by Diana Tyler
Ethan scanned the area for a stick, a rock, a bucket, anything he could use to intervene should things get ugly. He wanted to tell Damian to see if his doma worked so he could become invisible, but that would just put Ethan on the Centaur’s blacklist, and he didn’t have a power with which to defend himself.
“All I’m doing,” Damian said, sounding only a smidgen calmer, “is telling you that I met you in the future. And you were different.” He took a step back, giving the Centaur some breathing room. “Way different.”
The Centaur scratched his chin where the hat’s strap ran across it. “And why, pray tell, did I come back from the grave to visit the likes of you?”
“Because Duna sent you to teach me.” Damian looked away, and Ethan could almost see the weight of remorse bearing down on his friend’s shoulders. “You said you were living proof that faith can save the soul of any wretch, even a murdering, thieving, lying, cheating Centaur like you.” Damian threw up his hands before the Centaur could retaliate. “Those were your words, not mine.”
Ethan looked at the Centaur, but he didn’t appear angry. Quite the opposite: he’d pulled the hat over his face, trying in vain to hide the fact that he was crying like a child.
Chloe looked at Ethan and shrugged.
He shrugged back and waved her over to him. “Maybe we should give them some bonding time,” he whispered.
Chloe smiled and shook her head. “Life just keeps getting weirder and weirder, huh?”
“We’ve come a long way from the gryphon fossils back at the museum.”
They walked down the road toward their tents. Ethan folded his arms across his chest, suddenly self-conscious about being half naked in front of a girl. If they’d been back in their time, he would have been suspended from school and probably jailed for aprépeia, indecency. It had never made sense to him that sexual intercourse was permitted at fourteen, yet being shirtless was a crime. Just more rules with which the Fantásmata reinforced their control and kept people more preoccupied with staying in line than seeking the truth.
“Did you really meet the Centaur like Damian said you did?” Chloe asked him.
“I met Katsaros. Remember the overweight PE instructor we had in grade four?”
“That was the Centaur?” Chloe said, incredulous.
Ethan laughed. “No, but he looked a lot like him, except Katsaros wore corduroy pants and suspenders instead of a sweatsuit.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Afraid not.”
Chloe looked over her shoulder. “Sounds like it was an effective disguise.”
“I guess when things got desperate enough, he showed Damian who he really was.”
Chloe became quiet as she slowed her pace.
Ethan could see that he’d touched a sore spot. “So it seems like you and Damian have patched things up,” he said, hoping he’d been correct in his earlier assessment.
“We’re in this together now,” she said. “Whatever he did or didn’t do, it doesn’t matter now.”
Ethan smiled his agreement as two children sprinted past, the older chasing the younger and yelling angrily in Próta.
“And if it’s true what Damian said about the Centaur changing from a murderer to a man of faith,” Chloe said, “then who am I to think Damian can’t change, too?”
“That’s a good point. You may not have had your parents for long, but I think they taught you a lot in the short time you did have. They’d be proud of you.”
“I hope so.” Chloe looked up to the sky and smiled softly. Then, as if just remembering something, she dropped her gaze and turned to him. “Where did you go this morning, with Iris and Tycho?”
Ethan walked toward a copse of olive trees and stood under the shade. “How about I show you?”
Chloe smiled and put a hand on her hip. “I don’t need a chaperone.”
Ethan tried not to stare at her; at how pretty she looked, even covered in mud and grime and whatever other hell-borrowed substances were stuck to her clothes and skin. He couldn’t put words to what made her so attractive to him. It wasn’t so much what she looked like but what she did that drew him. The way she laughed and talked and asked questions, always hungry to learn. The way she didn’t care what anyone thought or said about her. The way she wasn’t afraid to express her emotions, to stand up for herself when necessary. And the way she let go of bitterness and extended forgiveness so readily.
Even without the doma, Chloe was the most unusual girl he knew, in the best of ways.
