Epilogue
NYSSA
Awareness returned in jagged pieces, each sense filtering back in coarsely, one at a time, with the sharp scrape of splintered glass.
Even the smallest, simplest question — where the fuck am I?
— sent a hot spike of pain searing through my skull.
The words detonated behind my eyelids, leaving me gasping for breath in the oppressive whiteness — that relentless, fucking white — of wherever it was that I’d woken up.
Usually, darkness was my most dependable companion. It was my shield, my weapon, and my anchor. Usually, its silky tendrils twined around me like a lover’s caress, eager to forge my every desire, or shatter my every foe.
But no darkness lingered here.
The white was cold. Unyielding. It did not play, it did not protect — nor did it demonstrate any indication it even heard my wordless pleas. It just blanketed me in terror. It suffocated, isolated, and dowsed any resolve I might have once possessed.
But the worst part was not its unwillingness to aid me. No. The worst was that it stripped me of that sense I’d never given any thought to losing. The one I’d come to rely on all too much.
Charon would be so disappointed. My father, too.
I’d let my training slip, and now I was paying the price for that lapse.
I had no inkling of my surroundings, no godly inner compass to guide me home. I knew nothing about this place or the extent of my injuries, save for the acute pain in my abdomen and the distinct, sickly-sweet smell of ichor in the sweltering air.
The throbbing in my head echoed the agitated pace of my heart, each beat pounding through my eardrums so loudly it ricocheted through my skull, compounded by the silence of this place. The more I hyperfixated on it, the faster it thumped, spurred on by my building anxiety.
And no one was here to help me. No one was coming to save me, either.
Because… the only thoughts in my mind were my own. I was cut off from both my soul-bound tethers.
I refused to acknowledge what that might mean for Caelus and Velira. I hoped that it was merely distance that separated us, though some deep part of me whispered that even when realms separated us, I could still feel a tiny sliver of their presence.
A simple feeling that I was not alone. That they were out there.
That I could not feel them now…
No.
I refused to accept that this severing was of the permanent kind… that they might no longer breathe if I could no longer feel them.
I needed distraction. And what better way to combat mental anguish than by physical pain?
Wincing as my head lolled, I reached to palpate what I was sure was a horrific wound — only to meet the jangling resistance of chains.
Chains?
I almost scoffed. Did they not know? They who had shackled me?
Iron could not hold a god. And they were fools to even try.
I tugged on my wrists, testing the strength of the metal, and learned that I could not easily separate them.
Cuffs, then.
I yanked again and found that they were tethered to something else by a second chain connected to the first. Carefully, for I knew not what else lingered in this whiteness with me, I let my hands inch forward.
My fingers splayed, and I was grateful not to have brushed against anything furred, scaled, or with several too many legs.
But Charon is the one scared of spiders, I thought dazedly. Not me.
A manic laugh spilled out, ending abruptly in a sharp hiss as my brain protested the noise. It seemed I was only too good at hurting myself — nobody else need try.
My hands slid across a dirt-covered floor, the granules gritty and abrasive under my palms, until they skimmed against the chain holding me captive. Grasping the thick, heavy length, I noted that it, too, was warm like the rest of the room.
While blindness pressed against me like a second skin, torridity covered me like a third.
It was too hot in here. Sweltering and relentless — and dry, like Apollo’s desert. But I knew in my bones that wherever I was, it wasn’t there. That was open, endless, and every once in a while, a breeze passed through.
This felt more like a tomb.
A tomb set alight.
Wrapping both hands around the chain, I gleaned that at least one finger was broken. Maybe, two. But I had to find out as much as I could about my surroundings before whoever chained me came back. My survival would likely depend on it.
The list of those who would dare imprison me was short. And shorter still, was that of those who would prolong the length of my imprisonment, knowing that one slip on their part would see me free — and feeling particularly murderous.
It was only a matter of time before I found out who had moved themselves to the top of my own special list.
I followed the chain to where it was anchored within a stone wall.
