And then he knew. He snatched the golden goblet from his belt, looked down into it, and thought about Hera.
Instantly, she appeared in the rounded depths, and just as Zeus had done, she looked straight up at him. Her face filled with anger worse than cloudy wine. With courage he didn’t know he possessed, Ganymede gave her a slow wink, then turned to look at Zeus with a happy, possessive smile.
Hera appeared at the heavy gates in a furious violet blur. Air blasted outward, nearly knocking the teenage immortals flat, though it barely ruffled Zeus, who turned from Iris to see what was going on. He looked surprised, but recovered quickly.
“Husband,” Hera said. “You’ve been down among mortals again, I see.”
“Just delivering a gift, my dear,” Zeus said.
“Is that what you call it?” she asked tartly.
“Two horses to the king of Troy,” Zeus sighed. “You may check, if you like.”
“I trust you,” Hera lied. “But have you forgotten our date?”
Zeus looked puzzled. “Date?”
“You promised me a fine dinner together. Just you and me.” She slid her arm into the crook of Zeus’s elbow, the place Iris had just been occupying. “And no wriggling out of it. You wouldn’t want me to pout, would you?”
“My dear, your pouting levels high mountains and sends ancient civilizations to the bottom of the sea,” Zeus said.
She ran a finger down his nose. “And you love it.”
“Indeed I do. That’s why I chose you for my wife instead of Demeter.”
“Then let me show you how much fun I can be, darling.” The golden gates swung open and she led him firmly through them. Ganymede, however, knew he had one last part to play.
“My lord,” he called. “Do you want me to wait at your table?”
Hera, who was stroking the back of Zeus’s neck, flicked Ganymede a look powerful enough to flatten an army of Spartans. Zeus, enraptured by her violet eyes, didn’t seem to notice.
“No, boy,” he said absently. “Run along.”
Ganymede was only too happy to obey. He fled to his new watery grotto with Eros and Iris right behind him.
Eros collapsed onto the divan. “That was brilliant!” he howled, clutching his sides. “Fucking brilliant! G, you can run with the big dogs easy. I would never have thought to bring Hera in.”
“Brilliant and brave,” Iris added, thwapping him on the shoulder. “I wouldn’t have had the guts.”
“Best part is,” Eros said, wiping the tears streaming from his eyes, “she thinks she stole Zeus away from you. She has no idea you manipulated both her and Zeus himself. Oh, man—I love you!” And he sprang up to plant a big kiss on Ganymede’s mouth.
“Don’t forget me!” Iris said, copying the gesture exactly.
Ganymede grinned, dizzy as a puppy in a dryer from their attention. “I got lucky.”
“Don’t be modest,” Eros said. “You’re an immortal.”
A new gush of water rushed from the twin waterfalls, and Ganymede ducked his head, still a little embarrassed. “So what do we do with these?” He drew the three black hairs from his tunic. Light dropped into them, sucked into a midnight drain. Eros, who hadn’t never seen them up close before, whistled.
“Fucking-A,” he said.
“I’m going to try destroying them anyway,” Ganymede said. He drew the knife Zeus had given him from his belt and sliced the hairs to bits. But even as he did it, the pieces pulled back together. He tried burning them, but they wouldn’t catch fire. Nothing worked.
“Told you,” Eros said.
“We can’t leave them here,” Iris said. “Zeus will find them. Eventually. And then you’ll be royally fucked. And not in that other way.”
“Right,” Ganymede said. “We’ll have to hide them somewhere. But where?”
“In a place where Zeus or any of the other gods will never look,” Iris said promptly.
“Zeus goes everywhere,” Ganymede pointed out. He was starting to feel a little desperate.
“There’s one place he never goes,” Eros said slowly. “But I don’t know if we want to—”
“Where?” Ganymede interrupted. “It’s worth a shot, wherever it is.”
Eros hesitated. “Look,” he said, “it’s really far away, and I don’t think it’ll work.”
“What’s up with it?” Ganymede asked. “Come on, Eros. It’s not Hades, is it?”
“Oh!” Iris said. “I know where he means.”
“Yeah? Where, dammit?”
Iris looked away and licked her lips. “He’s thinking of Tartarus.”
