by Laynie Bynum
I wriggled out of his grip, but Charon grabbed my arms and pushed them against the wall. “Now, now, you’re not about to run away now, are you?” he taunted. “Not when we’re about to have some fun.”
He leaned closer and whispered, his lips inches away from my ear. “Let’s see how brave you really are. Do you want to know what hell looks like?”
Cold hands closed around my heart. “What do you mean?”
“Look down.”
I did, and instantly wished I hadn’t. The ground had disappeared beneath my feet: I was standing on top of an abyss going for hundreds of miles. Starving, fleshless arms reached for me from the hellhole, scratching my ankles and pulling at me. Dozens, maybe even hundreds. The dead, crawling on top of each other trying desperately to get free. Their faces were hollow skulls, their eyes pitch-black holes.
My stomach tightened with nausea. “Stop it. Please, stop.”
“What’s wrong, Aiden? You don’t seem so tough now.” Charon hadn’t moved an inch; that taunting smile was still plastered on his face.
“Stop it.” I yanked my leg away, trying to escape the desperate grasps of the ghouls from hell, snatching on to the first living thing they could.
“Use your powers,” Charon said matter-of-factly. “Escape.”
So, he deliberately wanted to scare me so I would show him my powers. Hell no. I stomped against the hands of one of the desperate undead and squared my shoulders. “No.”
Charon blinked, taken aback by my answer.
“If this is all you can do, you’ll have to do a lot more before—”
I hadn’t even finished the sentence before he moved closer toward me, his body pressing against mine. “You want worse? I can give you a lot worse.”
His eyes, which were already dark, now swelled with darkness: not just the irises, but also the white surrounding them turned dark. Two black orbs peering straight into my soul. All the warmth disappeared from my body, replaced by an icy cold. My teeth chattered and my skin ran with pinpricks as if the temperature had dropped a dozen degrees. But it wasn’t the room dropping in temperature: it was me.
“Now you know what it feels like,” Charon’s voice cut through the cold like a blade through ice. “The infernal cold of hell. Fiction always tells us hell is warm, but that’s the biggest lie in all of history. Hell is cold, freezing cold, the kind of chill that eats away at your soul, gnaws at your bones.”
I wanted to rub my hands up and down my arms, but Charon had me pinned against the wall, making it impossible to move. All I could feel was that damned cold, making its way through my bones, nestling in my heart. Like the Ice Queen from the fairytale, I wondered if I would ever feel warm again.
I rubbed my thumb against my index finger, resisting the urge to snap my fingers and turn back time, just so I could escape from this spine-chilling iciness. One snap, and I could twist the fabric of time to escape… But I didn’t want to give in, didn’t want to show Charon what my actual powers were…
As sudden as the cold appeared, it vanished. Charon’s eyes were no longer black orbs—only his irises remained their natural, midnight color. “Had enough?”
There was something raw and vulnerable about his voice, a tone I hadn’t expected. So far, he had been taunting me, teasing me, and I expected him to give me a sarcastic response now, but the vulnerability, I didn’t expect.
“Yes.” My own voice sounded raspy, as if I had spent hours wandering outside during a snowstorm. Agonizingly slowly, the heat returned to my body.
Charon let go of me. My first instinct was to run, back to the safety of the common area, where Hypnos was still patrolling in case any of the guards came near, back to Mica, although she was probably still asleep. But at the same time… I didn’t want to run away. Not yet.
“Do you always feel like this?” I asked, in that same raspy tone, the inside of my throat cut with sandy paper. “Like you’re… I don’t know, drenched in frost.”
“Like my father, I’m a conduit between the underworld and this world,” Charon said, refusing to look at me. “So yes, I always feel it, but not as bad as that. This is only when I unleash it.”
To feel like that all the time… Anchored to the world of the dead, while you yourself were alive… It seemed like a horrible fate.
