Chapter 26
& The Truth Shall Fuck You Up
LYRA
A short distance from me, Boone breaks into a jog, still grinning. And he doesn’t stop until he scoops me up into a bear hug, swinging me around.
“Brilliant,” he crows, squeezing me tight. “What were those? Aphrodite’s horses?”
He sets me back on my feet, and we grin at each other in triumph. “Lust,” I say. “And in heat.”
Boone tips back his head to laugh at that. “Yup. Fucking brilliant.”
Then he sobers abruptly, scanning me from head to foot. “Are you hurt? The zombies…”
“I’m fine.” Although I’m guessing a massive bruise is forming where I did the splits on the water horses’ chariot side bar.
Now I know why charioteers wore leather around their thighs.
I wave him off, only to check him over in return.
At first, he appears okay, but it’s not until I see the streak of dirt covering an entire side of him that I think to lift his tunic. A hiss escapes me. “Oh gods. Boone.”
“Bad?” he asks with mild curiosity, like the road rash that basically sheared the first few layers of skin off his torso, leaving long, bleeding abrasions covered in dirt, is no big deal.
“It’s not great.” It comes out like an accusation.
“It’ll heal the second my power is returned.”
I carefully lower his shirt, trying not to let guilt churn my stomach. “I guess so.”
“Hey.” He gives me a pointed look. “I’ll be fine.”
I frown at him fiercely. “None of this is fine, Boone.”
“You realize you can leave now?” Hades is standing where I glimpsed him only a minute ago. He’s still leaning on a thick rail with both his hands, and he couldn’t be more bored.
Then he waves off to his left.
Where the starting gate stalls stand, the taller archway in the center is now intricately carved with symbols of Hades—a bident and scepter, a screech owl, a key, and, of course, Cerberus.
And through the now-open archway, standing in the mountain hallway that circles the outside of the abyss’s cylinder, the Titans wait like before, watching us.
“Congratulations,” Hades says. “You have passed the test of not succumbing to worldly experience and becoming a zombie yourself.”
We unsealed the second Lock.
The relief finally hits, and I draw in a long breath.
Beside me, Boone gives a jaunty, slightly taunting two-fingered salute to Hades’ double still watching us. “Fuck you very much.”
Then, together, we tromp our way through the once-again-pristine dirt toward the exit. And it takes everything in me not to look back.
He’s not real, I tell myself. He’s not my Hades.
Looking will only make this worse.
I’m right behind Boone as he exits through the arched doorway, but before I can set even a toe through after him, a hand grasps me around the wrist and gently tugs me to a stop. And I freeze, because I know this touch. I crave this touch.
A tremble starts deep inside me.
I thought he was a recording, a copy—more like Hestia—not something that feels like flesh and blood.
“Look at me, little goddess.” He says the words softly. Temptingly, even. “Come on.”
I don’t know what part of me obeys. Maybe the part that needs answers.
Or the part that just needs to see his face and hear his voice, even when it’s false.
Or the part that worries a tiny bit that everything I have with the real him is built on lies.
Or the part that just wants to prove myself to him… and to me.
I damned well won this round.
When I meet his eyes, Hades’ mouth tilts in a barely-there smile.
Then he looks down at my wrist that he’s still holding and makes a noise in his throat kind of like a hum.
It sounds like satisfaction, maybe. Seeming to be engrossed, he traces a fingertip softly over the two stars of my Orion tattoo that are on my left arm, and then the single one on my other wrist.
“My star,” he whispers to himself more than me, and his nickname for me makes my heart squeeze. “Do you know why you’re here?” he asks, finally drawing his gaze up to mine, though he continues to hold my hand.
I try not to melt and deliberately narrow my eyes. “If I’ve been here so often, I have a feeling you know better than I do.”
His lips quirk. “I can see why I like you in my future.” Why does that wording sound off, like he’s more than just a copy?
He sobers, eyes flashing dangerously silver. “You are here for the seven Locks.”
Seven. That rings a bell in my memory.
Before Zeus’ Labor in the Crucible, I told Aphrodite that Persephone wasn’t dead but trapped down here, that we were trying to get her out. And she said…
Gods. What were her exact words?
The only way to open Tartarus requires all seven of the gods and goddesses who trapped the Titans in there.
And later, Zeus said something about Pandora’s Box going around the seven wards.
Are the wards these Locks? Do I have to do this seven fucking times? I throw my head back and groan.
“This is the second Lock.” Hades slides a hard look over my shoulder at the Titans. “And they can’t open them.”
The Titans can’t? I try to control my breathing, to keep my head. “Let’s say I believe you…”
I get an immediate, arrogant smirk, and I hold up a hand. “Slow your roll. I’m not saying I do, but for the sake of expediency, if I did… If Titans can’t figure out these Locks, then how can I?”
Hades lazily swipes his thumb over the inside of my wrist, and now I’m controlling my breathing for a different reason entirely.
“When my brothers, sisters, and I imprisoned the Titans, all seven of us—Hestia, me, Demeter, Poseidon, Hera, and Zeus, as well as Aphrodite—each made a Lock. The Labyrinth down here isn’t a maze, as humans seem to believe.
It’s a series of locks. Safeguards against our parents getting out.
Each is a test that must be passed in a certain order.
The only way to open Tartarus, to escape, is for someone who is not a Titan to unseal all seven. ”
I suck in a harsh breath as what Hades’ copy is saying finally penetrates my poor mind. He’s telling me there is definitely a way out. This is the way out. A way to get home. Get back to my Hades, the real Hades. We just have to go through five more Locks and not only survive but defeat each test.
Fuck me.
“And that’s what I did just now?” I ask him. “I unsealed your Lock?”
