Chapter 37
Killing Time
LYRA
I’m on my feet in a defensive crouch, axe in my hand in an instant, and thankful that I’m still in the protective leather getup from Hades’ Lock.
Zeus has his hands up, but he’s not aiming them at me now, and his chimera is also paying me no attention.
“Okay.”
Covered in even more ornate armor than he wore the first day of the Crucible—head topped with a spiky, bejeweled crown that would do a witch king proud—Zeus hovers in the air as if the raw energy of his power is making him levitate.
His entire body is electrified, and currents of energy spark around him and through him, his white-blond hair nearly glowing.
“Why did you do that?” My voice comes out as bewildered as I feel. “That was unprovoked. He didn’t—”
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll clear these fields. Save yourself,” Zeus snarls.
A warning. He is giving me a warning. Zeus, head asshole of all assholes, is trying to…help me?
Confusion is like a buzzing of bees in my head. Maybe I landed in the middle of a fight, and I didn’t see what past-life Cronos did to deserve it, but as far as I can tell, Zeus attacked his father with no warning. And now he’s trying to help insignificant, unknown me?
That’s not like him at all.
Zeus throws out his hands, and lightning blasts from them with a boom that concusses my ears to ringing before stuffing them with cotton wool. But the electricity doesn’t come at me. It shears past me…behind me. I whirl to find Iapetus still on his feet, having managed to avoid the strike.
He’s not wearing armor or his loud print shirt—he’s dressed like Cronos in ancient robes now. Neither Titan is wearing armor. Unlike Zeus.
“Get the hells out of here.” Iapetus, also a younger-looking version of himself, waves wildly at me before dodging another strike.
Now he is trying to help me? What upside-down rabbit hole did I just fall through?
Iapetus’ focus zeroes in on the god in the sky. “Don’t do this, nephew!”
I stumble back. Not just at his words but at the way he said them.
There’s a desperation in his voice I didn’t think I would ever hear from the grumpy Titan who never stops grumbling…who threw me into Hades’ Lock without a blink. “We are not your enemies,” he calls.
“Lies!” Zeus thunders. “My father swallowed every child he sired except for me, and only because my mother hid me. And you defend him.”
“Zeus—”
I definitely stumble back this time and nearly off my feet, trying to get out from between the two.
Just in time. Zeus flies at Iapetus, tackling him through the air, and even as they blast out of sight, I can see that the Titan isn’t fighting beyond defending himself from the deadliest of the strikes that Zeus tries to deliver.
Iapetus does not hit back. He does not use his power.
Zeus was right. I should not be here. Knowing that Iapetus makes it out of this alive—because I know future him in Tartarus—I leave him there and take off through the woods, not sure where I’m going. I’m not even sure if I should do anything beyond hide.
It’s obvious now when this is. The start, or maybe the end, of the ten-year war between Titans and gods before the gods locked their parents up in Tartarus.
“Hestia, watch out!”
A blur moving too fast to catch details shoots through the woods to my right, zipping around the trees only to come to a jarring halt when Aphrodite slams into Hades’ older sister, knocking them both off their feet.
I hear the crack as Hestia’s head hits a rock so hard the boulder splits into two moon-shaped halves that fall to either side of the goddesses.
The strangest gurgle of pain rips from Hestia’s lips.
“Did I hurt you?” Aphrodite sounds frantic as she’s on her knees and checking over Hestia.
I can’t see Addie’s face with her back to me. But Hestia, I do get a glimpse of as she sits up, looking dazed as she shakes her head. There is a shimmer over her face. Like glitter or the way soap is iridescent in sunlight.
Staying where I am, hidden in the trees, I squint, trying to get a closer look.
With a gasp, Hestia raises a shaking finger to point at…me.
I hold very still even as adrenaline and fear pump into my veins with every surge of my heart. Until I realize…
No.
She’s not pointing at me.
There is a rustle, and Phoebe steps out of the woods to my left.
The silvery, moon-shaped patch in her hair is hidden, as the black tresses are gathered into a ponytail.
