“Really?” She stretches against me, an intoxicating sensation of her skin against mine. “I thought maybe we could just play hooky and stay in bed.”
“If we do that, we can’t visit the greenhouse again today.”
She lifts her head so suddenly, she almost clocks me in the chin. “The greenhouse?”
If I had any doubts about my plans for the day, the happiness written across her features would have banished them. “Yes.”
She’s up and off me before I have a chance to brace for it. “Well then, what are you waiting for? Let’s get moving.”
I watch her ass as she strides across the room and disappears through the door to the bathroom. A few seconds later, the water turns on and her voice floats out. “Coming? I think we’ll save time if we share a shower.” The wicked lilt to her tone gives lie to the words.
I find myself grinning as I climb out of bed and stalk toward the bathroom. “Save time and water. Sounds like a plan.”
Chapter 22
Persephone
Hades and I spend a blissful hour in the greenhouse, and then we make a few stops as we head back toward the house so he can see and be seen. He doesn’t explicitly say that’s why we’re wandering the aisles of a hardware shop after we did the same in a little market store, but I see the way people watch him. The careful way he notes empty shelves, I have no doubt that he’s creating a mental list of gaps in the supply chain and looking for ways to plug those holes so his people don’t suffer.
He’s brusque and straightforward to the point of rudeness, but it couldn’t be clearer that his people worship the ground he walks on. I lose count of how many times shop owners thank him for taking care of them while things are tight.
More, people are working together to ensure everyone is taken care of. It’s a mentality that I vaguely remember from a time before moving to Olympus, but years in the upper city have made it feel new and novel. It’s not that everyone in the upper city is selfish or evil. Hardly. It’s more that they take their cues from the rest of the Thirteen and are very, very aware that they are never truly safe.
Yet another difference in the legion that separate Hades from Zeus.
We leave the hardware shop and walk down the street. It feels the most natural thing in the world to slip my hand into Hades’s just like I always seem to when we take these walks. He laces his fingers through mine and it feels so right, I can’t breathe for a few steps. I open my mouth to say… I’m not even sure.
I see the sign before I get a chance to. I stop short. “What’s that?”
Hades follows my gaze. “It’s a pet store. Family-owned, have been for three or four generations, if I’m remembering right. Not counting the three who currently run it.” He rattles the history off just like he did about the family who runs the gyro stall in the winter market, without having any awareness of how novel it is that he has this information readily available from memory.
“Can we go in?” I don’t bother to keep the excitement from my voice. When he raises a single brow, I can’t help trying to explain. “When I was very young, we had two dogs. They were working dogs, of course—nothing goes to waste on a farm, industrial or not—but I loved them. Having pets in the high-rise is strictly forbidden, of course.” I have to fight down the urge to bounce on my toes like a child. “Please, Hades. I just want to look.”
If anything, his brow rises higher. “Somehow, I don’t believe you.” But he gives one of his slow smiles. “Of course we can go in, Persephone. Lead the way.”
A bell dings above our heads as we walk through the door. I inhale the mixed scent of animals and wood shavings, and a feeling wells up inside me that’s part nostalgia and part something I can’t identify. I don’t spend much time thinking about my life before my mother became Demeter and we moved to the city. There’s no way she’d leave us behind, and pining for a life that was no longer mine seemed a study in madness. Better, easier, to focus on the future and my path to freedom.
I’m not even sure why a pet store brings it all back, but my heart is in my throat as I wander the first aisle, looking at guinea pigs and brightly colored birds. We reach the end near a counter and see two pretty Black women standing there, heads bent over a computer. They look up and catch sight of us. One of them, the woman wearing a faded pair of jeans and an orange knit sweater, grins in recognition. “Finally decided to take my advice?”
“Hello, Gayle.” He moves past me and she pulls him into a hug. “We’re just doing the rounds.”