The Reign of Olympus (Shadows of Olympus #3)

Chapter Thirty-Eight

It’s noiseless inside, no sound but that of my own heart. The dark green corridor stretches ahead of me, the grass long and lush underfoot. Moonlight bounces off it like light on water. But I’ve barely taken a step when the path forks. A moment ago, there was only one way forward—straight ahead—but now suddenly there is a left path and a right one. I hesitate, then take another step forward, and now a third path opens. I shiver. I’m not sure what happens to those who get lost in the maze. They stay trapped forever, perhaps, wandering endlessly through the mirage.

I hold the lamp up before me. I start with the rightmost path, moving the lantern slowly across it, waiting for some change, but none comes. Then I try the next path, the one in the middle, and still nothing happens. The way before me stretches out, quiet and moonlit as before. A horrible thought comes over me. Perhaps the lantern is broken after all. Perhaps Nemese was lying to us all along.

I take a deep breath, and swing the lantern over the one remaining path—and draw a sharp breath. This path all but vanishes, the moonlight disappearing, leaving only blackness.

So this is it.

I take a careful step forward, nudging one foot slowly in front of the other. I have a new problem now: the lantern has told me what I needed to know, but now I must walk in darkness. How can I be sure of what lurks along the path? This maze is a creation of the gods, and I do not trust it. I hold my free hand in front of me, but it brushes only empty air. My feet shuffle through the long grass, little by little.

I carry on like this, slowly, the lantern swinging aloft ahead of me. All the time I pass by other paths, forking off to left and right, brightly illuminated by the moonlight. Every time the path splinters I must test them all, looking only for the blackest path, the one like a tunnel into the void.

Walking in the dark, shuffling forward with no light to guide me, it’s like being blindfolded. I must learn to trust my body in a different way.

For an instant I’m back in the past, in those days I spent in Eros’s palace. Those early days, before I knew who or what he really was; before I broke my vow and brought its great walls tumbling down around us. In those days he still thought the sight of his face would harm me, and made me go blindfold in his presence. I remember that feeling now—how the darkness seemed hostile at first, and then, slowly, like an embrace.

Eros has told me the truth of what happened with Zeus’s blade. How he found it; why he took it. He tracked Deimos through the tunnels that night, moving faster with his two wings than Deimos could with one. He waited in the shadows as his brother fought Cerberus. And when the great beast had Deimos between his jaws and the blade fell to the floor, Eros seized his moment. He pocketed it and ran before Deimos could recover his advantage. It obviously didn’t take Deimos long to guess who had followed him.

“But why hide it?” I asked, when he told me the story. I remembered what he’d said that day on the beach about striking a bargain. We were both fools, I suppose, thinking we could make a deal with the king of the gods.

“It was for you,” he said. “I wanted him to grant you immortality.”

Immortality . I could only stare at him. I did not think such a thing was within the gift of even the gods. After all, they were born to it; we were not.

He looked away.

“I do not think it has been done in many, many lifetimes, but there are stories. Rare stories.” His eyes turned grey for a moment, their usual fire gone. “I wanted you to belong with me. Always.”

I remember the things I said to him, that night we argued: that we were too different; that his world could never be my world, nor mine his. That I did not belong with him. But I was wrong.

I do belong with him. I always will.

“I’m sorry.” His eyes find mine. I see the strain in his throat; the pain of imagining what might have been. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it happen.”

I reached out to knit his hand in mine. Even now, in the dark maze, I feel the tears behind my eyes. In many ways—in so many ways—it would be my deepest wish. Stay forever. Stay with him forever. But the more I think about it the more it seems to me that for all I would have gained, I would have lost something, too. What exactly, I cannot say. Could it be that death makes me not only what I am, but in some way, who I am? I can’t quite untangle it.

Not that I’ll have to. The plan failed, after all.

I think of Eros and his eyes bright with fire. The worlds that sparkle in there, that seem to live for me alone. I will always belong with him. It doesn’t take eternity to know that.

