Chapter 17
Family Time
LYRA
When the sensation of being pulled through time dissipates, I am standing between the side of a building and thick woods that abut it.
No Boone to be seen.
I whip around, searching for him, but don’t call out. I have no idea who else might hear. “What in the name of Zeus’ folly did you do, Boone?” I mutter to myself.
The Titans are afraid of the broken time for a reason. Rhea said I always end up in Tartarus. What if I cause world-ending paradoxes or something?
But I can already hear Boone’s arguments in my head. We don’t know who or what to believe in Tartarus. What if they’re trying to keep us from learning that we can get out this way? On the flip side, they could also be the ones controlling where time takes us, trying to manipulate us.
So the question is…what do I want to do now? Hide and wait for time to swing back by, like catching a trolley? Or try to find out more?
I take stock of where I am.
The building is huge and far from modern.
It’s several stories tall, and I think I see a hint of smooth columns on the side farthest from where I stand.
It doesn’t look like the pristine white Greek-inspired temples of my current day.
Instead, it’s painted all sorts of colors—maroons, yellows, blues, blacks.
Beyond that, I catch the glint of sparkling sunlight off dark-turquoise-colored waters. Waters reflecting the blue of a perfect, cloudless sky.
The Mediterranean, maybe. Definitely the past. Will Hades show up in this past, too?
A sharp burn of anger stirs in my chest all over again.
I still can’t believe he never said anything about meeting me before.
I kissed a version of you with long hair in the water garden, Lyra seems like a conversation we should have had by now.
A shout of laughter comes from the opposite corner of the building from where I am now. More toward the water. Curiosity—possibly my worst flaw, now that I’m lovable—tugs, and my feet follow the sound.
Just a little peek. I have thief training. I can get in and out without being seen, right? Besides which, time will take me back eventually. What’s the worst that—
Oh, hells. Was I seriously going to think what’s the worst that could happen? Maybe Hades is right and my sense of self-preservation is broken.
Moving carefully, I focus on not making a sound as I creep all the way around the building and into the stubby trees that are thick on the ground here, moving outward and then back in toward the sounds of people.
A childish giggle reaches my ears, and I stop where I’m partially cloaked in the shade of a particularly dense set of bushes with shiny dark leaves.
I have to go up on tiptoe to see over the shrubbery.
The sight that greets my eyes requires me to slap my free hand over my mouth to swallow back my gasp, and then I wince and wait for discovery.
It doesn’t come. Letting out a slow, silent breath of relief, I rise back up and look.
Cronos, Rhea, and their children are enjoying a day together as a family. Honestly, when I first looked, I thought it was Hades tossing an angelic-looking baby boy high into the air, garnering adorable, high-pitched squeals and giggles. But it’s not. It’s Cronos.
Younger than the one in Tartarus, without the silver. Without the lines around his eyes and mouth, either. The baby he’s tossing has a shock of white-blond hair. No need to guess—Zeus.
As I watch, Cronos gives the baby an extra boost into the air, and when Zeus reaches the pinnacle, lightning surges from his body with an immediate clap of thunder.
Cronos has to jump to the side to avoid being struck directly but also manages to catch his son on the way down.
He gives a great, chortling laugh, throwing his head back in obvious delight.
“You threw him too high again,” a familiar, patient voice chides gently from somewhere off to my right. “You scared him.”
Rhea.
Cronos cuddles baby Zeus, tickling him under the chin. His pale-blue eyes, like his son’s, are twinkling. “He’s not scared. He’s showing off.”
“Uh-huh,” Rhea murmurs from somewhere I still can’t see.
“You aren’t afraid of anything. Are you?” Cronos coos at the baby. Even from here I can see the delighted grin Zeus beams back at his father as he babbles with baby talk that the King of the Titans seems to understand, nodding along.
“Well, you’re scaring me, my love.” The gentleness has left Rhea’s voice, replaced by affectionate exasperation.
“Fine. Fine. Not so high,” Cronos grumbles. Then to Zeus in a low voice, “Your mother is too easily scared.”
“I heard that,” Rhea calls.
“Mama!” a small voice cries out from the sea beyond. There’s a spit of beach leading from the water to a half-moon white-rocked cliff, and atop that cliff, the family of immortals sits in a field.
Squinting, I spot Poseidon’s long, blue hair first. He’s maybe twelve years old. With a wave of his hands, two dolphins flip out of the water, their chirping noises audible from here.
There’s a sound of clapping off to my right followed by, “Wonderful!” from Rhea, and even from a distance it’s easy to see the way Poseidon puffs up with boyish pride.
I lean to my left, pulse hammering in my ears as I search for Hades, but I don’t see him.
Instead, I spot a younger Rhea sitting on a rough brown cloth spread out over the ground.
The Queen of the Titans is clad in a tunic-style dress similar to the pink one she was wearing in Tartarus, but in black this time with a simple geometric design embroidered around the edges.
Beside her, Hestia, maybe in her mid-twenties, is helping unload a basket of food.
In Rhea’s lap, she cuddles a small girl of three or so who is already going to be an obvious striking beauty. Hera.
Everyone knows newborn gods stop physically aging in their twenties, so they really are these ages. Although the Titans have aged slightly in Tartarus, so maybe it’s not a full freeze. Not that it matters. The bigger question is…
When is this?
When does Cronos swallow his children? I would rack my brain for the historical dates taught to us in school, but I’m too distracted, still looking for Hades.
“Come eat!” Rhea calls to her family.
“Yay, bread!” A small girl with copper-colored ringlets is closer to where I hide, already golden in the way she shines. She bounces and claps her hands. Demeter.
But where is…
“Hades?” Rhea calls.
I lean farther, searching for even a glimpse.
“Do not move,” a low, shiver-inducing voice growls from…all around me.
Heart pounding, I freeze, not even breathing and honestly not sure I could if I tried.
Then my god of death—a younger Hades, probably in his late teens, maybe even twenty—appears in front of me in a swirl of black smoke that evaporates from him in wisps, as if he brought a piece of the Underworld with him when he teleported.
He grabs me by the wrist. “Who are you—” His silvery eyes flare with what almost appears to be recognition, but that’s not possible, not when he was this young. Except his next harsh whisper proves me wrong.
“…You.”