Chapter 63
Friends In Low Places
LYRA
The door to the Lock slides open, and I fall back, smacking my head on the ground. “Ouch,” I grumble, feeling the spot.
Cronos leans over, appearing upside-down to me. “That was a silly place to sit,” he whispers.
Behind him, Rhea rolls her eyes but says nothing.
I guess it’s not safe to make sound yet, or they’re being extra cautious after the bell went off twice, since we’re so close to the source here.
“Yeah, yeah,” I whisper back as I get to my feet.
This time, when they lead me across the chamber and to the tunnels, I stick close to both Titans. Every sense is on screaming-level alert—my ears focused on every sound, my skin prickling.
Remembering Hades telling me my ability should allow me to see the Pandemonium, I squeeze my eyes closed and flip the mental switch. When I open them, nothing appears anywhere near us. No bell sounds. No raging Iapetus.
We make it all the way back to a different hidden cell than the one we’ve used to gather and sleep before, with Cronos silently pointing out the new turns and directions as we go.
A safety measure to keep Iapetus from finding us—the Titans move where they all sleep any time someone gets hit.
I guess they’ll track him down after the effects wear off.
I turn off my glamour sensing as we cross safely through the doorway located down a very narrow, pitch-black passage with no sconces.
With a door between us and the Pandemonium, I don’t need my power for now.
We emerge into a cell that is not much more than a roughly cut cave with a door to it, and find all of the Titans, Boone, and Persephone asleep on the floor.
All except Iapetus, who isn’t here.
I point at Phoebe, who is tucked into a corner, bandaged but not in pieces like I was worried about. “Is she okay?” I mouth the words.
We all need to rest after two rounds of bells.
They nod, then indicate we should also lie down.
Which I do…and then I just lie here.
I lie here like a useless lump and think through the thousand things that have happened, trying to piece it all together. Trying to get answers.
What I need is time. The broken kind.
Now that I’ve tested my theory once, in a small way with my axe, do I dare risk a reset to test it in a bigger way? I think I have to. I have to know.
So the next time one of those cracks appears, I’m going for it.
Making that decision feels…right. But now I’m stuck waiting again. So much down here is hurrying up to wait. So I shift, trying to get comfortable, trying to sleep, turning over. And yelp.
A hand clamps over my mouth, muffling the rest of my yelp, and Persephone, who is lying right beside me on the floor, lifts her finger to her lips.
I nod, and she takes her hand away, but then she doesn’t say anything.
After a second of her staring at me with those big lavender-blue eyes and me staring back at her, I raise my eyebrows. “Can I…help you?” I whisper.
Hesitation steals over her features.
“If not, I’m going to sleep—”
“Have you ever lied to Hades?” she rushes to whisper.
I blink, then frown.
And she makes a face. “I mean when you time travel. Because you have to be careful what you tell him.”
Oh. “I…try not to.”
Persephone’s perfect features pinch. “Oh.”
“Why are you asking? Have you lied to him?”
She pauses, then shakes her head. “I’ve never gone to him when I’ve ended up in one of those broken chunks of time.”
Which means Persephone was never Hades’ source. He didn’t arrange with her to use Pandora’s Box to get her out. He arranged it with someone else. I’m not questioning it. I’m sure of it. And I’m starting to be sure of who.
“Who did you lie to, then?”
Her gaze slides away from mine, lashes dropping to hide her thoughts from me. She doesn’t want to say.
“Boone?”
She’d be a terrible poker player, the way her gaze flies to mine. “No—”
“Now you’re lying to me.”
She goes quiet.
“Why did you lie to him?”
Her lips twist. “At least you bother to ask.” She sighs when I say nothing to that.
“I thought I had to. When I first met him, I had already caused a few resets and didn’t want to do it again.
I showed up where he was, in the middle of a museum, and I needed a reason for being there.
So I pretended to be a thief and beat him to his score. But…”
I wait silently, studying her.
“Time kept taking me back to him.”
Anxiety ties knots into my stomach. Time kept taking her to him. “Why?”
She shrugs. “But the last time it happened, I…”
“What? What did you do?”
“I kissed him,” she whispers.
