by Aimee Carter
“He also puts up with you,” said James, sitting down on a tree stump on the other side of the f ire. “And he’s faithful.” Ava huffed. “I wouldn’t be able to do my job if I was only ever with him. Besides, you weren’t complaining when—” James glared, and she stopped. Instead of grilling her more about her relationships, I looked down at my hands.
Nicholas presumably loved her, or at least he felt loyal enough not to cheat, unlike Ava. Maybe she had an excuse, but it reminded me strongly of Persephone, and bitterness curled through me, wrapping around my insides and making me still as stone. For a moment, I hated Ava for doing that to her husband whether he was okay with it or not.
“You’re not married, are you?” I said to James.
He shook his head. “Not yet, not off icially. There’ve been some mortals, of course, but we’ve all had a few mortals on the side.”
“More than a few,” said Ava with a snort.
“Then why get married in the f irst place if you’re not going to stay faithful?” I said.
Ava shrugged. “I think Daddy believed that getting married would force me to settle down, but that didn’t work out too well.” She paused. “Nicholas understands, you know.
He knew what he was signing up for in the beginning, and he doesn’t mind. At the end of the day, he knows he’s the love of my life.”
“We get married for the same reasons that mortals do,” said James. “To create a family, a home, to have that sense of security. To have a partner. And in Walter, Henry and Phillip’s cases, to have a queen to help them rule.”
“Didn’t turn out too well for Henry,” I muttered, and James sighed.
“No, it didn’t.”
A strong breeze made the leaves on the trees above us rustle, and I forced myself to relax. I couldn’t change what had already happened. I could, however, control what I did, and I already knew I would never hurt Henry like that. No matter how bad things got.
However, a tendril of resentment lingered inside of me, and I couldn’t resist muttering to Ava, “If you can stay with Nicholas, then why couldn’t Persephone stay with Henry?” She said nothing. The f ire crackled, and off in the distance I heard a woman singing, but I didn’t pay attention.
Many of the mortals we’d passed had been singing. While some of the songs I’d recognized, others were so old that they’d been lost to time, except to the dead who sang them.
“Persephone fell in love with a mortal,” said James after a long moment. “She wasn’t any different from the rest of us—she wasn’t faithful to Henry before she’d met Adonis, either.”
“You can’t say you’re all like that when Nicholas doesn’t cheat on Ava,” I said sharply. So it hadn’t been once, then.
Henry had had to endure knowing Persephone had been with other people over and over again—presumably other members of the council he had to face afterward. Yet he’d still loved her.
“Calliope didn’t cheat on Daddy, either,” said Ava thoughtfully, and I nearly choked.
“Calliope and Walter?” I wheezed. “But he’s so old.”
“She’s older,” said Ava with a sniff. “Besides, age doesn’t matter after the f irst thousand years or so. He only looks older because he wants to. He thinks it makes him look distinguished.”
It didn’t make any sense. Not that Calliope was older or anything, but that she was married and would love Henry so badly that she was willing to kill to have him. “Then why—” I gestured around us, frustrated. “Why are we here? Why are we doing this if Calliope’s married and loyal to her husband? Why would she do all of this to get Henry if she already had Walter?”
James and Ava exchanged a look I didn’t understand, and I dug my nails into my jeans. I was already thousands upon thousands of years behind. Knowing there was something they weren’t saying only made my frustration grow.
“Walter fathered all of us,” said James. “Everyone on the council who isn’t the original six.”
“Or me,” said Ava. “He was in different bodies and forms, so, I mean, it isn’t gross or anything. But they’re all Walter’s children.”
“And Calliope is only mother to two of us,” said James.
“Nicholas and Dylan.”
I was silent as the weight of everything that implied settled over me. I didn’t know exactly how long they’d all existed, but I did know it was longer than I could comprehend. A hundred years sounded like forever to me, but for them, it was barely any time at all compared to the rest of their lives. And throughout it all, Calliope had watched her husband love other women, and she’d had to accept his children as her family. As her equals.