“You did.” Another lazy swipe of his thumb. “Aphrodite’s lust was a nice touch.”
I swallow down a riot of emotions, so tangled I can’t seem to get a hold on what I’m feeling. “I’ve unsealed two already,” I say slowly. “The Titans have had ages down here. Why haven’t they escaped? They should easily have—”
He cuts me off. “Because you were once human.”
I frown. Why would that matter? Before I can voice that question, another realization hits me harder than the first, and I don’t think I move or make a sound, but Hades leans closer, gaze more intense. “What?”
Resets. Time resets. Right? But we know the Titans fear the cracks of broken time.
“You said I’ve done this before?” I ask through lips that don’t want to move.
His grip tightens, then slowly eases before he nods.
“Cronos broke time,” I say now. Not a question. It’s the only possible answer. “Did he make multiple timelines?”
Hades shakes his head.
Oh. No multiverse. Okay. “Then…”
“I’m not entirely sure, stuck in here and only getting my information from your visits. But time keeps starting over from a certain point.”
So it’s true. Time can reset. I’ve been down here before, and Hades… “Does my Hades know? Does he remember all the different times?”
His recording stares at me like he’s trying to decide if the answer may break me. “I don’t know.”
My breath leaves me in a whoosh at that nonanswer.
“The Titans remember, though,” he says. “I think they are the ones resetting it to make sure you end up down here, because they believe you’re going to free them.”
Because of Phoebe’s prophecy. Okay. Forget controlling my breathing, which has abandoned me anyway. This deserves a meltdown, starting with a panic attack.
“Lyra.” Hades’ voice comes from far away, like down a tunnel. “Lyra.” He gives me a little shake, and that yanks me out of my head.
“Have I ever unsealed all seven?” I demand.
Another pause, longer this time as he seems to check my expression. Then, “No.”
No. Never. Not once.
My heart, which for a smidgeon of a second when he confirmed there was a way out had floated up on a cloud of hope, reverses course and plummets to the bottom of my stomach to churn in the sour bile. “Never.” My voice cracks around the word.
“That doesn’t mean it’s not possible.”
Now Hades’ copy decides to be sympathetic? A slightly hysterical laugh bursts from me. “Yeah. Okay. Sure.”
I think maybe he sighs. “You say that we’re in love, you and the god I come from, and that he made you his queen.”
“What?” I stare at him, my face scrunching up.
“Is that the truth?”
Why is he asking this now? With a frown, I nod slowly.
Through the continued screaming in my head at the situation I’m in, I vaguely watch the way his expression shuts down. “If that were true, then I would have marked you as mine.”
He traces a line across my wrist, connecting my stars, and all the way around like a cuff, then up the back of my hand to my ring finger, where he traces around the base like a ring. “Here,” he says. “Like this, but a trail of stars.”
My already bleeding heart shrivels where it’s still lying in the pit of my stomach.
Is he trying to kick me while I’m down? Because what he’s saying plays into the fears and doubts I’ve already been trying to hold at bay since ending up down here.
“But he has marked me as his,” I say in a voice gone husky…
and shaky. I brush the tip of the forefinger of my free hand across my lips. “Here.”
Hades’ eyes flash to my lips, then flare wide, darkening to a stormy gray.
Wait. Is it still there? I didn’t think until just this moment that maybe Tartarus stole it away, like my axes and my tattoos.
But the way Hades reacts tells me he sees it.
“Satisfaction,” I whisper. I remember. “Possessiveness. My Hades would have looked at me in the same way.” I tilt my head, studying him. “But does he actually love me?”
The recording of Hades jerks his gaze up to meet mine, and I see the smallest hesitation there. And maybe I expected it, because instead of taking it as a blow, I just sort of nod to myself. If this recorded version of him doubts his future feelings for me, then I am probably right to do the same.
Hades takes a small step back, away from me. “And what about him?” He looks over my head again, but this time I know he’s looking at Boone and not the Titans.
“He is my only friend down here,” I say.
Hades’ jaw hardens just a fraction, and I only see it because I’m looking up from below.
Then he steps closer again and gently takes my chin between his thumb and forefinger, tipping my face up to meet his gaze, which runs over my features as if he’s memorizing them.
“I think Hades has more competition than he realizes.”
Then, without warning, he lowers his head and kisses me.
And I lean into the touch.
I want this touch.
And I try to feel. Feel him. Feel us.
But I don’t.
This kiss isn’t like our first kiss, when Hades offered me the gift of protection in the Underworld—soft and even tentative before turning to heat.
And it isn’t like our last kiss before I ended up down here, when he claimed every inch of my body—on fire for each other, unable to stop, an elemental force we both gave in to.
This kiss is…faded. Like this rendition of him.
And my heart, which craved his touch so much, already shriveled from shock and truth, turns to dust. Turns to ash.
This copy of Hades must sense that I’m not with him—body, mind, and spirit all far from his reach—because he stops. When he raises his head, he doesn’t move away, only enough to be able to look me in the eyes. Does he see my heavy disappointment? Does he feel it?
“What was that for?” I ask.
The smile he offers this time is a shark’s smile. Predatory. “I don’t like competition.”
He means Boone.
I back away from Hades slowly. And his gaze drops to me, a small pucker forming between his brows. “You look…disappointed.”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what?”
I take another step. “It’s just become so clear to me that you aren’t him. You’re like a carbon copy from the nineteen hundreds—smudged and blurred at the lines.”
For the briefest second, I think I hurt his feelings, the way he stiffens. But then he cants his head in the direction of the waiting group outside the Lock. “You’d better go.”
“Yeah.” I do an about-face a general would have found up to snuff but only make it one step before Hades calls my name.
I pause and glance back, meeting his silver gaze.
“Whatever you do, don’t let the Titans out.”