Chapter 64
Fortune Favors The Bold, Or The Colossally Foolish
LYRA
Persephone and I fall asleep with her hand clutching mine, and for the first time since I ended up down here, I relax enough to sleep well. Which is why the shimmer of light behind my eyelids is annoying as fuck.
“Go away,” I murmur-slur. I’m only vaguely aware of speaking it in my sleep.
But the light frustrating me only grows brighter. And brighter. And drags me out of unconsciousness. I open my eyes to the sight of the underside of broken time directly overhead. It peeks through the cavern’s solid rock ceiling, just a little, bobbing and dipping above me like it wants to play.
Rising up on one elbow, I check the room of sleeping Titans, but no one is stirring. No one else is even remotely awake as far as I can tell.
I check the crack again. It’s still there. Still beckoning.
Persephone hasn’t released my hand, so I try to slip out of her grip, but of course her eyes pop open immediately. My turn to put my fingers to my lips. Then I point overhead, and she looks, eyes widening before they drop back to me.
I point at myself and then time.
She frowns and shakes her head.
So I lean forward to whisper in her ear. “I learn too much from these not to.”
Irritation on Persephone is just as adorable as every other emotion, squishing up her delicate features. But then she nods and lets go of her death grip on me.
Quietly and carefully, I get to my feet and reach up toward the shimmering prism of time. Like it was waiting for me all along, it lowers from the ceiling, swallowing me up.
When time releases its grip on me, I don’t have the luxury of figuring out when or where I am—although the where is immediately clear and yet doesn’t entirely penetrate.
Not around the silent gasp that chokes me.
Because Hades is on his knees in front of Persephone’s altar in his Olympus home. “Forgive me,” he says in a broken whisper. “There’s nothing more I can do. You’re just…gone.”
Someone may as well have ripped open my chest and torn out my heart from seeing him so shattered. Never mind the twinge of jealousy.
In the same heartbeat, I have a terrible feeling I’ve gotten my answer to my own suspicions. I think I know what I’m supposed to do now. I was looking for proof when I entered this time loop. This might be it.
I scowl at the back of his head and make a decision.
This is probably a very bad idea.
But I also made a promise—to Rhea. I know where I ended up this time around.
And I am 99.9 percent sure I’m right, that broken time is taking me to either where I learn something important or to where I can set certain wheels in motion.
This is a big godsdamned wheel. So much bigger than giving myself the axe.
And I’m trying really hard not to think about how many ways I could be wrong about that.
Or, for that matter, the world-ending paradoxes.
Because if I do this, there’s one thing I become dead certain of…
I’m Hades’ source.
It has to be me who told him all the things to do. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
“She’s not dead,” I say quietly.
If I’m testing this shit out, I’m going all in. I wait for that weird sensation of a reset I experienced in the visions Mnemosyne gave me of my past, but none comes.
Instead, time marches forward and Hades is almost animalistic in the way he’s on his feet and on me in less than a heartbeat, taking me roughly by the neck before he freezes…and stares at me with eyes wide and flashing silver daggers, a nerve ticking at the side of his mouth.
“Lyra?”
I’m right about this.
Please let me be right about this.