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Mother fussed the whole way back to the farm. She tucked Kore’s hair behind her ears and muttered about the sundress and how busy the pattern was, lamented that Kore had been gone for so long. Some of Kore loved the attention, the comfort at being near Mother again and hearing her voice smoothing its way over her. A new part, one that she quieted forcefully, chafed at it.

Mother hired a car to take them back. The drive was a long one, not that Kore cared anymore to wonder where they went. She wouldn’t have to tell Hades which gate to take her through, not anymore.

The girls screamed when she walked through the barrier. One moment, she stood doubled over on the dirt drive, catching her breath from pushing through the invisible wall. The next, delighted squeals pierced her ears, followed by dozens of feet running.

Theo reached her first. She slammed into Kore hard enough that they both stumbled, Kore barely having enough strength to keep them both upright. Theo’s body shook, her sobs reverberating through Kore. Kore held on tight. She might have cried, too.

The other girls came, dozens of them. They all had questions, wondering where she’d gone and what she’d done. Was it true she’d fought Hades? That she’d been kidnapped? Had she seduced the king of the Underworld?

Mother chided the girl who’d asked that one and bid them all back to the house. Kore hurried along with them, but she knew Theo walked close enough to see the look on her face when she remembered Hades crawling into bed beside her.

Luckily, Theo held her silence until they lay side by side in the loft, the night and the sound of dozens of sleeping girls surrounding them. She poked Kore in the back as Kore pretended to sleep.

Kore thought about continuing to pretend, but Theo was unlikely to let that stop her. Kore rolled onto her side, where, sure enough, Theo’s dark eyes glittered in the low light.

“What?” Kore asked.

“Are you going to tell me what really happened, or do I have to pull it out of you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Kore didn’t have to see in the dark to feel the glare Theo leveled at her. “I don’t believe that story your mother’s been telling for a second. I was there on the beach, too. I saw you go back for him.”

“Theo—”

“Don’t lie to me.”

Kore sighed. She didn’t know why the story wouldn’t come out of her. Maybe the ending hurt too much. How did she explain that without sounding like a fool?

Theo sighed. “You’re not saying something, and I want to know why.”

Once, Kore would have told her. She would have gushed about the new feelings swirling inside her, ones she wasn’t sure she fully understood yet. But they no longer mattered, so Kore shook her head and rolled to face the wall.

#

A week passed. Two. Kore fell back into a normal rhythm. The dress Mother hated found its way into her footlocker, traded for the long sheet-like garments of the rest of the girls.

Mother kept her busy, not that Kore minded. She worked on restoring the farm, re-seeding the rows that needed it and perking up the ones that didn’t. She enjoyed using her powers to fix what had been broken, and most nights she fell into her bed too exhausted to think about anything but closing her eyes until the next morning.

When the first shipment went out, Kore didn’t even mind that two others were asked to go. She’d have her chance when she wanted it. Mother had said so, and that fact alone allowed Kore to enjoy the farm again without looking to its borders.

Theo, however, could not be pacified. She found every moment to badger Kore with more questions, whether they stood side by side among the fruit trees or sat on the porch shelling peanuts or lay beside each other after the lights had gone out. Kore should have been grateful her friend cared enough to ask, but she only wanted to be alone in her thoughts.

The week after that, when Kore had about lost her mind trying to avoid Theo, she knocked on Mother’s office door.

“Come in.”

Kore slipped into the room, shutting the door behind her. She half expected to see inch-thick shoots bursting from the floorboards, the ones she’d pulled up before she’d run away, but they’d been removed. The office looked the way it always had.

Mother smiled when she saw her. “Hello, dear. How are you today?”

Kore shrugged. “I came to see how the next shipment is coming.”

“You know how it is. Always something.”

“But the human world is recovering?”

“Remarkably well. I always knew they would.”

The levity of the remark burrowed under Kore’s skin uncomfortably, but she tried to brush it off. Mother knew more about these things, she told herself. Maybe the human world had never been in any real danger at all, and as usual, she had built it up to a crisis in her head.

Mother looked at her from over the top of her logbook. “Is there something you wanted, dear?”

Kore took a deep breath. “I thought it would be a good time for me to finally go.”

