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Zagreus, prince of the Underworld, is late to his father’s banquet, sliding into place next to Megaera and earning an audible noise of disgust from Hades. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes to Megaera alone, his back very deliberately turned on his father. “I lost track of time.”
“You’re making me look bad,” she points out.
“Don’t be silly, you could never look bad,” he says, and traces his fingers along the spiked piercings in her left ear. Not in the mood to be flirted with right now, Megaera turns her head away from his touch and faces the rest of the banquet hall. Zagreus follows her lead, but she can still feel the heat that radiates from his skin.
Of course it is too much to hope that he might shape up once he’s actually arrived. Instead he is plainly distracted, fidgeting and looking every which way during the first course. By the time shades file into the hall to begin clearing tables for the second course, Megaera’s patience is at its limit, but when she turns to tell him so, he’s already leaning towards her to whisper in her ear.
“Father’s not looking,” he says. “Let’s get out of here.”
“What?” is Megaera’s blunt response. “Why?”
Zagreus sends an irrepressible grin her way. “I’m bored,” he says in an undertone, looking far too amused to suit his claim. “And there’s something I want to show you.”
Megaera looks instead around the banquet hall. It’s true that no eyes are on them right now, Lord Hades’ included, but they are seated near the front of the hall and will be missed sooner rather than later if they leave. And then one of them will catch an earful for it—either Zagreus, for his insolence, or Megaera, for failing to stop him. Because who would dare brush off the hospitality of the lord of the Underworld?
Well, his son would, consistently and carelessly. Zagreus takes Megaera’s hand and pulls her up with him as he stands. “Come on,” he says. “Really, Meg, there’s something I want to show you, and I don’t know how much longer it’ll be around.”
“What is it?” Megaera asks, matching his undertone but standing her ground.
“You’ll see. Come with me.”
His hand is warm, nearly hot, around hers, and Megaera sends one last look towards Lord Hades. He isn’t looking, but Nyx meets her eyes, smiles, and looks away again as if she had noticed nothing. Megaera swallows a sigh. Maybe there’s no need to be stubborn for stubborn’s sake alone. She lets Zagreus pull her into the shadows of the hall, past a startled shade, and out the door.
“How many times have you done this?” she asks as he leads her down a deserted hallway.
“Oh, gods, I don’t know.” He stops at a crossroads and listens to make sure no one’s coming, very clearly skulking around his own home. “A hundred times over the years, at least?”
Megaera’s never paid attention. She can’t remember whether she’s noticed his absence at these affairs before, or simply not thought of him at all. Probably the latter. In truth, she had rarely thought of the prince of the Underworld until his parents’ request involved her indelibly in his life; she had only accepted the conventional opinion that he was a scattered, insubordinate little brat who grieved his father to no end. That impression hasn’t necessarily changed. But to see it from his side of things is different.
Checking needlessly at each crossroads whether the coast is clear, he leads her to a large bay window and pushes it open. “What I want to show you is on the roof,” he explains. “Are you all right climbing from here?”
“I don’t need to climb.”
“Right!” He takes the correction with a smile of delight instead of embarrassment. “Would you like to go first, then? I’ll meet you up there.”
She narrows her eyes. “What are you showing me?”
“You’ll see when we get there. I promise, Meg, it’s worth it.”
It had better be, for her to dare climb onto the roof of the House of Hades. But she finds that she isn’t able to doubt Zagreus—not when he looks at her like this, his mis-matched eyes practically shimmering with sincerity. He holds the window open for her, playing the perfect gentleman. She climbs out the window, looks upwards to gauge the distance, and then rises to the roof with a single flap of her wing. Taking a seat on the edge, she watches as Zagreus follows. He doesn’t close the window behind him; instead he moves up the brick facade of the House carefully, his feet knocking rubble loose as he goes. “You know we shouldn’t be doing this, right?” Megaera asks, once he’s close enough that her normal speaking voice will reach him.
