Chapter Text
The wind whips her hair, branches scratching at her cheeks as she runs. She can feel the forest alive around her—the dryads, skittering in the canopies, the rustle of animals, suddenly gone still in her wake. There’s a desperate hum under her skin driving her faster, driving her closer to the moors, further and further out of reach. She can feel him at her back, hear the whisper of him all around—now, now, darling—and knows she cannot let him catch her. Not this time. This time, she’ll pay for it, and the phantom of his hand around her neck pushes her harder, barreling over roots, branches cracking under her bare feet. She can see the tree line, dull grey light like a beacon, and her lungs ache.
She bursts past the trees, trips over the suddenly soft ground, catches herself and feels mud cake her hands. There’s blood on her cheeks and her dress is torn but she can hear his footsteps behind her like thunder.
So she runs.
Her feet slip on the grass and the temperature drops, but she doesn’t dare look behind her, doesn’t dare breathe. Fog clouds her view and she can’t see in front of her, doesn’t know which way to turn. There’s a temple, somewhere, and if she can just get there, close its doors behind her she knows he won’t—can’t—follow. She’ll be safe, for the time being, if she could just run a little faster, a little longer—
The cliff drops suddenly, wet ground giving way to rock and stone and she barely manages to catch herself, arms pinwheeling, feet dragging her back a few quick paces. Over the pounding of her own heart, she can hear the ocean, crashing, but she can’t see what’s below—if it’s a short drop. If it’s a soft landing. If she’ll fall into the water or fall to her death and behind her his voice gets closer, a mocking,
No way out, now, darling.
She looks back at the fog and wonders which would be worse—his hand, dragging her back, or the sudden rush of wind in her ears. She steps forward, every instinct telling her to stay still, every fear telling her to jump. Her toes curl over the edge and she thinks, help me, someone, please, help me.
Behind her, Rupert shows his face, his smile tight, grey suit rendering him part of the landscape. “Time to come home, darling,” he says, his voice like steel.
Rebecca shakes her head, frantic.
“You’ve backed yourself into a corner, yet again.” He pauses, and she can feel his breath on the back of her neck, though he’s still yards away. “If you come now, I’ll be lenient.”
She knows his lenience. Knows what it lacks.
She takes another step, one foot off the edge, and at least it will feel like flying, for a moment. Before it’s done.
She closes her eyes, and hears Rupert’s voice —startled, for once in his life—and then an arm wraps around her waist, pulls her back into something warm and solid and if she were able to breathe, able to think she’d register that the touch is soft. Firm, holding her close, but it isn’t Rupert’s clawing hands, isn’t bone-tight; but she isn’t, and she struggles, tries to rip herself away and hears a cry tear itself from her throat and then there’s a voice in her ear, soothing and deep,
“Hey, hey, it’s okay. You’re safe, it’s okay.”
It isn’t Rupert. The sound is worlds away from his smooth, arrogant timber. She doesn’t recognize it, doesn’t sound like anything she’s ever heard before and her body jolts with fear before she realizes the touch has loosened—not keeping her, just holding.
She looks up into the worried face of a man with eyes so gentle and warm she can’t breathe. She can’t breathe, her heart tearing into itself and he says,
“You’re okay. Breathe, please, breathe.”
She sucks in air and his lips twitch into the barest tint of a smile, but it isn’t cruel or knowing, just relieved, and the hand at her back moves up between her shoulders.
“I’ll take that back, now.”
Rebecca stiffens, feels the world slowly start to cave in and he ruined it, this man, ruined her only chance and she wants to scream and kick and cry but the only sound she makes is a desperate whisper, “Let me go.”
The man shakes his head minutely, but he turns to look back at her husband, and she waits for him to push her away, push her back toward Rupert, away from the cliff, away from freedom.
Without thought, she curls her fingers in his sweater, the fabric soft, so unlike Rupert’s starched shirts and heavy coats. The man looks at her, eyes roaming over her face and she doesn’t know why he sees—what horror or grief or desperation.
But when he turns, he puts his body between her and Rupert, keeps a hand on her waist, like he’s afraid she’ll jump. His eyes narrow. His grip on her tightens just fractionally when Rupert takes a step forward, and the man shakes his head.
“‘Fraid I can’t do that,” he says, and Rebecca’s throat feels like it’s on fire.
Rupert blinks, a flash of anger she knows so well; and then he settles, and smiles, and holds out a hand.
“Darling.”
