The Shadow Prince (44 page)

“She loved you,” she says. “And you loved her.”

I shrug, but the tears build faster in my eyes. Almost to the point that I can’t see the road. “I don’t even know what that feels like.”

“You just described it,” she says. “I think you’re feeling it right now.”

I wipe the wetness from my eyes. “That’s just blubbering. What else would you expect from ‘the boy who cried?’ ” I say sarcastically.

“It hurts and it makes you feel vulnerable, but there’s nothing wrong with crying like that. My mom always says that tears are the price we pay for having love and compassion in our lives.”

“Sometimes it feels like too high a price.”

She shakes her head. “You know, I don’t think it was losing control of yourself that made your father disown you. It had nothing to do with that. I think it’s because he was afraid of you.”

I blink at her, the tears drying up. “Afraid of me?”

“At seven years old, you stood up to the king of the underworld. You challenged him. You were just a little boy who loved his dying mother and that gave you strength. A strength he couldn’t even fathom. I bet that scared the crap out of him. Like that Kronos guy, who was afraid his children would become more powerful than he was—but you know, instead of eating you physically, he ate at you emotionally. Your father needed to knock you down as far as he could. Because if you could challenge his authority as a boy, then what would you be capable of as a man?”

chapter forty-eight

“You mind if we make a pit stop?” I ask Haden. I’d been waiting for him to have to pull into a gas station or a charging station at some point, but his car never seems to run out of juice.

“We’re only an hour and a half outside of Vegas.”

“That’s nice,” I say. “You might be made out of fire and shadow and all that jazz, but I’m human, which means I need to eat. And honestly:
I have got to pee
.”

Haden lets out a short laugh. It strikes me again how different he looks when he smiles. It happens so rarely, it feels like getting a glimpse at a Christmas present through the edges of the stiff wrapping paper.

“There’s an exit up ahead with a diner,” I say, checking the map on the touch screen.

There’s a moan from the backseat. In the mirror, I watch Garrick push himself up to a sitting position. He presses his hand to the sides of his head like he’s trying to keep his brain from throbbing.

“Good,” I say. “Looks like our prisoner has woken up. I bet he could use a Coke or something.”

“I’ll place our order,” Haden says, rubbing his hands on his pant legs to get rid of the stickiness from the menus. “Take Garrick with you and find a place to sit.”

He says that like this place is crowded, but we’re the only ones here. Other than the trucker at the counter, nursing a milk shake.

“And watch him,” he says, nodding at Garrick.

“Okay,” I say, and lead Garrick to a booth in the back of the diner, but I’m not quite sure what I’d do if Garrick tried to bolt. Sit on him, maybe? I’ve got at least twenty pounds on the scrawny kid. But from the way he collapses into the booth and rests his head in his arms, moaning like Joe with a hangover, I’m guessing he’s not going to try to make a break for it anytime soon.

Haden heads to the counter, and Garrick looks up at me over his elbow. “He didn’t tell you the whole story, you know. About what happened when his mother died.”

“You were awake when he told me about that?” I had a feeling Haden wouldn’t have shared his story with me if he’d known Garrick had been listening. Then again, Garrick already knew how it went. He’d been there, after all.

“I was in and out, but I heard enough to know Haden left out the part when he gave me this scar,” he says and runs his finger over the thin white line that mars his pale cheek. “He threw a broken crystal chess piece at my face. All because I tried to help him clean up after his father left and the servants carried out his mother’s body.”

“That’s terrible,” I say. “But I mean, his mom just died and he was only seven.”

“I was only five,” Garrick says.

“And you were a servant already?”

“I’m a Lesser. I was born to serve.” He sniffs and rubs his nose
in his sleeve. “Working in the palace was a lot better than working in the Pits, though. I’ve been there since I was seven.”

“You work in the Pits. With those awful Keres?”

“Thanks to Haden.”

“Haden?”

“I bet he didn’t tell you that part of the story, either.…”

“What story?” Haden asks, sliding into the booth across from me. “What are you two talking about?”

“I was just about to tell Daphne what you did to me two years after your mother died,” Garrick says. He has no inner song, no tune coming from him, but I can tell he’s trying to upset Haden from the very loaded glare he throws his way.

It works. Haden goes ashen and a nervous little melody, like the tapping of anxious fingers against a table, comes off him. “We don’t need to talk about that,” he says.

“But she should know,” Garrick says. “If you’re going to give her your woe-is-me, disgraced-prince sob story, you really should tell the whole thing.”

“This is not the time or place,” Haden says, almost as if it were an order.

“But she wants to know,” he says. “Don’t you?” He turns that pointed glare on me. I can’t deny that I am dying with curiosity now.

“Tell her how you couldn’t stand having me around after I witnessed what you did when your mother died. Tell her how you lied just so you could get rid of the walking, talking reminder of your shame. Tell her how you had me banished to the Pits. Tell her how two little words could have saved me from seven years of living a nightmare, being clawed at by every terrible thing that lives in the blackest part of the Underrealm, fighting for scraps, and
praying to the gods that I’ll make it one more day. Or when things are really bad, that I
won’t
.”

My breath catches when he says this. I look at Haden for his reaction.

From the dark tones coming off him, I expect him to lash out at Garrick, to order him to be quiet, but instead, he lowers his head, as if resigned to letting the truth come out.

“Tell her,” Garrick says. “Or do you want me to?”

Haden sucks in a deep breath and lets it out. “When Garrick was seven, two years after my mother’s death, he was found with one of my mother’s pendants in his possession. It was made of rubies and shaped like a pomegranate. It was her favorite. He was banished to the Pits for stealing it from the palace.”

“But I didn’t steal it,” Garrick says. “She gave it to me. You knew that. You knew she gave it to me, but you told them that I took it.”

