“And what’s up with that? Why do you need Boons? Are they your mates?” A pink blush brightens her cheeks. “Erm … I mean, are Underlord girls just really ugly or something?”

“There are no Underlord women. I don’t know if it’s a remnant of Demeter’s curse or just the will of the Fates, but no female child has ever been born in the Underrealm.”

“Oh,” she says. “So that’s what’s with all the girl snatching.”

“Nobody is snatched. The Boons must give their consent to come.”

“But do they really know what they’re getting themselves into? Consent isn’t really consent if she doesn’t know what she’s saying yes to.”

I am silent for a long while. I can’t deny that there is truth to Daphne’s words. I never knew why my own mother had agreed to follow Ren into the Underrealm—what he promised her to get her to come—but I doubt she knew that it would lead to her eventual death. A pang of guilt hits me. Daphne doesn’t know that saying yes means that she very well could be agreeing to a much shorter life span. But that is if she is only a Boon, I try to tell myself. If she is the Cypher, could that mean she would survive longer than an ordinary girl? Perhaps finding the Key to the Underrealm will grant her immortality, too, when it is restored to the Underlords.

But how exactly will the Court use her to find the Key? What will be the cost?

“The Boons live very comfortable lives of luxury,” I say at last. “I imagine that appeals to many girls.”

“Some,” she says. “But I don’t fancy giving up my free will for comfort.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

“And I don’t fancy finding this Key for you people, either. You think I want you restarting this war and trampling my world again in the process?”

“It’s not just for opening the gates. The Key is also needed to stop the locks on Pandora’s Pithos from failing. Imagine what would happen to your world if more of the Keres got out. They would multiply and do far more damage than any fight between the Lords.”

“Oh,” she says, quietly. “Could that really happen?”

“I don’t know for sure. There are rumors.…”

“So you don’t know anything, really.”

I start to say something, but she stops me.

“I don’t want to hear any more. I’m not going to be your Cypher, so stop trying to use scare tactics on me.”

We are both wordless for a long time after that. Daphne fiddles with the touch screen, trying to find a radio station, but we’re too remote to get anything clear. There’s only one car in front of us and one car behind.

“All my music was on my phone,” she says, turning off my radio.

“I have half a dozen MP3 players.… But I left them all in my other car.”

Daphne starts to hum to herself. It’s a song that sounds vaguely familiar to me, but I can’t say that it’s one of the ones I downloaded from the music store. I listen to her, melting into the melody, until a sudden pain pricks behind my eyes. I rub at them and realize I’ve got tears welling in the corners. I wipe them away quickly, but not fast enough for Daphne not to notice.

“What is it?”

“That song. I think I’ve heard it before. I think my mom used to whisper it to me when no one was around. It made me feel … safe. Protected. Maybe even happy.”

“She loved you,” she says. “And you loved her.”

I shrug, but the tears build faster in my eyes. Almost to the point that I can’t see the road. “I don’t even know what that feels like.”

“You just described it,” she says. “I think you’re feeling it right now.”

I wipe the wetness from my eyes. “That’s just blubbering. What else would you expect from ‘the boy who cried?’ ” I say sarcastically.

“It hurts and it makes you feel vulnerable, but there’s nothing wrong with crying like that. My mom always says that tears are the price we pay for having love and compassion in our lives.”

“Sometimes it feels like too high a price.”

She shakes her head. “You know, I don’t think it was losing control of yourself that made your father disown you. It had nothing to do with that. I think it’s because he was afraid of you.”

I blink at her, the tears drying up. “Afraid of me?”

“At seven years old, you stood up to the king of the underworld. You challenged him. You were just a little boy who loved his dying mother and that gave you strength. A strength he couldn’t even fathom. I bet that scared the crap out of him. Like that Kronos guy, who was afraid his children would become more powerful than he was—but you know, instead of eating you physically, he ate at you emotionally. Your father needed to knock you down as far as he could. Because if you could challenge his authority as a boy, then what would you be capable of as a man?”

Chapter forty-eight

DAPHNE

“You mind if we make a pit stop?” I ask Haden. I’d been waiting for him to have to pull into a gas station or a charging station at some point, but his car never seems to run out of juice.

“We’re only an hour and a half outside of Vegas.”

“That’s nice,” I say. “You might be made out of fire and shadow and all that jazz, but I’m human, which means I need to eat. And honestly: I have got to pee.”

Haden lets out a short laugh. It strikes me again how different he looks when he smiles. It happens so rarely, it feels like getting a glimpse at a Christmas present through the edges of the stiff wrapping paper.

“There’s an exit up ahead with a diner,” I say, checking the map on the touch screen.

There’s a moan from the backseat. In the mirror, I watch Garrick push himself up to a sitting position. He presses his hand to the sides of his head like he’s trying to keep his brain from throbbing.

“Good,” I say. “Looks like our prisoner has woken up. I bet he could use a Coke or something.”

“I’ll place our order,” Haden says, rubbing his hands on his pant legs to get rid of the stickiness from the menus. “Take Garrick with you and find a place to sit.”

He says that like this place is crowded, but we’re the only ones here. Other than the trucker at the counter, nursing a milk shake.