By Elizabeth Anne Myrick

Under my hand, salt breaks away from the gate in thick, crystalized flakes. Reus giggles. He reaches out his chubby baby fingers, but I yank him back, pressing his face to my cloak when his laugh turns to a startled wail.

“Shh…” I hold him closer, my heart pounding as I look over my shoulder. Darkness shrouds the path behind us. From this distance, the city lights hide under a veil blacker than Hades’s cloak.

But it will not hide us when Hades himself comes looking.

Reus squirms, clutching the leather cord about my neck. I pull the key from under my tunic. Here, at the kingdom’s edge, the key emits an otherworldly glow, ten times brighter than when Mother slid it into my palm last night.

“It is yours, Kor.” She closed my hand around the blade. Holding my face in her calloused palms, she brushed one last kiss on my forehead. “It unlocks the Eastern Gate. Do not make my mistake. Take that baby and never look back.”

She didn’t say where she’d gotten it, and now I regret not asking. The gate is a pale sliver in the wall bordering Hades’s kingdom. It stands twice my height, stretching toward the black sky, infinitely more foreboding than the stories I’ve heard of it.

They say the salt is from the tears of the damned who come begging for release.

They say it is better to drown sorrows in the Styx than to seek hope at this door.

And yet they say Hades cannot touch the realm beyond the gate.

I twist the key in my hand. All I see is salt, crusted on the wooden slats, the hinges, even the dead grass along the threshold. There is no lock, no handle.

No way out.

I fling the key down. Why did I trust her? Mother raised me on pretty lies of sunshine and summer and new life, as if hope holds power in this land of desolation. If such places exist, she has never seen them. No one in our world has.

Reus strains forward, reaching his open palm for the gate. I sink to my knees and let him down. A tear drips from my nose onto his dark curls.

Why did I think this time would be different? None escape this place. The gate itself bears witness. I may have the key, but I cannot solve this riddle without a lock.

Light catches in Reus’s eyes as he grins at me. A smudge of dirt darkens one cheek. When he giggles, the sound is like bells in the night.

In the distance, a hound brays.

I swipe the back of my hand against my eyes. The key is as real as my child. The lock must be real, too. I need only find it. Standing, I scoop Reus onto my hip. His legs tangle in my cloak. Flakes of salt gnaw at my sweaty palm as I search.

Soon, my hand burns from a thousand tiny cuts, but I do not stop. Reus winds his fingers in my hair, sucking on the head of the key. His eyes droop. When the key drops from his hand, I wind the cord around my wrist.

Another hound brays, closer this time. Too close. Panic rises within me.

“Help!” I pound on the gate. Perhaps there is no one there to listen. My voice rouses Reus, and he cries. I scream, my throat raw. “Help us!”

A trio of howls pierces the night.

And then, a voice, muffled from the other side of the gate. “Is someone there?”

Surprise freezes me in place. I stand with one fist pressed to the slats, Reus’s wail ringing in my ear. He yanks a chunk of my hair, and I startle into action. “Yes! Please, help us!”

Behind me, I hear my name. “Kor.”

I whirl to find Hades in all his glory. He commands his tri-headed hound to stay as he draws close. His cloak trails behind him, withering the already-dead grass to ash. He wears that devilish, heart-breaking smile that I once thought meant kindness, and his words chill me to the bone. “The Eastern Gate opens to no one in my kingdom.”

I do not reply.

His gaze flicks over to Reus, or perhaps the gate. He steps closer. “Kor, my love, my light. Have I not given you my kingdom? Everything I have is yours. Reus is a prince among our people. What more could you ask?” He is close enough that I see my reflection in his dark eyes. “Come home.”

Behind me, the voice on the other side of the gate speaks again, the words muffled to a whisper I hardly hear. “Do you have the key?”

I stare Hades dead in the eyes. “Yes.” Then I swing my arm, drawing the key across his face.

He stumbles back, the earth below him smoldering. His hound growls. I have no time, and only one hope. I fling the key over the wall.

Hades lunges at me just as the gate swings open. Light floods in. Shielding his eyes, he gropes blindly.

I step one foot over the threshold, beyond this kingdom of darkness. The light shines so brightly, I can see nothing that lies ahead. Reus whimpers and clutches his arms around my neck.

“Kor…” Hades stretches his hand toward me. “Don’t go. Please. I love you.” Once, his love was a relief, his palace a beacon of hope, his words sweet and intoxicating as honeyed wine.

But I have drunk my fill and found his kingdom empty.

Salt powders the ground at my feet as I take hold of the gate. Perhaps it is my tears, dried and flaking away. When I let go, a fine layer of dust coats my palm.

“Goodbye, Hades.” I take my first step out of his kingdom, and close the gate behind me.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elizabeth Anne Myrick lives in Kansas City with a golden retriever named Edith, a suitcase named Posey, and several houseplants with unfortunately forgotten names (but she swears there’s a Kenneth in there somewhere). Always hungry for adventure, she’s visited sixteen real-world countries and countless fictional ones. Her stories glimmer with hope and a sprinkle of magic. You can find Elizabeth on the back deck with her iced coffee, lost in a good book, or on her social media.

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