“Go where?”

“Go…with the shipment. You know, like you said I could.”

The logbook closed with a thud. “Darling, you didn’t think I was serious, did you? I’m sorry if you did. I simply said it so we could leave the meeting.”

Kore searched for words. She found none.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Mother filled the silence for her. “I hardly think now is the time for you to venture out again. You spent three days in the Underworld, returned injured, and the stars only know what else happened to you down there. You’re much better off here, where you can’t get into such trouble.”

Anger surged up Kore’s spine. “Nothing happened to me down there.”

“Your farewell with Hades would imply differently.”

“You can rest easy, Mother. He’s not interested in me.” The words burned on the way out, but they were the truth, no matter how much Kore hated them.

“Well, regardless. You’re hardly yourself, Kore. Theo has been worried about you. She says you two don’t talk anymore.”

“When have you talked to Theo about me?”

For the flicker of a second, Mother looked like she’d been caught. Then the smile came back and her gentle, placating expression returned. “I didn’t, dear. I only know that I can usually hardly separate the two of you, but Theo has been working on her own in the fields more than once this week.”

Mother was lying, Kore could tell by the twitch at the bottom corner of her mouth. She took a step back. “Is nothing safe around you?”

“Excuse me?”

But Kore didn’t elaborate. She turned and fled the office. The staircase disappeared two at a time under her feet, and when she reached the loft, she stood panting, searching the faces staring back at her. None of them was Theo’s.

Questions came, but Kore turned away from them all. Down the stairs and out the door and there, on the long porch bench, Theo sat staring at the drive.

“Kore?”

Kore didn’t answer, only took Theo’s hand and bounded down the steps. She dragged the girl to the oak tree, where they couldn’t be overheard by anyone sitting in the upstairs window, even if they would have a dozen pairs of eyes on them by now.

Theo ripped her arm out of Kore’s grasp. “What’s gotten into you?”

Kore’s cheeks burned. “Tell me you haven’t been talking to my mother about me.”

Theo opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

“It’s true?” Kore’s voice cracked, but she didn’t care.

“Not like that.” Theo winced. She held her hands out, pleading. “She asked me a few days ago if you were all right. I only said you hadn’t been talking to me, and I didn’t know why. That’s it, I swear.”

Kore’s heart beat too fast. The tree creaked beside her, and Kore hoped she didn’t rip new branches from the trunk, or crack the tree in two.

Hands on her shoulders made her look up, into Theo’s gentle expression. “Something is going on with you, and it worries me. You’re not yourself. You can’t be upset because I’m not the only one who noticed.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Nothing you wouldn't have said yourself. It’s not like I had much to work with, anyway, since you haven’t been talking to me, either.”

“Can you blame me? Apparently anything I say can get back to her.”

Anger pulled Theo’s brows tighter. “Maybe if you let me in, I’d be able to cover for you when she comes asking. I followed you all across the earth, you know. We didn’t stop looking for you for days, and when we finally find you, you’re la-dee-da-ing with the king of the Underworld? Do you know how that looks?”

Kore wanted to scream. “I don’t care how it looks! If I tell you nothing happened, why can’t you believe me? You think I would hide something like that from you?”

Theo worked her jaw. She looked like she thought about saying something else, then she closed her eyes and breathed a long sigh. “You’re right. I messed up. But it’s so unlike you to push me away, and I didn’t know what else to do.”

Kore shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“I think it does.”

“Well, Mother just told me I wouldn’t be leaving the farm despite her promise, so really, Theo, it doesn’t matter.”

Theo paused. “You’re serious?”

“I wish I wasn’t.”

Instead of answering, Theo pulled Kore close. The hug felt good, Kore had to admit. She’d missed her friend.

Theo pressed her cheek to Kore’s hair. “I wish I knew what to do.”

Kore wished she did, too. But nothing came to mind, so she let herself be held. She let the tears come, for everything she’d held in, everything she could no longer say.

Theo held her for a long time. Only once Kore’s hiccups subsided, and she’d sniffed the tears back, did Theo release her enough to help wipe the witness from her cheeks. “How about we talk? For real this time.”

“Only if you promise it won’t go back to my mother.”