For one terrifying moment, I understood why Calliope was doing this. I could feel her anger, her hurt, all of the pain she’d gone through, and her loneliness and desire to be loved. She’d watched Henry go through the same thing with his wife, and she must’ve seen a kindred spirit. Someone she thought would understand and want to be with her, because she would never cause him that kind of pain.
Instead Henry had thrown it back at her, and he’d become one more person to make her feel utterly alone.
But Henry wasn’t the bad guy. He’d stayed loyal to Persephone despite everything she’d done to him, and my momentary compassion for Calliope faded. In the end, she was to blame for what she’d done, no one else.
“No wonder she snapped,” I mumbled. “If I had to watch Henry do that to me, I think I would, too.”
“It doesn’t excuse murder,” said James. “And it doesn’t excuse releasing Cronus. No matter how much of an ass Walter is, she’s the one who ultimately made those choices.” And we were the ones who had to face the consequences, just like Henry had nearly faded because of Persephone.
It didn’t make sense though. “So why did Persephone give up her immortality when she could do whatever she wanted? She had the same deal with Henry as I do, right?
Six months out of the year, I’m his wife and help him rule, and for the other six, I can do whatever I want?” Ava tossed me a yellow apple from seemingly out of nowhere. I caught it, but I didn’t take a bite. “It wasn’t like that at f irst,” she said, glancing at James, who was staring off into the forest with a faraway look. “Henry offered that to her when he realized how miserable she was down here.
None of us can take this all the time except for him.”
“Most of the council doesn’t visit,” said James. “Our abilities are muted down here, and—”
Crack.
Wood sizzled above me, and right as I looked up to see what had happened, Ava shoved me off the log and onto the ground, dangerously close to the f ire. I yanked my hand away from the f lames, and a deafening crash turned the world into dust.
Coughing, I scrambled to my feet and stumbled, my foot connecting with splintered wood in the spot where I’d been sitting seconds before.
“Ava?” I said, choking on the clouds of dirt. “James?” I squinted. Before the dust cleared enough for me to see more than a few inches in front of my face, a pair of hands grabbed my shoulders and yanked me backward.
“Come on,” said James roughly, tugging me away from the log. “We need to get out of here.”
“But Ava—”
“I’m here,” said Ava a few feet to my left. “Go.” James pulled me away, and I stumbled over rocks and roots I couldn’t see. Another crack echoed through the forest, and I darted forward, futilely covering my head. The second falling tree missed James and me by inches.
“What’s going on?” My leg ached more than it had since we’d left the palace, and I struggled to keep up. The air cleared the farther we went, and I saw James holding his hand above his head, as if he were trying to ward something off.
“Cronus,” he said, and another tree sizzled. “He found us.”
CH A P T ER SE V EN
OA SIS
Out of all the things I’d imagined could go wrong with this journey through the Underworld, Cronus trying to stop us had never crossed my mind.
> I’d tried to work my way around Persephone refusing to come. I’d thought out what to do if we couldn’t f ind the cave. And even though somewhere deep inside of me, I knew there were no other options, I’d been trying like hell to come up with something better than sacrif icing myself.
Never, not once, had I thought Calliope would f igure out we were coming and send Cronus to stop us.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Not that there was much we could’ve planned for other than running for the hills, which was exactly what we did.
James clung to my hand as we darted through the trees, and Ava trailed behind us. Between the two of them, they seemed to have enough power to keep Cronus a safe distance away.
That didn’t stop the trees from falling though, and more than once James pushed me aside a fraction of a second before I was brained by an oak or a maple infused with the same fog that had sliced open my leg.
I didn’t know how long we ran, but it was long enough for my lungs to feel like they were on f ire. The trees gave us some shelter, but every time I looked over my shoulder, Cronus seemed to be inching closer.
We couldn’t run forever, and I was sure James and Ava wouldn’t be able to hold him off long enough for us to reach Persephone, either. And when we did reach Persephone—
what help would she be against a Titan?
