She eats for several long moments, and I can practically see her considering and discarding strategies to react in a way that will get her what she wants. Which is obviously not to talk about herself.
If I weren’t already determined to find out more about this woman, her resistance would only pique my curiosity further. I focus on my meal but watch her out of the corner of my eye. I have thousands of questions about this woman, but best to start with a relatively simple one. “You’ve been in the Underworld for nine years.”
“Yes.” The word is clipped and icy.
“Hades always did like to rob the cradle.” Not that twenty-one is all that young. By twenty-one, I’d already left Sabine Valley behind and come here with the intent to take a piece of territory for myself. But Aurora is not like me, and we’ve more than established that.
She goes tense beside me. “It’s not like that.”
“Isn’t it?” I’m provoking her, but asking in a direct way will guarantee she shuts me down. I have to rile her a bit. “Twenty-one and fresh-faced. It’s no wonder he made a deal with you.”
“If he was really what you seem to be suggesting, he would have had me working there when I originally made the deal eight years earlier.”
Shock stills me. She went to Hades when she was thirteen? I don’t know why that surprises me. At thirteen, I was hardly an innocent. Amazons don’t shelter their children in the same way civilians tend to, but that doesn’t change the fact that she was a child when Hades accepted that bargain.
Something barbed and dangerous slithers through my chest. “Did he touch you?”
“Of course not.” She sounds so horrified, I believe her. “He gave me what I asked for, patted me on the head, and told me to come back when I was twenty-one.”
There are few lines I won’t cross, but grooming a child to work in the Underworld is unacceptable. “Did you see Hades during those eight years?”
“No.” She glares. “I finished school, paid my way through most of a bachelor’s degree, and was devastatingly normal.” Something in her expression falters a little. “I waited a month after I turned twenty-one, but he never called the bargain due. I had to go to him.”
Relief nearly makes me woozy. I hadn’t thought the old man would cross that line, but if he had… I don’t know what I would do. Going up against someone who is arguably the most powerful person in Carver City over something he did over a decade ago would have been a terrible decision. There’s nothing to gain and far too much to lose.
That doesn’t change the fact that my hand is itching to wrap around his throat at the thought of him taking advantage of a scared and vulnerable thirteen-year-old Aurora. “How did you even find him at that age?”
“You know better. Some people don’t get a childhood, Malone. I’ve known who Hades was and what he is to this city since I was a kid.”
“You were a kid when you made that bargain.” Which just leads me right back to where we started. “What would drive a teenager to seek out Hades in the Underworld to make a deal?” What would cause Hades to accept it? But then, Hades might cover it up well enough, but he has a bleeding heart. For every ruthless bargain he makes, there is another one or two behind the scenes that help some unfortunate individual who has nothing to offer. Obviously, Aurora was one of those, but that still doesn’t explain how she found her way to him.
She looks away. “I needed money to keep someone I care about safe.”
Impossible to look at that situation and not feel like Hades took advantage. “So he gave a teenager a bunch of money in exchange for nine years of your life. Hardly seems like a fair deal.”
“Yes, well, not all of us have such a privilege that we can walk in and take what we want without an issue.” She spears a grape tomato and eats it.
This is getting me nowhere. If anything, it’s making me feel worse instead of better. Why do I care about the terms of Aurora’s deal? She made it. She’s obviously not broken beyond repair as a result. I know enough of how the background of the Underworld works to know that Hades doesn’t require anyone to engage in the sex work. He simply offers the option if they want it. Most do, and why not?
It still bothers me.
“Surely your parents weren’t willing to let you make that sacrifice on your own?” Amazons might not shelter our children from the ugliness of the world, but we certainly don’t sit back and let them make deals with the devil.
“My father died when I was a baby.” She picks at her salad. “My mother also died. I lived with my grandmother, and she wasn’t aware of the deal.”