The Petros Chronicles Boxset

by Diana Tyler

  Ethan kicked the weapon and glanced at the horizon, hoping against hope that Hermes and the others were circling back. But the sky was empty, and Ares was getting closer.

  “Are you a little rusty after all those years spent rotting in Tartarus?” Chloe said to Ares. She pointed to the hole in her shirt. “You’re buying me a new shirt.”

  “To wear at your funeral, you mean? For you to rot in?” Ares dropped his helmet and drew his sword.

  Ethan dropped into a staggered wrestling stance and brought his hands in front of him. Maybe if he could pry the sword from Ares’ hand, he’d have a chance.

  “Oh, quit it with the show of valor, lad,” said Ares in midstride. “I’m not here to spill inferior blood.”

  “You’ll have to if you want to get to Chloe.”

  Before he could think better of it, Ethan charged Ares, his heartbeat pounding in his ears as he swept his left arm under the war god’s right, pulling the man forward onto his back. Ethan dropped to his knee, shooting his free arm between Ares’ legs and throwing his hip into Ares’ knee. Ethan hooked his elbows around the god’s bronze greaves and, using every ounce of his weight, propelled him down to the rocks. Before Ares could react, Ethan snatched the god’s sword from his grip and drove it deep into his neck, the only exposed area he could see.

  Ares’ face did not look pained as the blood gurgled in his gullet. It was if the fatal wound was more like a pleasant surprise. He smiled, his gums and teeth glistening ichor-gold. “You’re a fool,” he rasped. “All you’ve done is earn her a few more hours. When I’m healed, she’ll be dead. As you will be.” Then he closed his eyes and his head fell limply onto his shoulder.

  It was only when Ethan stood up that he felt the warm, thick flow of blood gushing from his ribs.

  “Ethan!” Chloe grabbed her jacket and ran to him. She lowered him to the ground and pressed the jacket into his sternum.

  He grew lightheaded as the bloodstain spread. “I’m sorry,” he said, trying to look as strong as she had when the spear was flying at her, but he felt weak. He felt afraid.

  “Shhh.” She held his hand as she dug into her pocket. “It was my turn to save your life.” Her mouth smiled as her eyes filled with tears. She pressed the keys on her cell phone again and again. “Come on, come on, turn on.”

  “It’s okay.” He brushed her hand with his thumb. “Find Damian. You have a few hours until he heals.”

  Chloe flung her phone behind her. “No.” Her desperate eyes surveyed the rocks around them, looking in vain for something to help him. She suddenly became still, her gaze frozen on Ares’ corpse. How many times had Ares been killed in a similar fashion and worn that same smug expression while his regenerative heart stopped beating?

  “I’ll be right back.”

  She sprinted back to the picnic area and picked up Nereus’s goblet and silver bowl. Then she slowly carried them back, careful not to spill their contents.

  “Eat this,” she said, kneeling beside Ethan as she tore off a small piece of ambrosia. “You don’t have to chew, just swallow it.” Her hand trembled as she held the bread, waiting for him to open his mouth.

  “Chloe…” Ethan grimaced as his entire torso throbbed with excruciating pain. His vision tunneled. Big black spots clouded his vision, covering all but Chloe’s face.

  “Ethan, Ethan, open your mouth.” Chloe touched the side of his cheek. Her fingers felt hot against his skin. “Why won’t you take it?”

  A soft wind blew around them, cradling them in warm caresses. Ethan looked at Chloe. Despite her tears, she had never looked more beautiful. She was glowing, not with the sunlight, but with an inner radiance that was almost palpable. It was her love for him made visible, and it soothed his pain more than any salve or medicine ever could.

  “You said it yourself,” he said, holding her hand to his face. He coughed as he tried to kiss it. “We weren’t meant to live forever.” The pain was gone now, but the darkness was growing. Now he could see only her eyes, shining like a lonely patch of bright blue sky in a stormy sea of clouds.

  “Ethan, please…” She swept her hand over his forehead, then leaned over and kissed his temple. “I need you to stay. Please…”

  He felt her head rest on his heart. “I love you, Chloe.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Her tears streamed onto his neck as an overpowering peace took hold of him and lifted him off the ground. He was floating up, higher and higher, but he could still feel Chloe’s touch and the weight of her head. “I love you,” he tried to say again, but there was no sound. And then he lost her as another woman took his hand.

