Goddess Interrupted
Read Goddess Interrupted Online
Authors: Aimée Carter
Tags: #Greek & Roman, #Juvenile Fiction, #Love & Romance, #Legends; Myths; Fables, #Fantasy & Magic
Kate Winters has won
immortality. But if she wants a life with Henry in the Underworld, she’ll
have to fight for it.
Becoming immortal wasn’t
supposed to be the easy part. Though Kate is about to be crowned Queen of
the Underworld, she’s as isolated as ever. And despite her growing love for
Henry, ruler of the Underworld, he’s becoming ever more distant and
secretive. Then, in the midst of Kate’s coronation, Henry is abducted by the
only being powerful enough to kill him: the King of the Titans.
As the other gods prepare for a
war that could end them all, it is up to Kate to save Henry from the depths
of Tartarus. But in order to navigate the endless caverns of the Underworld,
Kate must enlist the help of the one person who is the greatest threat to
her future.
Henry’s first wife,
Persephone.
“Do you accept your role as
Queen of the Underworld?” said Henry.
I could do this. I had to do
this. For Henry’s sake—for my mother’s sake. For my sake. Because in the
end, without Henry, I didn’t know who I was anymore.
As I opened my mouth to say yes,
a crash shattered the silence. I twisted around to survey the damage, but
before I could get a good look, Ava appeared beside me and took my elbow.
“We have to get out of here.” As we scrambled forward, another crash echoed
through the hall, and a shimmering fog seeped into the palace. The same fog
from my vision.
This was the thing that had
nearly killed Henry, and now it was attacking all of us. Without warning, it
sliced through the air faster than the members of the council could control
it, but it wasn’t aimed at Henry or Walter or Phillip.
It went directly for
me.
* * *
Praise for
THE GODDESS
TEST
by
Aimée Carter
“This absorbing,
contemporary take on the Greek myth of Persephone features romance,
mystery, suspense, and an engaging, fully dimensional
protagonist.”
—
Booklist
“[A]bsolutely unique, fresh
and fascinating.”
—
BewitchedBookworms.com
“The narrative is well
executed, and Kate is a heroine better equipped than most to confront and
cope with the inexplicable.”
—
Publishers
Weekly
Also by
Aimée Carter from Harlequin TEEN
THE GODDESS TEST
THE GODDESS HUNT (ebook)
GODDESS
INTERRUPTED
Aimée Carter
For Melissa Anelli,
who knows how it feels to climb that long,
winding road just to see the dawn.
Prologue
Calliope trudged through the sunny field as she ignored the babble of the redhead trailing behind her. Ingrid was the first mortal who had tried to pass the test to become Henry’s wife, and maybe if he’d spent more than five minutes a day with her, Henry would’ve understood why Calliope had killed her.
“You’re in for a treat,” said Ingrid, scooping up a rabbit from the tall grass and hugging it to her chest. “Everything’s going to bloom at noon.”
“Like it did yesterday?” said Calliope. “And the day before that? And the day before that?”
Ingrid beamed. “Isn’t it beautiful? Did you see the butterflies?”
“Yes, I saw the butterflies,” said Calliope. “And the deer. And every other pointless piece of your afterlife.”
A dark cloud passed over Ingrid’s face. “I’m sorry you think it’s stupid, but it’s my afterlife, and I like it this way.”
It took a great deal of effort, but Calliope fought off the urge to roll her eyes. Upsetting Ingrid would only make things worse, and at the rate this was going, it would be ages before Calliope got out of here. “You’re right,” she said tightly. “It’s only that I never spend any time in this realm, so the process is unfamiliar to me.”
Ingrid relaxed and ran her fingers through the rabbit’s fur. “Of course you don’t spend time here,” she said with a giggle that set Calliope’s teeth on edge. “You’re a goddess. You can’t die. Unlike me,” she added, skipping across a few feet of meadow. “But it wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be.”