“And that portal to the underworld that you opened? When did that first happen?” My own powers began to manifest when I was about six years old. I had tried to escape some bullies at the orphanage and had jumped through time simply by snapping my fingers. But based on the demonstration Charon had just given, I wondered how his powers had first manifested themselves.
“I’ve always seen dead people, as far back as I can remember,” Charon said, still sounding vulnerable, different than he had before. “I thought it was normal. Then, I began waking up with my room full of them, and I screamed until there was no more air in my lungs. The teachers at the boarding school I grew up in didn’t think it was funny that my roommates demanded another room practically every other week.”
I could only imagine how horrible that must’ve been. Compared to that, jumping through time was a walk in the park. At least my powers had only ever helped me, not condemned me.
“Did you figure out who you were before you ended up here?”
Charon nodded. “Yes. I figured out long before that. Ever since I found out I was different, I had to know who or what I truly was. My mother told me then, about my real father, about who she thought he was—and her description was pretty accurate.”
He had been pretty open with me since he exposed me to the horrors of hell. I was starting to think that his changed expression and tone of voice, meant that he felt guilty. Guilty that he had pushed farther than he intended.
“I don’t know if I can trust you.” I looked at him up and down, trying to figure out who he really was: the taunting, self-absorbed, arrogant son of Hades who had whisked me away from my cell and forced his minion to put my roommate in a magical sleep, or the man standing before me, who seemed vulnerable, tormented by the powers that made him who he was. The latter, I wanted to trust, but the first…
“My powers are nothing like yours,” I said. “I…” I hesitated, doubting if I should tell him or not. After this display, I was pretty confident I wasn’t ready to join the ranks of underworld demi-gods any time soon. At the same time, something about the darkness drew me in, something drew me towards him, towards Charon. Handsome, tragic, haunted Charon.
“You don’t have to tell me. It’s fine.” Charon moved away from me. “I’ll figure out soon enough during the Trials. But you’re right—you don’t belong to the underworld.” He glanced at the floor, and for a moment I wondered if he was sad about the thought of me not belonging to the realm of darkness. “I felt it when I pushed that unearthly cold on you. You’re not one of us.”
He didn’t mean to be harsh, but the words still hit me like a knife tearing through flesh. You’re not one of us. I had heard that same sentiment, in one way or another, a thousand times over the years, as orphanage after orphanage spit me out like garbage, kicked me to the curb like filth.
Then, Charon said something else that twisted the knife in my flesh even more, ramming it straight into my heart.
“And I’m pretty sure you’re not one of them either.”
Chapter Six
“So, you’re not one of the underworldies. I could’ve figured that one out myself.” Mica yawned and stretched her arms above her head. “By the gods, I’m exhausted.”
“If that ghoul of a Hypnos hadn’t put you to sleep…”
“It’s not the first time he’s done that. It’s a pretty impressive power, though, if you ask me.” Mica wiggled her foot from left to right. “Even my foot is asleep. Great.”
“And you just let him get away with it?” I raised my eyebrows.
“What am I supposed to do, yell for the guards, so that they discover these…” She held up the bracelet on her arm, “no longer work properly?”<
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“All right, fine, I get your point.” I crossed my arms in front of my chest. “Still, someone ought to teach that sleep-inducing madman that he can’t just go around hexing people.”
Mica shrugged while she got up from her bed, testing her legs. “Hypnos doesn’t do anything if he’s not ordered to do so by Charon. So, blame the guy in charge, not the minion.”
“Hmph.”
This caused my friend to turn toward me, a frown etched on her features. “What, ‘hmph’? That doesn’t sound very convinced.”
“I just… I don’t know. Maybe Charon’s not that bad.”
“Two seconds ago, you told me about how he opened up a freaking portal to hell, and made your bones freeze with an unearthly cold. If that’s not bad, then I don’t know what is.” Mica held her arm in front of her, and then folded it at the elbow. “Even my arm is still numb, for the gods’ sakes.”
