Page 48 of A Match Made in Hell
Aric tuts, waving a finger at me. ‘Not today. But soon.’
He disappears before I can tell him what I think of him. Whirls of mist coil around my feet like ghosts of snakes, and I kick them away before turning to face the others. The springs glow red behind them, but they barely give the lava a second glance, like it’s as mundane as traffic on a Monday morning.
‘Does this happen a lot?’ I ask. What I mean isjoin me in alarm, why don’t you?
‘I suppose,’ Harper replies. ‘Lava gets everywhere in this place. We used to have a lovely ballroom –sofancy compared to Dionysus – but it got flooded a few years ago. I heard Asphodel has to stretch to make room for more people.’
Another of Sath’s lies. Maybe I can press her into working it out on her own. ‘Flooding kind of defeats the purpose of stretching.’
She contemplates this for all of a second before shrugging. ‘Maybe it stretches because of the flooding.’
I press my lips together, wishing I wasn’t bound to secrecy. Wishing Aric hadn’t seemed so damn happy about what just happened – like he knows full well what it means.
‘Come, sit.’ She taps the ground beside her. ‘It should be settled for the day now.’
The wordsettledis doing some heavy lifting there, but I comply, sitting cross-legged at her side and finding myself agreeing when she asks me again to join them in Dionysus tonight. My attention is on the lava blackening before my eyes, layering the springs like charred pond scum.
This is supposed to be for eternity, Asphodel an hourglass that will never tip the other way, but now it feels like the glasshas been turned, the sand already falling.
And if I can’t complete the next four tasks, I’ll sink with it.
17
Despite my lingering foreboding, Asphodel stays still for the next few weeks, and I settle into a routine. I spend half my nights with Sath, learning he is a terribly sore loser when it comes to games that aren’t Scrabble, which fills me with no end of joy. The rest of the time I’m with Harper. She takes me around Asphodel during the day, and it appears she has a habit of collecting strays because every floor we visit I’m toldI simply must introduce you to Fatimaandoh, look! There’s Percy. I love Percy.
I’ve come to the conclusion Harper loves pretty much everyone she meets, which would explain why she’s putting up with me. Still, it’s nice, having her attention. When we’re in Dionysus she tends to attract crowds of admirers, like the dead are moths to her flame, but she sticks to me, Amelia and Henry the most.
Despite Dionysus being twice the size of any club I went to on Earth, she is impossible to lose, her hand constantly entwined with mine. It doesn’t stop me looking over my shoulder every five seconds like I’m expecting her to disappear. Sasha disappeared all the time. I’d go to the bar for us both and find her missing on my return, leaving me to spend the rest of the night alone, wandering around like a stray puppy. By the time I’d found a group to adopt me, she’d have called Noah to say I was lost and needing claiming.
As far as this new routine goes, I don’t hate it. When I wake, I feel lighter, somehow. Every day is filled with a new possibility now they aren’t planned out for me. I don’t have to worry about disappointing Noah and then having to worry about saying the right thing to make him stay. I can just . . .be.
It’s only when I come across Aric lurking round corners that the smile drops from my face, and I remember I do not, under any circumstances, want to stay here. Not when at least one demon actively hates me, or when the gates could burst open at any moment. When I’m constantly at risk of ending up in the Void listening to that all-too-familiar voice telling me I failed at becoming all the things I promised I’d be. I have to get home and prove that voice wrong instead.
My counting is more out of whack than ever, and there are only eighty scratches on my wardrobe when a dress appears inside. There’s a note pinned to it, written in elegant cursive, that sayswear me tonight. I swallow. It’s jet black, with thin straps and a plunging, heart-shaped neckline. Tiny sequins are stitched into the bodice, glistening like fallen snow under a moonlit sky. The skirt is floor-length and sheer, a thigh-high slit on one side and intricately beaded flowers trailing up the other.
My skin prickles, nerves twisting my insides into knots as I try to work out what kind of task requires an outfit like this. Noah’s bought me several dresses over the years, a new one every time he took me to some fundraiser or gala hosted by his family – tedious things, honestly, but Noah saw them as networking opportunities, schmoozing his way through the crowd and picking up future business contacts while I smiled prettily at his side – but those dresses never looked like this. For one, they had a lot more . . . fabric. He didn’t like me having too much on show, saying he already knew I was beautiful, and if I cared for him at all, I shouldn’t want to catch anyone’s attention but his.
This dress, though, makes me feel beautiful without the need for his validation. The material is cool against my skin, fitting me like a glove, gliding over my body like water rippling over rock and clinging to curves I didn’t know I had. I run my hands over it, barely recognising the person in the mirror as I admire it from every angle. I have to force myself to turn away in order to apply make-up: smoky-brown eyeshadow, a quick flash of eyeliner, a smidge of dark red lipstick which hasn’t quite dried by the time there’s a rap at the door.
My stomach falls to the floor.
I allow myself one final glance in the mirror, smoothing non-existent creases in my dress and patting tangles in my hair I didn’t try to tame. Another, more insistent, knock has me frowning. Maybe I’d be ready if I’d had some warning, did he ever consider that?
My palms are sweaty as they go for the handle. I don’t feel an iota of surprise when I find Sath standing there, two glasses in his hand, one containing the green liquid he’s given me before, the other fizzing with something bright pink. I do, however, feel plenty of iotas about the way a lock of dark hair falls over his forehead.
I miss the way it was when I first met him. Short, cropped too close to his head to be this distracting. Now it makes me want to reach out and –
I ball my hands into fists at my sides. Sath, meanwhile, is running his gaze up and down my dress, drinking in every inch of me, giving no indication whether it’s to his satisfaction or not.
It seems safer not to look at him at all, so I jerk my head at the two glasses instead. ‘One of those for me?’
‘Your next task. Gluttony.’ He hands the pink drink over to me. ‘One drink, and no more.’
I take it, sniffing cautiously. ‘What is it?’
‘Wine, containing snake venom,’ he says. ‘It can be . . .addictive. Among other things.’
That sounds wholly unappealing. ‘What other things? And how addictive?’