“You…” I deflate a little. Just a kiss? “That’s it?”
“I shouldn’t have. We’d had other moments.
More than just me snatching scores from under his nose.
Kissing him…was like coming home. It led to…
” She blushes. The goddess actually blushes.
“Other things. Except time never took me back to him again after that, and when I returned here, the item he’d been trying to steal was in my pocket.
I forgot I’d already gotten it, meaning to give it to him. So he…”
So he thought she’d been toying with him just to get the score. Something a thief of the Order would take incredibly seriously. That’s his freedom, one more score to pay off his debt. He thought she’d fucked him over. Literally.
No wonder he didn’t trust her when we got down here.
“And this last time that he went to the past, I guess he saw me, the me before I ended up down here, with Hades. He must have misinterpreted something about that.”
That tugs hard at the string of silly jealousy I’ve been trying to pretend I’m not all tied up in when it comes to her and Hades.
“But I can’t think of anything I’ve ever done with Hades that would make Boone…”
“Make him what?” She’s got me hooked now. I have to know.
“He seems determined to shut me out.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
She stares for a moment, then sighs softly. “I thought, if you’d lied to Hades, maybe you could tell me how you…”
“Kept it up?”
Another shake. “Fixed it.”
Oh. I think through the complicated relationship and timeline Hades and I have. And while I haven’t lied to him exactly, I haven’t been truthful every second, either. Same for him. Because neither of us had a choice in the moment. I can see that now.
“I wish I could help you. All I can say is, give Boone time, and never lie to him again.”
After a beat, she offers me one of her trademark sunshine smiles. This one feels off, though, like it’s dim behind clouds.
I eye her, sunny smile and all. “You say we always become friends?”
Persephone huffs a laugh. “Always. Eventually.” Then she pouts a little. “You’re taking longer this time.”
“How, exactly?”
She tips her head, gaze turning inward as she purses perfect lips. “I think because we’re opposites.”
I blink because it’s so in line with what I was just thinking. “Doesn’t that make it harder?”
“No, silly. It means I lighten you up, and you make me…” She glances away, biting her lip.
“Heavy?” I say in a flat voice. “You were going to say I bring you down. Right?”
She rushes to grab my hand. “But in a good way.”
“Uh-huh.” I try to shake her off, but it’s like getting rid of a barnacle that has goo-goo eyes.
“I mean it,” she insists. “I think I ended up down here because I trusted the wrong person, even if I still don’t know who it was.” She makes a face. “Hades was always warning me that trying to see the good in everyone around me opens me up to be hurt.”
“That sounds like Hades.”
Her smile draws me in, like we’re sharing this thing in common. And part of me wants to let her. I could ask her if she thinks he ever really loved me.
But I don’t.
Stuck down here, there’s no way she’d know.
“So…there was never anything romantic between you and Hades?”
“Eww. No.” She grimaces. “You’ve asked me that before, you know. In fact, you usually ask.”
“Well…as his named queen, the entire world has a picture of you two as lovers. There’s even a story of how he tricked you into marrying him with pomegranate seeds.”
She sighs. “My mother put that story out there, actually. She needed some reasonable explanation to Zeus about why I’d ever want to be in the Underworld at all, let alone help rule it.” She squeezes the hand she’s still got a grip on. “You love Hades. That’s why I loved you to start with.”
I shift back. “That seems strange.”
She scoots closer, clearly oblivious to my space needs. “He’s one of my favorite people. He gave me a larger purpose than just flowers.”
“Spring is important, too.”
“Not when your mother can handle it without your help.” Her voice turns dry.
“And often does.” Another sigh, and then she seems to cast off that small mood with a shake of her shoulders.
“But Hades… Others are too afraid of him to love him. Except Charon and Cerberus, of course. And me. But you came along way before I did.”
For a second, I think maybe she is going to say something else. Instead, she pins determined optimism on her face. “I wish I could tell you what to do about all of this, but I have faith you will work it out and we’ll all gain our freedom.”
My turn to huff a laugh. “Why in the name of the cosmos would you have faith in me that way?”
The sunshine is real this time. “I told you. Because you’re my friend.”