand on my arm, bringing us both to a stop. “I don’t think you should let them do it.”

  The rest of my force—a security team I keep hidden in the walls and the floors under normal circumstances—are gathered at the line between the mines and the factory, all twelve of them. The massive space isn’t quite empty. Some of the workers are lurking at the outer edges, hoping they won’t be noticed. I don’t bother sending them out. They signed their contracts with me. If this is how they’d prefer to die, then I’ll take the extra manpower. Even if it reminds me of the way the rest of the people in my father’s house would come out to watch him beat the shit out of us. There’s something to be said for bearing witness.

  One of the men—black uniforms, extra ammo on belts—hands me a pistol, the black grip toward me. They’re all waiting for me to say something. That’s what it means to own everyone in the room. They’re an extension of you.

  “Oliver.” Loud enough for all of them to hear. “You don’t think we should force them to fight in the mines?”

  “It’s close quarters, which will delay them. But it’ll cost us more in the end. You won’t be able to close off the entrance, and nobody can work in the mines if they’re all blown to shit.”

  Nobody can return to work, and if I wait until Zeus has his chance to send his men through the mines then I will be completely fucked by the time they get here.

  Running footsteps interrupt the meeting, and right on time, there’s Persephone. Looking as soft as she’s ever fucking looked. Soft shoes. Soft leggings. A shirt as flowy as pale pink petals. What the fuck was she thinking, putting that on? It won’t protect her from anything. It shreds something in the vicinity of my chest and aches, an open wound.

  I will.

  “You left.” Her voice is a cousin to excusing but her eyes have gone wide with anxiety. “What’s happening? Did they get inside?”

  Persephone, saying this last bit to Oliver like she has every right to demand things of the head of security. She does have that right. I didn’t expect her to step into it this fully, but apparently she thrives under desperate situations. I’d rather see her desperate and writhing in my bed instead of standing here in the harsh light of the factory floor. I’ll deny myself that if it means keeping the mountain intact.

  The mountain. My people. Persephone.

  They’re the ones I have to keep in focus now and not the coiling, shredding pain already looking for ways to burrow into my brain and seed itself there until I’m a useless wreck.

  Oliver’s right.

  “We’re going to let them in.”

  Persephone’s mouth drops open. “No.”

  “Yes.” I take one step toward her to remind her where she is. I shove away the desperate urge to agree with her, to sweep her up in my arms and get her the fuck out of here, to hell with all these other people.

  She stands her ground. “You can’t do that.” Her whisper dissolves into the air around us. “You could die. We could all die.”

  The possibility of it settles around all the people in the room, men shifting their weight from side to side. Persephone has no idea how close we’ve come to that reality. Death crowds in like the sun finding its way through a crack in the wall. You can cover your face with your hands but it will still light up the blood vessels and work its way through.

  “Open the door.”

  Oliver moves without hesitation, but so does Persephone. I put an arm out and she runs into it, all the air going out of her. “Please,” she gasps. “Don’t do this. Oliver—”

  He’s been with me longer than he’s been with her, and his stride doesn’t falter. All the way into the big, carved-out tunnel that leads to the mine. And all the way to the thick gates just beyond the line of shadow. There’s the unmistakable metallic click of a key in a lock, and then Oliver comes back out, his gun in his hands and the safety off. “Should I go in and meet them?”

  A suicide mission. “No. We’ll wait here.” Let Zeus and his men exhaust themselves trying to feel their way through the pitch-dark mines.

  It doesn’t take as long as I’d hoped.

  They’re motivated. He’s paid them well.

  But I’ve paid my people, too, and they line themselves up at the back of the factory.

  Energy surges, lighting up my veins from my heart to my fingertips, and for the first time in hours I see this clearly. They can’t fucking stand there. If anyone’s going to meet my brother, it’s going to be me.

  I take Persephone by the arm and push her toward Oliver. “Get her out of here.”

  “No,
” she shouts, voice sharp. “I’m not going.”

  “You are, and so is everybody else. Back up.” The footsteps haven’t stopped coming. They will never stop coming. Conor barks by my side, his only warning. “Get back. I’m not fucking kidding. At least three tables back—”

  I’ve paid them better than Zeus would dream of, and they’ve got more binding contracts, which is how I end up in front of everyone else just as the first enemies arrive out of the shadows.