Theo nodded. “On my immortal father.”

“Good enough for me.”

With a small smile, Theo stepped away from her and waited. Kore placed a hand on the tree and willed one of the branches to grow, lowering a young shoot thick enough for Theo to use to pull herself up. Theo nestled herself into a crook by the trunk of the tree, then offered a hand to haul Kore up after.

When they were comfortably settled, Theo leaned her head against the bark and let her gaze find the evening sky. “I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but the outside world isn’t everything you want it to be.”

Kore thought of windswept hills and winding, lazy rivers. A house and a dog, close and comfortable and safe. “I don’t think I agree with you.”

“Yeah? You’d live out there, in the Underworld?”

“I don’t know.” She let her eyes climb too, into the orange and indigo of the last rays of light. “But it’s not what Mother says. It’s so…normal.”

Theo snorted. “How can the Underworld possibly be normal?”

Kore could have talked about all the people who lived in the city, people with jobs and lives and relationships. She could have mentioned Hades’s office, with a desk and paperwork just like Mother’s, and Leuce, the woman who’d given her the dress she’d stuffed away in her spot in the loft. But Kore didn’t want those memories to belong to anyone else. And even though Theo had promised, she couldn’t risk any of it getting back to Mother.

She changed the subject and hoped Theo didn’t mind. “Have you seen Hermes again?”

Theo’s shocked protest came so fast it turned into a cough. “How do you know about that?”

“I saw the way he looked at you on the plains, and the way you looked at him. You’re reckless enough to give it a try.”

Theo flushed from her collarbone to her forehead. “Let’s hope you’re the only one who noticed. Your mother would kill me if she found out I snuck a god onto the farm.”

“Theo!”

“What? You and I both know there are plenty of quiet places around here, ones Demeter doesn’t care to know too much about.”

Kore smiled despite herself. “As long as you’re happy.”

“Satisfied might be a better word.”

Kore laughed hard enough she risked falling out of the tree.

Theo chuckled too, adjusting herself against the bark. “Here’s one thing I will say—for all the lectures your mother gives, in my experience, the gods aren’t so bad.”

“You’ve met more than one, have you?”

“You know what I mean. You, and your mother, and Hermes. Even Hades seemed more like…I don’t know, like he only wanted to go home. I didn’t get the sense that he was bent on your immediate destruction.”

“He was kind,” Kore agreed. “When I woke up in his house, I think I lost my temper with him. He didn’t even raise his voice, only offered to help get me home.”

Theo nodded slowly. “And then?”

“And then what?”

“I don’t know. You went all dreamy on me.”

It was Kore’s turn to turn away, embarrassed.

Theo grinned. “I knew it! Did you kiss him? Do more than kiss him?”

“Theo!”

“Well, did you?”

“No.” Kore’s hair rustled. She wondered what kind of flowers she’d grown now. “Besides the fact that he’s more than polite, I think he’s with someone else.”

Theo made a noise in the back of her throat. “Boring.”

“What, you want him to cheat on his girlfriend?”

“I mean, no, it’s good that he’s a good guy. But it sounds like you like him.”

“That would be stupid of me. It’s not like we could be together without one of us giving up where we live.”

Theo shrugged. “You might be right. Then again, emotions rarely pay attention to logic, do they? It’s kind of the fun part about them.”

Kore sighed. “That would be great if he felt the same way, but when my mother suggested I don’t see him again, he agreed that would be best.”

Theo’s face fell. “Really?”

Kore nodded, not wanting to say anything more about it.

“Did you think he might have told her what she wanted to hear so she didn’t try to dismember him again?”

Kore had already considered that. “He’d stood up to her once already. If he’d wanted to do it again, he could have done it.”

“Or, he’d already stood up to her once, and didn’t want to push his luck.”

“Unless he tells me otherwise, I have to assume what he said is the truth.”

“Are you sure he didn’t?”

Kore shrugged. She hadn’t expected writing in the sky, but the farm had been quiet for three weeks. Surely, if Hades wanted to see her, he’d have found a way to do it by now. Not that it mattered—Mother had gone back on her word, so Kore couldn’t leave without risking every living thing on the planet.