Tartarus. The name made Ganymede twitch. Tartarus. The deepest, blackest pit where Zeus imprisoned his most dangerous enemies and the worst of the worst monsters. Tartarus. The place where Zeus would no doubt banish Ganymede if he learned of Ganymede’s secret.
“We can’t go there,” Eros said.
“We have to go there,” Ganymede said. “Are you with me, or do I have to go alone?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Iris said quickly. “Of course we’ll go.”
“Yeah,” Eros said, though his voice was barely audible.
Before either of them—or Ganymede himself—could change their minds, Ganymede grabbed their hands. All three of them vanished. Less than a moment later, they were standing in silent darkness thick and heavier than sand. Ganymede couldn’t see a thing. A terrible dread filled his chest with ice water and it became hard to breathe. His arms and legs dragged. Life had no point. He wanted nothing more than to lie down and die.
His toes felt the edge of a rocky ledge. Everything smelled of age and mold and death. The only sound was a faint drip of water. It would be so easy to tip over, let himself fall into the infinite bleak blackness beyond.
A choked sob reached his ears. Iris’s voice. She was crying. The sound touched Ganymede’s heart, made it ache. Iris was in pain, and the thought pushed him to action. Automatically he groped for the cup at his belt and filled it with nectar, pure and sweet and fine.
“Iris!” He groped in the darkness and found her slender wrist. It was cold. He thrust the goblet into her slack hand. “Drink this!”
“I can’t,” she sobbed. “There’s no point.”
“Just do it!” he ordered, pushing the cup toward what he hoped was her mouth. “Now!”
There was a pause, and then Ganymede heard a faint gulping sound. “Oh,” she said. “Oh!”
“Better?” he asked.
“Much.” She sounded amazed.
Already his earlier resolve was fading and the despair was rushing back to take its place. “Give me the cup. Quick!”
She did, and this time he drank. Instantly, the weight of despair vanished and he felt like his old self. “Where’s Eros? I can’t see a damn thing.”
A bright light instantly filled the area. Ganymede reflexively raised a hand to shield his eyes, but as an immortal, he wasn’t blinded. The light came from Iris herself. He could see now that they were standing on a wide ledge set into a terrible rocky cliff that went both up and down out of sight. The rock was damp, and trickles of water slid down the cliff face like uncaring fingers. Eros was lying near the lip of the ledge. One arm dangled over the edge.
“Eros!” Frightened, Ganymede leaped to snatch him away, though Eros’s wings complicated the move. His face was pale and he was barely breathing. His body was growing transparent, the weight fading from Ganymede’s lap. “Gods, what’s wrong with him?” he demanded in horror.
“There’s no love down here,” Iris said simply.
Ganymede pushed open Eros’s mouth and poured nectar into it. No response. The golden liquid trickled down his cheek. Ganymede looked up at Iris, stricken. “Iris! What do we do?”
She dropped to her knees beside him, her body still glowing. “How do feel about me?”
“What? Not now, Iris. Eros is fading away! Can he actually die?”
“Look at me!” Iris took him by the chin and forced him to meet her eyes. “H
ow do you feel about me? Answer!”
“I … I love you,” Ganymede said. The words poured from him. “I love you like the ocean loves salt. Like a cloud loves the sky. Like a stream loves the river.”
Iris kissed him across Eros’s body. “That’s more than enough.” And suddenly Eros grew heavier across Ganymede’s legs. He coughed, spraying nectar everywhere, and swallowed some of it.
“Eros!” Ganymede poured more nectar into his mouth, and Eros swallowed greedily. Then he sat up. He wrapped his wings around Iris and kissed her hard.
“Thanks,” he said hoarsely, and kissed her again.
“Hey!” Ganymede protested. “What about me?”
Eros turned and pressed his forehead against Ganymede’s. “You, too,” he murmured. “You, too.”
They all three held each for a long moment, then got to their feet and looked around. Tartarus, the deep pit, gaped both above and below, gulping in Iris’s glow light. The wide ledge they stood on wound around the pit like a corkscrew. Small rivulets of water continued to drip or stream down the sides, making the black rock treacherous and slippery. Despite the vast space, voices didn’t echo. The pit devoured sound as well as light.