“I think I’d like to find a river or something first,” said Chloe, yanking a short twig out of her hair. She tossed it at him and smiled when he caught it. “I’m starting to smell myself, not a good sign.”
“I don’t know. Bad things seem to happen whenever you get too close to a body of water.” Ethan twirled the twig in his fingers. “First Lake Thyra, which took you to Hades, then the river back home…”
Chloe leaned against the gnarled trunk of the nearest tree. “Hey, neither of those examples ended poorly. I got out of hell, didn’t I? And this place isn’t all that bad. There’s just a storm-generating, humanity-hating, maniacal Asher to contend with. No big deal.”
Ethan let the twig fall to the ground as his thoughts traveled back to the river. “I wish it could’ve ended well for my parents.” He hadn’t said it to make Chloe feel guilty, but looking at her now, he could see that was exactly how she felt.
She pushed off the tree and went to him. “Ethan, I’m so sorry.” She reached out as if to touch his hand, but stopped herself. “That was a really dumb and heartless thing for me to say.”
Ethan shook his head. “No. Don’t apologize.” He looked at her and forced his cheeks into a smile. “It’s been on my mind all day.”
“You’d think that I, of all people, would be more sympathetic.”
“I just want to know what happened to them.” Ethan wanted to cry, to feel some sort of release, but he couldn’t. He was utterly numb, as if his body and mind were in a state of shock. “I want to know where they are, if they’re even still alive.”
“I know.”
Ethan knew that Chloe understood. She and Damian were the only orphans in modern history. Everyone else lived until age seventy-five, at which time they were murdered in the Fantásmata’s twisted coronation ceremony. One day, Ethan hoped, everyone would know the truth, that the eagerly anticipated graduation from elderhood to sovereignty was nothing more than a ritual execution.
Chloe stilled and closed her eyes, just as Ethan had seen her do by the river before Carya had shown up.
“Chloe, what are you doing?”
“Shhh! I have to focus.”
Before Ethan could try to stop her, she was gone.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WARNING
Ever since the night she’d eaten the walnut Carya had given her, Chloe had grown accustomed to darkness. From her time in Hades’ prison to the handful of occasions she’d used her doma, darkness seemed to accompany her everywhere she went. It had frightened her at first, but now it was almost a comfort, like the threadbare blanket she’d clung to as a child because it ensured she was never alone.
Chloe was suspended in darkness now. She couldn’t even see her hand before her face, nor could she feel any sort of floor beneath her feet. Was she in space again, a part of space without stars or suns to illuminate it?
And then a soft breeze, accompanied by the enlivening scent of lavender, blew through her hair.
“Carya? Is that you?” She felt a small, warm hand take her fingers and gently squeeze.
“Do not be alarmed by what you shall see,
This is but a vision of a future that could be.
Death will come for them again, and again will Ethan grieve,
It is best to let them rest, and in your heart believe
That they received the truth, which those in hell now know;
Their spirits flew to heaven, free from suffering here below.”
The la
vender smell disappeared and was replaced by the nauseating odor of rotten eggs and acrid smoke blended together.
“Carya!” Chloe yelled. She covered her nose as rocky ground rose under her feet and dim light pierced the center of the blackness, expanding like ripples on water. “It’s rude to just leave people, you know. Especially after giving them creepy messages.”
“Mom! Dad!”
Chloe jumped and turned as she heard Ethan shouting behind her. He was in a small wooden boat, rowing frantically toward the shore. Only a thin sliver of orange sunlight was left hanging on the horizon. As far as the eye could see, the waves were like a battleground covered with flotsam: dead fish, and fragments of shivered oars. What had happened here?
Chloe looked over her shoulder at Ethan’s parents running toward her, sheer panic clinging to their faces like plaster masks. The sleeveless robes they wore were ragged and unraveling at the edges.
Behind them charged two unnaturally large bulls whose pounding hooves made the pebbles jump as the earth shook beneath them. From their mouths and nostrils issued a ceaseless spray of fire, the smoke polluting the air with the choking stench of rot. Their entire bodies, from the tips of their horns to the twitch of their swishing tails, were made of solid bronze.