“Haden?” I ask. “Is that true?”

“In a way. He would have taken it if she hadn’t given it to him.”

“But she did give it to me—”

“Because she caught you trying to steal it.” Haden looks at me like he wants me to understand. “My mother and I walked in on him going through her stuff. He was supposed to be cleaning, but he pocketed the pendant right as we walked into the room. She saw him do it. We both knew she did, but instead of demanding it back or calling for the guards, she told him he could have it. I asked her why, and she said that Garrick was only different from me and Rowan because his mother wasn’t able to protect him the way she had protected us. She said that if letting him have the pendant would help his life be a little better, then the least she could do was let him have it. She said that we
should show compassion and mercy for everyone.”

“A lesson you forgot as soon as she was gone. As soon as it was convenient for you.”

Haden lowers his head again. “I made a mistake and I’ve felt shame for it every day of my life.”

“You turned him in for stealing it?” I ask him.

“After my mother died, my father chose a new Boon from the harem to become his queen. He wanted to give her the pomegranate pendant, but when it came up missing from my mother’s possessions, the Court originally concluded that I was the one who stole it. When my father demanded to know what had happened to it, I told him that Garrick had taken it—and when they found it on him, they didn’t believe that she had given it to him.… I didn’t corroborate his story.”

“How could you do that to your own cousin?” I ask.

“We’re not cousins,” Garrick says. “We’re brothers.”

“Half brothers,” Haden says quickly. “And I did it because I hated Garrick at the time. He was right; he was a walking reminder of my dishonor. A walking reminder of what my life would have been like if my mother hadn’t protected me with that oath. It hurt me every time I looked at him, and so I wanted to hurt him back.” He sits up and looks Garrick in the eye. “I didn’t know how bad it would be. I didn’t know they’d banish you to the Pits. I thought maybe a few lashings … I didn’t know.” He pauses for a moment and then says, like it’s the most painful thing he’s ever had to say, “I’m sorry.”

I hear the shift in Haden’s tone, and I know he’s being sincere—I can hear the remorse coursing off him—but Garrick treats him like he’s just spat in his face.

“Take your apologies and shove them up your ass,” he says.

“Garrick, please,” Haden says.

Garrick looks at me. “Be careful, Daphne. Haden’s selfishness and his obedience are a dangerous combination. He’ll do anything to try to win his honor back. If he’s willing to let a little kid be thrown into a Pit full of monsters because he didn’t like seeing him around, what do you think he’s going to do when he doesn’t get what he wants from you?”

His words strike a dissonant chord inside me. His view of Haden doesn’t match the remorse that I hear in Haden now. They just
feel
wrong to me.

But then again, I barely know Haden at all.

What
would
he do if I couldn’t convince the Oracle to change his mind? What would he do when I continued to say no? Because I’m sure as hell … or Hades … never going to say yes to helping him.

“Watch your back, Boon,” Garrick says. “Because nobody else is going to do it for you.”

“I’m not a Boon,” I say through gritted teeth.

A very round woman appears at our table with a loaded tray. “Well, howdy, folks,” she says. “I’ve got chicken noodle soup, sodas, a salad, cheese fries, and cheeseburger! Whose poison is whose?” She looks down at us, and her grin fades. “Oh no, oh, dears, you’re not all headed to a funeral, are you?”

After the waitress leaves, Garrick grabs his bowl of soup and Pepsi and moves to the next table over like he can’t stand sitting close to Haden anymore. But instead of eating, he lays his head on the table and moans, as if his exchange with Haden has zapped up all of his strength. I keep a close eye on him in case he decides to make a run for it anyway.

“You know,” I say tentatively, “if you stopped treating Garrick like a Lesser and more like your brother, he might start to forgive you.”

He nods as if he might actually consider the idea.

Haden and I sit across from each other in awkward silence for a few moments, but the smell wafting up from my cheese fries and bacon cheeseburger reminds me of how insanely hungry I am. I pick up a fry, and a long string of gooey, melty cheese trails behind it. I catch the slight curl of Haden’s lip while he watches it.

He pulls his own plate closer to him and starts picking the croutons out of his salad.

“You seriously got a salad?” I ask him, trying to lighten the mood.

“Yes?” he says, and then pushes the glorious pile of grated cheddar cheese off the lump of iceberg lettuce on his plate. “Is that a problem?”

“We’re at a greasy spoon. You should at least have the decency to get something greasy. That’s their specialty. This,” I say, pulling his plate away, “doesn’t even fall into the proper definition of
salad
. This is just lettuce.”

“I like lettuce,” he says, but the grimace on his face betrays how he really feels.

“How do you maintain all that muscle if you eat like a rabbit?”

“We eat
different
things in the Underrealm.”

“He doesn’t like anything,” Garrick says from the adjacent table. “He’s the pickiest eater this side of Tartarus.”

“You mean you don’t like bacon cheeseburgers?”

“I’ve never tried a bacon cheeseburger.”

“You’ve never …?” I place my hand over my heart like this news wounds my soul. “We are changing that right now.”

I take a knife and cut my burger in half. I shove a rebellious piece of bacon back under the sesame bun and present it to him like it’s precious cargo. Which it is. I don’t take sharing my bacon cheeseburgers lightly.

“I can’t,” Haden says, trying to nudge my hands away.

“I will be morally offended if you don’t at least take a bite.”

“Just eat it so she’ll shut up!” Garrick says. “I’ve got a headache.”

Haden takes the half burger from my hands and holds it gingerly. “If I’m going to eat this
thing
, you have to do something for me first.”

“What?” I ask reluctantly.

“Tell me how you did what you did to that Keres. How did you know how to make it go solid enough for me to kill it?”

Garrick nearly knocks his Pepsi off his table. “You killed a Keres?” he says. “That’s impossible!”