The forest around us dissolved into a desert, and whatever options we’d had before disappeared. We couldn’t run forever, James and Ava couldn’t f ight forever, and it was clear Cronus only wanted one thing.
Me.
Every tree hadn’t almost hit James or Ava; they’d almost hit me. The f irst one had landed right where I’d been sitting moments before. And before Henry and his brothers had gone after Cronus, the fog had slipped through their defenses and chosen me as its target.
The hot sand was diff icult to run across, and the sky shimmered in the sun. I was already exhausted. If my leg gave out and I stumbled, Cronus would kill me. The only advantage I had was doing something he didn’t expect.
I dug my heels into the sand and yanked my hand from James’s grip. He fell onto his knees, thrown off balance by no longer hauling me behind him, and I scrambled away from him as fast as I could.
“Cronus!” I yelled as I straightened on the side of a dune twenty feet away from where James had fallen. Ava was at his side, helping him to his feet, and both of them stared at me like I was a lunatic.
Maybe I was. Maybe I was about to die. But if I didn’t do something, we would all be dead, and it was worth a shot.
We couldn’t outrun a Titan.
The fog thickened as it slowed and seemed to join together. Squinting in the sunlight, I thought I could see the outline of a face, but the heat radiating off the sand distorted my vision too much for me to be sure.
“You know who I am,” I said, trying to sound sure of myself instead of scared out of my mind. “And I know who you are, so let’s cut to the chase. You can’t kill me—or any of us.”
That was a bold-faced lie, but at least he seemed to pause to consider it. The same strange rumbling I’d heard in my vision echoed through the desert, and I became keenly aware of the fact that we were in a vast cavern, not underneath an endless sky. If I could have f lown, my hand would have eventually touched stone.
“You need us.” My words were so like Calliope’s that I nearly took them back, but that was the only way Cronus wasn’t going to kill us all for fun. Calliope wanted me dead, and he needed Calliope to open the gate. But—
She didn’t know how.
A surge of conf idence rushed through me. “Calliope doesn’t know how to open the gate. I do.” Could Cronus tell the truth from a lie like Henry? The fog inched closer to me until it was only a hairbreadth away.
Instead of striking, it surrounded me until the heat of the sun was gone and I could no longer see the blue sky.
I felt light-headed, but I willed my feet to remain planted in the sand. Touching him would undoubtedly mean sear-ing pain, and I couldn’t take any more of it, not when there was a long way to go before we found Persephone. I had to do this. It was my only chance. The council’s only chance.
“If you let me and my friends go, we’ll come to you,” I said, digging deep inside myself to f ind all the courage I had left. “When we get there, let the others go. They can’t defeat you without Calliope anyway. Once that’s done, I’ll open the gate, and you’ll be free.”
Silence. No rumbling, no laughter, nothing. Fog whispered in my hair, and I squeezed my eyes shut. I only had enough room to breathe.
“If you kill me now, the only other person who can do it is Henry,” I said, my voice cracking. “He’d rather destroy himself than ever free you. I know Calliope wants me dead, but she’s using you. I have what she wants, and since she can’t kill me herself, she’s making you do it for her in exchange for a promise she can’t keep. She has no idea how to open it. She can’t—she doesn’t rule the Underworld. Once I’m dead, she’ll leave you locked in that cage, and the other gods will subdue you again. Let me and my family live, and I swear I’ll release you when we get to the cavern.” I paused and swallowed hard. “I’m your best shot and you know it.” As the thick fog encased me completely, all I could picture was Henry lying in a broken and bloody heap in that cave as Calliope laughed in her girly squeal. And my mother was undoubtedly a prisoner now, too. I was going to lose everything if this didn’t work.
“I know what it’s like to be alone,” I whispered. “Not for—for as long as you have, but I know what it’s like to lose everything you love. And the way the gods turned on you isn’t fair. You were nothing but nice to them. You gave them everything they could possibly dream of, and in return, they imprisoned you for eternity. It isn’t fair. You have a right to be free.”