“Automatons…” Chloe said, her heart skipping a beat. Her mind flashed through snippets of stories about these creatures, twin bulls forged by the god Hephaestus as gifts to an ancient king. A hero called Jason had once subdued them, but for whatever reason—a reason she thought was probably linked to Mania—they’d been unleashed to terrorize once again.
Chloe snapped back to reality and commanded her legs to move. She dashed toward Moris and Lydia, hoping she’d be able to make contact and focus long enough to get them out of there. She stopped and held out her arms, yelling for them to take hold of her, but they didn’t seem to see her.
She stepped into Moris’s path and he ran right through her, as did one of the bulls five seconds later.
“It’s just a vision… It’s just a vision…”
And then silence, followed by a helpless cry from Ethan and the sound of his body splashing into the water.
“No!” he screamed.
Chloe couldn’t bring herself to turn around. She knew exactly what she would see: Moris and Lydia mangled and bleeding on the ground, and Ethan standing on the beach, powerless to save them—if they weren’t already dead.
“But I can save them,” she whispered, hoping Carya could hear.
She didn’t have to close her eyes for darkness to return. It fell over her like a cloak and drew her back to the black in-between space where the messenger was waiting.
“Your heart is good and so you wish to spare your friend from pain,
But one way or another, they will meet their death again.
Do not overwhelm yourself with choices not yours to make,
Stay focused on the quest at hand, for all of Petros’s sake.”
A deluge of warm liquid crashed down on Chloe’s head, drenching her from head to toe. It wasn’t water; it was thicker, like olive oil and shea butter mixed together, and smelled of pine and juniper.
Over the next few minutes, something that felt like a giant loofah went to work scrubbing her face, hands, head and neck. She could taste the grit and bitterness of mud as it dripped and slid between her lips. After the loofah was set aside, a blunt metal tool scraped away the excess soap as a hot mist lightly sprayed her skin. It was only then that she realized she was naked.
“Should I add ‘personal hygienist’ to your résumé, Carya?”
“There is much more to a leader than appearances and smell,
But it will not serve you to resemble a homely imp from hell.”
Carya giggled softly as Chloe’s jaw fell in astonishment. “Well, that’s a little harsh,” Chloe said.
But despite the levity of the moment, Chloe couldn’t help thinking of Ethan, of the grief she’d seen taking hold of him as shock began to wear off and all the distractions subsided. They’d been too busy escaping from the guards, running through the fire tunnel, and fleeing to the mountains to think about anything other than survival.
Now Ethan was in the same place she’d been in eight years ago. His parents were dead, the latest victims of the Fantásmata. The only difference between them was that it could all be undone. Perhaps even her own parents’ death could be undone.
Chloe shivered as the what-if scenarios escalated in her brain. What if she went back eight years and slit the tires of her parents’ car, preventing the car accident that had presumably killed them? What if she traveled farther than that and removed every shred of evidence that revealed her father’s identity as an Asher? Their family would be free, wiped off the Fantásmata’s radar, therefore protecting the Rosses by blocking their involvement in the first place.
Carya was right. Chloe had wanted to spare Ethan from that pain, but she also wanted to spare herself. Even though she knew her parents were in heaven, she still longed to be with them in this world, in this time. She remembered thinking to herself in the Vale of Mourning that she would be more than happy to remain in hell as long as it meant being reunited with her parents. Now she was infinitely more willing to live in a fallen world run by tyrants, as long as her family was together again.
And as quickly as the what-ifs came, they swiftly dissolved as two wrinkled faces materialized before her mind’s eye: Calix and Anastasia, the old couple from the Vale that Carya had entrusted with a message for Chloe. She envisioned how they’d danced together, overcome with rapturous bliss for the first time in centuries. In fact, with their memories erased from the River Lethe, they had no remembrance of happiness. In that moment they’d felt it in its purest form, all because hope had been returned to them.
