“I escaped once,” he reminds her.

“You won’t cross the abyss twice, you know that. You were lucky—infinitely lucky—to cross it the first time,” she says. A worried look flits across her face. “And you shouldn’t press your luck a second time. If you fail, the lord of lords might not forgive you. We are not irreplaceable. You know that, too.”

“I would be glad to be replaced.” He knows it will make her unhappy to hear him say this, but he must be true to himself. “I’m not repudiating you. Don’t take this as a rejection. It’s just that—I cannot be wed to you.”

Her face hardens and she turns away from him in preservation of her dignity. “How can I not take it as a rejection? How can it not be personal? You don’t want me as your wife, even though we were meant to be together. This is out of our hands. It is the natural order of things. You can’t fight it any more than I can.”

He can’t help himself; under pressure, the words blurt out like juice from a lemon. “You are not my wife. You must accept that I will never be your husband.”

His declaration seems to tear something inside the queen. She leaps up from the bed and whirls on him. Her magnificence blooms when she is angry—the same as his does. They are mirrors of each other. “Do not think you can be rid of me so easily, my lord. Do not think you can be unkind to me and dismiss me. You cannot threaten me. Do you think you are my match? You’re not even close—you haven’t used your powers in a thousand years, whereas I have been a god for every day of those years. You are weak and in no position to oppose me.”

“It doesn’t matter. You can snuff the life out of me, if that’s what you want. I would rather die than be with you.” The words leap from his mouth. He doesn’t think before he speaks; if he was impatient on earth, he is more so here, his old fury coming back on him swiftly. The queen winces; they are mean, these words, but true, and so he cannot take them back.

“It doesn’t matter how you or I feel—you won’t be allowed to do as you please. Order must be maintained in the heavens. Do you think the gods will let you get away with this?” she asks pointedly. She is not going to remain to be insulted and affronted, and, having said her piece, she disappears in a puff of vivid blue smoke, as though she has exploded from anger.

* * *

Adair is wandering through the labyrinthine suite of rooms in which he has found himself when he runs into Jonathan. His old friend and sometime adversary lounges on a chaise, reading what appears to be a book of poetry. He has the same inscrutable expression that he wore in life, both pleasant and yet unmistakably bored, as though nothing can possibly keep his attention. One never knew what was going on inside that handsome head. Jonathan always kept his thoughts to himself.

“Hello, old man,” he calls to Adair in his usual lazily chummy way once he notices him standing in the doorway. Jonathan sits up and makes room for Adair on the chaise and the two sit next to each other, Adair sullen, Jonathan cautiously friendly. He puts the book facedown on the floor, open to his spot.

“So you are the queen’s consort,” Adair says, not knowing what else to say under the circumstances.

Jonathan says hastily, “Yes, though I will say in my defense that I only recently learned she is your wife. That fact was kept from me before.” He appears to reflect for a moment on the woman who has taken him to her bed. “There’s no hard feelings, right? It’s not as though I had any say over the situation,” Jonathan adds uneasily.

“No, of course not,” Adair assures him.

Another moment passes in silence between them, each man caught up in his thoughts. At length, Jonathan continues, his tone a little more anxious this time. “So you are king of the underworld. The prince of Hades. Lord of the dead.” The roll call of titles makes Adair wince. Jonathan cracks an ironic smile. “Did you really not know? The entire time you were on earth, you never had a glimpse of your previous existence? An inkling, a hint? I find that—extraordinary.”

Adair shakes his head. “No. It was kept a mystery to me.”

“Ah yes, the barrier between the two worlds. I’ve experienced it myself. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense. I mean, you’ve always had quite a temper, haven’t you? And that cruel streak—you always were on the sadistic side. When you look at all the pieces . . .”

“I am not the devil.” Adair feels the need to correct him. “I wasn’t born into the position, I was chosen. It has nothing to do with personalities. I am merely the keeper of the realm.” Pride flares inside him and he feels the need to educate Jonathan. “It is not a trivial position. It’s not an honorary one, either. It takes a strong will to rule over the dead.”

“Oh, take my word for it. I know. I’ve seen it firsthand,” Jonathan quickly reminds him. “Your bride is the devil, however. I hope you don’t mind me saying that,” Jonathan adds. “Four years with her and it feels like four hundred—even though a year on earth is like the blink of an eye here.”

