by Aimee Carter
Her arms tightened around me, and she buried her face in the crook of my neck, her cheek warm against my skin. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to memorize this moment. She had to come back. And if she didn’t—
No, I couldn’t think like that. They’d survived the battles so far, and they’d survive this one, too. My mother would not die today. No one would.
“Come,” she murmured. “We haven’t got much time, and there’s something I’d like to do before then. James?”
James stepped up and touched our shoulders. “This won’t be fun,” he said, and before I could ask where we were going, the room exploded with light as we fell to earth.
My eyes watered. Going from Olympus to the surface wasn’t anything new. Why James had felt the need to warn me, I didn’t know. Until—
Until the blue sky disappeared, replaced by rock.
I would’ve thrown up if I could have. Even with my mother at my side, the oppressive layers of the earth pressed down on me, making my heart flutter with panic as we sped downward. I tried to force my eyes to close, but they were glued open with terror, and the best I could do was hug my mother tightly and hope like hell it would be over soon.
At last we landed in the rock cavern outside Henry’s obsidian palace. My knees knocked together, and all the blood rushed from my head, making the walls spin.
“You bastard.” I punched James in the arm as hard as I could. Not like it’d hurt him. “Why do you keep doing that to me?”
He grinned. “Because the look on your face is priceless. Honestly, Kate, what do you think I’m going to do? Leave you in the rock?”
I shuddered. “You wouldn’t.”
“I couldn’t,” he corrected. “Once you learn how to use the portals, you won’t be able to either.”
I opened my mouth to retort, but the murmur of low voices caught my attention, and I turned toward the palace. In the shadows, a crowd had formed, swarming the garden and the river on the other side of the cavern. “What’s that? Who are they?”
“The dead,” said James. “The lost souls, the ones who need guidance. No one’s here to help, so they’re stuck until you and Henry return.”
I stared. There had to be thousands of them. I’d expected some, knowing that Henry wasn’t down here to help, but not this.
Of course there were so many, though. With the numbers Cronus had slaughtered, I should’ve been surprised there weren’t more. “We need to help them.”
“Not right now, sweetheart,” said my mother, rubbing my back. “They have eternity. We have somewhere to be.”
“And where’s that?” I said.
“We’re going to visit your sister,” she said, and all of my indignation melted away. She’d gone ages without seeing Persephone before facing her the year before. Another visit so soon could only mean one thing: she was saying her goodbyes.
“Mom,” I choked out, my voice cracking. “You can’t leave me. You promised.”
“Whoever said anything about leaving you, sweetheart?” she said, brushing my hair from my eyes. We both knew the truth, though. No matter how many pep talks Walter gave, no matter how often she reassured me that she wasn’t going anywhere, she knew it was a possibility. And this time there would be no miraculous return.
I clutched her hand. “We could stay down here while the others fight. They won’t miss you. And we can come up with another way to help them.”
She gave me a sad smile. “Honey, you know the council needs everyone they can get right now. I have a responsibility to them, and I can’t walk away.”
“What about your responsibility to me?” My cheeks grew warm as my eyes burned with tears. “You promised you’d never leave me again.”
“I’m not. I’m fighting for what I believe in,” she said. “I’ve no intentions of dying today, Kate.”
“But you could.”
“Yes, I could,” she allowed. “As Walter said, Cronus is a formidable enemy, and there’s little we can do to combat him directly. However, you must remember we have thousands upon thousands of years of experience behind us, and we will put every last second of that to good use. I will do everything in my considerable power to make sure I come back to you. To make sure we all do.”
She could promise me the moon, but she was choosing to forget one very important fact: Cronus wasn’t beatable. Considerable power or not, there was nothing in the council’s arsenal that could take him on and win. Together they had a chance, but without Henry, without Calliope, they might as well have surrendered. They’d have a longer life expectancy that way.
There had to be something. The dagger—the weapons scattered around Nicholas’s torture chamber—those were advantages that could be ours, but how?
“Now come,” murmured my mother. “Take us to see your sister.”
I would have delayed if I thought it might work, but if my mother did die today, I couldn’t live with the guilt of denying her last request to see her other daughter. And Persephone deserved the chance to say goodbye, too.
I held my free hand out for James, and he took it without a word. For all the wisecracks that came from that big mouth of his, he knew when to keep it shut, too. If he didn’t make it either...
No. No one would die today. Not my mother, not James, not Henry, no one.
After one last look at the dead surrounding the palace, I closed my eyes. A warm breeze tickled my neck, and when I opened them, we were standing in the middle of a field full of flowers. Not ten feet away stood a cottage covered in vines, and even though we were in the Underworld, the sun—or at least Persephone’s version of the sun—shone brightly down on us.
“Hey!” cried Persephone, and I turned in time to see her blond curls bouncing in the wind. “Get out of there!”
“What—” I started, and then I looked down. We were standing right in the middle of my sister’s tulips. Oops.
My mother chuckled and took a step away from me, and I moved with her, refusing to leave her side. “I’m sorry, darling. Kate’s rather new to this particular method of transportation.”