I licked my lips. “I think he’s just misunderstood. To have to live with those kinds of powers your whole life. For me, it was jumping through time, and for you manipulating people without actually realizing it, but for him, it was being in the throes of the undead. That must be traumatizing for any kid.”
“Sounds like you sympathize with him.” Mica raised a single, thin eyebrow. “Be careful of who you sympathize with, Aiden. At the end of the week, when it’s time for the Trials, compassion won’t get you anywhere. Then it’s each man or woman for themselves.”
“What about you?” I inspected my best friend from top to toe. Something had changed in her, had festered inside her. Before coming here, Mica was the kind of person who would always put someone else’s needs before her own; usually mine. The older sister I never had. But now… She seemed more ruthless, more focused, but I wasn’t sure if I necessarily liked the transformation. “If I’m not in the same team as you are during the Trials, what then?”
Mica refused to look at me. “Then nothing. You are going to be on my team. You’ll be related to the muses, like I said. History, time, it’s all connected. Plus, you’re good at singing.”
“You want me to be one of them because the children of Apollo are on your team.” I could barely believe it, but I realized I was right. That was why Mica pushed me to try connecting with one of Apollo’s offspring, see if I was related to Clio, the muse of history.
I stepped closer toward my best friend, ducking so her gaze was on me again, forcing her to look at me. “What if I’m not?”
“You are,” she said stubbornly.
“Mica, what if I’m not? What if I don’t belong with them—what if I’m the child of Poseidon, or Athena, or Zeus for gods’ sake. What then?”
“I won’t attack you during the Trials, of course,” Mica offered, but she didn’t say anything else, which just about answered my question.
If I wasn’t the offspring of one of the gods part of her team, then she wouldn’t side with me. She would fight against me. She said she wouldn’t attack me, but if push came to shove… I was pretty sure that this new, toughened-up version of her would turn on me, if only to protect her actual siblings.
“I don’t recognize you anymore.” I hurried away from her, to the door of our cell. “Before you came here, you would’ve never in a million years said that.”
“People change in here, Aiden.” There was no fight in Mica’s tone, only acceptance. “You will change too.”
“No.” I shook my head furiously, my ponytail sweeping from left to right. “Not like that, Mica. I would never turn on you.”
“You haven’t even lived through the Trials once. We’ll talk after that.” Mica twisted away from me, something else she would never have done before she got here. This place had changed her, in ways I didn’t like at all.
I swallowed back the tears. “I’m going to find the children of Apollo you so desperately want me to belong to. But I am who I am, Mica, and I thought you loved me for who I am.”
I slammed the barred door shut after me and rushed through the common room. Some people turned their heads in my direction, but I ignored all of them as I strode toward the crafts room Mica had shown me earlier, when she had said it was the number one place where most of Apollo’s children hung around.
For a decade, it had been Mica and I against the world. It hurt that in just a few months’ time, she had decided to throw all that away and choose her new family over me. Choose this stupid factions system, or teams system, whatever it was, over me.
I was so occupied with thoughts about Mica that I barged into the crafts room, stomping like an elephant, and bumped head on against a guy holding a guitar case.
The case dropped on the floor, the noise piercing through the otherwise silent room.
“I’m so sorry.” I grabbed the guitar case and lifted it toward him. “Sorry. I hope it’s not broken.”
“Don’t worry about that,” the brown-haired, blue-eyed guy in front of me said. “I must’ve dropped it over a dozen times myself. It doesn’t break easily.” He took the guitar case back and offered me a hand. “I’m Orpheus.”
“Aiden.” I shook his hand, thankful that at least one person in this hellhole of a prison knew decency and manners.
“You’re new here.” Orpheus moved aside so I could walk further into the room.
The other people, who had glanced up momentarily at the distracting sound, now focused back on their various activities: drawing, painting, one girl was even playing a soothing melody on the harp.
