Chapter 61
Waiting & Wishing
LYRA
There is nothing to do but wait it out.
After the initial shock, the Titans with us all sat down with their backs against the bare walls of Poseidon’s Lock.
The obstacle course disappeared from the pie-shaped room, leaving it just rock.
Crius, the father of constellations with his star-pricked eyes, glamoured three tiny white stars that hover in midair, spinning around each other, giving us an extra amount of flickering light in addition to the glow coming off Hyperion and from Theia’s palms.
I’m not sure I would have minded it being pitch black.
Seeing the worry etched in deep lines across the Titans’ faces might be worse.
Cronos, of all of them, seems to be taking this the hardest. “I knew we shouldn’t all group together like that,” he says to Rhea.
He wipes at the blood on his leather-strapped shoe like Lady MacBeth trying to remove a spot that wasn’t there. “I knew it.”
“Iapetus can’t kill Phoebe, can he?” I ask in a small voice. “Especially not with Koios there?”
Cronos’ chin hits his chest as he drops his head forward.
Rhea is the one to lean around him. “Sometimes death isn’t the worst thing that can happen.”
A truth I already know.
“How long do we wait?” Boone asks. He’s plucking at the Lycra of the shirt Poseidon dressed him in.
“She’ll be fine,” I tell him.
Boone stills, then lifts his gaze to me, and I shrug. He would definitely have gone after Persephone if getting our powers back hadn’t stopped him.
“She’s not my concern,” he says in a voice gone void.
“Liar.”
After a flat stare, he looks away from me to the Titans. “So…how long?”
At first, none seem to want to answer, or maybe they’re so worried they can’t.
“With Iapetus hit, longer is better,” Hyperion finally says. “The Pandemonium might clear out, but he has to pass the worst of the rage, or we risk more of us being hurt trying to avoid him or stop him.”
Right.
They weren’t fucking around when they said rage. Titan-level rage is…
All I can think is the gods never would have been able to get the Titans locked in here if the Titans had truly fought back. I look around their strained faces again.
“I’d like to eat ice cream…real ice cream…every day,” Theia says out of nowhere and out of context. “And hug my children every day, too.”
Boone, who’s sitting across the way, exchanges a raised-eyebrow look with me.
“I want to smell snow on the mountains,” Hyperion offers, and Theia slips her hand into his.
Beside me, Cronos manages the tiniest of smiles. “I’ll spend the first hundred years in our home on the beach, also with our children.”
The place Boone and I saw? Does it even still exist? I strongly doubt it. I bump Cronos with my shoulder. “What is this?” I whisper.
He draws his knees up, draping his hands across them. “When the bell goes off and we know it’s bad, sometimes we spend the wait talking about what we want to do most when we get out of Tartarus.”
Oh.
Rhea smiles. “I want to meet each of my grandchildren.”
I snort—mostly a dubious and sarcastic snort, because I’ve met several of those grandchildren—but cover it up with, “There are a lot of them.”
Which makes her smile. “I know.”
The others continue to play the game. A nice distraction. I wonder how many times they’ve shared the same things in all these thousands of years.
“Have you thought more about your fated bond?” Cronos leans over under the cover of the chatter to ask me, low-voiced.
I glance from him to Boone. “If it’s not romantic…” Phoebe was sure of that. “What else is there?”
He hums in his throat. “Some fates are lifelong friendships.”
“That could be it.”
“Maybe…” He seems dubious.
“What do you think it is?”
He shrugs. “Some fates are bound to a specific event or action. Maybe that’s you. Boone has made many things here different. Maybe the two of you together is the reason you get out.”
I frown. That maybe makes more sense.
“Or he could be the sacrifice,” I think I hear him murmur.
I stiffen. “Sacrifice?” I manage to keep my voice to a whisper, not wanting Boone to hear.
Cronos shakes his head. “I’m just thinking through different kinds of fates.”
“Oh.”
Still, the word rattles around inside my head.
He nods around the room. “We are all fated. Did you know that? Romantically, I mean. Soulmates, some would call us.”
I straighten a little. My power to see glamours is off, but even when it was on, I didn’t see any lines between them. “I never heard that. Titans were painted as simply evil, and that’s about all we know.”
He sighs.
“What does it feel like?” I ask.
His smile this time is warmer, sweeter, as he takes Rhea’s hand and kisses her palm before curling her fingers around the gesture. “It’s like you are only completely yourself when they are near you. Like filling a hollow place inside you.”
The Titaness leans her head on his shoulder. “It’s like everything just…fits. Even after eternity together.”
Fits.
Filling something hollow.
That sounds like how I feel with Hades. At least the Titans are down here with their soulmates. Mine… I have to wait for broken time to see him again.
My gaze slides toward Tethys.
If I stay down here too long, is that how I’ll end up? Broken without him?
Cronos must see I’m still spinning around what all this means. “Stop worrying about your fate. It will become clear enough with time.”
“Damn,” I mutter. “I’m really starting to hate time.”
Which makes him chuckle. “Will it help if I tell you that fate isn’t as unmovable as you think? It can be broken.”
I stiffen. “What? That’s possible?”
He grimaces. “I’ve only seen it happen three times in all my years, both with soulmate-type fates.” He grimaces again. “Those are the most common.”
“What happened?”
“It’s worse for the one not choosing to break it. They never find love. They never feel whole. Their heart never heals.”
That sounds awful. “Why did they break it?” I ask. “The ones you saw?”
“They simply chose a different path. One they believed was their true path.”
I scrub a hand over my eyes. “They were in love with someone else?”
“Yes.”
“Were they happy? Afterward?”
He’s quiet for long enough that I drop my hand to look at him. “Cronos?”
“One was.”
One out of three. After causing another misery. “Why did you tell me this?”
“So that you know that you always have choices. Always, Lyra.”
“Choices? Rhea said I always end up down here, too. No matter what. How is that a choice?”
Cronos purses his lips, nodding. “True. But that’s because you consistently choose the same paths.
We may be able to reset time and manipulate a few things from down here to try to get you here, but we can’t make those choices for you.
” The look in his pale-blue eyes feels…significant.
Like he truly wants me to hear this. Like there is something bigger that he wants me to understand.
But then Cronos reaches over to pat my head. “I just want your happiness.”
I swallow a wry chuckle. Next time, leave me up there with Hades, then. I think it but don’t say it out loud, because that action feels…selfish now.
We fall into silence about the same time that the others stop talking as well. A quiet takes over the chamber, one that grows heavier by the second, each of us caught up in our own thoughts as we wait.
And wish things could be different.