The Underworld Crown (Series)

Chapter 1

There was no Hell quite like the torture of your own mind.

I once thought death would bring tranquillity. But it turned out there was no such thing as peace. Not even for those damned to the afterlife. Though I wasn't dead in the physical sense, the ache in my chest almost convinced me otherwise. Almost.

In a way, I was dead. Dead to my father. Dead to Camilla. Dead to everyone I cared for on Earth. For all I knew, they'd already held a funeral for me, having pronounced me dead after a mysterious period of absence. I wondered how much time had passed on Earth, and whether time worked differently down here in the Underworld. Mostly, I wondered if it was enough time for my father and Camilla to finish grieving, or if they were currently helplessly searching for me.

My hands shook as I clawed at the earthy floor with broken and dirt-filled nails I was sure Camilla would have had a heart attack at if she saw. I didn't exactly know why I was creating a makeshift ditch on the floor of my cell. Perhaps it was so I could dig myself out of my imprisonment. Perhaps it was to distract myself from the guards' curious gazes and who slouched outside my cell, using my presence as a distraction from their hours of standing.

Or maybe, it was to dig my own grave.

Either way, being imprisoned gave me too much time to think, and I seemed to be doing a lot of it.

The worst part of Hades' prison was the smell. There was something rank about the culmination of prisoners' sweat, death and decay, which lingered in the thick air. Especially when you wonder what has been splayed through the cell for possibly a few millennia and never cleaned. The sense of damnation was enough to stifle the air, making every breath require at least ten times the normal amount of effort.

I narrowed my eyes at my makeshift hole, surprised to realise the warmth and texture of the dirt was no longer enough to distract me.

He'd won. Hades had won.

Despites weeks of running, it had only taken one greedy demigoddess to sell me to the Devil. Cleo had handed me over with a hungry, gleaming smile, proud at the thought of her meaty bounty payment. I gritted my teeth together, knowing I should have relied on my gut instinct to not trust her. My jealousy of Cleo had made me believe her snide comments were nothing more than mere mockery. Meanwhile, I'd ignored the one red flag which indicated she would betray me: the fact she was a demigoddess of Greed.

And Alek–

My hands fisted, curling dirt with it. Tears threatened to flow. Cleo wasn't the first person I'd allowed to fool me. I couldn't even let myself think of him, of his own form of betrayal. No. I had to forget about him before Hades or his guards saw how vulnerable I was. I took a deep breath and loosened my hold on the ground, allowing myself to rock back on my heels and tip my head back to the roof. After a few breaths, I had my emotions locked back under tight control. It was the only way I would survive this.

There was one, small window in my cell. I stood up, stretched, and looked out it for the hundredth time in the hours since I'd been imprisoned. I was still trying to shake off the sleep I'd been forced into after the guard had drugged me.

Had I been on earth, I would've said it was minutes away from sunrise. But with Hell's lack of, well, sun, you could only guess it was morning by the reddish tint of the sky emerging from the horizon, which faded into midnight black.

Even from a grounded vantage point, I had a wide view of the expansive, yet motionless, lake which sat at the base of the castle. Even though the torrential wind was enough to make everyone duck for cover, the lake remained motionless. My stomach squirmed when a luminous bulb rose to the surface of the water, then submerged before I could get a good look at it.