If that idiot of a girl knew a damn thing, she’d have known that Calliope wasn’t just any goddess. She was one of the original six members of the council, before they’d had children and the council had expanded. Before her husband had decided fidelity was beneath him. Before they’d started handing out immortality like it was candy. She was the daughter of Titans, and she wasn’t merely a goddess. She was a queen.
And no matter what the council and that bitch Kate had decided, she didn’t deserve to be here.
“Good,” said Calliope. “Death is a stupid thing to fear.”
“Henry makes sure I’m comfortable. He comes by every once in a while and spends the afternoon with me,” said Ingrid, and she added with a catty grin, “You never did tell me who won.”
Calliope opened her mouth to say that it wasn’t a contest, but that wasn’t true. Every part of it had been a competition, and she’d worked for the prize far more than the others. She’d wiped out her opponents masterfully. Even Kate would have died if Henry and Diana hadn’t intervened.
Calliope should’ve won, and the grin on Ingrid’s face felt like salt in the gaping hole where her heart had once been. First she’d lost her husband, and when she thought she’d found someone who could understand her plight and give her the love she so badly desired, that someone—Henry—had never given her a chance. Because of it, she’d lost everything. Her freedom, her dignity, every ounce of respect she’d fought to gain through the millennia, but most of all, she’d lost Henry.
They’d been together, two of the original six, since before the beginning of humanity. For eons she’d watched him, shrouded in mystery and loneliness no one could break, at least until Persephone had come along. And after what she’d done to him—
If anyone deserved to be punished, it was Persephone. All Calliope had ever wanted was for Henry to be happy, and one day he would understand that the only way he would ever be was when they were finally together. No matter how long it took, she would make him see. And in the end, Kate would pay for robbing them of precious time from their future.
“Calliope?” said Ingrid, and Calliope tried to shake the thoughts from her head. The words escaped into the recesses of her mind, but her anger and bitterness remained.
“Kate,” said Calliope, spitting out the name as if it were poisonous. “Her name’s Kate. She’s Diana’s daughter.”
Ingrid’s eyes widened. “And Persephone’s sister?”
Calliope nodded, and behind Ingrid, a strange fog formed in the distance. It seemed to beckon toward her, but she resisted the urge to cut loose from Ingrid and follow it. As long as she was serving her sentence spending time with each girl she’d killed, she couldn’t leave without alerting Henry. If she deliberately disobeyed the council’s orders, she would be permanently banished and her spot on the council filled by someone else.
She knew exactly who that someone else would be, and she swore to herself that as long as she was still a goddess, Kate would never get anywhere near her throne.
Calliope eyed the fog. “Have you ever been through there?”
“Through where?” said Ingrid. “The trees? Sometimes, but I prefer the meadow. Did you know the flower petals taste like candy? You should try them.”
“I don’t eat candy,” said Calliope, still distracted by the fog. She hadn’t seen anything else like it while in the Underworld, and it must mean something. Maybe it was Henry’s way of telling her she could move on to the next girl. Perhaps he understood how awful Ingrid was after all.
“How can you not eat candy?” said Ingrid. “Everyone eats candy.”
“I’m not everyone,” said Calliope. “Stay here.”
“So you can walk away?” said Ingrid. “I don’t think so. You need me to forgive you before you leave, or have you forgotten already?”
Calliope gritted her teeth. Of course she hadn’t forgotten, but as far as she was concerned, Ingrid was never going to forgive her. Even if she did, Calliope doubted every girl she’d killed would, as per Kate’s ruling, which meant she would likely be stuck in the Underworld for eternity. That was longer than Calliope was prepared to wait. “Unless you want me to attach your feet to the ground, you will stay,” she snapped.
“You can do that?”
Calliope didn’t bother answering. Instead she headed toward the fog and away from Ingrid, who at least had the decency not to follow her. The farther from Ingrid she got, the dimmer the meadow became, until Calliope was surrounded by rock—the real face of the Underworld now that there wasn’t a dead soul around to influence its appearance.
