Chapter 9
Mistress
LYRA
A now-familiar chalkboard screech sends fear shooting over my skin, standing every hair up on end like toy soldiers. Then another screech, followed by another, and then more. All coming from high overhead.
We don’t even have to debate it. Boone and I take off at a sprint.
The screeches turn into a cacophony, drawing closer and closer, along with a low, rhythmic thumping that I realize is the beat of wings.
Those fuckers can fly. One swoops down on our left, and Boone throws an elbow without breaking stride.
I swing my axe at another and miss. Then together, we hurl ourselves through the doorway to land at the Titans’ feet.
“Congratulations.” Hestia’s voice comes from the doorway behind us. “You have unsealed my Lock.”
That’s when my power returns.
Before, when I was made into a goddess, I basically died first.
That time, a pinpoint of light in my vision grew larger and larger, followed by heat that spread everywhere, and finally pulses of power, as if a defibrillator was being used on me.
Not this time.
This time it’s like being woken from a dead sleep by ice shooting directly into my spine with a long, thick needle. The heat is still there, but the cold sizzles through my veins so fast, I might as well turn frozen solid.
About the time I hear Boone grunt, the sensation disappears, like it never was to begin with.
“That’s new,” a woman murmurs. Whispers, more like.
A Titaness. Some accounts have only the Titans down here. But history, especially ancient history written by men, often overlooks women. Clearly, they got this part wrong.
“What’s new?” I grumble as I gain my feet. “Gaining goddess powers never hurt before?”
“Not that,” she says.
I look up at the woman not ten feet from me.
She’s tall and slender, and the upper part of her chestnut-skinned, hollow-cheeked face is hidden behind a mask shaped like an owl and the same color as her brown hair.
I only know of one masked Titan. She’s got to be Mnemosyne, mother of the Muses, Titaness of memory and stories.
She points a finger that reminds me of a talon. Not at us. Behind us.
I jerk around, axe raised, ready to take on another Nightmare, only to see the creatures—there must be hundreds of them—at the doorway, standing in rows, glaring at us with their unsettling eyeless heads, mouths open in silent, jagged-toothed shouts.
Except they’re not coming through. They’re just standing there. Motionless.
Behind me, another Titaness whispers, “How does she have a weapon?”
And a different Titan, sounding a little pissy, says something about how “right now the bigger issue is them.”
The Nightmares still staring me down? “Yeah,” I toss over my shoulder at him. “I’d call them a big godsdamned issue.”
“For the love of the cosmos, keep your voice down,” one of the others whisper-hisses at me.
Cronos said something like that, too, right before that bell. Loud noises apparently wake something even Titans fear. Awesome. This just keeps getting better and better.
The Nightmare at the front steps forward, and Boone and I both step back.
Only, instead of attacking, one by one, they bow.
To…me. Us?
At least I think they do.
Um…
I look at Boone, who shrugs, then glance around to find the Titans watching all this with stoic faces. Or is that god-level shock?
“Have they ever done that?” The grumpy-sounding Titan speaks again. Quietly. I get the sense that quiet is not his normal mode.
He’s wearing white knee-high athletic socks with sandals, shorts, and a bright salmon-colored shirt. Like the worst kind of tourist. Iapetus, I think? One of the four original pillars of the earth who held up the four corners of the skies.
He was the pillar of the west. Iapetus’ hair is dark gray shot through with silver, reminding me of storm clouds, striking against deep brown skin.
He’s the Titan of controlling life and pain and considered to be the father of mortals.
I’m not sure if his clothes represent the mortals part or the pain part.
His question was muttered to masked Mnemosyne, who stands closest to him.
She puts a hand to her temple. Do Titans get headaches? “Never,” she says. Or…did the owl’s mouth move instead of the Titaness’s? Either way, I can’t tell if she’s grim or pleased.
Right now, with my arm starting to shake from holding my axe at the ready, I’m just trying to keep up.
“You are the only one worthy of us, Lyra Keres,” a hissing and yet sweet voice says inside my head.
I swing my attention back to the Nightmares, who rise from their bows in an oddly uniform motion.
“When the time comes, we will follow you, Mistress. You have only to command.”
I don’t know what that means. Yet another question mark. Those seem to be piling up around me like sand dunes today.
I’m tempted to command them to get me out of Tartarus. The only thing that stops me is knowing that if they could have escaped before, they would have already.
The one Nightmare in the center of the group nods its head, like a smaller bow. Then, with a swish of air, the archway closes with the Nightmares behind it, leaving us here.
The wall right in front of us, where the arch was, closes, suddenly appearing solid except for Hestia’s symbols carved into the center. Before my eyes, a new, glittering golden symbol appears in the stone. Two flames coming up out of a two-legged table.
The icon for the goddess Hestia.
It glitters at me as if lit with an inner fire.
“Well, at least she was fast this time.” I hear a whisper from one of the Titans.
Right. One threat is no longer a threat. We should be facing the one that still is.