Chapter 8
Before My Time
LYRA
A lock of raven-black hair falls into silvery eyes that stare at me with sleepy adoration.
Hades.
My heart stutters, then jagged pain bursts through my head like fire burning away the underbrush and clearing the haze with the truth as the veil of the illusion rips from my mind.
Hades.
My home is with Hades. My life is with the god of death, the King of the Underworld. No…not king anymore.
I am queen.
I spin around my little-girl room and see incandescent shimmers of glamours and enchantments everywhere now.
This version of me, of my life… It isn’t real.
Exactly like she said she would, Hestia made me believe that none of that happened.
She showed me a different future. Yes…one where I got everything my younger self dreamed of for so very, very long. One where I could even have been happy.
But it’s not my future.
Not the one I choose for myself. Not the one I desperately need to get back to on the other side of those damned gates.
Not anymore, and it never will be.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to wrestle with the abrupt disillusionment.
The ache in my head turns into throbbing, like reality is still battling to keep the false narrative out.
Because I did want this once—the love of my parents.
The bigger shock, reverberating through me like an earthquake shaking the very foundations of San Francisco, is that what I will regret giving up most is…
“Lyra?” Boone’s voice sounds from behind me.
I whirl around to find him in my doorway, my parents’ worried faces tucked in behind him on either side.
My hand creeps up to my throat like I’m trying to contain my own sorrow as my throat closes up at the sight of his face.
This alternate life blends with what really happened, and I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Boone is only my friend from my life before—we were never partners, never best friends. Those were things I wanted. Desperately, at the time.
But that’s not what I want now. I walked away from those dreams with ease the second I gave my heart to Hades.
This Boone must see something of the truth in my face because he reaches out almost reflexively. “We’re supposed to start a business together—”
I shake my head. “It’s not real. None of it was.”
“Please,” he chokes out. “You’re the only true friend I have. I can’t do this alone.”
“I’m sorry.” I twist my lips around the words and the threatening burn of tears.
I’m sorry because now that I can see the glamour of Hestia’s test, I know the future she showed me would never have happened.
My parents were never coming back for me.
Even if I’d paid off the debt, I don’t think they would have taken me in.
I’m not sure they ever loved me, or missed me, or thought of me once they shucked me off to the Order, able to go on with their lives debt free and no longer burdened with a cursed child.
But Boone…
That future with him was…possible. My skills as an office clerk would have made me ideally suited to help him start a business. Was that what he’d wanted? His dream?
He closes his eyes, because he knows I won’t change my mind.
I take a step back, lifting my gaze to the ceiling, looking anywhere but at him. “Okay, Hestia!” I call out. “I’ve made my choice. Let me out.”
A hissing sound comes from the direction of the doorway.
Behind Boone, my parents’ faces…melt. Like candle wax.
The colors of their skin and hair and eyes drip away with it.
My throat was already raw and tight with emotion, but now it closes even more with gut-churning horror, making it hard to breathe as I see what lies beneath.
Because my parents aren’t an illusion…they are Nightmares.
Oh. My. Gods.
I’m not safe in my dreams here. I was being hunted.
I thought the creatures of antiquity were eradicated from the world around the same time the Titans were locked up in Tartarus. I guess they’ve been stuck down here, too, waiting for more victims.
And Cronos fed me to them like chum in the water.
The illusion melted away, they stand behind Boone in their true form.
Sickly pale, grayish-white skin stretches over an anthropoid shape—lanky and long-torsoed with humanish heads, they stand on two overlong legs and with two arms that nearly scrape the ground.
That’s where the resemblance to humans ends.
Their sinewy chest muscles blend into something that looks like tree roots under their skin, growing around their collarbones and leading up their necks to their faces, which have wrinkles where a nose should be, smooth sockets for eyes, and high foreheads that mold into what looks like a ridge at the back of their heads.
Their mouths are human-looking but filled with jagged teeth.
I wasn’t seeing things before.
Trust your damned instincts, Lyra.
In sync, they both open their mouths wide, and it only gets worse—those jagged teeth protrude on what, to me, looks like a beak. Pink and raw, their beaks are lined with those teeth along the entire length, snapping at me.
