Chapter 59
Better Luck Next Time
LYRA
The broken cracks have taken me back to Hades so many times, the disappointment at not seeing his face when I land in the past is like a punch to the gut.
“What in the Underworld?” The words burst from me as I find myself in a place all too familiar. My bedroom in the den. The last time I thought I was here, I wasn’t. Because Hestia’s Lock glamoured me to believe that. To feel that.
Is this a glamour or not? But time took me here, not a Lock. It’s not hazy here, either. No pink lighting. Even the smell—a familiar combination of rock, water, dirt, and stale air—feels more real. The air against my skin doesn’t move. The way it always hasn’t moved.
Still, just in case, I blink my power on, but nothing shimmers anywhere around me. So it’s not a glamour. This…is real.
I flick it back off. Which is when my mind finally catches up. “Oh, shit.” I think I know what happens right now.
So many things have been thrown at me, I’m not even sure what to process next. But one of those things was Hades insisting that I told him to do things—the Anaxian Wars, find me in the Colosseum, break my heart. If all of that is true, if that wasn’t him being glamoured, then that means…
Am I doing things to make sure the past lands me right where I am now?
I slip my axe out of the strap on my leg that Demeter’s replica let me keep.
This is how I test my theory, right? A small way that fits with my experience of life this time around?
This axe disappeared in my room about ten years before the Crucible, and later, I learned that he had no idea how or why it went missing.
Now I know it’s because I took it during my time travel experience while I was in Hestia’s Lock.
I glance at the mattress in front of me, covered in a moth-eaten blue blanket. The axe appeared on my bed.
Was it because I gave it to me?
Knowing I would need it. Or even just testing a theory. Does it matter?
So far, I’ve wondered at the way time seems to be determined to take me to specific moments—maybe it’s future Cronos, maybe the Fates, maybe something else powerful. What if that influence is trying to give us chances to set ourselves up to succeed, to escape?
Am I the puppet master in my own story? The woman behind the curtain? Even if I’m a haphazard one bumbling between memories and uneasy coincidence.
The problem is, we don’t have other weapons down in Tartarus. I might need this to finish the other Locks.
Well…Tartarus take me now.
Then I realize that epithet doesn’t apply well to me anymore. Tartarus already took me.
Many, many, many times.
I sigh.
Hoping I’m doing this right, remembering Cronos’ instructions as I try to glamour my own axe the way I made that rock into a tomato in the tunnels, I lift the axe and force my will into the object, whispering words, telling it to not leave past Lyra Keres’ possession until she gives in and learns how to use it.
That bit is important.
Back then it was so annoying, the way I’d try to throw the axe away or stash it in the treasure room and it would keep appearing in my quarters. I smile as I lay the weapon down on the bed.
I close my eyes and picture flipping my ability to see glamours on like a light switch. When I open my eyes, I look at the axe on my bed. There’s an opalescent sheen covering it. Which means I at least did something.
This is how it came to me in the first place. I’m sure of it.
I don’t like giving up my only weapon, but it hasn’t exactly been all that handy down in Tartarus in the first place. And future me…past me?…fuck. I’m going to need it in the Crucible.
Now…the question is, what else? I’m not sure how long I’ll be stuck down here. Should I go steal some food to take back with me? Or find an empty room to hide in before past me comes back? Not that past me ever did. I definitely would remember seeing myself.
I reach for the door handle.
A red flash of light across my closed eyes is all the warning I have before silence engulfs me and I’m taken back to Tartarus.
When I reappear, Cronos is immediate with his demands. “Where is your weapon?”
A new suspicion creeps in as I stare at him, because I’m pretty sure I just proved my theory. But that also means…time isn’t broken. Not the way we think. Maybe it’s taking us exactly where we need to go to move forward until we escape this place.
I don’t know why, or how, or who is driving it.
Future Cronos makes the most sense. Maybe.
But I am fairly confident that even if that’s not true, I am the one making sure certain things in my past happen the exact way they did in my experience of this particular round of my life in order to get me to this moment.
I should test it one more time, something bigger, before I really start to do foolish shit.
I let out a short, sharp breath, then hold out my half of the small butterfly that has been in my pocket since I got out of Demeter’s Lock, hoping he’ll take it for what it is—a silent entreaty to trust me. “The axe is exactly where it is supposed to be.”