Chapter 11
As Time Goes By
LYRA
It takes everything I have not to twitch, let alone to keep from shaking on an inhale of relief.
Thank the fates. Boone’s here. I’m not alone.
Although…he’s also not visible. When did that become a thing?
Collectively, they all take a menacing step toward us, and fear shoots up my spine like Zeus slammed one of his lightning bolts into me. I imagine all the hairs on my body spiking up and out, like a wolf raising its hackles.
When every gaze trained on me shifts behind me, for a second I think Boone must be doing whatever he planned to get us out of here. It takes me too long to identify the fear that crosses the Titans’ faces. Because fear makes no sense.
More than one backpedals in the other direction. But not Iapetus.
“Lyra, run,” he whisper-yells.
I think Rhea reaches for me, but she misses as I whirl around to see what they’re all cringing away from.
I have a split second to realize another one of those red, glittering slashes that look like something ripped through the air with claws, leaving a jagged cut, is coming straight at me. “Not again—”
Another oppressive silence as it swallows me. Almost as quickly, sound returns as whatever the fuck those crystal things are disappears from view in a glittering crimson halo, and I can hear Hades’ voice somewhere nearby. It only takes a glance around to figure out exactly where and when I am.
Oh gods. I know this.
It’s impossible not to know.
This was one of the worst moments of my life.
White, fluted Corinthian pillars lead up a pathway to a set of floating stairs.
Literally floating, not attached to one another or the ground.
I’m standing well up the path to Hera’s quartz-adorned observatory, the pink glow from the lanterns inside casting a light over the scene below me.
Where I am, half hidden behind one of the columns, no one can see me.
But I can see them…
See me.
What’s happening inside these crystalline forms narrows down to one of two possibilities.
Either they could be some kind of strange glamour, meant to mess with my head, probably to make me do the Titans’ bidding or break me or something.
But what’s seeming more likely, especially as I watch myself with Hades across the way…
This is time travel.
I’m being taken back in time when I get swallowed up in the crimson light. That’s it. It has to be. I am going to the past.
Fuck me.
The past version of me standing before Hades is a mess thanks to Athena’s horror of a Labor.
My shoes are covered in bug guts, both from killing bugs and from running through their remains inside the glass maze she made out of the Roman Colosseum.
There are holes in my clothes where the spiders and the bullet ant pierced through.
My face is so pale, I could apply for permanent specter status.
And there’s blood on my shirt. I try not to think about whose blood.
I look like a sweet spring breeze could make me disintegrate as I face down a furious Hades, with Charon and Cerberus looking on like worried mother hens.
Charon, who was against the idea of us using Pandora’s Box to get Persephone out. No way did he know what the result would be, but damned if he wasn’t right.
Hades takes a step toward that girl from what feels like lifetimes ago. “Lyra—”
“Don’t,” she says calmly. To the current me, past me sounds like a recorded voice, like a robot, as I slowly move away from him. “You don’t want to come anywhere near me right now.”
He stops.
Gods, even now, knowing that he was pushing me away for real reasons, he seems so…remote. So cold.
I gave him myself, all of me, and he shut me out the next morning.
Yes, I knew there was no future in it when I was still human, but I didn’t expect him to make me feel…
used. To discard me so carelessly. I don’t think I could have done that to him.
Made him feel worthless, like nothing, after what we shared.
The biggest fear I’ve been holding back since I ended up in here with no Persephone in sight rears its ugly head and lashes at my insides like acid rain.
Did Hades know?
“Was that what last night was about?” Past Lyra asks him. “Boosting my confidence or something to try to get me to win? You feel nothing for me. I’m just a tool.”
“I—”
“That wasn’t a question.”
Lyra takes another slow, careful step back, even though he doesn’t move.
I remember so well just wanting to get away.
To not be there. To not hear the truth or see it in his eyes.
That he cared nothing for me, but even worse, that he’d made me believe he might just a little bit as some part of a manipulation or bigger plan.
He did that to a girl who’d never felt love.
I look away, not wanting to see this again.
“I thought I could see you,” I hear Lyra say. “The real you. But it was all a calculation.”
And I can’t help but look back. The two solitary figures stare at each other. Even knowing how this ends, even having gotten an explanation from him that he had to break my heart so that my curse would stay intact enough to get through the sirens, resentment flares inside my chest.