  “Carya…” He could see her perfectly. She was dressed in white with a golden belt around her waist and a coronet of emeralds in her hair.

  She smiled at him. “Come, Ethan. Let’s go home.”

  Ethan held out his hands. They were completely transparent. He gingerly touched his ribs to find they no longer bled.

  “There is no pain where we’re going,” Carya said, as they glided over the waves.

  Looking over his shoulder, Ethan could see Chloe’s body crumpled over his. “Will she be okay? Will she be safe?”

  “She’s in the best place anyone can be. In the palm of Duna’s hand.”

  It had taken nearly half an hour for Chloe to get a car’s attention on the side of the highway. She used the driver’s cell phone to call for an ambulance, and then had trudged the half-mile back down the beach, back to Ethan.

  The rest of the day had been a blur of weeping and stunned silences interspersed with short conversations with her parents, Damian, and the Rosses. Why wasn’t Hermes with you? What happened to Ares’ body? What were you two doing at Ourania?

  Chloe couldn’t remember how she’d answered them, or even if she’d answered at all. Nothing made sense to her. No question seemed worth asking because the answers felt so woefully out of reach. She lay curled up in bed, and all she wanted to do was stay there until the twenty-four hours had passed.

  “I know what you’re thinking.”

  Chloe opened her eyes. She knew it was Hermes because her door hadn’t creaked as it always did when someone opened it. He was standing at the foot of her bed, holding his dog-skin cap across his chest as if looking upon a dead person, which is precisely what she felt like.

  “I’m not thinking anything.” She rolled onto her opposite side and stared through swollen, stinging eyes at the picture of her and Ethan on the bedside table.

  Hermes walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. He sighed and gazed up at the ceiling, which was dotted with plastic, glow-in-the-dark stars. “You’re thinking of going back and preventing his death the moment your doma returns.”

  Chloe glared at him. “Actually, I’m thinking if it hadn’t been for you abandoning us, Ethan would be here now.”

  “I am sorry, Chloe. I wish I could’ve been in two places at once, but it was necessary for—”

  “For what?” Chloe sat up and yanked a tissue from the box on the pillow next to her. “For you to take Nereus and the other two on a pleasure cruise through the galaxy? For you to show them heavenly scenery so they’d be encouraged that this screwed-up planet we live on isn’t all there is?” She blew her nose and reached for a glass of orange juice her mother had brought her hours ago.

  “Chloe, I understand why you’re angry. You’re grieving.” He folded his cap in half. “I shouldn’t have come so soon. Forgive me.” He stood, but before he could put on his cap and become invisible, Chloe grabbed him by the arm.

  “No. Don’t go,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  Hermes looked down at her arm, and then gently patted her hand. “It’s all right. Get your rest. I’ll be just outside your window.”

  “I think I know what you came here to tell me,” she said, idly stroking her stuffed rabbit’s ears. “It’s the same thing Carya told me after Ethan’s parents died—or presumably died—in the old timeline.” Her cheeks burned as fresh tears stirred. Do no
t overwhelm yourself with tasks not yours to take, Stay focused on the quest at hand, for all of Petros’s sake. Carya’s words resounded loud and clear. She would never forget them, nor the heartbreak they’d caused her when she realized that life and death weren’t hers to manipulate.

  “You wanted to spare Ethan the grief you’d felt after losing your mother and father.” Hermes sat down again and took her hand. “But think of it, Chloe. If you go back in time to save him, you could undo so much good that was done today.”

  “You mean Nereus’s meta—I can’t remember what it’s called.”

  “Metanoia,” said Hermes. “Indeed, and Orpheus and Eurydice’s, too. One must act quickly when one’s heart is being called to by the All-Powerful. Ignore it, and his voice grows softer and softer as the soul becomes more callous.”

  Chloe understood. Nereus had exhibited the same signs of contrition that Hermes had in the old timeline: he had felt guilt, shame, unworthiness, and a longing to reconnect with the place he’d come from. Orpheus and Eurydice’s hearts had been opened as well, each fully aware of eternity and the All-Powerful’s sovereignty over it.

