Chapter 5
Never Dream
LYRA
Brad and Jessica Keres. They’re here. They came for me finally.
Not Hades but my parents.
Another stabbing sensation rips through my head, and my heart might as well tear in two. Until I met Hades, I only ever wanted three things—to lose my curse, my freedom from the Order, and a real family. Is the wish Hestia is granting me the one I’ve ached for the longest?
“You’ve grown up so much,” Mom whispers.
The haze in this illusion makes it hard to collect details, like walking through a dream, but I still greedily absorb everything I can about both my parents.
My mom is petite, her brown hair graying at the roots, but she does have green eyes like mine with gold at the center.
My dad is tall with a belly that reminds me of Santa Claus.
I get the raven-black shade of my hair from him.
Brown eyes, though. I didn’t seem to inherit any of his other features.
I used to put myself to sleep imagining this exact moment. When they came back for me.
My father holds a trembling hand out to me. “We’ve come to take you home, baby.”
His eyes brim with hope, but worry lines bracket them, etched deep as if carved there by time. Is this an act? Or did they miss me every single night the way I missed them? Did they wonder what I was doing? Picture me thieving? Pray for my safety?
It’s all a lie, I try to tell myself, and I flinch with the pain. Don’t believe it.
But it feels so…much better…to believe this. It doesn’t hurt. It feels…warm and more real by the second, and convincing my mind that it’s fake is getting harder.
The only way they’d be here in the den is if they came here to pay off our family debts and take me home… Maybe I was wrong. Maybe they do care.
“You’re really here?” I ask.
Is that my voice?
I sound…off. Like an automaton reciting scripted lines.
Besides, that’s not what I should have asked.
I want to ask how in the name of Hades they could have left me here so long.
I want to demand why they thought a three-year-old should be paying off debt of any kind.
I want to ask why they blamed me for Zeus’ curse in the first place.
My mother is the one whose water broke in his temple, pissing him off. It’s her damned fault.
So many other questions.
My mother nods, dropping her hand from her mouth to smile at me through the mist of tears. “Yes, baby,” she says. “We’re really here.”
She steps closer, opening her arms, beckoning me.
Something pinches in my head, like the start of a headache. Pain means something, doesn’t it? But the reason why is slippery. Didn’t Hestia say something about a threshold? Maybe I’m remembering that wrong.
Swallowing hard, I manage to keep my feet where they are, but I still reach out and grasp her hand. Then close my eyes as even that small touch sends happiness through me on a surge of pure warmth.
All the pieces of my heart that chipped off—year after year, each time they didn’t come—rush back in and snap together. Whole again. Like nothing was ever missing.
A tear squeezes out to run down my cheek. Grief doesn’t always come from losing someone—it also comes from realizing they were never really yours to begin with.
I was so angry with them, but now all I want is for this to be true.
I can have both, can’t I? Them and Hades?
Another pinch of pain—duller, though—and in the back of my head, a small voice, barely audible, whispers that something is wrong.
That this isn’t right. Isn’t real. I have new dreams and a new family.
But it’s such a little voice. Distant and far from me and growing softer and hazier by the second.
My mother squeezes my hand. “Let’s go home, Lyra.”
A small part of me is still fighting this…compulsion…but only a small part, and I step through the doorway and into my parents’ arms, and what was left of that little doubting, warning voice flies away.
Everything that’s happened recently—the Crucible, Hades, Tartarus—suddenly, it becomes so obvious that all of that was just a dream. A nightmare, most of it. I’m still in the Order, still cursed, still paying off our debt…and yet my parents have come to free me and take me home.
“Come on, sweetheart,” my dad says in a voice wobbly with tears. He clears his throat.
Before they can lead me away, Felix gives me a big hug. It’s a little uncomfortable, since Felix is not and has never been a hugger. But I find myself hugging him back.
“My little master thief,” he says in my ear.
Master thief? I try to pull away, the ache behind my eyes growing again. Because that sounds wrong. I’m not a master thief. I’m a…
His face blurs a little more, turns rosier, and the warmth takes away the headache.
And I suddenly remember things are different. Or…not suddenly. More like the knowledge just…is. I belonged here.
Felix looks over my shoulder at my parents. “You should be proud. She’s one of our best. Second only to Boone.”
I…am?
Pride swells in my chest as memories of my scores flash through my mind. I am. I’m one of the best master thieves they’ve ever seen.
I pull back and grin at Felix. “You only want me to come fix your spreadsheets.”
Spreadsheets? I don’t do spreadsheets. That’s the clerks’ job. Why did I say that?
A sharper shot of pain stabs behind my eyes, and for a flash, the space it takes for a hummingbird’s wing to flutter once, I think Felix’s face morphs into something…not human. Are there…teeth? Did I see jagged teeth?
But even faster, he’s back to smiling. No pain, either. Must’ve been a trick of the pretty lighting.
He shakes his head with a click of his tongue. “You will be a sore loss to the den.”
Which makes me tear up. So many years in one place will do that.
As I step away from him, my mother takes my hand and my father wraps an arm around my shoulders. Together, they lead me away down the long natural stone hallway, navigating the various twists and turns of the den secretly buried underneath the city of San Francisco.
We get to the area where the newest pledges are required to stock rubber boots and flashlights for the thieves coming and going from our underground tunnels. I help my parents find pairs that fit them before I grab one of the lights. Which is when the slap of running feet has me glancing back.
Then straightening.
Boone.
“Lyra,” he calls.
The second he says my name, the edges of my vision feather and fuzz and another wave of memories comes at me. Boone and I…
We’re partners.
Best friends, but more than that, when Boone and I work together, we’re unstoppable.