Little Saint Bride [Death and the Maiden, #1]

Chapter Twenty Two: Bad First Impressions

If there was ever a way to not go about gaining information, it's starting a brawl with my closest neighbour, a girl so muscular she looks genetically enhanced.
But of course, that's precisely what I do.

I can't help it. I've been in such a bad, bad mood all day. One of those moods, the one that festers the longer you leave it, like mouldy cheese. The mood that leaves you with an automatic frown and a mouth that feels hatred towards smiling.

(That sounds like my natural face, but I digress.)

My bad mood began at my forced removal from Hadrian, who half of my hopes are pinned upon to convince his brother-- once we find him-- to allow me back above the waterfall. Blondie had finally gotten some sense, and she was wondering why there's a god turned up in her neck of the woods, and frankly, I was wondering why Hadrian didn't get the hell out of there earlier, too.

In my head, my thoughts were crashing like the waves that had consumed me, days ago. 

Does he actually want me to come back with him?

Is he going to seriously, truly, help?

Why?

Over the top of Blondie's head, I caught Hadrian's stare. He was only a few metres away, but I could see a new, concerned look, outweighing his usual frivolity. He stood with his arms folded, and his foot tapping. When the blonde girl tried to engage with him, his stare was thunderous.

But of course, she had sent me away, and she had kept Hadrian, thunderous stare or not. It hadn't perturbed her in the slightest, nor had she raised any alarm regarding the god before her. No-- she was too busy staring at his abs for that.

In fact, she looked suspiciously triumphant as I followed the man walking away from the middle of the square, the two of us heading towards the slum backstreets, foreboding and dark. I looked over my shoulder only once to see her eyes, boring into mine, an odd look flashing there; as if we were in a fight, but I'd just walked out of the arena and surrendered.

But Hadrian was behind her, looking lost and confused, and I wondered if it might not be quite so easy to bed him as she thought. The guy was notoriously stubborn. 

It certainly was harder for me to get what I wanted, much more than I had anticipated when I'd sacrificed myself in the hopes of finding my brother. Contrary to what I imagined, finding my brother wasn't quite like wandering around until you found the right pub-- it was a lot less certain, and a lot more at stake, and the easiest answer seemed to be to have sex with Hadrian and share his power.

Until he had refused me. 

Now, I have hope of my own power, independent of the handsome king that I'm not sure who's side he's on. To me, it sounds a far safer plan than having to hope on something as unreliable as passion and love. As long as I can make it to Chronus, I'm confident that I can convince him to let me back up the waterfall, to leave Elysium-- even if I have to bargain my life once more. Surely finding a sorcerer set on summoning the dead is something that benefits Chronus, if only because he has more workers reaching this hellhole to bully the crap out of.

Speaking of-- the living conditions here are awful. The streets are filthy, probably due to the sewer system that is backlogged and pouring out drainwater from the pools in the middle of the roads. There's no carts or horses for the outer district, Morgan tells me. Punishment for sin has stripped us all of every dignity there is.

The living blocks are the epitome of a bored and poorly creative architect. They stand ten flights tall and longer than several houses put together, but for all their largeness, they house so many souls that they're full to the brim. Morgan explained how everyone is split into their specialty work. First, the blacksmiths who weld most of Elysium's iron. Then there's the quarriers, too exhausted to notice that they live, eat, work and sleep all with the same people, mining ores and supplying stone to the kingdom. Labourers exist to build and mend the walls of the districts, to build new houses, to repair and extend these ugly apartments, and then go and live in their own construction. The sewer workers are one of the many underground sections that spend most of their daylight buried deep beneath the city, mending leaks, fixing pumps, shovelling shit.