He stood still. Part of me wanted him to keep his distance, but a much more insistent part wished he knew me well enough to know when I desperately needed a hug.

“She always hated being born in January,” I continued, my voice blank as I stared at the lifeless plant in front of me. “Said she never felt like celebrating when there weren’t any flowers and all of the trees were dead.”

“Sleeping,” said Henry. “The trees are only sleeping. They will return when the time is right.”

“My mother won’t.” I sat down heavily in the snow, not caring if my jeans got wet. “We’ve been celebrating her last birthday ever since she was diagnosed. This time it’s really it.”

“I’m sorry.” He sat down beside me and wrapped his arm around me, and the warmth from his body stopped mine from becoming numb. “Is there anything I can do?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without her.”

Henry was silent for a long moment, and when he did speak, his voice sounded distant. “May I show you something?”

“What sort of something?”

“Close your eyes.”

Fairly certain of what was about to happen, I obliged, expecting the change in climate. Instead of going from the cold outdoors to the warm indoors, however, I felt sunshine on my face and a warm breeze. We were still outside.

When I opened my eyes, half expecting to still be in the garden, I had to steady myself against Henry as I looked around. We were standing in the middle of Central Park on a summer day, exactly as my mother and I did in my dreams, except now the park was empty. My mother was nowhere in sight.

“Henry?” I said uncertainly, looking around. The lake was nearby, and I heard the strains of a familiar song being played somewhere in the distance, but we were alone. “What are we doing in New York?”

“We are not in New York.” He sounded wistful. I inched closer to him, both afraid and fascinated by this place. “This is your afterlife.”

I stared at him, his words taking several seconds to settle properly in my mind. “You mean this is—we’re—”

“This is your corner of the Underworld.” He raised an eyebrow at my expression. “Do not worry, it is only temporary. I wanted you to see it.”

Wildly I looked around, hoping my mother would appear, but it was just us. “Why?”

“I wanted you to see it so you would know—” He stopped, but he didn’t need to finish for me to understand what he wasn’t saying. He wanted to show me where I would go when I died. My stomach twisted into knots, and I glared at an unoffending patch of grass. So he wasn’t really fighting after all.

But he continued, his eyes lowered to the ground. “I am showing you so you will have some firsthand experience if you pass the tests.” A lie, but I tried to believe it. “Once you become immortal, when you are here, the Underworld will take on the shape as the mortal sees it.” Several seconds passed, and he added in a quieter voice, “I also wished to know you will be content in the end if the council does not rule in your favor.”

My favor, not his. Not ours.

I whirled around to face him. “Why are you letting them walk all over you like this? The council, your family, whatever they are—if you think I’m good enough, then why don’t you tell them to put a sock in it and respect your decision?”

Henry’s expression was unreadable. “I am not omnipotent,” he said, taking a cautious step toward me. I didn’t move away. “It is within the council’s power to make those sorts of decisions, not mine.”

“But you could at least try, and I don’t see you doing much of that lately,” I snapped. He flinched, but I kept going. “Aren’t you a member of the council?”

“Yes and no.” He gestured for me to sit down on the grass, but I refused, standing with my arms crossed. “I spend most of my time separate from them. When they desire my input, or when it is a decision that directly affects my duties, I join them. But their decisions deal with the world of the living. That is not my realm.”

“So why don’t you tell them to shove it and get this whole thing over with? If they rule over the living and you’re not living, why do they get to say whether or not you’re doing a good job?”

Henry gazed off into the distance toward the sparkling lake. “They are the ones who are able to grant you immortality, not I. Perhaps in the beginning they would have trusted me with this decision, but the mistakes I made with Persephone have colored the council’s opinion of my judgments.”

I gritted my teeth at the mention of Persephone, and hatred gnawed at my insides. Even if it was his actions that caused her not to love him, she was the one who’d hurt him. “Can I ask you something?”

He made a wordless sound in the back of his throat, and I took that as a yes. I settled on the grass beside him.

“Why did you kidnap Persephone?”

He pulled away enough to look me in the eye, and the pain on his face made me regret my question.

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want.”

“No, no.” He shook his head. “I am not angry. I am only trying to understand how it is possible that the truth of the matter could have gotten so lost in time.”

I waited for him to continue, ignoring the dampness of the grass that was starting to seep through my jeans. He looked pensive, as if he were looking for the exact way to tell me something he didn’t often get to say.