Then, traced the wall with my fingertips as high as I could reach, each brick as hot as the last. It stretched further than the chain would allow me to follow, and I was left with no real answers as to the size of the room that was likely to be my tomb.
Exhausted and pained, I slid down the stones and curled up on the filthy floor. Thirst gnawed at me, low and constant. Every swallow caught in my throat. Every breath scraped like knives.
My injuries must have been worse than I’d initially suspected, if my strength had fled so quickly and thoroughly. No powers answered my cries, no whispered words soothed my mind.
I was alone.
Completely and utterly alone, for the first time in years.
And so, I had to fight to keep the terror at bay for as long as I could. If I could buy my loved ones — my army — time, then I would. Because whoever held me captive obviously wanted something. I just had to work out what it was.
I catalogued six wounds ranging from inconvenient to troubling: two broken fingers, a dislocated right shoulder, an ankle that barely held my weight — either sprained or broken, I couldn’t tell — a grievous head laceration that felt worryingly spongy beneath the pads of my fingers, and a still-bleeding gut wound that suggested I’d impaled myself on something at some point.
I couldn’t remember receiving any of them.
The last thing I could recall was launching skyward with Vel.
Vel, I lamented. I hope you’re okay.
If they’d hurt her, even the Furies wouldn’t be enough to save them.
It was only a matter of time before I healed, escaped, and killed every last fucker on my way out.
Just as I’d resigned myself to one last, momentous battle, footsteps echoed nearby. They thumped with the casual surety of someone who believes they have all the time in the world — and all the power in it, too.
A door whooshed open, clanging with a solid thump against another stone wall, stirring dust and debris on the floor in its wake.
It stuck to the back of my throat on my next inhale, igniting a series of wicked coughs so loud and wracking that I didn’t hear the footsteps continue into the room.
A quick snap assaulted my ears as someone grunted, altogether too close.
I recoiled — away from the sound, and the smell… a scent not unfamiliar.
Whiskey. And something sweeter.
Not honey, but ichor.
The scent of someone with blood on his hands and enough liquor to drown it in.
Ares.
“Well, well, well,” he drawled, his voice dropping as he crouched before me. “Look how the mighty have fallen.”
That last, quiet word triggered a series of violent flashbacks — violet scales, a blood-covered sword, an airborne battle, a demon of smoke, a shriek of agony… and then… then — a long freefall toward a tumultuous battlefield.
My eyes snapped shut and I pressed myself as far back as the wall would allow. Every instinct screamed at me to run, to flee — but I couldn’t.
“Ah, so you do remember,” Ares mused. “We wondered.”
“We?” I managed to rasp out.
His face split into an audible grin, his lips sliding past his teeth with a slick ssk, like I’d just walked into a well-laid trap.
“We,” Kronos’ low timbre taunted from across the room.
Hera — for the tittering, high-pitched snickers could not be mistaken for anyone else — giggled madly from the same direction.
Kronos took one, two, three slow strides forward to join Ares at my feet.
“You have something that I want,” he declared, slowly. Without preamble.
“We’ve established that. Whatever it is,” I began, feigning nonchalance in the hopes that I might end up believing myself. “Tyche must not favour you.”
“Oh? And why is that, Deathbringer?”
“Because you’re shit outta luck,” I said with a shrug.
Hera gasped so loudly it sent another painful spear through my skull. Time had not changed her, then.
Ares growled. But Kronos?
Kronos laughed.
Deep and thunderous, like the rattling of a mountain during a landslide.
“It truly astounds me,” he got out between chuckles, “that even one as powerful as yourself has not learned the most valuable lesson our kind can uncover.”
“I’m nothing like you,” I spat.
“We are more alike than you think,” he purred. “Both of us conquerors. Realm-breakers.” He lifted a hand and held my chin captive in it, to the point where it hurt—
Not yet, Nyss, I told myself. Save your fight for later. You’ll need it.
—and dragged the fingertips of his free hand across my cheek until only one rested there, the nail pressing in hard enough to draw blood. “And possessors of more power in our pinky fingers than any one of them.”
