Can You Take It? by Jeneane O'Riley

Eli just sacrificed himself to death so his longtime best friend, Cal, could be with her mate and one true love, Mendax. But now, in death, Eli finds himself in Tartarus and a promise he made to Cal. With him is a pendant that holds a piece of Cal’s sister in it. He needs to find her, give her the pendant, thus completing her soul together so she can be free in the afterlife. When Eli gets his bearings, he realizes he is in Eromreven, a part of the afterlife, but one he wasn’t expecting to be in. One of the first beings he meets is Walter, Mendax’s half-brother that died some time ago. Also with him is a girl Walter is pining over, Eletha, who seems to be in charge of Eli’s fate and thus threatening him with the ten tiers to prove himself.

Walter takes Eli under his wing, and Eli sees that Eromreven is not what he expected. It is full of people riding a high on being dead or people trying to bide their time as if they are in hell. Walter takes Eli to the king of Eromreven, Kaohs, who happens to be the father of Eletha as well. Eli has a meeting with him, and Kaohs promises to help Eli find Cal’s sister, but also tells Eli he needs to come to terms with his death because there is no way he can go back to the land of the living. Not only that, if Eli wants a peaceful afterlife, he needs to go through the ten tiers. Kaohs also reveals that time is different from the underworld to the human world, because Mendax has already found a way for Calypso to see and hear Eli if he makes it past the tiers.

Over to Mendax and Cal, we learn that two months have passed. They have been married, and Cal is now expecting a child that she believes is a girl. Cal is still trying to get over the death of Eli, though Mendax wants her to get over it quickly.

Back in Eromreven, Eli has started exploring, and he managed to get himself involved in a game called the Red Keys, where everyone but one person loses their soul, and they are forgotten forever. Eli now has to start training for this game, and Walter is going to help him. During the training, Walter says that he should blow off some steam and go find a girl. Eli becomes entranced by a girl named Anna, and he ends up finding her. The two start kissing, and she keeps trying to take the pendant from him, but Eli won’t let her. In a fit, she finally breaks and says it’s her pendant and she wants it back. Eli’s head clears, and he realizes that Anna is actually Cal’s sister — she is just all grown up. Anna reveals that Zef is not her real father, it is Kaohs, and she plans on taking over for Kaohs as ruler of Eromreven. But in order to do that, she must have the pendant with the last piece of her. It turns out that Eli has to give it to her willingly, she can’t take it by force, and Eli has no plans to give it to her now that he knows who she is. During the whole interaction, Eli thought he briefly heard Cal’s voice in his head.

Back with Cal, she runs to Mendax excitedly, telling him that she heard Eli in her dream. Mendax doesn’t believe her and tries to distract her by kissing her. When things get heated, both Cal and Mendax hear a voice in their head — it’s Eli. The gods forgot to sever their bond. Eli tells them a handful of things, like he found her sister, who she is, and that this might be the last time they hear him because his game of the Red Keys is soon, and his soul might be lost forever. Mendax is thrilled by the opportunity of never remembering Eli again.

It’s time for the Red Key game, and going against Eli is Anna, wanting her amulet. Eli, though, is hell-bent on winning and also killing Anna. He thinks he has won — he killed a contestant he thought was Anna — but Anna shows up again. Eli gets her pinned and is about to kill her when he realizes he can’t. So he runs away, and Anna follows, as do others, calling him a coward and telling him to come finish the game. Instead, Eli runs right into a door that starts the ten tiers.

The first tier is Treachery, and as he stumbles in, so do Anna, Walter, Eletha, and a man named Bexley. Anna takes a moment to sit with Eli and almost gets him to give her the amulet, but Eli realizes it was a trick. Anna and Eletha tricked him again, and he is angry, so he decides to leave to the next door. Walter decides to follow because he doesn’t like what Eletha is doing either. The two open the next door to tier two — Wrath.

When Walter and Eli stumble through, they find out they need to overcome each tier by overcoming that feeling. But while they are figuring that out, Walter disappears, and a gnome appears and says that Walter was going to kill him, which confuses Eli a lot. So, Eli decides to spend his time by going back to the bond with Cal. She wants to know what’s going on with him and wants to know about her sister. That is when Eli tells her that her sister is crazy and wants to take over the underworld. Cal says it doesn’t matter, and the pendant needs to go to Anna. Eli breaks down and says he won’t, and then also says that Cal is being very selfish, then blocks the bond. He is then reunited with Walter, who is confused as to why they got separated. They then decide they need to find Bexley and the girls. But as soon as they decide to go look for them, the girls come crashing in and tackle them all into the next door — Violence.