I learned something about the other blade, too. The one that was my mother’s. In the dream, I asked Poseidon, and after a long silence, he told me what I believe to be the truth. It was his consort, the goddess Amphitrite, who stole the blade. She was not the first goddess to be angry with her husband for his faithlessness—and particularly at the insult of coming second to a mortal. Instead of using the blade against Poseidon herself, Amphitrite gave it to my mother and told her of the sea-god’s deceptions: of the false shape he had taken, and the truth about the child my mother carried inside her. Perhaps she hoped my mother would kill Poseidon herself, and do the dark deed for her.

I don’t know if it’s better or worse that my mother knew the truth before she died. I used to think the truth was always better than ignorance. Now, I’m not so sure. But if she knew what I was, I hope at least she was able to forgive me.

The maze feels darker than ever, and suddenly my free hand smashes into a wall of thorns, pushing a gasp from my lungs. I let myself get distracted; I let my guard down in the darkness. If I had been going just a little faster, I’d have a face full of thorns too. My breath quickens. A dead end? It can’t be. I turn in a slow circle, lantern aloft, craning to see in the dark.

Finally I find it: a small turn-off to the left, narrower than any that came before. Then I’m barely on the new path when it forks again, this time to the right. Soon the maze has me forking and twisting with a new relentlessness, as if to ensure it takes from me what little sense of direction I still have. The paths themselves are getting narrower, too. The walls seem to hem me in, tapering to almost nothing along the path ahead. The turns give me less and less room, leaving me squeezing through dark chinks in the hedges, shredding my robe and, sometimes, my face and hands. How long until dawn? At dawn, there will be no more moonlight, no more shadows. My lantern will be useless then, and I’ll be trapped with no way out.

A sudden gust of wind races toward me along the path, making the lantern’s black flame gutter and dive. I gasp, doing my best to shield it with my hands. If the lantern goes out, I truly will be lost here. But the wind is rising and the flame only gutters harder. My one hand shielding it is useless: I drop to my knees, bending my body over the lantern to block the wind with every part of me. The black flame winks and quivers. I feel a sob somewhere deep in my chest. The wind roars over me, and I don’t know how long I crouch here, feeling its cold, listening to its howl. At some point it moves on, but still I huddle on the ground, not trusting myself to get up. Not trusting that the wind won’t come back the second I try to stand. It’s safer like this, anyway.

If I don’t walk on, I can’t get lost.

If I don’t keep trying, I cannot fail.

If I don’t love, I cannot lose what I love.

I crouch over the black flame, breath after breath moving through my body. Memories flow with them, and grief. I let them come. Grief for the souls lost. For the girl I once was and the parts of myself I’ll never get back. I let them all flood me.

And then I take another breath, and get to my knees. There is no other choice. Dawn will come, and when it does, better I face it standing.

I stumble forward, the lantern swinging in my hand, and find the next turn. I push my way around the corner and then, abruptly, the walls fall away: I’m in a small, moonlit clearing, and there, in the grassy center, lies a figure curled up on his side, eyes closed. A wild fear blows through me, but then I see his chest rising, falling. He’s sleeping, that’s all.

My heart flutters as I crouch down beside him. Moonlight moves over his downy skin. I can feel his warm breath. Does some great destiny truly await this boy? It may be. But greatness, it seems to me, must be hard to measure. Who’s to say in the end which are the small gestures, the quiet choices, that can change another’s fate?

“Nikos,” I whisper, and put a hand to his shoulder. He doesn’t stir. I shake harder. “ Nikos! Wake up!”

But he won’t wake no matter how I try, though his breath continues smooth and uninterrupted. An enchanted sleep—what else? I grit my teeth. I only hope I have the strength for this.

I put the lantern down and hoist him in my arms. It is not so long since I held him like this, but he was an infant then. How quickly his babyhood was over—and even now, his childhood is all but gone. Too much has been taken from him.

I loop the lantern around my wrist as best I can, and with a grunt I pull myself up to stand. He is not light to carry, and I will be slower, much slower, on the return. But I know now, deep in my bones, that I will make it.

I will, because I have to.