Now that she was closer, she could see that the fog wasn’t really fog after all. Instead it seemed to shimmer in the air, a thousand tendrils of light reaching for her. Calliope reached back, and the moment her fingers touched the strange glow, she understood why it had called to her. At last, after decades of waiting, he was awake.
Calliope smiled, and a rush of power so ancient it didn’t have a name spread through her. With Ingrid nothing more than a distant memory, she stepped forward, and the anger she’d harbored for so long finally found its purpose.
“Hello, Father.”
Chapter
One
Return to Eden
When I was a kid, each
fall my teachers had the class write and present one of those horrible “What
I Did Last Summer” essays, complete with pictures and funny anecdotes
designed to make a classroom full of bored students pay
attention.
Each year I sat and listened as
my classmates in my New York City preparatory school talked about how they’d
spent the summers in the Hamptons or in Florida or in Europe with their rich
parents, or au pairs, or as we grew older, boyfriends and girlfriends. By
the time we reached high school, I heard the same glitzy stories over and
over again: escapades in Paris with supermodels, all-night parties on the
beaches in the Bahamas with rock stars—every student vied for attention with
exploits that got wilder every year.
But my story was always the
same. My mother worked as a florist, and because most of her income went to
paying for that school, we never left New York City. On her days off we
spent our afternoons in Central Park soaking up the sun. After she got sick,
my summers were spent in the hospital with her, holding her hair back as the
chemo attacked her system or flipping through the television channels
looking for something to watch.
It wasn’t the Hamptons. It
wasn’t Florida. It wasn’t Europe. But they were my summers.
The one after my first six
months with Henry, however, blew every single summer my classmates ever had
out of the water.
“I can’t believe you’d never
swum with dolphins before,” said James as I drove down a rough dirt road
that didn’t see much use. We were back in the upper peninsula of Michigan
and surrounded by trees taller than most buildings. The closer we got to
Eden Manor, the wider my grin spread.
“It’s not like we had a ton of
them in the Hudson River,” I said, nudging the accelerator. We were so far
from civilization that there weren’t any posted speed limits, and the last
time I’d been down this road, my mother had been too ill for me to risk
taking advantage of it. But now, after the council had granted me
immortality, the only thing I risked was my old beat-up car. So far, I liked
the perks. “I’m more impressed with the volcano erupting.”
“No idea why it did that,” said
James. “It’s been dormant for longer than some of us have been alive. Might
have to ask Henry about that when we get back.”
“What would he have to do with a
volcano?” I said, and my heart skipped a beat. We were so close now that I
could almost feel him, and I drummed my fingers nervously against the
steering wheel.
“Volcanoes run through Henry’s
domain. If an old one’s going off like that, then something’s up.” James bit
off a piece of jerky and offered me the rest. I wrinkled my nose. “Suit
yourself. You realize you’re going to have to tell him about everything we
did, right?”
I glanced at him. “I hadn’t
planned on otherwise. Why? What’s wrong with that?”
James shrugged. “Nothing. I
figured he wouldn’t be too thrilled with the idea of you spending six months
in Greece with some handsome blond stranger, that’s all.”
I laughed so hard I nearly drove
off the side of the road. “And who was this handsome blond stranger? I don’t
remember him.”
“Exactly what you should say to
Henry, and we’ll both be in the clear,” said James cheerfully.
It was a joke, of course. James
was my best friend, and we had spent the whole summer together touring
ancient ruins, vast cities and breathtaking islands in one of the most
beautiful places on earth. Maybe one of the most romantic, too, but James
was James, and I was married to Henry.
Married. I still wasn’t used to
it. I’d kept my black diamond wedding ring on a chain around my neck, too
afraid of losing it to wear it properly, and now that we were only a mile or
so away from Eden, it was time to put it back on. I’d struggled to pass the
seven tests the council of gods had given me to see if I was worthy of
immortality and becoming Queen of the Underworld, and because I’d won—only
barely—Henry and I were now technically husband and wife.
