Chapter 33 Be Careful What You Ask For, Because This Sucks
Be Careful What You Ask For, Because This Sucks
LYRA
I still can’t believe the Titans can glamour something like this.
A full training course. It’s out in the open beyond the pillars and the burning lands, and that makes it hot.
It took all of them to create it together and looked pretty impressive when they did.
We’ve been warned of where to try to go if the bell goes off and the Pandemonium come.
Like they care. Or maybe the Pandemonium aren’t even a thing.
Just another control mechanism, like the bogeyman or the thing under the bed. A ghost story.
Not that any of that matters as still, glassy water rushes up at me. Or, more accurately, I fall at it. Fast. And brace, because I already know this is going to hurt.
I don’t even manage to flip in the air to hit feetfirst like I was told to do, slamming into the water laid out in a full belly flop after a hell of a drop.
The angle I hit at snaps my head back, but it’s the immediate shock of electricity that zaps through my body, making every muscle seize, that is the worst. For a horrifying few seconds, I can’t move as I float helplessly deeper under water, like a leaf drifting to the bottom of a lake.
It’s just long enough for my mind to start panicking about the lack of oxygen before the shock releases its hold on my body, and I come up spluttering and coughing.
I learned after the first time to keep my hair pulled back and braided because its wet curtain nearly suffocated me. But at least the electricity stops.
Why did I ever ask the Titans to train me for the damned Locks?
“That was terrible!” Cronos yells down at me from where he stands at the start of the obstacle course while I make my way to the edge of the pool. “Are you even trying?”
I cling to the wall and glare up at him. “I guess I just love getting shocked and drowned over and over,” I yell back. “Who knew I had that kink?”
A low chuckle sounds from behind me, and I look back to find Boone leaning a casual shoulder on the post at the end of the obstacle course we’re learning to run. Already done. Without a scratch. Dry as a bone. Again. Of course, because years of training and thieving have made him very good at this.
I, on the other hand, haven’t made it through once.
I glare at him. “You realize that I would’ve been eaten by giant electric eels by now if this was really Poseidon’s Lock.”
That sobers him up, but I swear his lips are still twitching when he holds up both hands.
The god of oceans and waters seems to be a one-trick pony when it comes to his preferred trials. Water and monsters and trying to stay away from both. We don’t have to worry about the monsters unless we fall, but then we’re dead anyway.
So…you know…the usual brand of divine shenanigans. Oh, those zany gods.
Rhea and Tethys are preparing us for Demeter’s, which we’ll face before Poseidon’s, but they insist they can’t tell us much without resetting time again, so all I can figure is that it has to do with harvesting something.
“Let’s go again.” Cronos, who must’ve run closer, shoves a hand in front of my face and, after I take it, drags me easily out, water cascading off me.
“You’ve managed this before,” he says as he walks me over to the starting line of the course.
The disappointment rife in his voice raises my hackles like a dog. “What’s the problem?”
I answer through clenched teeth. “I’m too short. I can’t hold enough tension between the walls.”
“Short.” He examines me more closely. “That hasn’t been a problem before—”
“I swear if you say that one more time, I’m going to gut you.” Not really, though. Not yet. The thing is, he has been helpful, in his odd way.
The bloodthirsty bastard chuckles but then grabs me by the arm, dragging me over to stand chest to chest with him.
“Whoa—” I hear Boone’s hurried steps.
But Cronos simply puts one hand flat on top of my head and brings it to his chest. Even at five foot six inches, I hit him mid-sternum. “You shrank.”
Shrank? Really? I take a step back. “Are you saying I’ve been taller before?”
“By a bit.” He frowns. “How is that even possible?”
“You would know better than me.”
He nods. “Must’ve been your upbringing.” He raises his eyebrows in question.
I shrug. “My mentor and boss in the Order of Thieves, Felix, used to take delight in telling me how malnourished I was when my parents dropped me off with him.”
Cronos searches my expression like he’s trying to decide if I’m messing with him or not. “Is that true?” Before I can answer, he casts an assessing gaze over the rest of me. “And you’re thinner. What in the name of Tartarus happened to make them starve you, Alani?”
“Are you blaming me right now?” I poke him in the chest with a finger. “Talk to your damned son.”
He looks at where I poked him almost like he can’t quite comprehend that I did. It’s hard to tell because his head is bent and the scruff of his beard hides his mouth, but for a tiny second, I think he smiles. That’s before he lifts his gaze with another frown. “What did Hades do?”
“Not Hades. Zeus.”
“Zeus?” He blinks at me.
I tilt my head, giving him a pointed look. “Now that I’ve met the tree that particular apple fell from, I can’t say I am all that surprised.”
But Cronos doesn’t respond. He’s looking at me, but I don’t think he’s seeing me. There’s an emotion working behind his eyes that could be anger but could also be worry. I’m not sure either of those make sense. “What did Zeus do?”
“Your youngest is a dick and cursed me to be unlovable.”
Cronos straightens abruptly, his voice raining down on me like thunder. “He did what?”