“Yes. I guess it’s obvious.” I titled my head to the left, observing him. He didn’t look familiar, and someone with those striking looks, I would’ve remembered. Orpheus looked like a marble statue come to life, a work of art. Not flawless like the brethren of Aphrodite, which tended to look a little too perfect, but with flaws in all the right place, imperfections that made him look real.
“And because I would’ve noticed you around,” Orpheus said.
“Were you not at lunch this afternoon? Dryas made quite the spectacle of inviting me to sit next to him…”
“I skipped lunch.” Orpheus motioned at two empty seats where we could sit down on. “I was working on a song, and when I’m in the zone, I tend to lose track of pretty much everything else.”
“Wow. I admire that kind of dedication.” Unfortunately, I was nothing like that. I could get distracted by a butterfly flying past, or by a clock ticking three rooms over.
“Thanks.” Orpheus put his guitar case down next to his seat. “I play guitar. Used to play electric, but I could only bring along my acoustic guitar to this place.” A sad, melancholy look passed across his features, but he quickly hid it behind a smile. “What about you? Do you like music?”
“Sure. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like music. But I don’t play any instruments,” I admitted.
“Never had the chance to, or never had the urge to?” Orpheus asked.
I was glad to finally be able to talk to someone normal. Someone who wasn’t overly threatening or arrogant, but just a genuinely nice, caring person.
“A bit of both. Never had the chance to, so I never thought about it either. But my friend…” I paused, remembering my argument with Mica earlier. “She thinks I could be one of the children of Apollo, and she urged me to come here and find out.”
“Hm.” Orpheus’s gaze practically put me under a microscope. “We have a lot of different interests and powers here, so it’s hard to judge right away. Especially if you said you never had the chance to play an instrument… With me, for example, I can play any instrument. Right away. That’s my main power. A violin, a piano, a clarinet, you name it, I can play it.”
“Wow.” My mouth almost dropped to the floor. “That’s awesome!”
“Doesn’t help much in the Trials, I’m afraid.” Orpheus scratched his neck. “But I’m happy with it. Do you want to give it a try?” He gestured at the guitar case.
“Uhm, sure.” An army of butterflies swirled around in my stomach. I just prayed I didn’t drop the guitar this time
around.
Slowly, Orpheus removed the guitar from its case. He handled it with the utmost care, like a father taking care of a newborn. The guitar shone, cleaner than any item I had ever owned, even brand-new items. It was obvious by all accounts that he loved the instrument very much.
Orpheus placed the guitar on my lap and showed me where to position my hands. “Now, let’s give it a shot.” He gave me an encouraging smile.
I toggled the strings, but the sound that came out wasn’t very pleasing to the ears. It didn’t pierce my eardrums, but it didn’t exactly sound like a heavenly melody either.
“Try again.” Orpheus encouraged me.
I did, trying a few different notes on his instructions. He told me where to put my hands—on one occasion, when I failed to grasp what he meant to say, he took my hand and forced my fingers in the right position. His touch instantly made the army of butterflies in my stomach explode into fireworks.
“I think you could learn playing the guitar, if you wanted to…” Orpheus said hesitantly.
“But I’m not particularly gifted at it,” I finished, saving him the embarrassment of having to say it out loud, since it was written all over his face anyway. “I get it.”
“It doesn’t have to mean anything. You could be amazing at playing another instrument. Or at singing.”
“Mica thinks I’m a good singer, but trust me, you do not want to hear me sing.”
I handed Orpheus his guitar back, and he put the instrument back in its container, careful not to bump against the sides of the case.
“Maybe you’re good at drawing.”
“I’m okay at it, but I’ve been doing it for quite a while. It’s more practice than skill, I think.”
“Painting?” He offered.
“Not particularly, no.” I sighed. “My powers are actually related to time, and because there’s a muse of time, Clio, my friend Mica thought I would fit in here.”
Orpheus was the one person I had come across so far, except Mica of course, who seemed trustworthy enough to confide to him about my actual powers. Besides, if I wanted to find a place to belong, then I didn’t have much of a choice.
