Chapter 76
What Did I Miss?
LYRA
“Did Cronos send you for me?”
Boone gives me a funny look as we close the gap between us. “No. We’ve been waiting for you to come back.”
He turns to walk beside me back toward the tunnel.
Waiting? “How long?”
“You’ve been gone a week—”
I stop walking, staring at the darkened tunnel entrance. “A week?”
No wonder time didn’t bother dropping me back where Cronos was. He’s not there anymore and hasn’t been for a while.
But a week?
Boone touches my shoulder lightly and whistles. Are you okay?
“I’m fine.” I clear my throat and start walking again. “I’m just surprised. Did anything happen while I was gone?”
“No.” He sounds grumpy about it, too. “What happened in this one?”
We’ve already been through the me-being-the-puppet-master stuff before. Boone remembers all those other times, just like I do. When I’m done, he just gives a grim nod. He knows how hard letting go of saving Isabel was for me.
“So, Oceanus is the bad guy?” he asks.
I shrug. “Maybe.”
When I try to go straight at a juncture, he tugs my elbow and draws me down a different path. “We had to move again.”
There’s only one reason they would have done that. The Pandemonium. “Who?”
“Hyperion, this time. It turns out his light consumes him when he goes feral. We’re lucky none of us is permanently blinded.”
“Is he okay now?”
“Yeah.”
That’s something, at least. “What else have you been doing while I was gone?”
Boone glances at me. “I wanted to try to figure out what was going on in Hera’s Lock so we can plan, but they wouldn’t let me enter alone.”
“If you reset us, we just start over on that bridge,” I point out.
His turn to shrug. “We’ll figure it out when you’re ready.”
They’ve been waiting on me. A new layer of guilt grows over the first one like mold.
Boone’s quiet as we take a few more turns. “Lyra…did you feel it? When the other you died?”
“I didn’t feel her pain or her end if that’s what you’re asking.” I felt pretty damned sick.
“Yeah. Me too.” We both keep walking.
I want to ask him how things are with Persephone. I even open my mouth to do that, right before the bell tingling makes us both jump.
“Fuck,” we mutter at the same time.
I don’t know if they trained him on this part of the tunnels, but I know exactly where we are, and doors are few and far between.
Except…
I grab his hand and try to run, but he pulls me up sharply. “Not that way. The closest door is this way.”
So he does know, but not about what I do.
“There’s a hidden door closer, this way.” I grab him and drag. “No time to argue.”
“Hells,” he mutters. But he stops resisting, and we both run.
We run as fast as I can go—I know that Boone is holding back on his full level of speed—and it takes two curves before I remember to turn on my damned power.
Thank the gods I remembered, because I blink just as we flash by the veil-covered door. “Stop!”
Boone stops so fast that, even though I was slowing, I slam into him. He absorbs the impact like I’m a feather, but I’m already reaching for the handle.
“Wait—”
“It’s glamoured. I can see it.”
That doesn’t so much as make him pause. “Do you know what’s in this one?”
“No. But it’s our best option.”
His grim gaze skates over the wall I’m reaching for.
“Whatever’s in there can’t be as bad as what’s coming out here.” I glance over my shoulder. Hades’ copy said I could see them coming with my ability. Is that true in the darkness not penetrated by our light, though?
“Do it,” he says.
It’s as I’m reaching for the handle that I think about the fact that the door may be locked.
But it’s not, and we rush inside, closing it behind us.
Then both breathe a sigh of relief, because the small room is empty.
We whirl back around to press our ears to the door, listening not for the Pandemonium but for anyone else who might be trying to find safety.
“My, my.” A voice that is somewhere between a song and a hiss sounds from behind us. “Visitors. I’m honored.”
Boone and I both spin, hands coming up to face whatever or whoever is in here with us. Just as fast, though, we both spin back to face the door.
“Holy shit!” My exclamation drowns out Boone’s, which is along the same lines.
We both speak at the same time in fits and starts, talking over each other. “Is that…”
“It can’t be…”
“I definitely saw snakes…”
“Don’t look her in the eyes…”
“I am right here,” that sweet slither of a voice breaks in. “You could simply ask.”
Except what I saw wasn’t a woman with a snake’s tail for a body. It didn’t have a body at all. Just a head stuck in a single alcove in the wall.
We’re lucky we’re not stone statues right now.
“Medusa?” I finally ask.
There’s a smile in her voice when she answers. “I would clap if I still had my hands.”
Oh. My. Gods.