Chapter 28
Tunnels, Doors, & Punishment
LYRA
The darkness in the tunnels is lit by sconces, although several of the Titans glow. The floor here is tilted at an incline, and the tunnel itself feels as though it curves, winding its way up through the rock of the mountain that surrounds the pillars.
We’re at least a quarter mile from the Locks before I hear the first sound. It floats down the passageway ahead of me. The distinctive bray of a donkey.
I frown, glancing at Mnemosyne.
She says nothing.
But when we come round a slightly more exaggerated bend, I hear it again. Louder. Coming from a…
“Is that a door?” I ask.
“To a prison cell, yes.”
“What’s that noise?”
“Ocnus.”
I can’t help my double take. “What? He’s…down here?”
I thought Ocnus was tucked in some dark corner of the Underworld that I haven’t been shown yet.
The man is condemned to weave a rope out of straw that a donkey eats as fast as he makes it, but there is no record of what he did to deserve such a punishment.
Hades will know… Not that I can exactly ask him.
I flip my hand over, tracing the stars on my wrist. Forget wasting time asking him useless questions. I just want to hear him call me his star one more time.
Iapetus shoves his face between us. “Don’t go in doors that are marked with an X.”
I glance at the door as we pass it. “I don’t see an X.”
“Oh, Ocnus is…” Mnemosyne purses her lips. “Harmless. He doesn’t have an X.”
Right. “And the ones that are marked?”
Mnemosyne slides me an annoyed glance. “If you go in, you may not come out alive.”
“Resetting would be terribly inconvenient,” I murmur.
Mnemosyne doesn’t just slide me a look this time. Now those green eyes, shadowed by her mask, are uncomfortably direct. “You have no idea.”
The heaviness in her voice, in her shoulders, is far from flippant. She really seems…tired. Not physically—more like exhausted in spirit.
Suddenly, I don’t want to know that it’s real. Because then I have to contemplate how many times I might have ended up in Tartarus already. Or gone through the Crucible, for that matter. Watched Boone die, had my parents give me to the thieves, dealt with Zeus’ curse…
Stop it, Lyra.
I only see one more X on one of the many doors as we continue, and sounds don’t come out of all of them. But the ones that do… Quiet whimpers, labored breathing, and even a quavering, “Who is out there?” reach my ears.
All ignored by the Titans, who hardly seem to notice.
Mnemosyne stops before a door. As she reaches for the handle, one of the other Titanesses calls, “Watch out.”
In another blur of speed, Cronos runs by, only to stop abruptly past where Mnemosyne and I stand, whirling to face the tunnel he just ran down, peering beyond us.
I peer with him.
“I’m already here, my love.” A quiet voice sounds from the darkness behind him.
Cronos whirls, only to be blasted back down the tunnel by an invisible force coming from the hands of his wife.
“Bastard.” Rhea’s hair lifts up as though electrified or like she’s in a wind tunnel.
She’s not being quiet now. None of them are. I guess we’re far enough away from the obelisk of the Pandemonium.
“Easy, Rhea.” Cronos coughs as he gets slowly to his feet. “It was the only—”
She cuts a hand through the air. “Silence.”
His mouth is still moving, but no sound emerges, and I laugh, even though I shouldn’t be laughing. This is a serious moment.
But it’s like she hit a mute button on Cronos, and damn, that shit is funny.
“At least you’re not married to Oceanus,” Mnemosyne offers.
Rhea whips her head to stare at her sister. “Curse that traitor,” they both say together.
I glance back toward Theia, who seems sickly, the same as Cronos, and is moving with a slight limp. But I’m looking at the Titaness holding her hand like a child.
Tethys, Theia’s twin, though apparently not identical. She reminds me of a cold, glassy lake frozen over. Not in looks—red-gold hair and turquoise eyes should be fiery, especially against amber skin, but instead are dulled. The frozen effect is more in her demeanor—unreactive, unresponsive.