“What Father doesn’t know won’t hurt him!”
She rolls her eyes. Tasked with making him into a man, instead she’s letting him drag her into his ridiculous schemes. An abject failure all around. But when he’s close enough, she reaches down with one hand to hoist him up. He thanks her for the help, sincerely, and dusts off the front of his tunic.
“Well? Are you ready for this?”
“Ready for what?” she asks again, impatient. “You’d better not mean to show me the view from this height. It won’t impress me.” She sees it every time she sets out for work, and every time she comes back. Tartarus isn’t unlovely, for a pit of hell adapted to torture the worst of humanity’s sinners, but the view is too familiar to warrant trespassing on the roof.
Zagreus shakes his head, though. “That’s not it. Come on.”
He takes her hand again, and together they pick their way across the rooftop. It’s not meant to be traversed and therefore not lit except by sickly candlelight from Tartarus’s distant chambers and the faint glow of Zagreus’s skin. When Zagreus misplaces his foot and stumbles, Megaera catches him and then scoffs in impatience. “Here,” she says, and opens a magic flame in the palm of her hand to light their surroundings.
But Zagreus shakes his head. “No, that will ruin it.”
“What?”
“You’ll see. Trust me, Meg.” He folds her hand closed again, and she extinguishes the flame. “It’s just a little farther. Past the library.”
Against her better judgment, she continues to follow him. “Why were you on the roof, anyway?”
“Not important.” But even in this dim light she can see him trying to suppress a smirk. Catching her eye, he admits, “I was going to spice up Father’s party a bit.”
Megaera stops dead. “If you’re planning to implicate me in one of your pranks—”
“I’m not, Meg, I promise. I didn’t even have time to set it up. I got distracted.”
“By…?”
“By what I want to show you. Almost there, would you close your eyes? I want it to be a surprise, if that’s all right.”
He takes her hand to lead her forward, but Megaera doesn’t move. She peers at the baffling prince of the Underworld. “Zag, do you understand how old I am?” she asks.
“Too old for surprises?” he guesses, eyebrow cocked. “Too old to have any fun at all?”
“Too old to be dragged across the roof with my eyes closed based on the whims of a brat like you.”
Her barbed words glance off him entirely. “Oh, come on. You don’t even need to worry about falling like I do,” he reproaches her, and then squeezes her hand, his eyes serious. “Please, Meg. I don’t know how much longer it will be there, and I really do want you to see this.”
Megaera stands still. Hades had warned her about his son: that he was impulsive, impertinent, an exhausting waste of time and energy. But he had never warned her of this devastating sincerity. Zagreus has a way of baring his soul over the smallest matters, making it blindingly obvious that his defenses are down, and it’s one thing to see and toy with that in bed but outside of that context Megaera never knows what to do about it. Somehow it turns part of her to rubble, exposing something that hasn’t seen the light in centuries as she stands in the dust and wreckage. She has to learn to survive it eventually, if they’re going to keep doing this. But for now, she inhales and closes her eyes and focuses on the heat of Zagreus’s hand around hers. “Fine,” she says, and then: “If I fall, I’m making sure you go down with me.”
“Understood,” comes Zagreus’s wry voice, and he leads her onward. Megaera follows him, feeling with her toes before each footfall for the warmed tile he leaves behind him. “We’re going to walk around the spire,” he tells her. “You can put out your other hand if you want to keep track of the curve.”
She does so, and they’re able to proceed a little faster like that. A moment later, she hears Zagreus mutter a cry of relief. “It’s still here,” he tells her, excitement bubbling in his voice. He leads her further a bit and then releases her hand to slide his arm around her waist instead. “All right, open your eyes.”
Megaera opens her eyes and sees at what he is so excited to show her: a thin beam of white-golden light streaming down from the cavern ceiling above them. Immediately, she shakes her head in denial. She knows instinctively what she’s seeing, but her mind refuses to believe it. “It’s not real,” she tells Zagreus.