With the silence between us for
the past six months, however, it didn’t feel like it. I hadn’t admitted it
to James, but I’d spent the summer glancing around in hopes of seeing Henry
in the crowd, there even when he wasn’t supposed to be. But no matter how
hard I’d looked, I hadn’t seen any sign of him. Granted, half a year was
practically a blink of an eye for someone who had existed since before the
birth of humanity. But surely a sign that he missed me wasn’t too much to
ask for.
During my winter with him
though, I’d had to fight for every small step forward. Every look, every
touch, every kiss—what if six months apart brought us back to square one?
He’d spent a thousand years mourning his first wife, Persephone, and he’d
only known me for one. Our wedding hadn’t been the perfect ending to a
wonderful love story. It’d been the beginning of eternity, and nothing about
our new life together was going to be easy. For either of us. Especially
considering that on top of adjusting to marriage, I’d have to learn how to
be Queen of the Underworld, as well.
And no matter how many years I’d
spent caring for my dying mother, I had a sinking feeling none of it would
help when it came to ruling over the dead.
I pushed my worries from my mind
as the black wrought-iron gate of Eden Manor came into view. New York,
school, my mother’s illness—that was my past. My mortal life. This was my
future. No matter what had or hadn’t happened during the summer, I would
have the chance to be with Henry now, and I wasn’t going to waste a
moment.
“Home sweet home,” I said as I
drove through the gate. I could do this. Henry would be waiting for me, and
he’d be thrilled to see me. My mother would be there, too, and I wouldn’t
have to go another six months without seeing her again. After nearly losing
her, spending the summer without my mother had been torture, but she’d
insisted—this first summer was my own, and she and Henry wouldn’t be
involved. But I was back now, and everything would be okay.
James craned his neck to look at
the brightly colored trees that lined the road. “All right?” he said to
me.
“I should be asking you that,” I
said, eyeing the way he drummed his fingers on the armrest nervously. He
stilled, and after a moment I added before I could stop myself, “He’ll be
happy to see me, right?”
James blinked and said coolly,
“Who? Henry? Couldn’t say. I’m not him.”
That was the last answer I’d
expected, but of course he wasn’t going to be cheerful about it. James would
have been the one to replace Henry as the ruler of the Underworld if I’d
failed, and even though it hadn’t come up on our trip, James was undoubtedly
sore about it.
“Could you at least try to
pretend to be happy for me?” I said. “You can’t spend your entire existence
mad about that.”
“I’m not mad. I’m worried,” he
said. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, you know. No one
would blame you.”
“Do what? Not go back to Eden?”
I’d already passed the tests. I’d told Henry I’d be back. We were married,
for crying out loud.
“Everyone’s acting like you’re
the be-all and end-all for Henry,” said James. “It isn’t fair to put you
under that kind of pressure.”
Good lord, he really was talking
about not going back. “Listen, James, I know you liked Greece—so did I—but
if you think you can talk me into not going back—”
“I’m not trying to talk you into
anything,” said James with surprising firmness. “I’m trying to make sure no
one else does. This is your life. No one’s going to take your mother away
from you now if you decide you don’t want to do this after all.”
“That’s not—that’s not why I’m
going back at all,” I sputtered.
“Then why are you, Kate? Give me
one good reason, and I’ll drop it.”
“I can give you a
dozen.”
“I only want one.”
I sniffed. It wasn’t any of his
business. I’d nearly died in my attempts to save Henry from fading; I wasn’t
going to walk away from him because of the possibility that I might not like
the Underworld. “I don’t know how you do things, but I love Henry, and I’m
not going to leave him just because you don’t think he’s good for
me.”
“Fair enough,” said James. “But
what are you going to do if Henry doesn’t love you?”
I slammed on the brakes and
forced the car into Park so violently that the head of the stick shift
snapped off. The car was a piece of shit anyway. “That’s impossible. He said
he loves me, and I trust him not to lie to me. Unlike someone else I
know.”