Here, they are on cosmic time, the interminably slow drip, drip, drip of time. The impartial clock by which the cosmos unfolds, during which stars form and burn and finally burst, for planets to be reduced to dust and scattered to the farthest reaches of the universe. All of it just another day, for the gods. “I am the age of the cosmos,” Adair says, and he feels the truth of it in his firmament, down to the electric pulse that runs through him.

Another minute passes in silence between the two. Adair wishes he had a nice whiskey to help ease the time with Jonathan. It seems like the proper gentlemanly accoutrement for the situation and, before he can even think twice, a tray appears at his feet bearing a crystal decanter and two heavy tumblers. He pours generous dollops of whiskey and hands a glass to Jonathan.

Jonathan gestures about the dingy room, whiskey sloshing onto his hand. “Now that you’re back, maybe you could do something to spruce the place up. It’s infernally dismal here, so dark and drab.”

Adair gives Jonathan a strained look. Here he is worrying about his future happiness and Jonathan wants to talk about interior decorating. “What difference does it make how things look? I could give two figs for the atmosphere. Besides, do you think I have the slightest interest in remaining here?”

Jonathan takes a bracing swig of alcohol. “It’s obvious that you’re depressed. The queen is depressed, too. It couldn’t hurt to brighten things up.”

Adair knows there is some truth to what Jonathan says. He is depressed. Memories of his past existence continue to crowd into his head, stuffing his mind to bursting, and it’s noisy in there, buzzing like a nest full of hornets. He doesn’t want these memories back. He’d be happy to live the rest of his life without them. He wants to hold on to his memories of being Adair—he wants to remain Adair.

He drops his head into his hands and moans. “I don’t care about all this other stuff. I don’t want this kingdom or these responsibilities. I didn’t ask for them.”

Jonathan gives Adair a surprised look. “Why, I never thought I’d hear you talk like that, Adair. You always knew what you wanted, and that was all that mattered. You’ve changed.” He sounds a touch disappointed.

Adair grunts. He has been stripped to his essentials, and he knows it. “I only came here for Lanore. Where is she, Jonathan? Do you have any idea where I can find her?”

“I have seen her. But the queen had her taken away, to some place she called ‘the pit,’ but I don’t know anything more,” Jonathan says.

“How am I going to find her?” Adair moans.

That self-pitying remark is the last straw for Jonathan, who gives him an annoyed look. “Dear lord, Adair, just listen to you. Stop acting like a mortal. You’re a god, for goodness’ sake. You can do anything—or rather, practically anything. So stop your whining and put your mind to it.”

Repressing the urge to knock Jonathan across the room for his insolent remark, Adair sees the truth in it. Jonathan may be impertinent but he is right. The universe is his to command—up to a point, he knows, but finding Lanore should be within his power. He has done it twice, after all: once to find her home in Paris, and the second time on the island, when all he had to do was wish and the ocean obeyed. This is not earth or the ocean; this is the underworld, his own kingdom, for God’s sake. The queen’s words have made him doubt his ability to channel his power, and for a moment he hesitates. Then he pushes that doubt aside. He is in his kingdom. It should do whatever he commands.

Adair stands and starts to walk back to his chamber. The more he thinks about what it is that he wants, the more he feels the power swell and rise within him, a muscle plumping to attention. He may have been away for a millennium, but here in the underworld it has been no more than a few blinks of an eye. The slowness of cosmic time will work in his favor. His power wells up within him, coursing through his body, surging to his hands. Bring her to me, he thinks. Bring Lanore to me.

* * *

One minute, I am at the bottom of the pit, huddled on a rock and speaking to Stolas. And the next, I am levitating through the air. I’m carried along through space, up, up, up the long shaft of the pit. I can feel Adair’s presence again, clear as a bell in my head. I have never been so happy to feel his presence. Once a sign of his domination and oppression, it now means something else entirely. I know he’s here and I feel so many emotions at once—happiness, joy, relief—that I don’t think I can contain them all. Thank God we will not go another eternity-filled minute without seeing each other again. Thank God I will have the chance to tell him that I love him. I know it now with all my heart. My prayers have been answered.