“It is.”
“It’s—it’s candlelight from an upper level, or—” Anything other than the impossibility it appears to be, but Zagreus catches her hand and lifts it into the beam of golden light. Megaera draws in a ragged breath.
“It’s the sun,” Zagreus says, awe in his voice, and lets go of her hand so that the only warmth she’s feeling comes from the light streaming down from up above. It seems to pool in the palm of her hand, painting her skin an unfamiliar color. Her heart beats fast. Sunlight. Here. She twists her hand in the light, watching the shadows curl around her fingers.
“How…” she breathes. It’s so warm. She looks upwards in disbelief and sees hundreds upon hundreds of dust motes dancing in the light. “There must be a chasm on the surface for this to make it all the way down here. This isn’t supposed to happen.”
She should be concerned about such a drastic irregularity. Instead she finds herself looking from the light to the wonder in Zagreus’s eyes. He reaches into the beam as well, rubbing his thumb against his forefinger as if Helios’s rays were something he could touch. There is a yearning in his face.
“It’s already dimmer than it was when I spotted it, and I know the sun will go down sooner or later,” he says, his tone almost apologetic. “But I wanted to share this with you before it did.”
“Why me?”
He looks her way indulgently, then takes her hands, moving so that the sunbeam falls between them. Then he cups her cheek with one hand and leans in to kiss her. His lips are hot and the sun is warm on her face and Megaera feels a lightness within her chest. When he pulls back, just a moment later, he looks bashful and terribly pleased with himself all at once.
“I thought that might be romantic,” he says, his eyes searching hers to see whether he hit his mark.
But the smile Megaera sends him in return is, by necessity, pained, and she takes a half-step backward out of the light. Unease twinges in her chest, and something like sympathy. “Don’t romanticize the surface, Zag. It won’t get you anywhere.”
He shrugs and cracks a lean grin. “Too late to stop me now.”
She knows that. She feels like she ought to try anyway; because Lord Hades would will it and because impossible hopes only fester in the end. But Zagreus is still standing in the sunlight, and the look on his face is too earnest and his eye has never shone this green before. She wonders if the queen has this touch of warm glory to her, too, wherever on the surface she’s gone. She wonders if she ever thinks of the son she abandoned to the dark.
The quality of the light shifts then—falters—and as Zagreus looks upwards, heartbreak is written all over his face. He looks back at Megaera. “Once more?” he asks, and she can’t refuse him. She steps back into the failing light and brings their lips together, gently. She does want happiness for him. She does. When her skin goes cold, she knows that the light has left them.
Zagreus exhales—sighs, really—as he steps back. He looks towards the cavern ceiling, and Megaera follows his gaze, but now there’s only a pinpoint crack in the stone, barely visible from here. Prosaic, but irregular. Unacceptable. To say nothing of whatever hole in the surface allowed the sunlight through in the first place.
“Zag?” she says, only a little surprised to hear the forlorn tone to her voice. “You know I have to report this, don’t you?”
He sighs again, his neck still craned back. “I know, Meg,” he says heavily. His yearning is palpable in the air. “But… someone else would have found out eventually, and I’m glad I got the chance to share it with you while I could.” He looks away from the ceiling and towards her at last, a sad smile on his face, and sometimes, sometimes Megaera genuinely thinks that his sincerity might kill her. It pierces through every defense she has and lodges into her heart and makes it impossible to breathe.
“Thank you,” is all she can think to say, and it doesn’t feel like enough, but the affection in his gaze says otherwise. He takes her hand, and she lets their fingers intertwine. There’s no point in going back to the banquet; they will have been missed by now. Maybe if she tells Lord Hades that Zagreus was only pointing out this crack to her, she will spare both of them from a lecture. But for the time being, this corner of the Underworld is quiet. They sit down together on the roof, where they’re not supposed to be, and he wraps his arm around her waist, and they pass a little while in unhurried companionship.