Persephone stormed toward us, her feet automatically avoiding the patches of flowers as if she knew exactly where every blossom was. After spending a thousand years in this field, she probably did. “That’s no excuse for trampling my tulips,” she grumbled.
“I’m sorry.” Despite the reason we were here, the look on her face made me smirk. Persephone wasn’t my favorite person, not by a long shot, and having the chance to stick it to her was a small victory during an otherwise awful day. “Next time I’ll try to aim for the path.”
“You’d better.” She knelt down next to the flower bed and touched the crushed tulips. “Why are you here? I go centuries without having to deal with guests, and now you decide to visit me twice in a year? Are you really that desperate for marital advice?”
I blinked. “What? No, of course not—”
“If he’s going through one of his spats, just leave him alone and don’t bother him until it’s over,” said Persephone. “He’ll come to you then.”
“That’s not why we’re here,” said my mother, and she knelt beside my sister and touched the tulips. They glowed golden in the sunlight, and slowly they straightened back into perfect condition. “There. All fixed.”
“I didn’t need your help,” muttered Persephone, sitting back on her heels. “What I need is for you people not to step on my flowers in the first place.”
I opened my mouth to tell her exactly where she could shove her flowers, but James beat me to it. “For the love of whatever you hold holy, Persephone, would you please shut up for two seconds and let us talk?”
The three of us stared at him, and he squared his shoulders, clearly doing his best to look respectful and godly. But with his mop of blond hair and ears that stuck out like a caricature, he looked about as godly as Mickey Mouse.
“Fine. What’s going on?” said Persephone, and though the edge remained in her voice, her expression softened.
&
nbsp; “Cronus is about to break free from the island,” said my mother. “The battle will begin within the hour, and I hoped you might be willing to look after Kate until it is over.”
My mouth and Persephone’s dropped open simultaneously. “You’re leaving me here?” I cried.
“You’re making me babysit?” said Persephone in an equally horrified voice.
My mother focused on me first. “Kate, darling, I know you want to help, but you will help the most by remaining safe so I do not have to worry about your well-being.”
“But—” I started, and though she held up her hand, I kept going. “Mom, please. You can’t keep coddling me like this.”
“You know you do not have the ability to fight in a way that will be helpful to the rest of us,” said my mother bluntly.
“That’s not my fault,” I said. “You’re the one who promised to train me. I could’ve learned.”
“Not in less than two months. We were all stretched to our limits already, and even if we had, you aren’t one of the original six. You simply are not powerful enough to help change the course of battle fighting head-on like that.” She touched my cheek. “Please, allow us our greatest chance of success. Remain safe.”
I dug my nails into the palms of my hands. “You can’t make me stay here.”
“I know, but I trust you to make the right decision. Milo needs a mother, and he can’t have that if you’re gone. When the time comes, he’s going to need you. And you’re going to need him.”
“So you want me to just hide my head in the sand until it’s over?” I said thickly. “How can you say that? You’re the one who showed me how to be a fighter in the first place.”
She gathered me up, and I melted into her embrace. “Sometimes fighting means surviving in the face of insurmountable odds. That’s what I need you to do. Be the survivor I know you are.”
I hiccupped into her shoulder, and my fingers tightened around her sleeve. “Please stay with me.”
“If I could, I would. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be than here with the two of you.”
Holding her arm out for Persephone, she waited, and finally my sister accepted the hug. “First time you come to see me in hundreds of years, and you want me to babysit,” she muttered, and my mother kissed her forehead.
“I’m sorry, darling. I’ll make sure to visit more often.”
That wasn’t a promise she could keep if she were dead, and Persephone flinched right along with me. Was this the last time we’d be together like this?
It couldn’t be. I wouldn’t let it. There had to be something.
“I’ll promise to stay here with Persephone if you promise not to risk your life,” I said. It wasn’t much, but until I could come up with a solid plan, it would have to do.
“Oh, Kate.” My mother kissed my hair. “You might as well ask me not to go at all. I haven’t let Cronus get the best of me yet, and I don’t intend on starting now, that I swear to you. Have a little faith.”
Easy for her to say. She was the one running off to fight. “I love you,” I mumbled. How many more times would we say these endless goodbyes before it really would be the last time?
“I love you, too. Remember Milo.” She pulled away and looked me straight in the eye. “Can you do that for me?”
I nodded, a heavy numbness settling over me as she turned to say goodbye to Persephone. Instead of embraces and tears, they bent their heads together and began to whisper. “Let me go with you,” said Persephone. “Cronus and Calliope can’t hurt me, and I could be useful.”
My mother shook her head. “I need you here with Kate, to make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid.”
Persephone rolled her eyes. “Of course she’s going to do something stupid. She’s Kate.”
“I’m counting on you not to let that happen.”
After one quick squeeze of her hand and my mother’s admonishment to be good, their goodbyes were over. Persephone’s eyes were dry. How could this be so damn easy for her?
James touched my shoulder, and I spun around to hug him. “If you die, I will be so pissed at you,” I said.
“Then let’s hope that doesn’t happen. If you wander into battle, I’m going to be so pissed at you,” said James.
