Chapter 15
Safety Is Relative
LYRA
I’m basically expecting Rhea to take us down more tunnels to some kind of dungeon-style room with torture equipment, or at least chains on the wall that magically keep a god and goddess from running.
But Rhea doesn’t bolt down a tunnel. She runs for the pillars.
Gods, she’s fast. So fast that even at my own goddess speed I can hardly keep up, the world blurring by in flashes of color then black and white as Boone continues trying to keep us hidden.
She circles to the back of the massive pillar of earth and stops there.
Not breathing even a little bit hard, she presses her hands to the root, and like a baby bird opening its beak for its mother, the treelike roots split themselves apart.
Vines and flowers crawl out of the way, the wood itself untwisting and separating.
The sound it makes is a creaking and brushing.
Soft. Almost impossible to hear above the roar of ocean waves and blaze of fire from the other pillars.
They may be a mile apart, but they’re so big, that doesn’t matter.
The splitting and moving stops, and she ushers us into a chamber inside the earthen column that looks like the hollowed-out center of a tree.
Not by any means the size of the full root.
More like the wood drew back to form a tiny, wonky-shaped chamber just for Boone and me, big enough for us to stand up or lie down in.
The creaking starts again as Rhea closes the three of us inside.
Immediately, a tiny blue flame appears in Boone’s palm, lighting the dark space. Hermes’ never-ending fire that doesn’t burn what it touches—a gift to thieves. But now Boone is the god of thieves, so I guess it’s his fire to control. At least we’ll have light in here.
In the next instant, he whirls on Rhea, hand to her throat. “No more cryptic shit. Explain.”
Rhea’s lips flatten a bit, and she doesn’t answer, instead giving his hand a pointed look.
From the tension that ripples across his shoulders, Boone is debating what to do. His eyes narrow. “We can’t escape you,” he admits slowly. “And I doubt we can kill you.”
“It is a conundrum,” the Titaness murmurs, like he isn’t still gripping her by the neck.
He grunts, an angry growl of a sound. But he also drops his hand.
As if none of that happened, Rhea adjusts her pale-pink dress, brushing off an invisible piece of dirt. “You will be safe here for now.”
“Safe?” I laugh at that. The sound pops from me like I fired a gun. “From what? You?”
We’re only safe with her because she’s allowing it.
“From the others,” she says.
“That’s not threatening as fuck,” I mutter as I glance toward the place we entered, now a wall of tree roots, almost expecting to hear pounding as they try to get in.
“And,” she continues, “from the Pandemonium.”
“Okay, what is that?” Boone asks before I can.
He’s loud enough that the Titaness flinches. Not from fear of us. Her swift glance at the closed “door” to this hidden place tells me it’s fear of whatever is out there.
Rhea studies my face, and I frown at her, which is when she finally answers. “When you hear that bell, the Pandemonium are unleashed throughout Tartarus. They are one of the many measures to keep us down here—we think to keep us in our cells.”
We glance at her. Other than rabid Theia, we didn’t hear or see anything. “Do you mean the Titans go…wild?” Boone asks.
She shakes her head. “There is an onyx obelisk in the tunnel that leads to the bridge over the abyss where you entered Tartarus at the gates,” she says.
“All we know is that when the bell goes off, the sound comes from inside that structure, and the onyx…vibrates. Nothing seems to emerge, but when they touch us, like they did Theia…” Rhea shudders.
“The Pandemonium can’t pass through doors or walls.
So whenever you hear that bell, hide somewhere you can shut yourself in for a few hours.
The closer you are to that obelisk, the faster you need to run. ”
“I don’t believe you,” Boone says, hard-voiced. “Shouldn’t the Pandemonium have come right by us? We saw nothing. Heard nothing.”
“That’s what makes them so dangerous. They are invisible, soundless, no smell, no warning. Just one touch and…” Another shudder racks her.
What she’s saying should terrify me, probably, but I think I’m starting to go numb from everything being thrown at me—the Pandemonium, that I’m the Titans’ savior somehow, Hestia’s Lock, what I saw inside those red cracks—I don’t know what to believe.
