Chapter 21
Cracking Up
LYRA
“Boone,” I whisper.
“I know,” he whispers back.
Because Persephone basically just pointed out the visible proof that the Titans couldn’t get out in thousands and thousands of years. And she did it so casually, like this doesn’t confirm that there’s no fucking way we’re making it out ourselves.
“Come on,” Persephone calls from across the way. “We don’t want to stay here too long. Using Pandora’s Box, or possibly your arrival here, always seems to make the Pandemonium set off more often.”
And I guess they can get up here. She doesn’t say it, but we both understand just the same.
With one last glance at the damage, we both trail over to where she’s standing.
She scoots around the thick back side of the pillar, then points up, which is when I see the crack.
It’s not like the other damage wrought by the Titans.
Theirs looked very different. This is a golden, glittering seam, like a vein of ore in a mine, part of the very rock.
“It’s beautiful,” I say slowly. “What is it?”
Persephone lowers her hand to her side. “It’s a break.”
Boone’s gaze traces the fracture, eyes sharp. “What do you mean a break?”
“It appeared a long time ago…” She trails off, making a face and visibly thinking about how to word it. “Something happened that shook Tartarus—”
“What?” I immediately ask.
She makes the same face, nose wrinkling deeper. “I can’t—”
“What’s the point of showing us this if you can’t give us any information about it?” Boone asks.
Another wince, and then she considers me closely. But I’m not shaking yet. I don’t think.
“It appeared the first time Lyra ended up down here,” she finally says. “And it’s getting bigger. Time resets put everything back as it was, but not this.”
Dread drops into my stomach like small stones into a still lake, creating larger and larger ripples. A crack in the very heart of the world isn’t enough? Now it’s getting worse?
Persephone takes a deep breath. “If we don’t get out of here soon…” Another breath. I don’t think she’s faking the fear that blanches her skin. “Come see.” Now she takes us to where we can see the pillars of sky and ocean and points to more cracks along those. “I think Tartarus itself is breaking.”
A larger rock of dread drops into my stomach. “Are you saying the world is teetering on the edge of collapse?”
Heavens save us.
Are we about to be buried alive down here? Is that what she’s saying? And we’re immortal. Would we live through that only to be pinned down for eternity?
That’s…
I don’t even want to think of what that would be like. Hades’ punishments for the wicked would look like vacations in comparison.
“I’m saying we don’t know.” She says this quietly. But the fear is still here, bracketing her mouth in lines now. “But do you really want to wait around to find out?”
Fuck.
Lots of fucks. Because sometimes one just isn’t enough.
How is it that I manage to find myself at the heart of a story about the end of the world? Seriously. I have to be the unluckiest girl alive. Definitely the wrong curse.
“Is this what’s causing the rumbling we’ve heard?”
Another doubt-filled look. “We don’t know that, either. It’s always been a little rumbly down here, but there’s been more of it lately.”
Great. Just great.
“How did you get down here?” Boone demands. “A straight answer this time.”
Persephone blinks at him. “I…don’t know that, either, and neither do the Titans.”
“That’s damn convenient,” Boone says.
He really does not like her.
Apparently oblivious to that, Persephone reaches out and pats his hand, making him jerk away from her like a startled animal.
“I wouldn’t call it convenient at all,” she says, lowering her hand to her side slowly.
Boone sets his feet with a glare. “What would you call it, then?”
“Frustrating.”
“That doesn’t make it any less convenient.”
She tips her head, considering him more closely. “Stubborn is kind of adorable on you.”
His face goes blank beneath the days-old scruff. Then he opens his mouth.
I rush to cut him off. “Why weren’t you there to greet us with the Titans when we came out of Hestia’s Lock?”
She doesn’t take her gaze from his face, but she also doesn’t answer.
Boone huffs an unamused laugh. “Can’t tell us?”
“Introducing me to Lyra too early, when she has so much to learn about down here, never goes very well.”
“Bullshit.”
I agree with him. We still don’t know what to believe. For all I know, Persephone is on the Titans’ side and always has been.
“What better way to gain access to Tartarus than to befriend the King of the Underworld?” Boone asks, his thoughts clearly in lockstep with mine.
