Page 35 of Mortal Desires

Beyond his walls, things were trickier.

As the Divine Comedy predicted, hell had several circles. According to Penny, it wasn’t safe to navigate them all.

Here, all the legends were true, and sometimes it was hard to keep things straight. In some places, people were being tortured like in Christian hell. In others, they engaged in orgies like the Greek gods would prefer.

Mythology mixed with religion into one jungle of possibilities made up of all the beliefs humanity ever had.

“He’s preparing me for the next ceremony,” I simply replied.

It wasn’t a lie. According to him, the spell to obey would remain on me until the next marriage ritual. That was tomorrow.

“What’s going to happen in the ceremony?”

“Mmm…”

Penny turned me around, her hands closing on my shoulders. “Pilar, what’s going on?”

“Nothing is going on,” I replied quickly.

“We’re living in the underworld, Pilar. You’re married to the king. Do your sisters even know about that?”

“I think he considers himself more like a god.” I tried to ignore the question about my sisters.

Penny laughed; we had this exact conversation before.

“I followed you here, and I thought maybe you knew what you were doing but now I don’t know.”

I tried to move again and resume our walk but she didn’t let me go. “Why would you leave your sisters behind to come here? Tell me, do they even know? It’s been a week.”

“I’ll tell them I’m married as soon as the rituals end.”

I didn’t trust Elisa not to save me at the cost of Penny. She couldn’t see her, she couldn’t understand the loyalty I felt for my only true friend. My sister would do anything to rescue me. Elisa was loyalty reincarnated in the body of a woman but she wasn’t loyal to Penny.

When the ritual was complete and I truly belonged to the underworld, I’d tell my sisters. When it was too late for them to come to my rescue.

“Don’t judge me for feeling something is going on,” Penny went on. “Unless you were secretly dating the king of—”

“God.”

“The underworld. I know you’re hiding something.”

I blew out a breath and lopped my arm through hers again, pushing to resume our walk.

“Didn’t we agree he’s my soulmate? Like Marnie saw.”

“Yes, and I know you and I know you never wanted one.”

I blew a raspberry. “I guess it wasn't a choice.”

Penny giggled. “Marnie strikes again.”

Suddenly I felt disloyal to talk about Marnie’s powers like that. I dreaded the day I’d meet my soulmate since Marnie confessed to me she dreamed about him. I never asked what she saw, and she never told me. Now, I knew she only saw he was coming when I wore the red stone. I fingered Abuela’s ring still on me with a sigh.

Mami died when Marnie was just a baby. She was weak after labor, and magically weak when her power split into seven potential witches.

Elisa said many times, to Marnie especially, it wasn’t our births that killed Mami. A witch could have as many kids as she wanted or none at all. But since our coven’s power was linear and its totality belonged to the Morales line, every baby that was born weakened the current coven leader.

Mami was at her lowest after Marnie was born and that was the perfect moment for Dad to strike.

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