  “Now they believe?” she asked. “They believe Duna is real? That he’s good?”

  Hermes smiled. “Sometimes it takes only a glimpse of heaven’s grandeur, even from afar, to save a soul from hell. All anyone need do is lift their eyes.”

  “I’m happy for them,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I really am.” She held herself together a few seconds longer, trying her best to focus on their salvation instead of her own devastation. But the devastation was too much. She started to sob once again. “I just miss him so much.” She fell onto her side and wept until her lungs burned and her throat went dry.

  Hermes stroked her hair, staring at the velvet ring box on her desk. “You will be with him again, Chloe,” he said. “That’s the most blessed hope any mortal can possess—a hope that your eyes will one day see.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  NIGHTMARE

  The funeral for Hector’s father was two days later, but Ares had forbade Hector to attend. If Hector wanted to ensure that he wouldn’t be attending his mother’s funeral any time soon, he had to take Chloe’s doma. And that meant Chloe had to die.

  “What if it was your father who had died?” Hector asked Ares.

  They were sitting on the bluff above the Okeanos River. A light mist started to fall; it had been drizzling and raining nonstop for days. It was as if the whole cosmos was grieving, for what had been done, and for what was about to be.

  “My father is immortal.” Ares laughed, toeing the mud with his boot. “Even if he wasn’t, I would still have to bow before Necessity.” A muscle in his cheek jerked as he looked at Hector with a look of pity. “If you hadn’t run away, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  Hector’s blood ran hot. “My father was going to die anyway. I had to take a chance. I had to try and warn them.”

  Ares clicked his tongue as he picked up his spear from the ground. “Foolishness. The Fates don’t reward the man who turns his back on Olympus.” He pointed with the spear at a double-boled myrtle tree on the opposite side of the river. “The arrow of the Fates always meets its target. You would be wise to remember this.”

  The war god lunged forward and hurled the spear across the river. The bark made a sharp cracking noise as the point of the spear sank into the center of the myrtle, just below the place where its trunks intersected. With his resting hand, Ares flicked his wrist backward, effectively prying the spear free from thirty yards away.

  Telekinesis, Hector thought. Perhaps that was a power stored away inside the dýnami. He pushed his hand toward the spear and, forming a fist as if the shaft was in his grip, twisted right. The spear did likewise. He twisted left, and the spear obeyed.

  “By the twins, what do you think you’re doing?” Ares bellowed. He wheeled around and stormed toward Hector, his wide eyes dark as onyx. “You just get stupider by the second, Asher.”

  Without looking, Ares reached his hand toward the spear and summoned it. The weapon, as though magnetized, sped toward him, landing perfectly in his open palm. Hector tried to rip it free, but Ares’ power was too strong.

  “This spear was forged in the heart of hell,” shouted Ares. “In Hephaestus’s forge, just like the dýnami, which Zeus, for all his discretion, was unwise to entrust to you.” He tossed the spear into his other hand and made a mocking jab at Hector. “It will not be wrested from the hand of a god by that of a pigeon-livered poltroon.” He stepped forward and pressed the spear-point to Hector’s ribs.

  Hector squeezed his eyes shut, fighting the impulse to beg for his life.

  “Do you want to feel what your cousin’s courageous friend felt in his final minutes?” Ares grinned sadistically, relishing the fear manifested in Hector’s petrified face and trembling limbs.

  “No.” It was more like a gasp than a word, but it served its purpose.

  Ares pulled the spear away and stood it on its end. “Now you’re being sensible.” He turned and walked to the bluff’s edge.

  The sight of Ares, with his blood-red cloak blowing in the wind and his golden breastplate slick with rain, chilled Hector to the bone. He knew that one day he would feel what Ethan had. As soon as Ares was done with him, he would be like every other Asher: dead.

  “I have an idea,” said Ares, his throaty voice carrying powerfully as thunder rolled overhead. “Come.” With a wave of his hand, he conjured the cloudy chariot that transported him anywhere in the world. It enveloped them in seconds, sweeping them off their feet in a violent gust.