Persephone tips her head again, studying him like he’s a particularly difficult flower to grow. “I like you despite yourself, Boone Runar.”
Hades is right about her, and so is Charon. The young goddess is essentially sunshine in a bottle. The question is, is it genuine? Or a front? A way to gain trust when what we should be doing is running the other way?
Wait… How does she know his name?
I glance at Boone, surprised he isn’t asking the same question, but he’s too busy glowering at her.
Persephone reaches out a fingertip and touches it to the scar of gold.
Vines burst out of the rock and proceed to wind up the break, pushing in and out of granite so hard it should be impossible for the plants to find a way.
But they do. They crisscross the scar back and forth, all the way up, like stitches, and then the vines grow and grow and grow until they cover the entire crack.
Even then they don’t stop, not until flowers bloom with petals of vibrant gold, as if they drew their color from the ore of the scar.
She holds out a hand to a flower, which leans in and nuzzles her fingers like a beloved pet might, and her soft smile is once again tinged with that strange sadness.
“We’re all trying to hold this place together somehow,” she says. “Until we can be freed.”
Then she looks at me, and for the first time since meeting her, she lets me see not the bright, glowing woman, but the goddess she truly is underneath—one who is powerful and determined. “You have to save us, Lyra.”
We. Us. She’s definitely with the Titans now.
Will that happen to me, too?
Oh gods. “How?”
They haven’t really told me yet. Not really. Just tried to chuck me into the pit. Best guess is I have to open a bunch more Locks. But how many, and why me? Or is there something else they need me for?
“First, you need to trust us.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen,” Boone grumbles. “What else you got?”
“Just…this.” That’s when she glances behind me. So quickly, I almost don’t catch it. Not before she shoves me hard.
She sends me tripping backward, my arms windmilling…
Right into Iapetus.
I didn’t even know he was here. But as he knocks my axe from my hand and scoops me up under the knees, I catch the look of horror on Boone’s face. He doesn’t even get a chance to form the word “no” with his mouth before Iapetus wraps me up in a bruising grip and tumbles both of us off the edge.
He doesn’t need vines, taking the landing at the bottom like he just jumped out of bed.
The second his feet hit the ground, he’s running.
My struggles don’t even make a dent as we blur through the pillars into the mountain, down tunnels all the way to the chamber where the door to Hestia’s Lock still glitters with her symbol.
But we blow past that and into another tunnel.
The one they all kept looking at with fear any time I spoke too loudly.
We slow suddenly, and he clamps a hand over my mouth as we pass an onyx obelisk. The source of the Pandemonium, according to Rhea. And I don’t know if it’s the way the Titan is holding me so hard or the vibe that thing gives off, but I don’t try to escape while we go by.
As soon as we are well past it, Iapetus is running again, and the world is blurring. And all I know is the tunnel seems to be circling its way up inside the mountain.
When we come to a stop, the pissy Titan and I are back where Boone and I originally started with Cronos—on the bridge by the massive double gates, with the drop into the abyss at my back.
My heart, already tripping, sprints away like a racer off the starting blocks.
Self-preservation kicks in, and I jerk against his grip.
When that doesn’t budge anything, I jam my knee up into his groin.
Nothing.
And now my knee is throbbing like I rammed it into solid stone. What happened to my immortal strength?
Iapetus doesn’t bother with the threats or talking it out. He just takes me by one wrist and dangles me over the abyss.
I’m flailing like a snared rabbit. I have no other weapon at my disposal except words. I fling them at him. “Maybe Oceanus isn’t down here because you killed him the same way you’re trying to kill me.”
The world has always wondered. Because the Titan who legend claims wasn’t imprisoned has never been seen since. But that’s not why I say it. I’m trying to make him stop, rethink, and I saw the way all the Titans tensed at the mention of Oceanus’ name before.
“Curse that traitor.” Iapetus repeats Mnemosyne word for word.
He draws me in closer, and for a second, I have hope that my gambit worked. Because, for the strangest moment, I think I see regret cross his features.
But I know I was wrong when he gives me a grim smile. “If you survive, you’ll thank me when you come out.”
Then, just like Cronos, he lets go.