*

Nikos stirs a little as we reach the edge of the maze. His hand rests against my neck, his thumb curled around the leather strap of my amulet. Perhaps even in his sleep, some part of him still senses its power.

The sight of the bloodied, wrinkled bit of fabric tied against the hedge makes my heart race. The way out. My arms are aching, shuddering beneath the boy’s weight. But the hedge of thorns is still sealed shut. How are we to get out?

I hold out my hand and push it deep into the mass of thorns, and feel dozens of tiny needles pierce my skin. I remember how hungry they seemed before, as if they were not just drawing blood but drinking it. I set Nikos gently on the ground and push my other hand against the hedge, too, thrusting it as deep as the first. It seems to me there are many more thorns than before. All I know is that I feel light-headed, my thoughts a little dizzy, my legs a little weaker.

But the wall of thorns is opening. A gap wide enough for me to see the cloaked figures waiting on the other side. Eros pulls his hood back and I see the relief flooding his face. Behind him stands Nemese, wearing a look of quiet satisfaction.

I feel the wind on my skin as I step through, legs shaking. Eros lifts the boy from my arms and draws me close. I breathe him in, the honeyed, earthy scent of him.

Nikos yawns widely, his eyes blinking open, startled as they find mine.

“How…” he begins, but Eros hushes him. I take his hand in mine.

“For now you must be silent. Only for a little longer.”

Outside the garden, we settle him on Ajax. He’s no longer so bleary-eyed, and looking at his face, part of me wishes that he slept still: now that he’s awake, there’s the pain of remembering. It’s a burden I would carry for him if I could—but like the maze, it’s a path he’ll have to walk alone.

“It’s all right,” I whisper to him. “I’m here.”

His chin trembles as he looks at me, but only for a moment. He has his mother’s strength, and something more that is all his own.

Then I remember the other thing. I pull the Shroud from around my neck, and loop it over his. There is rumor that Aphrodite has relented at last: that in her grief, with only one son left, she has let go of her vendetta against Eros and me. We’ll see. Zeus, too, gave his word that he would leave Eros and me alone. I may be a fool to trust it—I am not quite sure I do trust it—but the Shroud must have a new wearer now. Nikos needs it more than me; most likely he will need it all his life.

And he will have it all his life. Just as he has me.

Eros closes the gate, and the garden seems to sigh behind us. I hand the shadow-lantern back to Nemese, who waits quietly in the dark—a shadow with flaming hair. She nods briefly, and the next instant she’s astride her white mare, already vanishing from the slopes of Olympus.

I turn to look at Eros, those eyes that hold my every thought and every dream. That tell me the things that even his voice cannot speak. Perhaps it is true that Aphrodite has set aside her vow of vengeance; perhaps he really could resume his old ways in these lands and be the god he used to be. But he and I made a plan once before, to travel to a foreign land. To start over. He could be a new kind of god there, one who does not serve the old ways. Who does not drink the mortal world dry.

Either way, we will make a life for ourselves, somehow. We’ve done it before. This time we will do it as three. Or perhaps more. Eros said something to me earlier tonight, as we rode through the darkness.

“If we do not have eternity…” he hesitated. “We must make the most of all we have. And even for mortals, there is a path to eternity of sorts. A part of you that may carry on forever. Perhaps I was wrong before, to say I could not do it.”

I felt myself stiffen, unsure if he meant what I thought.

“But I thought…you said…”

His warm hands on the rein held mine.

“Even a god may change his mind, Psyche.”

The future—our future—shifts before me even now, thick with uncertainty, but also with dreams.

Love. How, in our mortal world, can it be separated from pain? What is painful, what is precious, they mix together like blood in water; they cannot be separated.

“Ready?” Eros says. I nod, and he lifts me up behind Nikos, then swings himself into the seat behind me.

This is how it is: I have him, and he has me. Not for eternity, but for one lifetime. Zeus would say it is nothing at all: a mayfly hour, no more. But what hour could be more vast, more radiant, more boundless? The moonlit path winds downhill before us as Eros digs his heels into Ajax’s flanks.

And we are gone.

***