The Titaness of nursing and the font of fresh water doesn’t appear to react at all to the curses being heaped on her husband’s name. Is she broken-hearted? Or just broken?
Beside me, Rhea takes a visible, calming breath, and her hair settles around her face before turning to me with a hostess-style smile pasted to her features. “I am happy to see you survived.” She points at the door I’m standing in front of. “This is where we’re going.”
“Not yet,” I say as she reaches for the knob.
“What now?” Iapetus mumbles.
Rhea merely pauses, eyebrows lifting in question.
“Only Rhea, Phoebe, and Mnemosyne can join us,” I say.
I see the way Phoebe blinks. She regards me with mysteriously deep brown eyes now shaded with confusion. “Me?”
Iapetus scowls at the same time. “You’ve got to be—”
I cut him off. “Especially not Cronos or Iapetus. Otherwise, we’re happy to rot down here with the rest of you.” And I’ll visit Hades’ past for the rest of my future.
“What did I do?” Cronos has the gall to look a little hurt.
“You threw me into two Locks—”
“One.” He waves behind me. “Iapetus threw you in the second one.”
The beachwear-tourist, age-gap-romance Ken doll scowls. “Because you told me to.”
Cronos glares.
Is he for real right now? “Why would I trust someone who decapitated and castrated his own father?”
“For a good reason,” he says, his voice a rolling grumble.
“Name it.”
He just shakes his head. Stubborn old ass.
Rhea sighs. “If he tells you, time will reset. If you find out on your own, it won’t. That one happens every time we’ve tried.” She snaps her fingers. “We start all over again a hundred and fifty years ago.”
“When I arrived here,” Persephone tacks on.
I don’t even glance her way, staying focused on Rhea, who shrugs.
This again.
“Out of curiosity, why does telling me things also cause a reset?”
Rhea shrugs. “Technically, you are part of the outside world, so it has the same effect with you.” Another shrug. “We think that’s why.”
“The outside world.” I think that through. “They don’t remember?”
Clearly, they don’t, or I would know about this already. I would remember doing this before.
Unless it’s all lies.
“Only those officially imprisoned in Tartarus seem to remember all the other times,” Cronos says, inching closer to his wife. She bats away his hand when he reaches for hers.
And I always end up here.
Oh my gods, I’m starting to listen like this is true.
I give my head a shake. “Fine. Time does all that, and I’m part of escaping, which is why you pulled me into it.
But that doesn’t mean I should trust you or like you…
” I give Cronos a hard look. “You ate your children to keep them from overthrowing you next—”
He straightens abruptly, growing larger and somehow darker as he does. “I. Did. Not,” he thunders.
I cringe back just a little, surprised lightning doesn’t flash around him.
Despite her own ire with him, Rhea runs a hand down his arm, murmuring words softly enough that I can’t catch them, and Cronos visibly calms, shrinking again, his shoulders rounding, suddenly seeming…aged. He doesn’t look at me.
Then he turns and stalks away down the carved-out tunnel and disappears into the darkness.
In the silence that descends like a wet blanket smothering smoke, Boone points at Koios. “He can come, too.”
If a Titan could pull off a hot-nerd vibe, Koios does.
Like Iapetus, his clothes are modern, like a gamer in loose shorts and a graphic Metallica T-shirt.
The Titan of intelligence and curiosity has a birthmark of stars that trail across his forehead.
And then there’s that distracting aura of northern lights.
Iapetus frowns. “Why him?”
“Because he’s smart enough to just listen quietly,” Boone says.
“Come on,” Theia encourages her scowling brother as she draws a still-hazy-looking, still-silent Tethys away down the tunnel.
“Just bloody great,” Iapetus mutters. But he follows the others, and their glow moves down the hallway with them.
Rhea opens the door, waving me ahead of her.
And I walk straight into a shard of broken time.
“Lyra!” Mnemosyne’s voice is still ringing in my ears even through the silence of time travel.