Rebecca shudders. She doesn’t mean to. Doesn’t mean to move closer to the man still between them—doesn’t know if it’s smart. Doesn’t know who he is or what he wants or if this choice will be any better than going back, but the man doesn’t waver, looks hardly intimidated at all.
“Come with me.”
There’s no question, no begging—it’s a command, and maybe it’s the wind at her back, maybe it’s the man, maybe it’s a hundred years of that voice in her ear before she falls asleep that makes her lift her chin, makes her voice clear across the open moors,
“No.”
Rupert’s smile fractures, just for a second.
“It wasn’t a request.”
She swallows. Opens her mouth, but the man beats her to it, voice low, but there’s an edge of anger there that makes her want to run. From both of them.
“Seems to me the lady doesn’t wanna go with you,” he says.
“The lady is my wife. She belongs to me.”
The man snorts, and Rebecca doesn’t dare hope.
“People don’t belong to people,” he says. “Not sure if you’ve missed the last five hundred years, but we kinda frown on that sorta thing.”
Rupert’s eyes narrow, all traces of patience gone. “Don’t play this game with me, boy.”
The man laughs. Laughs. In his face. It’s an easy sound, but she can hear the strain behind it, the tension buried so deep she’s not sure Rupert can.
“Might wanna look where you’re standin’, Rupadupes,” he says, and then tilts his head to the right, away from the cliffs. The fog moves like it’s obeying some silent command, and in the distance there’s a mansion, dark and quiet and looming.
She knows that house. Has heard all the stories, from the time she was small—the three brothers. The straws. Rupert was given the world, the skies. His other brother, the oceans, the rivers, the lakes.
The third brother—
She inhales, tries to bury a gasp of fear, but he hears it, and flinches; but all he does is murmur, so only she can hear, “I won’t hurt you.”
She doesn’t know if she believes him, but she wants to.
“You’re playing a dangerous game, Theodore.”
Theodore. She’d forgotten his name. Somehow, she knows it doesn’t suit him.
“I’ll take my chances,” he says, and Rupert scowls. The air shifts, little sparks dancing at the edges of Rupert’s fingertips.
“This isn’t over,” he says to her, and Rebecca swallows and holds his gaze, draws the anger from her chest to her eyes so he can see it—all her loathing.
Rupert’s jaw clenches, his eyes flickering back to Theodore before his expression clears.
“I hope she’s worth it to you, brother,” he says, on the edge of a sinister smile. “It would certainly be a first.”
Rebecca flinches, and Rupert spares her a last, victorious smirk before he disappears, a crack of thunder and light momentarily blinding her.
When she opens her eyes, the moors are calm. The wind seems to have smoothed, the fog rolling back around the house, swallowing it from view, save one light on in a room somewhere. It’s disturbing and comforting at the same time, and she takes a deep, sharp breath.
The sound makes Theodore turn, and when she looks up his brow is creased, and his hands have let her go.
Let her go?
“You alright?”
She doesn’t know. Her head is pounding along with her heart and her muscles feel weak; she feels unsteady, especially without his grounding touch, and she doesn’t understand. She stares at him, waits for the other shoe to drop—for his hand to find her again, for his voice to change, for his price to be made.
Nothing, she knows, comes without sacrifice.
She’s heard the stories. Death’s keeper who lives on the moors, alone—the dark, solitary man who rules the underworld with an iron fist, who says who can leave and who must stay, who changes the laws of nature to suit his whims. Rupert always warned her of his brothers—their temperaments, he said, far worse than his own. She was lucky, he said, that he’d found her first, such a pretty thing.
But he doesn’t look anything like Rupert’s retellings. His eyes aren’t black like snakes, they’re brown, and warm; his hair falls in his face sweetly; and he’s wearing white shoes with red laces.
The God of the Underworld, in trainers.
She almost laughs—hysterically, hopelessly—but manages to swallow the sound when he looks at her, puzzled.
He pauses, and lifts a hand, and Rebecca flinches back so hard she staggers, feels his hand touch her waist just long enough to steady her, then fall away. “Sorry,” he says, though there’s a spark of anger behind his eyes that isn’t, she knows, directed at her, “It’s just—you’re bleedin’.”
Rebecca lifts a hand to her cheek, and her fingertips come away red.
“It’s a scratch.”
He nods. “I got a kit back at the house. You could clean up.”
She doesn’t want to go to his house. Doesn’t want to stay. Doesn’t want to run and doesn’t know where is safe. The temple, maybe, but even then, for how long. The other gods won’t save her. They never have.
