Chapter 30
THIRTY
Aria
“Stop stalling," I snapped at the Lord of the Dead, stepping into his personal space.
It was a bold move, perhaps a stupid one, considering the man radiated a cold so absolute it made the air inside my lungs feel like shattered glass.
But the scent of death, cloying lilies, turned earth, and the sickly-sweet rot of pomegranates, was overwhelming, choking out the clean ozone of my own magic.
"They are hurting. The world is hurting," I hissed, gesturing vaguely to the apocalyptic landscape around us. "If you have a point, make it."
"Always so direct," Hades sighed, adjusting the lapels of his immaculately tailored suit, which somehow remained pristine amidst the falling ash. "Fine. There are two ways to save this pathetic ball of dirt and water. Do try to pay attention; I hate repeating myself."
Athena stepped forward then, her golden armor crying out with the friction of her movement. She interposed herself between me and the King of the Underworld, her spear held low but ready.
"Do not listen to him, Aria," the Goddess of Wisdom warned, her voice tight with a fear I wasn't used to hearing from an Olympian. "Once you enter his domain, there are rules. Ancient rules. There are prices that cannot be paid in gold. You become his."
"She is already mine," Hades countered softly.
His gaze flicked to my right hand, the one that had crushed the Titan's Heart, the one now fused with star-metal and pulsing with a volatile violet light. He looked at it as though he could see the spectral remnants of the gore still coating my palm.
"She ate the fruit of the heart. She absorbed the essence of the Deep Earth," he murmured, his voice like velvet over gravel. "We are just negotiating the terms of her residency."
He looked past Athena, dismissing the War Goddess as if she were nothing more than a nuisance fly, and stepped around her to face me.
"Option one," Hades said, holding up a single pale finger.
The movement was crisp, jarring against the chaotic backdrop of the melting mountain range where rocks were dripping like wax.
"You are the vessel, Aria. You already ate the Titan’s heart.
You survived the Primordial Flame. You are, for lack of a better term, a cosmic trash can. "
My jaw tightened. "Charming."
He gestured grandly to the sky, to the screaming, ragged maw of the Devourer that was currently chewing through the stratosphere, turning the blue horizon into a bruised purple void.
"You fly up there. You open yourself. You suck the Devourer inside, just like you sucked up the Titan’s rage.
You become the prison. You are a Keeper of Pandora's line, are you not?
You would become the jar." He grinned at me, a jagged, skeletal expression, as if he'd made a clever insider joke.
“It is what you were bred for. What you were trained for. "
"And then?" I asked, my voice ringing with impatience, though a cold pit of dread was opening in my stomach.
"And then you lock the door from the inside," Hades said simply.
"You enter a state of permanent stasis. You become a star in the sky, cold and unmoving, holding the darkness for eternity.
You will be conscious, in a way. You will see the world turn, watch civilizations rise and fall, but you will never touch it again. "
He paused, letting the silence stretch, before delivering the kill shot.
"But, the world lives. And your boys..." He glanced toward the monstrous forms of the Princes, his expression mildly pitying.
"Without the bond anchoring them to a singularity, to you, the Titan magic fades.
They return to their normal, manageable divine forms. They walk free. No chains. No cages. Just... life."
I felt the air leave the valley.
I looked at Kaelen. The Dragon Prince was a terrifying silhouette of obsidian scales and jagged spines, his massive chest heaving like a bellows. Black smoke curled lazily from his nostrils, carrying the scent of sulfur and rage.
I looked at Thane. The Bear Prince was waist-deep in the bedrock, fighting a losing battle against the earth that seemed intent on swallowing him whole. He looked exhausted, his massive paws trembling as he tried to hold his ground.
"And option two?" I demanded, the star-metal on my arm pulsing hot and fast, syncing with the frantic beat of my heart.
"We go downstairs," Hades said, pointing a thumb at the scorched ground. "Tartarus. The roots of the world. The Devourer is eating the sky, but its stomach is in the Void beneath the Pit. We go down there, and you kill it at the source."
"The catch," I prompted, narrowing my eyes. "You’re a banker, Hades. You're a bureaucrat of souls. There’s always a fee."