“Rulers of the cosmos.” Persephone’s words cut through us as she hurries past the nearest pillar. “Be quieter.”
“The Pandemonium can’t hear us out here,” he growls at her, not looking away from me.
I don’t look away from him, either, my mind working a thousand thoughts. “Is that new?” I ask slowly. “Is my curse new?”
“Yes.” It’s possible he tried to gentle that answer.
I’m too distracted to care. Why would my curse make any difference? “What else is new? The Crucible Games? Do I always play for Hades?”
His face takes on a stubborn cast so like his oldest son’s that my heart trips. “You can’t tell me?” I ask.
“No.”
“But I always end up down here. How?”
“We go through one of the broken time pieces and reset it all ourselves if you don’t.”
“You—” His words might as well have rung a Pandemonium bell inside my head. Heat flares from my gut and into my chest, crawling higher. Flames up the sides of my face. “You—”
“You’re our only hope, Lyra.” He says it softly, and for the first time this odd, arrogant, maybe-baby-eating jerk of a Titan looks…lost.
“Do you even know what you’ve put me through? My parents abandoned me when I was three years old because they couldn’t love me—”
“They always abandon you.”
I whip away, breathing in and out and trying not to let the stinging in my eyes turn into real tears. I promised myself a long time ago I wouldn’t cry over my parents. Apparently, that was a good decision.
“I’m sorry. Lyra—”
“Just…” I swallow. “Let’s not talk about this anymore.” I search for Boone and find him and Persephone standing halfway into one of the tunnel entrances near the ocean pillar. I can’t see their faces, and they aren’t doing anything unusual. She’s talking. He doesn’t seem to be saying anything.
But then he walks away from her, and now I can see them both—see him stoically detached as she watches him with an emotion I can’t pin down.
“What was that?” I ask when he nears us.
“What was what?”
When I give him a look, Boone glances over his shoulder to where Persephone has now left. “Nothing. I don’t trust her.”
That didn’t look like nothing. But it didn’t exactly look like something, either.
Then Boone frowns, his feet slowing as he studies my face for a long beat before his gaze snaps to Cronos. “What did you say to her?”
I really don’t want to talk about it. I’ll tell Boone later. Not the part about my parents, but the part about the Titans doing much of the resetting on purpose.
I walk away, headed toward the start of the course. “Let’s just get me through this stupid thing.”
Boone catches up, studying the obstacle course as we near it—particularly the glass cage. “There’s got to be a way to get you up that.”
I let out a silent breath of relief. Discussing feelings really is not my happy place.
With a glance back at Cronos, who is watching for me the way a tiger waits for a mouse to run out of its hole, I push the anger, confusion, sadness, and all the other things down into my gut.
I also study the square contraption made of glass that I have to shimmy my way from the bottom to the top of while it widens as I go.
Located in the middle of the course, it’s the one spot I can’t get past. This last attempt, I tried switching to lengthwise, with my hands on one wall and my feet on the opposite, rather than like a spider, but it still got too wide to reach, and I slipped.
“Maybe if we give me shoes with thicker soles?” I muse to myself.
Not so thick that they make the rest of the course difficult, though.
Would just another inch make enough of a difference?
I look down at my feet, still in the leather-strapped shoes from Hades’ Lock, and study the soles.
If the Titans can glamour this pool, they can glamour me better shoes. “What do you think?”
“I think that won’t work inside the Lock.” Boone manifests his blue flame in his palm, then snuffs it out. “We won’t have our powers to glamour different shoes.”
Cronos, who followed us, touches a finger to my elbow. Oddly gentle for him, so I raise my brows in question when I look back around.
“Parents should love their children,” he says slowly. “I shouldn’t have…” He trails off like he’s not entirely sure what to say.
And, for a second, it’s tempting to soften, to appreciate the sympathy he’s offering.
Except he tossed me into Hestia’s Lock without a shred of regret. So I pull my elbow away from his touch. “You say that, but you swallowed your own children so that they wouldn’t steal your power.”
Except…I saw them together, none swallowed. Hades and Hestia grown.
“Lyra,” Boone hisses.
Because we’re playing nice with the Titans right now. Not antagonizing. We agreed that we need them to get through the Locks.
Cronos doesn’t blow up at me like he did last time. If anything, he flinches like a puppy I just kicked. “I told you, that’s not—” Cronos cuts himself off and shakes his head.
“Still can’t tell me?” I mutter.
But I can’t get the scene of such a happy family Cronus and Rhea made with their children out of my head. Glamours? Lies? Or was that real?
What is Cronos not saying?
“Try this.” He sounds resigned as he waves his hand over my shoes, thickening the soles and drying me off. Then he points at the course. “Poseidon’s Lock doesn’t always change your clothes, so if we send you in with them, it might work.”
I don’t make it past the second obstacle, let alone to the glassed-in spider wall, before I hit the water again. The thicker shoes made me lose my footing.
The first thing I think when I break through the surface, spluttering yet again and my body twitching from the shocks, is…I need Hades.