Dreamless

parapets glared down on them like baleful eyes, and the outermost wall seemed to shift and change position in the haze of the far distance, as if it resented being looked at directly.
    Behind the black castle, a thin curtain of fire shot straight up, illuminating the barren plain around it. Following the licking flames down to their source, Helen realized that she must be looking at Phlegethon, the River of Eternal Fire that encircled the Palace of Hades.
    Directly in front of Orion and Helen stood what looked like a wrought-iron dome the size of a football stadium. It was made of the same black material as the castle, except instead of being formed into huge, solid blocks, the substance was tortured into decorative curlicues. Under the arching dome was a vast garden. It was as if the builder was trying to hide the fact that he or she had built a giant cage over the garden by making it look elegant.
    The black material swam with colors. Blue and purple and even warm tones like red and orange surfaced and subsided on smokelike waves. It was like looking at a rainbow buried in soot—a wonder of light, forever trapped inside darkness.
    “Wow,” Orion breathed. He was looking around, as astounded by the menacing castle and the cage next to it as Helen was. Then he looked down at her hands, still gripping his arm, and grinned mischievously. “Thanks for taking me with you.”
    “Don’t thank me yet,” Helen whispered.
    She was staring at the main gate of the cage in horror. The lock on it was bigger than her torso, but there was no keyhole.
    “That’s not right,” Orion whispered when his eyes finally registered the lock that Helen was staring at so intensely.
    “No, it isn’t,” Helen said angrily.
    The whole thing pissed her off. This beautiful structure was nothing more than a prison to trap a young woman who had been stolen from her home and then tricked into a detestable marriage. Helen stormed up to the lockless gate and kicked it with all her might.
    “Persephone!” Helen shouted. “I know you’re in there!”
    “Are you insane?” Orion ran up behind Helen and tried to clamp a hand over her mouth, but she threw him off.
    “Let me in!” she screeched imperiously, like she was channeling some prerevolutionary French queen. “I demand to be allowed into Persephone’s Garden this instant !”
    The gate clicked and swung open with an ominous groan. Orion turned his head to look at Helen, his jaw dropping open in shock.
    “If you say what you want, you can make it happen.”
    Helen nodded in agreement, still trying to figure out how she’d done it. She thought back to the beginning of the conversation and how she had said jokingly to Orion that she “didn’t want to get attacked” that night. They had walked for a very long time without encountering any monsters. Then she asked for Persephone’s Garden to magically appear, and it had.
    “But I have to know exactly what I want, and then I have to ask for it out loud,” she said.
    Her face twisted up in a rueful grimace and a pained groan erupted out of her as she remembered her tortures. Hanging from the ledge. Imprisoned in the tree. Trapped inside the hell house. Worst—drowning in the pit. The strength swept out of her legs, but she would not fall. Not now.
    “So many times I’ve suffered down here and I could have ended it whenever I wanted,” she continued in a bitter monotone, needing to say it to believe it. “All I had to do was say what I wanted to happen out loud and it would have. It’s almost too easy.”
    “How young you are!” A musical but melancholic voice came to them from somewhere inside the giant, gilded cage. “Knowing what you really want and having the confidence to say it are two of the hardest things to do in life, young princess.”
    Helen thought that over for a moment, and grudgingly admitted to herself that she agreed. If she asked for Lucas, and got him, she’d be guilty of something that would make her feel far worse than any cut or broken bone.
    “Come in and visit with me. I promise, you won’t be harmed,” the voice continued, gently inviting them.
    Helen and Orion shared a look and walked together through the open gate and into Persephone’s Garden.
    Dappled light stretched from floor to ceiling in lacy rays. The dim light that filtered through the cage and the upper canopy of strange vegetation hit on dark green leaves that sparkled and glinted all around, and the dancing light gave the