It scared me how easily the words slipped out, as if I really believed them. Maybe secretly part of me did. Not that Cronus deserved freedom; but that I understood what he’d gone through, in a way. I’d been so afraid of being alone that I’d given up half of the rest of my life on the chance that I wouldn’t have to be.
“Let me help you.” My heart pounded as the air began to thin. “Please. I want to. And maybe—maybe we can help each other.”
The air turned bitter cold as all the warmth of the desert disappeared, and I shivered. I’d barely moved, but it was enough; the fog touched my bare skin, cold and silky and much more solid than I’d expected. Like feathers, maybe, or snow.
It didn’t hurt.
Instead, like he’d done to Calliope, he caressed my cheek, and through that single touch, I felt power beyond imagining. It was nothing like the force that Henry and the others had used to chase Cronus away. It was immeasurable, as if the entire universe was compressed into that lone tendril of fog. At last I understood why they were all afraid of him.
His touch lasted half a second, and he was gone before I could open my eyes. My mind reeled as I tried to comprehend what had happened, and despite the sun once again beating down on me, my skin felt like ice. I collapsed onto my hands and knees, the coarse sand scraping my palms, but it didn’t matter.
He’d spared me.
James and Ava were by my side in an instant. Sand f lew everywhere as Ava fell to her knees, and James hovered over me, his hands an inch above my back, as if he thought one touch would make me disintegrate into ash.
“You’re alive?” said Ava with wide eyes, as if she weren’t willing to believe it. She took my hand and held it like she was the only thing anchoring me to this place. I wasn’t so sure she was wrong.
“What happened?” said James, urgency and concern war-ring in his voice. I shakily leaned back on my knees, but I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t look at either of them. I’d lied to Cronus and stolen any chance James and Ava had of walking out of there alive. I had no idea how to open the gate, and when I admitted the truth—
It wouldn’t come to that, I thought f irmly to myself, or at least as f irmly as I could manage w
hen my brain felt like jelly. I’d bought us time. Anything could happen before we reached the gate, if we ever did. In the meantime, I had a little longer to come up with a plan.
“Water,” I said, my mouth as dry as the desert around us.
My lips were cracked, and my muscles screamed in protest every time I moved, but I was alive.
I trembled like I hadn’t felt warmth in years, and together James and Ava hoisted me up and helped me toward a small oasis in the distance. It looked so picture-perfect that if I hadn’t known this was someone’s idea of a desert instead of the real thing, I would’ve guessed it was a mirage.
We covered the distance faster than I’d expected, or maybe time was moving quickly for me now that I knew I no longer had a chance of walking out of that cavern alive.
The best I could hope for was that the others would leave before Cronus had a chance to strike.
They set me down underneath a grove of palm trees, and I leaned against one and closed my eyes. I hated being weak compared to them. They’d fought Cronus with barely a complaint, and I couldn’t even talk to him without feeling drained.
“Tell us what happened,” said James. He cracked open a coconut, splashing milk all over his shirt, but he didn’t seem to care. He dipped one of the halves into the pool of water and offered it to me, and my hands shook as I took it.
I drank deeply. The deliciously cool water spread through me, and once I’d f inished my second drink, I sat up and took inventory of my injuries. My leg throbbed and I was dizzy, but Cronus hadn’t hurt me again. I ran my f ingers through my hair in an attempt to comb it out, but it was too much of a sweaty mess to bother, so I searched my jacket pocket for a hair tie to pull it back.
Instead of elastic, my f ingers brushed up against something that felt like silk. No, not silk. A f lower petal. Startled, I f ished it out and cupped the crushed yellow blossom in my hand. It was small, with seven pointed petals that looked as if the ends had been dipped in purple, and slowly it began to uncurl.
I’d never seen anything like it, let alone picked it and put it in my pocket. And it was alive; it wasn’t dead or crushed like I’d thought it was. In seconds, it was whole and open, and the center looked like a shimmering drop of nectar. It couldn’t have possibly come from the surface.