  They’re barely into the light before they start shooting and all I have is this fucking pistol.

  Two of them go down, a hail of bullets in both directions, and it’s only then that everyone, all at once, recognizes the absurdity of shooting guns in the fucking factory. Any stray bullet will ricochet and we’ll all end up dead. Four of them down. I don’t miss. Five. Six. The gap between us and them closes. Between me and the rest of these people, who my brother has hired as killers. They all have the same focused, haunted look in their eyes that Zeus used to wear when he was younger, before he learned to hide it.

  People with nothing to lose.

  One of them knocks the pistol from my hand and it’s gone, underneath one of the work tables.

  There’s a certain pleasure in violence.

  In the crack of a cheekbone against knuckle. The give of a nose against the heel of a hand. The snap of a neck. Some of them have worn bulletproof vests but they were planning on shooting their way through, not dragging me down. Someone is screaming no, no, no. Oliver hasn’t managed to get her out then.

  The facts:

  There are too many people. Too many hands to crush. Too many punches to block. Too many blows to absorb. At some point, they’ve decided to come for me. Zeus told them not to bother with anyone else, and they’re following his orders.

  My men are following mine.

  If Oliver is smart, he’ll have told them that they need to stay back so that they can put themselves between these fucks and the rest of the people in the mountain. They’re doing their best to pick them off from the doorway, but they’re outnumbered. I keep a lean force. I don’t need a team of hundreds.

  I didn’t need that, until now.

  There are too many people, and it’s too fucking bright. The blood becomes a haze. One of my feet slips in it, and it’s enough for them to get hold of one arm. It takes three of them and Conor isn’t having it. But he can only sink his teeth into so much flesh.

  I’ve been here before. More than once. I was weaker then, but I’m still not strong enough now for ten of them.

  Twelve of them.

  Conor howls in my ear and a splitting pain almost takes me to my knees. Almost. I get a wrist free and send a man into the sharp corner of a work table, every sound magnified, up to the ceiling and back again. I’ve never been so bruised in my life, so utterly fucked up, and yet my heart beats with wild rage. I won’t stop until she’s safe or I’m dead.

  “Enough, enough,” someone says. “Leave some for me.”

  3

  Persephone

  My voice is hoarse by the time Zeus steps out from the cavern leading to the factory floor, fresh and clean. He’s had a haircut, which has had the effect of making his hair several shades lighter somehow, and he walks onto the floor with his hands loosely in his pockets and a big grin on his face. As if he’s not walking into the one place he’s not supposed to be. He could be hosting a party here. Sick rage tightens my hands into fists—pointlessly, because Oliver has braced himself against one of the tables and locked his arms around my waist. I’d fight him harder but I can’t turn away to use my fingernails against his face. I can’t stop watching for an instant, not when Hades is bleeding.

  Bleeding.

  Like any other man would.

  Blood and bruises, everywhere I can see. Someone has torn his shirt. The tear in the fabric is as shocking as the tears in his skin. I’ve never seen him like this and I’m not supposed to see him like this. There’s no comparison. I thought I knew fear before this. I thought I knew what it meant to have the breath squeezed out of my lungs in an iron vise. I didn’t know anything. Conor has his body pressed tight to Hades's knee. It’s hard to say which one of them is trembling but it has to be Conor, because Hades wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.

  I kick at Oliver’s shin and he doesn’t flinch. “You can’t go near them.”

  “They can’t do this.” They can’t, because I won’t live through it. The rest of the men in the room hang back in a loose circle, weapons at their sides. Is this what Andromache felt like, watching Hector go out to fight Achilles? Did she have the same sick dread teasing at the back of her throat. Hades and Zeus would be evenly matched except Hades is already disheveled.

  “No need to get other people involved.” Zeus undoes the buttons of his jacket, shrugs it off, and steps over several bodies to put it on one of the work tables. He makes sure it’s neatly folded. Then he glances back at the bodies. “Not more than they already are.”

  Hades swipes at his mouth and the back of his hand comes away bloody. “If you wanted to see me you could have just said so.”

  “But isn’t a surprise visit so much better?”

  Hades blinks, but I see it. On him it’s as telling as a flinch. He shifts forward slightly so that he’s standing more in front of Conor. “Following in father’s footsteps, then? Honestly, it suits you. You were always his favorite.”

