Chapter 56
Between Hell & High Water
LYRA
He’s the Hades from his Lock?
The tiniest ray of relief that had fallen over me at his arrival is viciously cast aside by shadows too impenetrable to let light through. The disappointment that slams through my chest might as well be more of the grain burying me alive. It won’t be much longer until that happens.
Hades is suddenly over me, in my face. “What’s in your pocket, Lyra?”
“What?”
He gives a grim shake of his head. How is the dust in the air not bothering him? It’s not even sticking to his hair and clothes. “Your pocket.” Then he grabs my hand and places my palm flat over the compartment in yoga pants meant to hold a phone…where I stuffed my half of Cronos’ butterfly.
The butterfly that Hades himself carved for his father as a child.
Does this version of him remember that? Probably not. He was made after Hades was glamoured to forget his parents loving him. So how does he know about it now? Unless Cronos has done this with me before and I told this copy of Hades about it.
I don’t even have to reach inside the pocket and feel the full weight of the carving, the rough and smooth edges. Just the memory that it exists clears my mind of the fog the damned drink of Demeter’s has no doubt caused.
By the time I drag my gaze from my hand to Hades’ silver eyes, he’s already positioned himself so that he’s braced, leaning over with his fingers interlaced before him, and I know what he wants me to do.
No questions. No hesitation. I struggle to my feet, then lunge for him, shoving one foot into his hands, my palms going to his shoulders.
He boosts me into the air, and I jump at the same time.
The momentum takes me up and over the mound of grain in the center of the room, high enough that I’m able to get my feet under me before I come down on the other side.
I hit on my ass and slide the rest of the way down feetfirst…
My momentum takes me right out the door that other version of me is forcing open with a rusted iron pole that she got from who knows where. I hit the clear air and whirl around just in time to see Hades buried by grain.
“No!” I shout just as the grain forces the door closed with an ominous and ringing clang.
I run to the door and bang on it with my fists. “Hades!”
“You abandoned him?” the other Lyra demands from behind me. Accuses, more like. Every single word strikes my back.
Before I can respond, though, everything disappears—Lyra, the silo, the farm and fields. All of it is gone, and I’m standing in a pie-shaped room made entirely of rock with only Demeter as my companion.
“Congratulations,” the goddess says. “You have unsealed my Lock.”
I hardly hear her. In my mind, I’m desperately trying to convince myself that I didn’t just kill the apparition of Hades. He can’t be killed, right? How was he even there?
Vaguely, I’m aware that Demeter waves a hand toward the now-open door and the Titans waiting in the chamber on the other side. But I’m already sprinting across the room, through the door, past all of them, and to the door to Hades’ Lock.
“Hades!” I yell as I place my palm over his cold, dark emblem to open it.
Nothing happens.
A round of shushes barely penetrates my panic, but it’s enough that I remember where we are and what sound could unleash. He’s supposed to open it for me, right? “Please don’t be dead,” I whisper.
Which is when my powers slam back into me.
Icy pain feels like the cold hand of death trying to rip my spine right out of my body. By the time it recedes, I’m on the ground, leaning on Hades’ door.
A door that’s still closed.
“Lyra.” A gentle hand lands on my shoulder. Cronos, I can tell. But I shrug him off as I push to my feet.
“Hades.” I manage to keep my voice down, placing my hand over the etched symbols again. Still the Lock doesn’t open. “So help me gods, if you don’t open this door—”
“He’s not alive or dead,” Cronos says in a hushed voice, more gently than I ever thought him capable of being. “He is something that both does and doesn’t exist at the same time.”
“Then how was he in Demeter’s Lock with me?” I demand softly without turning to face him.
There’s a hollow ring of silence behind me. “That’s not possible.”
I know he’s right. I know it. But how else did I get out of the silo? Hallucination Lyra saw him, too. But they can’t ask her.
Oh my gods. If I’m relying on a hallucination’s eyewitness account, I’m definitely losing it.
And that’s not the only indicator. I also was fully convinced, to the point of sacrificing myself, that Boone was the real savior in this story.
Suddenly, I’m not trusting my own mind and my own logic.
Not in this place where time is broken and immortals are chained, where invisible monsters appear when a bell sounds and the screams of the damned echo through the halls.
I slowly turn away from the stone door that remains silent and shut.
I don’t know what it is about Cronos’ face in that moment—the sympathy in eyes that I have always expected to be hard and cold, maybe, or the fact that his face looks so much like the one I desperately need to see right now.
On a swallowed sob, I step into him and bury my face in his chest, wrapping my arms around him.
“I don’t deserve to be here,” I say into his shirt.
He awkwardly pats my back. “None of us deserves to be down here.”
I tighten my grip on the back of his shirt and shake my head. “No. I mean I don’t deserve your faith. This isn’t working for a reason.”
I shouldn’t have given up in that silo. That was a dick move on my part, Kykeon-driven or not. But when it comes down to it, my logic wasn’t wrong.
Another awkward pat lands on my back. “We’ll worry about that tomorrow.” I’m guessing Cronos meant to use his most soothing voice, but it comes out all gruff and grumpy. These Titans really don’t know how to deal with emotions any better than I do.
A watery laugh escapes me. “This entire thing just fucking sucks.”
“That sounds more like my Lyra.”
I don’t know who gasps harder, me or Cronos, to find the replica of Hades standing on the other side of the open doorway to his Lock, looking none the worse for wear.