Chapter 49
This Is Harder Than It Looks
LYRA
Which has all the Titans staring at me. “Glamour?” Cronos asks slowly. “What do you see?”
I frown. “Should I not be seeing a glamour?”
“It’s important,” Iapetus insists. “What?”
I point at a door covered in a shimmery veil. “That.”
“What are you talking about?” The confusion in their expressions would be comical if they weren’t all so serious.
I glance from face to face. “The door. There have been several. You didn’t glamour those?”
They go from confused to grim. A small arc of burnished fire streaks over one of Iapetus’ arms before disappearing. “What fucking—”
Cronos cuts him off. “What door?”
I swallow. They can’t even see that a door is there? That’s… That doesn’t seem good. “Here.” I trace the frame with my hands.
“Is there a marking on it?” Koios asks.
“No. You really can’t see it?”
“We really can’t,” Theia says.
“Why would the gods do that to you? Why hide doors down here?”
Koios is the one to answer. “Someone doesn’t want us to know what’s inside.”
I raise my eyebrows. “That seems…sketchy?”
“I’m not sure what ‘sketchy’ is,” Cronos murmurs, staring at the wall where the door is. “But it doesn’t seem good.”
“Should I open it?” I reach for the handle.
The Titan grabs my arm and tugs me behind him. “No.”
“What? Why?” I wave at the door. “If someone is hiding this, it’s for a reason. We should find out—”
“We will.” He doesn’t let go of me. “But not you.” The last part comes out stern and gruff, and it gets my back up.
I twist out of his grip. “Is this some kind of alpha male thing? Because if it is—”
“I’m not risking you.”
The rest of my argument dies a sudden, silent death. Because while I know that he means they need me to get them out of Tartarus, there’s something in his voice, in the slant of his mouth, that makes me feel like he…cares. About me.
“Oh.” I try to shake that feeling off, because of course he doesn’t really care. They may not be evil, but to them, all I am is a tool. “But I’m the only one who can see it.”
“We can teach you how to use your power so you can remove the glamour, and then one of us will check it.”
Given how that didn’t work when I tried to remove Persephone’s glamour, and also how badly my goddess lessons with Hades were going before I got stuck down here… “That could take a while.”
“It’ll also mean you can turn your power on and off.”
“I think I do that already. I don’t see them most of the time.”
“But you’ll want to consciously control it.
When you figure that out, then you should turn it off most of the time.
Using your powers, even small ones, can be a drain.
You don’t want it on all the time. And if it alters your vision, that can also be distracting,” Theia says.
“Do you see Zeus zapping everything he touches all over Olympus these days?” Theia smiles when I shake my head. “He had to learn to turn it off.”
“He had to learn that one young,” Iapetus mutters.
Cronos’ grin flashes in the dim corridor, but it’s gone just as quickly as he studies me. “Ready?”
I nod, trying not to look too eager. Maybe, finally, I can be good at something other than throwing my axe.
Two hours later, I’m ready to throw a goddess-size tantrum.
We’ve tried everything, and the Titans have not been quiet, either, offering all sorts of suggestions—arguing with one another, mostly.
Cronos started by having me try to remove the glamour from the door.
It involves picking up the veil itself, sort of like gently removing a cobweb. All fingertips and delicacy.
Not my wheelhouse.
When that didn’t work, he tried having me glamour something, thinking it would be easier to remove my own magic. I did figure out how to make a rock look like a tomato, but only to me. Weak at best. And even then, I couldn’t pull the glamour off.
I’m also starting to see why they don’t glamour much down here to make their lives more comfortable. My stomach is starting to turn sour.
“My turn now.” Koios shoos Cronos out of his way to stand in front of me. “Close your eyes.”
The first thing he’s said the entire time they’ve been trying to teach me.
“Really?” I ask.
“Just do it.”
I sigh but close my eyes.
“Now I want you to picture something in your mind. Some way to turn things on and off.”
“Flint to strike and make fire is what I imagine,” I hear Theia offer.
Iapetus makes a sound like a hum. “I think of a dam that can be lowered and raised, letting water flow or holding it back.”
Right. Turned on and off. The first thing that comes to mind is a light switch.
“Got it in your mind?” Koios asks.
I nod.
“Turn it off. Then open your eyes.”
I flick my imaginary switch down, and the lights go out in my imaginary room…and then I open my eyes. The door in the wall is gone.
Completely gone. Not even a hint that it exists, that the rock is anything but solid.
“Oh my gods.”
“Did it work?” Cronos asks hesitantly, like he doesn’t entirely want to know that this was another failure.
“It worked.”
Cronos straightens, then glowers at Koios. “That’s all it took?”
Koios shrugs. “Simple is always better.”
Iapetus barks a laugh. “Something Cronos will never learn.”
“You, either,” Koios points out.
Iapetus snaps his mouth shut.
Then Koios nods at the door. “Now turn your power back on. See if you can remove the glamour.”
I turn it on fine, the shimmer of magic over the door becoming visible again with a blink. But I still can’t pull it away. “I’m sorry.”
He offers me a rare smile. The first I’ve seen from him. “It’s all right. That door has been hidden for who knows how long. You have time to work on it.”
His mention of time strikes me as off. “No I don’t. Not really. We want to get out of here.”
Koios considers that. “We can always return here after we leave and find out what’s hidden then.”
There is that. But it’s brought up something I’ve been considering these days of waiting as more and more time has passed. “If Boone doesn’t return today, I think I should unseal Demeter’s Lock tomorrow.”
No more waiting. I’ve done this without Boone before.
The bell goes off.
Cronos has me by the wrist, running us at a pace that even my goddess speed is struggling to keep up with. Just as I’m about to warn him, he skids to a stop in front of a door we can apparently both see and bundles us inside, with the others right behind us.
Just as they slam the door shut, someone else—one of the other Titans out in the tunnels—screams.