There’s this silence.
“I’m going, mom,” I say. “With or without your help.”
She nods. “I know.”
“Seriously, Uncle Ares is like ten minutes from—wait, what?”
“I know, Kathra. You are so… so stubborn.” She smiles. Her eyes glisten. “Your father was like that. Headstrong. Brave.”
“Human,” I add.
She nods. “Human.”
Human and dead and staying that way. Because mom couldn’t go after him, and now it’s too late.
But this is different. There’s still time.
“Hunter is physically dead,” she says.
“Yes, and?”
“And that isn’t your problem.”
“Yes, it fucking is—”
“No, I mean you have a different problem. His soul.”
“Oh,” I say. “…What about it?”
“It’s location.”
“It’s… he’s in Hell, right?”
“Yes, but not the first hell. The last hell.”
“So… what am I missing here?”
“Dead souls are supposed to ‘end up’ past the last gate; but Hunter has been dead for less than a day… He shouldn’t be in the last hell. No soul can make the journey there so quickly.”
I’m confused. “… So how did he get there?”
She’s quiet for a few seconds and worries her lower lip like she doesn’t want to tell me.
“Mom?”
“He was stolen.”
“Hunter’s soul was stolen?” I ask, amazed. “You can… you can steal souls?”
Aphrodite appears unamused, as per usual. “I cannot. But the Lords of the Gates can.”
“The Lords of the Gates?” I repeat, shaking my head because I’m not familiar with them. “Is that like the Lords of the Dance?” I snicker. Yes, I’m childish. Mom appears equally unamused. “Anyway…” I continue. “Who stole Hunter’s soul?”
“Gaul.” She says the name like it tastes bad.
“Gaul,” I echo, frowning. I don’t know that name. Not that I thought I’d know any names in the Nine Hells. Those in Elysium avoid those from below. And I’m hardly ‘those in Elysium.’ As far as my mother is concerned, I’m more ‘she who will remain unnamed’.
“Gaul of the Ninth Gate has Hunter’s soul.”
“Aaaaaaand who is that?”
“A Lord of the Underworld, Kathra.”
“Yeah, I got that far…” Then something else occurs to me. “Why steal Hunter’s soul?”
She just looks at me. “Really, you should already know that.”
“Know what?”
“Why Gaul is important, the grudge he bears against the gods.”
“Grudge?”
“Heavens, child, did you learn nothing in school?”
By “school” she means the classes I was forced to take here, in the palace of Elysium, every summer. It was kind of like church camp, except the “camping” happened in the Olympian rotunda and bedtime was at seven-fucking-thirty until we were fifteen. The history of the deities was taught by Angerona, the goddess of relieving pain and sorrow. The running joke was that her lectures created more pain and sorrow than they relieved…
“You can’t possibly think I remember any of that,” I say, frowning as I realize she thinks the exact opposite.
Aphrodite glares at me. “Yes, of course I do! The fool am I for believing my daughter had work ethic.”
Ignore it, just keep talking.
Except then something occurs to me: Aphrodite is the goddess of love. Not the goddess of the underworld, or of death. Definitely not the goddess of anything hellish.
“How do you even know Gaul has Hunter?”
“What type of mother would I be if I didn’t involve myself in your life?”
I snort. The irony drips out of the clouds like honey, thick and sweet; but right now, that’s not the problem. “What does that mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like.”
“You… you’ve been spying on me?” I mean, I think that’s what it means…
She says stuffily, “Well, that’s hardly what I’d call it.” She clears her throat. “I’ve been watching over you, Kathra.”
A horrible thought occurs to me. “Mom… Did you kill Hunter?”
“Of course not,” she says, frowning at me even harder.
I feel kinda bad. Then another thought occurs. “Then you just watched him die?”
“Yes.” She pauses, takes my hand and squeezes it.
“You just watched and let it happen?” I’m angry. I can’t help it.
She shrugs. “There was nothing I could have done, Kathra, I was not there.”
“What do you mean, you weren’t there?”
She shrugs again, like she thinks it’s a cute emoji and wants to use it more often. “I was simply… watching from afar.”
Okay, I guess she has a point there. If she was ‘watching from afar’, there wasn’t much she could have done. “So, why can’t you just tell Gaul to release Hunter? You’re a goddess, and Gaul’s…” I gesture vaguely. I’m not really sure what he is, other than one of the Lords of the Dance.
Ha-ha.
“Gaul is also a god,” she says.
“Yeah, but all gods aren’t created equal,” I argue while she continues to look at me like I’m a gnat, floating around her head. “I mean… You’re Aphrodite, the Aphrodite, and he’s what? Just some god of a bottom-tier level of Hell no one’s heard of.”
“Really, Kathra!” she faux-yells at me. “Everyone has heard of Gaul! He is not a ‘bottom-tier’ anything, he is the Lord of the Nine Hells, the Lord, and he will not take kindly to some half-breed godling intruding on his territory, thinking to steal what he will see now as his own spiritual property.” She takes a breath while I decide not to be offended at being termed a ‘half-breed godling’. “If you are seen in the hells, and you will be seen, you will be killed, and I will have no choice but to war with him—and I will lose.” She takes back her hand. “I would be playing right into Gaul’s plan and Aphrodite will not be the last to be dethroned.”
Okay, we’re just gonna breeze on past the third-person and the ‘half-breed’ bits and move on to the scary stuff.
“Dethroned?”