On sheer instinct, I reach behind me to grab the axes strapped to my back only to get handfuls of empty air. Which is when I remember that the Gate of Tartarus stripped me of my weapons and Hestia stripped me down to mortality.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Keeping my gaze glued to the snapping creatures, I try to think.
Is there anything in here that can help me?
Unless you count the doll—I mean, those plastic pointed toes could be used to stab—there’s nothing I can use to fight the Nightmares. Shit. Maybe I can run past them if they come in the room. Except Boone is blocking the doorway.
I pull my thinking up sharply.
Boone, who isn’t covered in a film of glamour, who has been crystal clear the entire time I’ve been down here. I squint at him. Why hasn’t he melted into a monster yet? Is he an NPC in this illusion? He’s holding still with his eyes closed.
One of the Nightmares lifts a long limb, and the hand at the end changes shape into something akin to a sword. Holy hells. The bastards are shape-shifters? It’s not entirely about glamouring?
I take up a fighting stance—feet wide, hands up, ready for it to come at me—but the thing that was my mother moments ago steps back and aligns the point of the sword with Boone’s spine. Then, even without eyes, I know it looks directly at me.
A threat.
Boone is real.
Did Cronos throw him down here with me, too?
What an asshole.
Holding up both hands, I don’t move. “Boone,” I whisper.
His eyes open slowly, and he stares at me, kind of hazy and confused. Oh my gods. It’s really him. Boone is here with me. Since when? The entire time?
Focus on the important stuff.
I think Boone is still caught in the fantasy, his eyes glassy and unfocused and slightly accusing. I do the only thing I can think of…
I whistle.
It’s one of the signals all pledges know—the warning to drop.
At the same time, I whirl and grab the doll, chucking it at the sword-armed Nightmare, but I miss and hit Boone right between the eyes.
Because he didn’t fucking drop.
His head snaps back. Before he can straighten, I tackle him, trying to take out his legs so he’ll fall forward instead of back. Which works great, except he lands on me with an oomph, though I’m not sure if it comes from him or me, because all the wind gets knocked right out of me.
“What the hells, Lyra,” he groans. “You don’t have to tackle me to—”
A flash of a weird, gray-fleshed sword comes from overhead, and, despite still struggling for air, I manage to roll me and Boone together, slamming my back into the doorjamb, but at least the Nightmare misses us. Its sword arm slams into…
Rock.
Not carpeted flooring.
The glamour of the bedroom and the house and the entire world of San Francisco melts away like an oil painting melting in a fire, and instead we’re lying on the ground in a huge space that reminds me of a pie wedge—wide at one end, which boasts a curved wall, and narrowing to a point at the other.
There is no ceiling, or maybe I can’t see it, since the top is so high up.
Smooth stone walls climb into the darkness of the abyss.
The space is lit only by a glowing orb that floats in the center close to the ground.
And scattered around the floor are bones. Bleached white like they’ve been in the sun.
Or picked so clean there’s nothing left.
Fuck.
“Move!” Boone, sounding more himself, wraps around me and rolls us both over and over and over as more than one sword arm flashes by, thudding against the ground with sickly noises as they miss each time.
Using a flipping technique, Boone has us on our feet, with him bodily between me and the two Nightmares, his arms stuck out to keep me from coming around him.
I lean over, getting a better look at their entire bodies. The rootlike growths around their shoulders and necks also extend down their legs. I shudder. Those things were my parents only a few moments ago.
With an otherworldly screech of sound that reminds me of nails being dragged down giant chalkboards, the two creatures charge.
Boone drops a shoulder and barrels into one of them, backing it up even as it pummels at him with its sword arms—but the swords are too long and it’s only hitting him with the fleshy part.
And the second Nightmare is coming straight for me.
My early years of training as a thief, including self-defense, kick in hard, and I manage to deflect its stabbing motion, grabbing it by the forearm and turning to bring its elbow down across my shoulder.
The arm bends the wrong way with a satisfying crunch, and the Nightmare screams. The sound seems to trigger its friend into a rage.
Across the room, the other Nightmare lifts Boone up, holding him lengthwise overhead like it’s lifting a barbell, not letting go no matter how much he thrashes. The thing has to be eight feet tall at least, and its arms are even longer.