“I can see why Zeus doesn’t come here,” Ganymede said. “I wouldn’t come here, either.”
“Let’s stash the hairs and get out,” Eros begged. He looked pale and sickly, despite more nectar from the cup. “It’s … bad here.”
“Uh, guys?” Iris said. “Look at this.” She was pointing at the wall of the pit a little further down. The glow of her body chased some of the shadows away, and Ganymede could see rough arched doorways in the stone, all of them taller than freight train tunnels. Each one was blocked with a pile of fallen stone shot with thin trickles of water. The trio drew closer, with caution.
“What’s this?” Ganymede pointed to a rough symbol carved into a stone in the center of one of the sealed doorways. The letters in the symbol looked familiar, but Ganymede couldn’t quite read the words.
“It’s ancient writing,” Iris said, “older than some of the gods.”
“What’s it say?”
“It’s just a name,” she told him. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “It says Typhon.”
“One of the monsters Zeus defeated at the beginning of the world,” Ganymede said in awe.
“This is his prison,” Eros said, putting out a careful finger to touch the carved seal. “He would have destroyed everything Zeus and the others created, wiped out the whole freaking world. Weird to think—one of the most destructive beings in the universe is on the other side of this pile of rock.”
Ganymede shuddered. When he did, the water trickling down the rocks shifted, mimicking him. He blinked. “Did I do that?”
“Sure,” Iris said. “You’re becoming more powerful, and there’s lots of water down here for you to play with.”
Ganymede waved his hand back and forth, and another rivulet of water on Typhon’s prison shifted beneath his hand as he did so. The water now ran right over the seal. “Wow. Neat.”
“Look at this one,” Eros said at a huge doorway a little further down the ledge. Though he was still pale, he seemed to have forgotten his discomfort in his curiosity. “It says Kyklopes.”
“Cyclopes,” Ganymede said from Typhon’s seal. “More wow.”
“And this one.” Iris moved further down. “Ketos.”
“Never heard of that one.” Ganymede went to look, leaving Typhon’s seal behind and not noticing that the water still ran over it. The water ran and ran and ran, and even as Ganymede walked away, the flow pushed aside a tiny particle of stone and set to work on another.
The door Eros was examining was a little smaller, though the seal was still ancient. Lots of the lettering had worn away, and the symbols that made a ring around the name actually looked a little crumbly. Ganymede reached a hand toward it.
“G!” Eros said. “Don’t!”
It was too late. The water wandering around the seal washed toward Ganymede’s hand in an unexpectedly powerful rush. Ganymede yanked his hand away, but two of the symbols, barely legible, crumbled completely, the new stream of water carrying the bits of rock away.
“What have you done?” Iris whispered.
A rumbled thrummed beneath Ganymede’s feet. A low roar built behind the stone and grew louder. The ledge began to shake.
“Back to Olympus!” Ganymede said. “Screw the hiding place.”
“Can you concentrate well enough to find the way?” Iris shot back.
“Move!” Eros shouted, and all three of them dove aside just as the pile of stone exploded outward. Rocks flew over the edge and vanished into the gloom. The huge doorway lay open and black. Ganymede lay on the ledge next to Iris and Eros, horrified and frightened. From within the dark door came a terrible hiss, one filled with teeth and scales. Something moved. And then the dreadful monster Ketos burst out onto the ledge. Her serpentine body bunched with muscle, and her huge jaws gaped enough to bite a whale in half.
She caught sight of Iris’s glowing body and lunged with an ear-shattering hiss. Iris flung a bright rainbow from both hands straight into Ketos’s eyes. The monster roared with pain and reared back. Eros conjured up his bow and fired a succession of silver arrows. They speared into her flesh in a neat line with small thup sounds, but seemed to have little effect. Ketos reared back her head to strike. Ganymede, standing next to Eros, backed up a step, not sure what to do. Already he could see that Iris and Eros were growing tired. Iris’s glow had dimmed markedly, and Eros seemed barely able to lift his bow. Ganymede himself could feel the nectar he’d drunk wearing off. They needed more, but there was no time to drink it.