In Violence, Anna and Eli have some time to talk, as neither of them is feeling very violent. They talk about how Eli thinks Anna is evil, but she says she should be given a chance to prove what kind of person she is. Anna also wants to know more about Cal, so Eli tells her everything. Meanwhile, Walter and Eletha are going at it with fighting, and Bexley can’t handle it anymore and ties them up, telling them they need to fix their problems not with violence but with words. Anna is the one that has to try and calm him down, which is when it is revealed that Bexley’s father is the devil, and he has gone through the tiers many times. Each time he goes through, he hopes he doesn’t make it, but Anna is there to tell him that he should want to hang on, to live longer. While Anna is helping calm him down, Eli reaches out to Cal but finds Mendax instead. He says that Cal doesn’t want to talk to him and then tells him that Eli should just give the necklace to Anna, it doesn’t matter what he thinks. Mendax also gives him an update: he and Cal are moving into his old court and taking over, as his younger sister doesn’t want the throne. Mendax does promise to watch out for his sister, which makes Eli happy. After everyone has calmed down, the next door opens — Greed.

Eli and Anna spend their time together, which turns into them kissing and spending some intimate time together behind a waterfall. After they have their moment, he tries to convince Anna to come and stay in the Fields of Elysium with him. It turns into a fight, and they pretend they didn’t just have a moment together. Also during their time together, Eli checks in with Cal and Mendax, but this time brings Anna into their conversation, allowing the two sisters to be able to talk to each other for the first time in years. As they are searching for a door for the next tier, Eli finds out that in this realm, everyone who came together has to vote for one person to go through. Eli originally wants everyone to vote for him, but after a discussion, they decide that it should be Bexley, who is very surprised by the vote. Because everyone was able to choose and be happy about their decision, they were all allowed to go to the next tier as well.

In a chapter from Cal’s perspective, she starts to feel suffocated. Mendax treats her like she is fragile thanks to the pregnancy. So she decides to go out and cause some problems, and it turns out to be deadly as someone comes to attack her. During the attack, she feels, for the first time, the motherly instinct of wanting to protect her child. She kills the attacker, and a furious Mendax is there. He witnessed it all but allowed her to do her own thing, knowing how she felt.

The next tier is Envy, but in this tier, the girls and the boys switch bodies. As they are finding a way to get switched back, they are attacked, and Anna protects Eli. Eli notices that this is the first time anyone has ever willingly chosen to save him. He starts to fall for Anna even more, which then leads to him trying to tell her to come to the Fields again. They end their discussion, though, as soon as they find the door to the next tier — Acedia, or the tier of indecision. While there, Cal checks in with Eli, who says she is having her baby. The group has no problem with this tier, and Bexley moves them right along into the next two — Gluttony and Lust. During their time here, Bexley announces that he has a purpose now: he wants to go to the human world and help them choose the right things so they don’t go to his father in hell. That night, Eli and Anna end up sharing a bed, where they both try to convince the other to come with them to their final destination. One thing leads to another, and the two end up sleeping together, but once again, neither will give up what they want. When Cal checks in about the baby, three months have passed.

In a Cal chapter, it’s revealed that now three years have passed, not just three months. She is teaching her daughter, Ten, about what she does when studying magic. Mendax comes in and takes Ten with him to the soldiers. The three are a very happy family ruling over the Seelie and Unseelie Court as a united kingdom.

The last door opens — Pride. There, Eli is met with Fate, who has been there all along. Fate announces that everyone but Eli has already passed the final trial of Pride. The door opens for Bexley to go through to the human world, and another door opens for the three to go back to Eromreven. But Fate tells Eli he needs to overcome his pride before he can go to the Fields. Eli checks in with Cal and Mendax, giving them a last goodbye. So Eli hands over the pendant and tries one more time to convince Anna to come back to him. She doesn’t, so he chooses to go back with her, knowing that he can’t live without her.

In an epilogue, the two are living happily together in Eromreven, with Eli’s only problem being trying to convince Kaohs that he is good enough for his daughter.