Hot. Heavy. Full of the heartache that he put me through.
Made worse now by where I’ve ended up.
Lyra drops her gaze to a spot at his feet. “You made me burn for you.”
And just like it did then, my heart breaks all over again.
Tartarus and time have me questioning if any of it was real.
Questioning us. Did I let him off too easily when he explained why he did all those things?
Did I believe him too readily? Did he do all that not just so that I’d win the Crucible, but because winning meant he’d get the box to get Persephone out?
Did he know I’d end up stuck in Tartarus?
Did he not care as long as it was a chance to save her?
Was I his pawn in more ways than I ever realized?
I don’t want to believe it, but seeing the way he was in this moment again… It hurts.
“Fuck,” Hades mutters. “Lyra, listen to me—”
She shakes her head, and even from here I can see the fear on my own face. The denial. The need to protect my heart from more damage, a heart so desperate for love it’s still a terrible ache inside me.
“I don’t want to hear what you have to say,” Lyra says. “I lost today.”
“I know,” he says.
“I can’t win the Crucible.”
Hades doesn’t respond.
“I can’t make you king, so you don’t need me anymore.” Past me looks down at her feet.
Hades takes a step closer, eyes turning to molten silver. “The crown isn’t out of reach yet.”
Lyra blinks, then raises her head to stare at him, and I know what she’s thinking.
For her to win, her friend and fellow competitor, Diego, would have to die.
She searches his face for any hint that what he’s saying bothers him at all.
“And you think being an asshole is going to make me want to win?”
An emotion flickers over Hades’ features, but it’s gone too fast to catch, even when I know what I’m looking for. “Make me king, and I’ll grant you anything you ask for that is in my power to give.”
Anger whips through me for that girl I was. For me now.
“Do you want to be back with your parents? Done.” He snaps his fingers. Does he know my parents never loved me? What he’d be sending me back to? “Do you want to be rich? Done.” Another snap. “Rule a country? It’s yours.”
I forgot he’d offered those things. Afterward. Forgot that he’d shown how clearly he didn’t know me.
A heaviness sets up camp in my chest.
“I don’t want anything,” Lyra tells him.
She’s begging him not to keep going. With her eyes. The way she leans away. She should throw a rock at his stupid head.
Hades prowls closer. “Everyone wants something.”
She backs up. “Not from you.”
There’s only the slightest pause in his steps, and then he keeps coming. “That’s pride speaking, Lyra. Get over it and take something for yourself.”
Lyra slips two fingers in the small, zippered pocket where I kept the pearls he gave me. “Come closer, and I’m gone.”
He jerks up hard at that, fury and a sort of shocked denial whipping across those beautiful features.
And betrayal.
I want to shout at him. Even now. Even as that heaviness in my chest worsens.
A shadow streaks by overhead, and Hades’ gaze shoots past her.
Past me from that awful day gasps.
I remember why. Because I felt Hades’ fear in that moment.
For me.
It pulls me up sharply now. Fear doesn’t make sense, but I think having felt that from him is why I blocked out a lot of other things about this moment.
About how he’d been. To me, later, after I won, after all the explanations, his fear in this moment was proof that he loved me despite all the terrible things he said.
But now…doubts are winding around me like a snake, smothering me.
“No!” Hades shouts as the winged Daemones land, two on either side of past Lyra, and take her by the arms. I remember this, too. How they took me away and locked me up, and how my heart was too broken to even care.
I watch this living rerun of the worst episode of my life, wishing I could turn it off.
But I can’t, so I grit my teeth as the Daemones take off into the sky, dragging Lyra away from the mountain.
And Hades shouts a string of profanities into the skies after me, his voice filled with rage and doom and death.
But when past Lyra is out of sight, Hades goes quiet…
and very, very immobile. Painfully slowly, his head drops forward until his chin is on his chest. The stillness that descends is like the hush at a funeral.
He stares at the ground, then waves one hand at Charon and Cerberus, who haven’t moved. “Leave me.”
Though they are both visibly reluctant, they do. They walk back toward the narrow stairs that wind down from Hera’s observatory, leading away from where I still hide among the pillars on the pathway above them.