“I’ll tell Simon. I’ll call him right now. You’re not allowed to leave town. I heard Simon tell you so.”

“Simon doesn’t need to know. He’s gone to LA on business. He won’t even be back until Monday.”

“So what, you’re just going to run away the first chance you get? What about the rest of us? What about me? What happens when Simon finds out you’re gone? What happens when I go back through the gate without you?”

“I’m not running away, Lesser. You think I’m a coward?”

“I don’t believe you. I’m going inside to call Simon! I’m telling him you’re going to this Vegas place.”

Haden grabs his cousin. Garrick tries to pull away. I get out of the car, thinking I can intervene. Talk some sense into Garrick. But I don’t get the chance. Haden places his thumbs behind the boy’s ears and his index fingers on his temples and presses until Garrick’s eyes roll into the back of his head and he crumples like a rag doll. Haden catches him up in his arms before he hits the ground. I cover my mouth, holding in a shriek.

“Open the door,” Haden says, dragging his cousin’s limp body toward the car.

“What did you do?”

“I put him in a black sleep. It’s an old Underlord negotiation technique.”

“Negotiation?”

“If a man refuses to negotiate, you render him unconscious.”

“That’s crazy.”

“He would have told Simon. There was no other way to stop him without resorting to violence. Now open the door.”

I pull open the back door, and Haden shoves Garrick into the backseat. The boy lies motionless on his side.

“Will he be okay?”

“He’ll have a raging headache when he wakes up in a couple of hours, but by then we’ll be halfway there.” Haden slams the door. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and tosses it into a bucket of rags in the garage. “Simon is eventually going to figure out I’m gone, especially if I’m not back by Monday, but I want to make sure he can’t track us. Give me yours.” He gestures for me to give him my phone.

“Mine, too?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“How would he …?”

“Trust me. He has his ways.”

I surrender my phone and watch Haden drop it into the bucket. He gets back in the car. “You coming?”

I sit in the passenger seat again.

As we sail out of the driveway, I glance back at his unconscious cousin in the third row, and I wonder if I’ve made a grave mistake.

Chapter forty-seven

HADEN

Daphne is silent the whole first hour of our trip. She keeps glancing at Garrick, who still lies unconscious in the back row. Sometimes, I catch her gaze darting to me. Her eyes linger on my upper arm. The sleeve of my T-shirt covers my scars, but I know that’s what she’s thinking about. No wonder so much tension fills the space between us.

“I didn’t do that,” I say, breaking the silence.

She startles at the sound of my voice.

“I didn’t cut those scars into my arm. My father did. So I wouldn’t forget my quest. It was the most painful thing I’ve ever had to endure. And I’ve endured a lot.…”

“Oh,” she says. The tension in her relaxes ever so slightly.

Another half hour passes.

“So what did you do?” she asks. “To piss your dad off so much? I got the gist a few weeks ago that you’re kind of on the outs with him.”

“That’s putting it lightly. My father disowned me.” I’m not sure I want to talk about it, but Daphne shifts in her seat, turning her body toward me. Maybe talking is the best thing for getting her to open up to me again. “I cried,” I say. “When my mother died, I cried.”

“What? Your father disowned you over that?”

“No. It’s what I did after he punished me for crying.…” I realize I need to back up the story more for her to understand. “I have a twin brother. His name is Rowan. But you have to understand that twins are very rare in my world. The first two sons of the Underrealm were created by our god, Hades. They were the first twins—the eldest of whom became the father of our race, while the younger twin became the progenitor of our greatest enemies, the Skylords.

“Because of this, firstborn sons are treated with great respect—made Lords and trained as warriors and Champions—while younger sons are deemed Lesser, and treated with suspicion and disdain.”

“Like your cousin Garrick?” Daphne asks. “You called him Lesser.”

I nod, but don’t tell her that Garrick is actually my half brother and not my cousin. “When my mother learned from the healers that she was carrying twins, she was overcome with dismay that one of her sons would be forced to live as a Lesser. So when Rowan and I were born, she allowed no one to be present with her. That way, no one other than she would know which one of her children was the eldest. Before she would allow my father to see us, she made him swear an unbreakable oath that neither of her children would ever be cast out of the ranks of the Underlords.”

“Smart,” Daphne says.

I sigh. “Some say that my mother granted us the greatest favor of our lifetimes—but unfortunately, her actions caused Rowan and me to become rivals from the moment we drew our first breaths. Everyone speculated as to which one of us was the true Lord, and which one of us was undeserving of our status. Everything we did was considered to be a competition. In the beginning, I was my father’s favorite. I was bigger and stronger than Rowan and resembled my father with my dark hair and olive skin, while Rowan was slighter and fairer like our mother.

“But as we grew older, it became apparent that Rowan had inherited more of my father’s cunning and cold temperament, while I was called nursling well past my second year because—as I am told—I clung to my mother’s skirts and screamed when my father tried to pit me in fights with the other boys my age. That is when the Court started to whisper that perhaps I was too human for my own good—that I had inherited too many of my mother’s human traits. My father’s favor had already started to shift toward Rowan before my mother’s death.”

I pause, changing lanes so I can pass a slow van and pick up speed. “Rowan is the one the Court wanted to send here, not me.” I shiver at the idea of that sociopath sitting here with Daphne instead of me. What tactics would he have used to coerce her into agreeing to be his Boon? The thought of her saying yes to him … “Be happy he isn’t here.”