“Then let’s hope that doesn’t happen,” I mimicked. “Do you need a lift to Olympus?”
He snorted. “Nice try. Your mother’s got it covered.” Hesitating, he pressed his lips to the corner of my mouth. An almost-kiss full of questions I couldn’t answer and promises neither of us could keep. “Don’t forget—I get to be your first affair, and I’m holding you to that.”
“You’d better,” I said, and with that, he let me go for one last hug with my mother. The knot in my throat grew unbearable, but I refused to cry. I didn’t want the last moments we had to be full of blubbering sobs.
Neither she nor James said anything. They smiled, no trace of fear or anxiety on either of their ageless faces, and James offered my mother his arm. She took it wordlessly, and together they faded until there was nothing left but the breeze.
“Come on, let’s get you some tea before you fall over,” said Persephone. She took my elbow, and I didn’t argue. If Cronus slaughtered everyone I loved, Persephone would be the only family I had left. Not exactly a satisfying consolation prize, but I didn’t want to give her any reason to hate me.
As much as I wanted to reassure myself that it wouldn’t come to it being just the two of us, I couldn’t. It wasn’t up to me, and I couldn’t change the outcome of the battle through sheer willpower and thought alone. I could do something to help though, if I could only think of something that would be worth the risk.
Something Persephone had said niggled in the back of my mind, but before I could concentrate fully on it, she pushed the door open. “Adonis! What did I say about feeding the dog peanut butter?”
Adonis, Persephone’s boyfriend—husband?—rose from the floor, and I gaped at the puppy at his feet.
“Pogo?” I knelt down, and the black-and-white dog Henry had given me let out a bark muffled by a mouthful of homemade peanut butter. Tripping all over himself, he scampered across the cottage and jumped into my arms. One lick on the cheek, and I could no longer hold back the floodgates.
Persephone stepped around me as I clung to Pogo and cried. She could give me all the nasty looks she wanted; she’d abandoned her family an eon ago. I’d barely started to get to know mine.
By the time my sobs ended, she had a mug of tea waiting for me on the tiny kitchen table. She sat in the chair opposite mine, and Adonis lingered nearby, leaning against the wall and shuffling his feet. While I sipped my tea with Pogo in my lap, neither of them said anything.
Several minutes passed, and I couldn’t take the silence anymore. “Aren’t you afraid of what’s going to happen?” I said, my voice rough after my crying fit.
Persephone shrugged. “They’ve been at war with the Titans before.”
“But it’s different this time. They don’t have Calliope, and Henry—”
“What about Henry? What’s wrong with him?”
With a sigh, I launched into everything that had happened since she’d left the palace after the first battle. Calliope’s plot to kidnap me, the nine months I’d spent as her prisoner, Milo, my connection with Cronus, what I’d promised him and what he’d promised in return—the attacks on Athens and Egypt, Henry’s fight for survival, his sacrifice to keep Milo and me safe. Everything.
“And now they’re going into the biggest battle in history down two of their strongest fighters with no real hope of success.” I cuddled Pogo, and he licked the crook of my arm.
Persephone drummed her fingers against the wooden table, her expression distant. “And you’re going to spend the entire time here, not even trying to help them?”
“The only thing I could possibly do is distract Cronus and Calliope, and you heard Mom. She doesn’t want that.”
“If I were you, I’d be fighting like hell to keep ev
ery good thing I had in my life,” said Persephone. “Not all of us had that chance. The relationship you have with Mother, with Henry—you two made me an aunt, and you’re sitting here like a lump instead of doing everything you can to get them back.”
“You think I want to sit here? If there was something I could do to help, I’d be doing it, but I can’t—”
“Like hell you can’t.” She narrowed her eyes. “Think, Kate. Just stop and think. You’re the girl who trekked across half the Underworld to reach me on the off chance I might know where to find Cronus, and you’re giving up right now? I don’t think so.”
Were she and James conspiring to make me feel like an utter failure? I opened my mouth to protest again, but she held up her hand.
“There’s always a way around a problem, and you have half an hour to figure it out before the battle begins. So you tell me, Kate—after everything you’ve been through and everything you’ve seen, are you going to sit there, or are you going to fight?”
I took a deep breath. Persephone was right; there was always a solution. There was always a way to fix something, even if it was hard. Even if it was nearly impossible.
Anything is possible if you give it a chance.
Henry’s voice. Henry’s words. He believed in me, even though I’d long since given up believing in myself.
Think. Think. The weapons. Cronus’s bargain. The layout of the palace. Nicholas. Persephone.
My eyes flew open, and the pieces of the puzzle snapped into place. “I know what to do.”
She grinned. “It’s about damn time.”
Chapter 17
Final Stand
We arrived arm in arm in the middle of Persephone’s forest. The moment the ground underneath our feet shifted, she let go of me, but I didn’t care. For the first time in ages, I knew exactly what I was doing.
Grabbing her hand, I dragged Persephone through the trees, toward a redheaded girl surrounded by the tamest animals I’d ever seen. A baby deer rested beside her, a singing robin settled on her shoulder, and in her lap she cuddled a litter of bunnies no bigger than my fist.