  Zeus's jaw tightens, and I take the opportunity to try and push my way out of Oliver’s grip. It does nothing. If I could just get myself between them, then maybe I could do something. I could do anything. “Oh, I disagree,” Zeus says mildly. “If anyone was his favorite, it was Demeter.” He tips his head back and scans the lights. “But we don’t have to get into old wounds, do we? Not when we’ve got new ones to tear open.”

  “It doesn’t have to happen this way,” I tell Oliver, hoping he’ll finally hear me and let me go.

  “It does. It’s that, or Zeus's people go after everyone in the mountain. And his people won’t stop with the guards.”

  He means the people hiding upstairs. The ones who signed up to work here. The ones who are looking to Hades, of all people, to protect them. I can’t look at any more bodies on the floor.

  Hades sighs, his face impassive while Zeus unbuttons the cuffs of his shirt and rolls up his sleeves. The waiting is killing me. Zeus must know that. He’s making everybody else wait because our hearts are going to explode and all the dirty work will be done for him. I go completely still then throw myself against Oliver’s arm. Nothing.

  “So impatient,” muses Zeus. “We’re not doing this here.”

  “There’s nowhere else.”

  “Liar.” Zeus grins at Hades, a familiar, taunting thing. “It’s not polite to kill each other indoors. Outside is best.”

  My stomach hits the floor and falls farther. Oliver’s arm goes tight around my waist and he curses under his breath. Outside is a death sentence and Zeus knows that. Why did I imagine him as somehow softer than his brother? Is it because of all his stupid parties? Those are only meant to hide what he is.

  Hades flicks his eyes toward the ceiling. “Hurry up then.”

  The two of them go past, shoulder to shoulder, and nobody in the room moves to stop them. Why would they? They’re the most powerful men on the mountain and on the planet. Everybody here answers to them. A frustrated scream chokes itself off in my throat. Oliver and I have a brief scuffle, which ends in us both following after the two brothers down a series of hallways. I don’t take a breath the whole time. At any moment, Zeus could decide to go after him, and then they’d be in this small, enclosed space.

  What’s worse is the valley outside. Hades throws open the door and green floods in along with new sunlight. For a split second they’re both silhouetted against the blue sky, and then they’re outside.

  Outside, outside, outside.

  The rest of us file out like spectators at the colosseum, and I can’t breathe. I can’t. At the other side of the valle
y Eleanor’s cottage door opens and she comes out. Even from here, horror is written in the way she stands. Horror and resignation.

  Zeus laughs.

  The sound bounces off the ravine and it might as well be a starting gun. I’m going to be sick on the ground. Why isn’t anyone doing anything? Conor takes off like a shot, a black blur, and lets out a choked whine. Oliver’s tackled him to the ground and pins him. I drop to my knees and get my fingers around his collar, both of us struggling to hold him down, and tears streak down my face. Damn it. Damn it. This can’t be happening, but it is happening.

  Zeus goes for Hades with all the precision of a soldier but the precision doesn’t last. I can’t make sense of their bodies. Fists fly through the air almost too fast for me to see. Zeus's head snaps back so hard I think it’s over, it must be over but he recovers like it’s nothing. He drives an elbow into Hades's stomach but Hades takes him down to the ground too. Nobody’s clean anymore. I’m losing seconds, trying to keep Conor from joining the fray, so I don’t see how they stand up and I don’t see how they go back down again, falling toward a rock. Hades gets a hand on the side of Zeus's head and skull meets rock. Dizzy. I’m getting dizzy, sick with how horrible it is.

  But Hades hasn’t killed his brother. Zeus spits blood onto the grass and gets to his feet at the same moment the sun comes out from behind the mountain’s peak and lets its full force down into the valley. It’s warm on my face and on my shoulders. A sweet relief.

  Only it’s not. It’s not, because it’s going to kill the man I love.

  Someone is screaming again and that someone is me, but I can’t stop it. My mother was dangerous—is dangerous—but these men were raised in such a rough home that they’re past the point where stopping is an option. And they have to stop. They have to.

  Conor snaps at Oliver, howling, his tail a frantic beat on the ground, and his collar tears loose from my fingernails. “Fuck,” Oliver says. “I can’t—”