"A keen eye," he smiled, and the temperature dropped another ten degrees, frosting the metal of my arm.
"The Titan blood you absorbed? It belongs to the deep earth.
If you enter my realm voluntarily, carrying that much Old Magic.
.. you trigger the Law of the Soil. You become subjects of the Underworld. "
I froze. "Subjects?" There was no way he'd just treat us like run of the mill subjects.
"Citizens with... extreme contractual obligations," he corrected smoothly. "You survive, you save the world, but you never leave. You belong to me. My enforcers. My hunt dogs."
He looked at Flynn. The Wolf Prince was currently gnawing on the trunk of a petrified spruce tree, his amber eyes darting wildly, chewing to keep his anxiety from overwhelming him.
"Fitting, really," Hades mused. "I’ve been needing a new hound."
The choice hung in the air, heavy as the toxic smoke choking the valley.
Option one? I die, essentially. I become a celestial ornament, a frozen guardian. But they go free. They get the life that was stolen from them for a thousand years. They get to feel the sun, taste wine, walk through a city without fear.
Option two? We live, but they trade one cage for another. They trade Hera’s chains for Hades’s leash. They trade a prison of light for a prison of stone.
I looked at Athena. She was pale, leaning heavily on her spear, watching the exchange with unmasked horror. She knew what servitude to Hades meant.
It meant erasure.
It meant fading into the gloom until you forgot your own name.
She shook her head slightly, a frantic, minute motion. I couldn't tell whether she was encouraging me to reject both options or pitying me for having to choose between them, because I didn't see any other way out of this mess. The whole world seemed to be rejecting us, literally.
I looked back at my men. My monsters.
Kaelen roared, a sound of pure frustration that sent a tremor through the ground.
He was trapped in the dragon form, his humanity submerged under layers of scales and instinct.
Though I couldn't read his facial expressions anymore, that didn't mean that I was oblivious to his rage.
I could feel it boiling in the bond between us, a river of molten gold.
They have spent a millennium in the dark, I thought, the realization sharp and agonizing. I won't send them back. I can't be the reason they lose the sun again.
I stepped toward Hades. My metal boots crunched on the molten stone, leaving glowing, violet footprints in my wake.
"We take option one," I said.
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the Devourer seemed to pause its chewing. The wind died. The fires halted.
"Aria," Athena whispered, stepping forward, her hand reaching out but stopping short of touching me. "You will be... frozen. Forever. It is a fate worse than death."
"I'm a Keeper," I said, my voice steady, though my human heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against my metal ribs. "My job is to hold the door. That is the first rule of the Citadel. The Keeper stands between. This is just a permanent position."
I lifted my chin, forcing back the tears that threatened to blur my vision. "I was never meant to have a life anyway. I was made for this."
I extended my hand toward the Lord of the Dead. "Do it. I'll act as the jar or box or whatever. Just tell me what to do."
NO.
The word didn't come from a throat. It exploded in my skull like a grenade, shattering my thoughts. I yanked my hand back and cupped the sides of my head as though that could do anything to alleviate the pain that the voices had caused.
It was a four-part harmony of absolute, violent rejection.
Kaelen moved.
He didn't launch himself at Hades. He launched himself at me.
A massive, scaled claw, the size of a carriage, slammed down in front of me, shattering the rock and cutting off my path to the Death God. The impact knocked me back, the shockwave lifting me off my feet. I stumbled, sparks flying as my metal shoulder scraped against a granite boulder.
You do not make this trade, Kaelen’s voice roared in my mind. It was dragon-speech, layered with fire, gold, and the screeching of metal on metal. I did not claw my way out of the dark just to watch you turn into a star. I did not burn the world to find you only to lose you to the sky!
I sink, Thane’s thought rumbled, a deep, tectonic grinding that shook the marrow of my bones. I sink into the mud before I let you stand alone in the cold. I will pull the whole world down on top of us before I let you become a statue, Aria. I will break the earth itself.
"He's offering you freedom!" I screamed at the dragon, ignoring the heat radiating from his body, gesturing frantically to the sliver of unobscured sky. "You go back to Olympus! You live! It's what you wanted!"
We live as widowers, Elias’s voice cut in, sharp and agonizingly sad.