I froze, heady in the knowledge that I’d once said something similar.
“You know it as well as I: we both have darkness in our souls. And that darkness longs to rip this world apart.” He broke the torturous string of physical contact, and began pacing the length of the room.
My shoulders drooped — even that battle had worn me down.
“We could rebuild it, you and I,” he mused. “We could create something better… something greater. Something more worthy of us as its rulers.”
I couldn’t help the scoff that parted my lips — he was psychotic.
But what else would someone be after spending eons in the coldest, darkest pit conjurable?
Kronos stopped.
“You wish to decline? No matter. I’ll just take it from you, instead.”
Ares — never one to ignore an opportunity for bloodshed — rushed me, jamming me against the rough stone of the wall. A quiet snick — the unmistakable sound of a blade unsheathed — came a moment before he slashed it right across my cheek.
I sucked a hissing breath through my teeth and glared into the endless white and Kronos laughed again.
“You will pay for that.” I dropped the words like a promise at his feet.
He snarled — but if I wasn’t mistaken, also flinched minutely.
Even Ares knew Death was not to be trifled with. But apparently for now, my shackled and weakened state convinced him otherwise. He struck out again, opening a second wound on my left bicep.
“Is that the best you can do?” I whispered.
He raised the dagger just as I’d raised his temper — but Kronos captured his wrist before he could bring it down on me.
“No,” the Titan said. “The best we can do is crush you. To leave you so broken, you lose the will to live. You’d rather die than keep fighting.”
“You’ll never manage that,” I croaked out.
He waited a painfully long time before delivering his verbal blow.
“Your soul-bonded seeks you, even now.”
No.
“He is conspiring on the Isle of Gods, devising some plan to pluck you from my grip.”
No.
“And when he launches that lone ship, when he seeks these shores, I will annihilate it.”
“No!”
“The oceans can have him.”
Hera, spurred into action by the threat to her son’s life, jumped forward. “My love, perhaps there is another way—”
“There is no other way!” Kronos roared, slapping her away. I hoped it was her stupid face. “He is the key to breaking her. And I will break her.”
“As you wish, my lord.”
She dropped her tone and backed away. Giving up. Refusing to do more than lift an arm to save him, her own flesh and blood — the child she bore.
The child she killed.
“He’s too much of Zeus, isn’t he?” I snarled. “Too much of the man you hate — the man you murdered — to love?!”
“Yes,” she answered simply, surprising me.
“I knew it from the moment he was laid upon my breast at birth — with his hair of snow and eyes of lighting. I wished so many times that he was the child of the prophecy. That Zeus had murdered him, instead,” she sneered.
“So that I could leave, and start anew, with a man who actually loved me.”
“You’re mad!” I shouted. “Nobody could love a heart as black as yours.”
“Tell me,” Ares cut in. “How do you always know where to strike, my liege? How is it that you always know exactly where their Achilles heel is, was, or will be?”
My mouth snapped shut. I wanted to hear this, too. Even if it was the last valuable scrap of information I ever learned.
Kronos purred, eager to illuminate — which meant he had zero intention of ever setting me free to spill these truths. “There has been one in their midst all along.”
I knew it.
“One loyal only to me.”
I fucking knew it.
A finger dragged against my bleeding cheek, followed by a sucking noise leaving me with overwhelming nausea and bile trapped at the back of my throat.
“One who would do anything to thwart you, my dear Deathbringer. Because once I take what you won’t willingly give, I can return to him what you stole” — his voice changed direction, to where Hera stood — “my treacherous little snake.”
Hera gasped. “No.”
Footsteps thumped down the hallway. Thick, heavy, thuds, indicating a sizable person.
Hera retreated with every beat, until she pressed herself hard against the same wall I leaned on.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, my instincts revolting even before my mind could catch up.
The footsteps stopped.
Hera let out a wordless cry, crashing to the floor…
…and then a voice spoke, fracturing my blindness with startling familiarity. A voice I had hoped to never hear again, had convinced myself that I was wrong about…
Zeus.
“Hello, wife.”