“Rebecca,” he says, and his voice is so soft, like flower petals against her skin.
“How do you know my name?”
His smile is crooked, like it hurts. “Everyone does.”
She knows why.
He doesn’t say.
Instead, he takes a step back, giving her room to move past him, away from the cliffs.
“I can take you to the nearest temple,” he says, “Or you’re welcome to stay. It ain’t much, but my brother has no jurisdiction here, so. You’d be safe.”
For a while goes unsaid.
Rebecca narrows her eyes. “Why would you do that? Risk—"
Everything.
He shrugs, but his shoulders are stiff and when she looks down, his hands are clenched in fists. “Like I said. People don’t belong to people. ”
Rebecca hesitates. It could be a ruse. Could be a front. Everything about him that screams innocent and good could just be her, trying to conjure what she needs; could be the rose-colored glasses Rupert always insisted she wore, until she stopped seeing color at all.
“What do you want?” she demands, and he frowns.
“Want? Nothin’.”
She snorts. “Everyone wants something. Everything comes at a cost.”
“Well that’s dour,” he says, but his lips quirk up as he watches her, almost fondly. “Bein’ kind doesn’t have an exchange rate.”
Rebecca isn’t certain she’d know kindness if it slapped her in the face.
She stares at him, and waits, and she doesn’t know what she’s waiting for but feels vindicated and hollow when he sighs—“If you’re insistin’ on reciprocity—" and then utterly confused when he says, “—can I have a flower?”
Rebecca blinks at him. “A flower?”
He nods, and shuffles slightly, the tips of his cheeks a bit pink. “Yeah. You make those pretty ones—with the white petals.”
“Lilies?”
Everything feels surreal.
He nods, and points back toward the forest. “They grow at the edges sometimes. I like ‘em.”
“And that’s it?”
He shoves his hands in his pockets.
“That’s it.”
It’s dubious, at best, but if he asks her for this, perhaps he can’t ask her for anything else. There’s nothing he can do with a flower—it’s just a flower. Still, she hesitates.
Rupert hates her flowers, her gift. Calls it superfluous and meaningless. Calls it a waste. He’s probably right, but Theodore is staring at her with something like hope, like eagerness, his expression open and soft and kind, and she brings her hand up near her stomach, takes a shallow breath.
When she opens her fist, the flower unfurls—a single white lily in the palm of her hand, its petals reaching skyward. It means little to her—just another plant, another thing she’s made that will die—but when she looks up, Theodore’s mouth is open and his eyes are wide in wonder, childlike, almost, watching the stem lilt in the wind.
Rebecca plucks it from her hand and gives it to him, ignores the strange rolling feeling in her stomach when their fingers brush.
Theodore holds the flower so reverently, like it’s precious. Like he’ll cherish it always.
“Beautiful,” he murmurs. “Thank you.”
Rebecca nods, but her chest aches and he just keeps looking at her with those big brown eyes and she feels abruptly like crying. Like the knot she’s carried inside her for as long as she can remember is starting to slacken. Like she has, for the first time, some semblance of control. She stares at him, feels his name unfurl on her tongue before she registers she’s said it, more breath than sound.
He wrinkles his nose and waves a hand. “Nobody but my mama calls me that,” he says. “Ted, please.”
Rebecca lets out a startled laugh. She can’t help it. It’s short and sharp and sounds horrible, but Ted—Ted—just smiles. “What?”
“You’re the god of the entire underworld.”
“Yeah?”
“And you go by Ted?”
“Y’know when I get made fun of, most people lead with the mustache,” he says, a glint in his eye. “I like that you went straight for the bullseye.” He mimes throwing a dart. “Right in the heart.”
She smiles—almost, just the barest lift of her lips, but she can’t remember the last time she smiled at all, not for real.
Ted beams at the sight, looks almost proud—not in the smug way Rupert always is desperately pleased with himself—but because he’s made her smile. Even barely. Even for a moment.
She shouldn’t trust him.
Shouldn’t listen to him.
Shouldn’t believe him.
“You wanna head in? It’s gonna rain soon.”
She doesn’t ask how he knows. She can feel it, too.
She looks at the moors, the forest and other places beyond. Looks at the ocean, crashing against the shore. Looks at Ted, who’s looking at her like he wants her to see all of it; all of him.
She’s going to have to leap one way or another, and for some reason, there’s a voice in the back of her head that whispers he’ll be a safer place to land.
“Okay,” she manages, and Ted smiles at her so brightly, she swears the fog begins to clear.
“Okay.”