She remembered Anastasia’s last words to her: “Child, you must be brave. All of us can be restored if you’ll trust Duna, the god who answered us when we didn’t even know his name.”
If Chloe returned to the past and undid her parents’ deaths, Calix and Anastasia and all the other souls who’d been freed from hell would still be there, and she would be destined for it, too. There, in that dusky dungeon of a valley, where listless spirits trudged through death without remembering a single fact about their lives or the people they’d loved.
Chloe didn’t know she’d been crying until a salty tear trickled into the corner of her mouth. She wiped it away as waves of heat, like a summer breeze, fanned across her body. Her scalp tingled as she felt Carya’s hands braiding her hair. Seconds later, a woolen robe was draped over her shoulders and Chloe pulled it around her, adjusting it as best she could in the dark.
“Thank you,” she said. “Any more warnings or sage advice you want to give me? I can use all the help I can get.”
Carya kissed her on the temple as light, fainter than daybreak’s first breath, permeated the mysterious ether in which they hovered. Chloe smiled when she saw the deep blue of Carya’s robes and the lovely auburn of her waist-long hair. How frightened Chloe had been the first time she’d seen Carya sitting in the backseat of her brother’s car with two walnuts in her hand. She’d thought she was hallucinating, on the verge of a mental breakdown.
“I meant to thank you,” said Chloe.
The messenger dropped her head coyly, the coronet of pearls atop it glowing like midnight stars.
“For saving my life on Circe’s island, and”—Chloe hesitated, reluctant to say the words—“for stopping me from going back to the river. I just…”
Her throat burned as she fought to stay her tears. She smiled and gazed about the hazy sphere encompassing them; it twinkled with opalescent shades of amber, gold, and yellow sapphire, all alternately intensifying and fading as if to a rhythm reserved only for heaven and its denizens to hear.
“I will tell him what you said, though,” Chloe continued. “They’re in heaven now. With mine.”
“You asked for wisdom and a warning to light your path ahead,
&nb
sp; And both did you receive within your vision of the dead.
A great power has been given you, a gift to change the times and seasons,
And some may have you do so for their own self-serving reasons.
You must not be swayed by compassion, fear, or pity,
This your mission, this alone: preserve the truth of the holy city.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
LETO
The cool evening air drew Leto out of her house and into the moonlit tranquility of the courtyard. Jasmine blooms cast their fragrance along the unvarnished beams of the pergola while violet vines of wisteria spilled sleepily over its face. Firelight from the hearth inside shone just enough to shed an intimate glow upon the haven.
Leto smiled up at the seven Hesperides glittering like gems along the wing of the dragon constellation. Whenever she saw these stars she knew her lover was near, for they always heralded his arrival. It had been weeks since Hermes had come to her, and now, in light of her most recent conquests, she couldn’t wait to see him as she guessed at the praises he might give her.
By her hands, the port city of Ourania lay in ashes. With every trireme, punt, and scow destroyed, the survivors had fled on foot into the mountains. They would have found no river on which to journey elsewhere, for in a calculated act of preemption Leto had ravaged them all, one by one, with a relentless assault of whirlpools and winds. Rallying every ounce of stamina and strength she could muster, Leto had stoppered every spring and sucked up every last drop of water before sweeping them into the sea.
Now, with the rivers rendered useless and every port either burning or blockaded, Iris and her cohorts were isolated and well within reach. Leto would have killed them already if not for the resilience of Iris’s doma.
The fire had held out longer and burned hotter than Leto could have predicted. But she would be prepared next time. As soon as the Ashers were eradicated and every relic razed, all of Petros would be hers to rule forever, with her prince of Hades at her side.
Leto’s heart began to flutter as the prospect of queenship swirled in her imagination like sparkling wine. She sat on the bench beside her favorite fountain: a marble statue comprised of half a dozen bottlenose dolphins, each with fresh spring water spouting from their buoyant bronze mouths.