  “Where are we going?”

  “You won’t remember if I tell you.”

  Hector pierced the cloud with his hand and carved out a window so he could look down on the Okeanos shrinking to the size of a rivulet as they climbed into the sky. Within seconds, the river was out of view, replaced by fields of asphodel flowers whose vibrant white hue not even the mounting storm could mute.

  And then, in a flash of revelation, Hector knew where they were going: the River Lethe.

  “My lyre can do many things,” Orpheus said. “It can lift the spirits of the destitute, restore hope to despairing hearts…but it cannot remove the sting of death, nor bind the wounds of the brokenhearted. I wish it could.”

  Chloe placed yet another bouquet of white roses and calla lilies in a vase, then looked up at Orpheus and Eurydice standing on the other side of the bar. She had hardly recognized them at the funeral. They had borrowed clothes from her parents in an effort to blend in, but even so, there was something about them, perhaps their beauty or the mythic, fairytale aura surrounding them, that made seamless assimilation impossible. Chloe had warned them not to talk to anyone for too long lest they give themselves away, and so far they had kept to themselves.

  “I wish it could, too.” Chloe smiled softly at Eurydice, who was wearing a black crêpe-and-lace dress and Damara’s freshwater pearl earrings. “You look beautiful.”

  Chloe’s mind flashed back to the cave where she and the others had found Orpheus after traveling back in time. He’d been there for who knew how long, living as a recluse in its innermost recesses, grieving wildly, going totally mad as he let his sorrow consume him.

  Chloe hadn’t understood how a person could deteriorate so quickly, how someone whose life had been defined by nature’s beauty and glorious music could end up in a dank, dark cave, tolerating only the sounds of his own unending agony. But now, with this incessant ache throbbing where her heart had been and her mind closed to all thoughts but those of Ethan, she understood perfectly. It wasn’t so hard to imagine herself running away, perhaps to one of Nereus’s caves or another close by, and letting grief have its way, even if it led to insanity.

  “Thank you for going to the funeral,” she forced herself to say.

  Eurydice walked around and pulled Chloe close. “In the time we come from, we place an obol in the mouth of the dead as payment for the ferryman of the Styx.
How blessed it is to know that such rituals are null for the children of Duna. Immediately upon death, we are ushered into his presence. It’s little comfort now, but perhaps one day it will be.”

  Chloe sniffed back her tears, then gathered the cut-off pieces of flower stems and put them in the trashcan under the sink. “Thank you.” She looked at Eurydice, then over at Orpheus, and felt the only positive emotion she’d felt in days well up within her: hope, the hope of reuniting with Ethan in heaven. The hope Hermes had talked about when she’d contemplated erasing Ethan’s death.

  She couldn’t deny that the thought had reemerged multiple times since her doma had returned. She’d envisioned the hypothetical trip again and again, working out different ways to spare Ethan while allowing Nereus, Orpheus and Eurydice to be escorted to heaven with Hermes. But every scenario ended the same way: Chloe lying dead on the beach and Ethan helpless to defend himself against Ares. Not only that, but Olympus would be one step closer to being reestablished, and the blood of every Asher would be on her hands.

  There was one idea she hadn’t thought of. It occurred to her now as she spotted Damian talking to their dad on the back porch.

  “Excuse me.” Chloe quickly brushed past Eurydice and went outside, her body tingling with anticipation. This could work. This could really work.

  “Go back in time with me, Damian.” She couldn’t waste time beating around the bush or asking nicely. “Back to the beach. Back to three days ago.”

  “Chloe…”

  She could tell by his tone that he wouldn’t even consider it. “Damian, you can do it. It can work. All you have to do is keep us invisible long enough to take Ethan and the other me some place safe.”

  Her father sighed and rubbed his forehead. “There is no safe place, Chloe. Not from Ares. Sweetheart, you need to let Ethan go.”

  The throbbing ache in her chest returned with a vengeance, sending Chloe to her knees. She clasped her hands and started to beg. “Please, please Damian.” She was sobbing now, not because she was angry, but because she knew they were right. She knew there was no place they could hide from Ares and Hector, not for long anyway.