I glared at him, but his
expression didn’t change. With a huff, I climbed out of the car, cursing as
the seat belt caught on my jeans. After my few failed attempts to untangle
myself, James reached over and gently undid it for me.
“Don’t be mad,” he said.
“Please. After what happened to Persephone—I want to make sure you don’t
have to go through the same thing, all right? That’s all.”
I wasn’t an idiot. I knew part
of Henry would always be in love with Persephone. After all, he’d lost the
will to continue after she’d given up her immortality to die and spend
eternity with a mortal, and he wouldn’t have felt that way if his entire
existence hadn’t revolved around her. But I could give him the one thing she
never had—requited love.
“If you really are happy and you
two love each other equally, then great,” said James. “Good luck to you
both. But if you don’t—if you wake up one day and realize you’re forcing
yourself to love him because you think it’s the right thing to do, not
because he makes you happier than you’ve ever been—then I want to make sure
you know you have a choice. And if you ever want to leave, all you have to
do is say the word, and I’ll go with you.”
I stormed toward the front doors
of the manor, yanking hard. “Great, so if I ever decide that Henry’s life
isn’t worth it, I’ll be sure to let you know. Help me with these, will
you?”
James didn’t say a word as he
joined me and opened the heavy doors as if they were made of feathers. I
slipped inside and forced a smile, expecting to see Henry waiting for me in
the magnificent entrance hall made of mirrors and marble. But the foyer was
empty.
“Where is everyone?” I said, my
smile fading.
“Waiting for you, I suspect.”
James stepped in after me, and the door slammed behind us, echoing through
the hall. “You didn’t think we were going to stay here, did you?”
“I didn’t know there was
anywhere else to stay.”
He draped his arm over my
shoulders, but when I shrugged it off, he shoved his hands in his pockets
instead. “Of course there’s someplace else. Follow me.”
James led me to the center of
the foyer, where a crystal circle shimmered with a rainbow of colors in the
center of the white marble floor. When I tried to continue to the other side
of the hall, he grabbed my hand and stopped me.
“This is our stop,” he said,
looking down.
I stared at the crystal beneath
my feet, and finally I saw it. A strange, shimmering aura seemed to emanate
from where we stood, and I jumped out of the circle. “What
is
that?”
“Henry didn’t tell you?” said
James, and I shook my head. “It’s a portal between the surface and the
Underworld. Totally safe, I promise. They’re like shortcuts so we don’t have
to take the long way around.”
“The long way
around?”
“If you know where to look, you
can find an opening into the Underworld and travel through various caves and
that kind of thing,” he said. “Dark, gloomy, time-consuming, and trouble if
you’re skittish about having millions of pounds of rock pressing down on
you.”
“There’s nothing underneath the
surface except lava and dirt,” I said, ignoring the thought of being buried
alive. “Every eight-year-old knows that.”
“We’re gods. We’re excellent at
covering our tracks,” said James with a boyish grin, and this time, when he
offered me his hand, I took it and stepped back into the circle.
“What else are you good at?” I
grumbled. “Turning water into wine?”
“That’s Xander’s specialty,” he
said. “I’m surprised he hasn’t turned the Dead Sea into one big keg party by
now. Must be too salty for him. As for me, I can find anything or anyone or
anyplace you want. Didn’t you notice we never got lost in
Greece?”
“Except that one
time.”
“We weren’t actually lost then,
either,” he pointed out.
“Still.” I gave him a look, and
he turned pink. “I just thought you knew the area well.”
“I did, thousands of years ago.
They’ve made some modifications since then. Close your eyes.”
A rush of electrifying power
swirled around us, and a roar filled my ears. Without warning, the ground
dropped from under us, and I shrieked.
My heart leaped into my throat,
and my eyes flew open as I tried to pull away from James, but his arm
wrapped around me like steel. We were surrounded by rock—no, we were
inside
rock, and we went through it as if it weren’t any more substantial than air.
James’s expression was as calm as ever, as if slicing through stone and
earth and god only knew what else was perfectly normal.