Her expression is a horrified mix of shock and confusion as she stares at the two goddesses.
“I would not have hurt her,” she says in her musical voice, brown eyes wide.
“Not for the world. Not for all the powers of the Primordials.”
“She wouldn’t, Aphrodite,” Hestia murmurs in a bleary-sounding voice. She must’ve hit her head so hard.
“Your love for her blinds you,” Aphrodite hisses, moving into a crouch over Hestia like a mama rattlesnake curling around her unhatched and vulnerable eggs.
Phoebe takes a shaky step farther away from where I hide, circling them.
“You’ve seen the truth.” Aphrodite is talking to Hestia. I still can’t see her face. “You’ve seen what they want to do to us. They will end us if we don’t stop them. End the mortals, too.”
The odd, shimmery lighting on Hestia’s face glints, turning brighter, more obvious. More…familiar.
It reminds me of the odd veil I saw over Zeus’ face once, thanks to Eos’ tears.
Hestia must listen to Aphrodite. “You are right. You are right, and I just don’t want to see it.”
Phoebe, now farther from their sides and facing me, raises both her hands—not defensively, definitely not to attack. More a placating gesture. “Don’t do this—”
The words cut off in her throat as her entire body goes rigid, head thrown back, and her face spasms into a frozen mask that looks a lot like pain to me. Her body lifts off the ground until only the tips of her sandaled toes touch.
“She’s having a vision,” Hestia says. “She hasn’t had one in ages.”
“Attack her now,” Aphrodite snaps. “While she’s vulnerable.”
In unison, like two predators attuned to each other and hunting together, the goddesses stalk toward the Titaness. Death—the intent of it, the violence of it—is evident in every leashed line of their taut bodies.
But before either can lunge for her, Phoebe comes out of her vision, her feet touching back down to the earth.
Her eyes widen at the sight of the two goddesses closing in on her, and the Titaness’s chin wobbles. “Who did this to you?” she all but whispers.
Then, carefully, she sets her feet in a fighting stance. When she brings up her hands again, this time it is definitely defensive. “I will not harm you unless you force me.”
Then, with visible deliberation, her gaze shifts beyond them to land on me, where I still watch from among the trees. “Your time hasn’t arrived yet. But you are coming into your first power. Can you see?”
Aphrodite’s back is to me, her focus trained on Phoebe as Hestia jerks around to see who Phoebe is talking to. Her gaze narrows on my face.
“Can you see?” Phoebe makes a gesture, passing her palm over her face like a…
“Veil,” I whisper. And stare harder at Hestia.
The shimmering over her features becomes glaringly obvious. Every detail of it. A mesh veil identical to the one I saw covering Zeus’ face at the end of his Labor in the Crucible, when he tried to kill me. Eos’ tears allowed me to see it before. Or so I thought. But they have long since worn off.
Like before, the one over Hestia’s face is all sorts of colors, like looking through a prism, and fitted to her features as if it’s been painted on.
Coming into my first power, Phoebe said.
I guess time doesn’t matter as far as how and when a power presents itself.
I know I’m not getting it from this moment or from this place.
That the gift was already deep inside me, planted the moment Hades made me into a goddess.
He said sometimes powers take years, even ages, to set in and reveal themselves.
Maybe it’s more that my body and mind are finally ready to handle this one now.
But what power do I have? What am I seeing?
“Alani,” Phoebe calls softly. “Hide.”
That last word reaches me a heartbeat before Aphrodite attacks and Hestia whirls away from me to join her. Phoebe absorbs the hit, and the three disappear out of sight before I can so much as shuffle my feet to get to her, to help her.
I put my hands to my head like I could physically take away the fog of confusion filling all the gaps and clouding my thoughts.
Do I hide? Do I help?
Given how adamant the Titans have been about trying not to interact with wherever broken time takes me, to avoid resetting things, hiding seems like the better choice.
Besides, if I helped, who would I help? The gods? Or the Titans?