Boone’s shaking his head, though, still doubtful. “You said it takes hours for the Pandemonium to clear. But we were only in Hestia’s Lock for thirty minutes at most.”
“You were in there for a full day,” Rhea corrects.
He rears back like she hit him, but I…I feel nothing. Numb is kind of nice, now that I think about it.
“I shouldn’t stay with you,” Rhea says. “I’ll return when it’s safer for you out there.”
Boone crosses his arms, eyeing her like he doesn’t believe a word coming out of her mouth. “You just told us to hide from things that induce violence. You’d risk going out there so soon?”
Rhea’s calm cracks the tiniest bit, cut through with irritation. “I can see you are going to be an interesting addition. Perhaps I should separate you two—”
“No!” I grab Boone’s wrist just as he takes a menacing step forward.
“If you think you’re splitting us up,” he snarls, “you’ll have a fight on your hands.”
She glances at me, then at the way I’m holding on to him, and a frown of what looks like motherly concern mars her brow.
I don’t let go of him. His is the only face down here I trust.
And I sink further into numbness.
Rhea sighs, eyeing him like he’s a recalcitrant child. “Fine. I won’t separate you. But I do need to be with at least one of the other Titans or they’ll know that I’ve hidden you away and have a better idea of where to come looking.”
“No.” He slashes a hand through the air. “You stay with us, or we find our own way—”
He stops talking when I tug on his wrist. “Where’s Cronos?”
“When the bell went off before, he got you two safely into the Lock. But he wasn’t able to get himself out. The only way off that bridge is to jump in the Locks or go down the tunnel past the obelisk the Pandemonium come from. We were able to subdue him. He’s locked in one of the cells.”
“Cells?” I ask.
She nods. “The tunnels are the prison part of Tartarus.”
Oh.
“Wait.” Boone holds up a hand. “The effect wears off?”
“After a day or so,” she says. “Sometimes longer. We’re…dangerous…like that. Even to one another. It’s better—”
“Both Cronos and Iapetus said I was your savior.” I cut her off in a voice that doesn’t sound like my own. Like I’m far away and watching from outside myself. “What did they mean?”
I catch the way Rhea winces, and she takes a very long time to answer, clearly thinking through her words. “You’re our only way out of Tartarus. Phoebe has seen it.”
The quiet words, even gently delivered, are like a thunderclap.
Phoebe saw it.
The Titaness of prophecy.
Merciful gods in all the heavens. Iapetus said something about a prophecy. Am I prophesied to release the Titans from Tartarus? Unleash them on the world?
Me?
How? Why? Although the answer to why I’d release them is already obvious—accidentally, while trying to escape myself. Is releasing the Titans my only way out?
“Lyra’s path will always lead her here,” Rhea finally says. Quietly. There’s even a hint of apology in her voice.
Always.
I always end up down here.
“Lies,” Boone snarls.
I jerk my gaze to him. He’s looming over Rhea now, fists clenched. Utterly sure. He’s right. He has to be right. We can’t believe anything they say.
Rhea’s watching me closely, and something like grief passes over her features—or fear, maybe—before she turns her attention to Boone. “I can’t tell you more now. She’s too close to breaking. It happens when she learns too much too fast.”
She steps toward the part of the wall we came through before and places her hand to it, and with the same creaking and brushing sounds, louder in here than it was from the outside, the roots start to part.
“Fucking Titans,” Boone mutters. “You’re going to drop a bomb on her like that and just leave?”
She doesn’t stop what she’s doing. “If I say more, it ends badly.”
I feel Boone staring at me, but I don’t look away from Rhea. I already know what he’s thinking. Are we really going to let her close us in here with no way out?
Honestly…better in here alone than out there with them.
She steps outside and closes the gap until there’s only a sliver of her face showing. “Oh, and stay away from the cracks of broken time,” she warns. “If you do or say the wrong thing to someone from the past, you’ll reset time for everyone.”
Then the roots close us in.