Ketos lunged and Ganymede acted. He tackled both Iris and Eros and swept them over the edge, sending all three of them hurtling into the pit. Ketos’s jaws snapped emptily where they’d been standing. Dead air rushed past Ganymede’s head as the fell, and his stomach dropped. Iris screamed. Eros yelled in panic.
“Fly, you idiot!” Ganymede shouted into his ear. “Fly!”
Eros seemed to come to his senses. He snapped his wings open, and their descent immediately slowed. Ganymede hung on to Eros with one arm, his other arm around Iris. Eros flapped like crazy, but he was panting and Ganymede felt the skin on his neck growing slick with sweat. The infinite blackness pulled at them, urged them to give up and fall forever. Eros started to weaken.
“You can do it, guy,” Ganymede said. “You can. You’re a fucking god. You can get us to the ledge further down.”
Eros rallied a little. “I’m … trying …” Eros gasped. “Everything … is so heavy … down here.”
“Just a little more,” Iris said. “We’re almost to a safe spot on the ledge.”
Above them, Ketos hissed in annoyance that her prey had escaped, then slithered with incredible speed up the winding ledge, up toward the top, up toward freedom. In seconds, she was gone. Ganymede ignored her, focusing his attention on Eros. He kept up a steady stream of encouraging talk as Eros half-flew, half-glided toward a lower place on the spiral ledge. They cleared the edge just as Eros’s strength gave out. His wings went still, and all three of them landed hard on unyielding stone. They lay still, regaining breath and balance.
“Shit,” Ganymede said after a moment. His entire body hurt. His head throbbed and his arm muscles burned. He’d forgotten how pain felt.
“Cup, dammit,” Iris said. “Eros is hurting.”
Cursing himself for his own selfishness, Ganymede grabbed Zeus’s goblet, filled it with nectar—the sweet smell made him dizzy with need—and handed it to Eros. Eros drank. The pain and fatigue left his face. Ganymede gave the goblet to Iris and watched the same thing happen. Her glow brightened considerably. Ganymede’s heart filled with affection and even joy. It felt so good to watch them both be healed and know he had done it. He took the cup and drank. The pain drained away, and he sighed with relief.
“Thanks and let’s get the hell out of here,” Eros said. “I
want to go home.”
“First, where?” Ganymede took out the hairs and held them up.
“Anyfuckingwhere,” Iris said. “No one’s going to look.”
Ganymede found a largish rock where the ledge met the wall of Tartarus. He rolled the rock aside, lay the hairs on the ground, and rolled the rock back over them. It felt odd, like he had both completed a job and left something to do. “Good?”
“Good,” Eros said. “Now get us out of here.”
They joined hands and Ganymede reached out to Olympus. It was hard, harder than coming to Tartarus. But he did it, and a moment later, the trio was back in Ganymede’s grotto. The soft sound of fresh water and the warm light immediately eased all fear and dread. Iris knelt by one of the pools and splashed her face. Eros threw himself down on the divan with a heavy sigh.
“I’m never doing that again,” he groaned. “Shit. I need a good fuck. Anyone up for it?”
Normally this would have gotten Ganymede’s instant attention, but he was distracted. He had thought that once he had hidden the hairs of Prometheus, he would stop wondering about the future, but now the chained titan’s words rang even louder in his head.
“The Fates have decreed that one day Zeus will also be slain.”
The statement seemed impossible, but it had to be true. Ganymede wouldn’t harm Zeus. Couldn’t. So how could this come about?
“Maybe it’s Ketos,” he said. “Maybe she’s going to kill Zeus, and I fulfilled the prophecy by letting her out to do it.”
Eros snorted. “Ketos? Hardly. Shit, G, even I could kick her wormy ass. Ketos was only a problem for us because Tartarus was sucking us dry. Zeus won’t even notice her.” He rolled over and looked at Ganymede. “So how about that fuck?”
“I need to know more,” Ganymede said.
Eros looked confused. “About a fuck?”
“I have to know how I could kill … him.” Ganymede sank down to the divan, barely aware of Eros’s body heat. “Geez, I can’t even say it, so how could I do it? I have to know how it can possibly happen.”
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